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Comment CPP sell ID theft insurance (Score 1) 71

by cmclean (#32593488) Attached to: 420,000 Scam E-mails Sent Every Hour In UK Alone
They have a big stake in the market, and have one of the most pernicious, devious and downright aggressive marketing and sales tactics it's ever been my displeasure to be on the receiving end of. So don't just take those numbers with a ladle-full of salt, take them as plain "marketing bullshit dressed up as research and regurgitated by lazy publishers"
Google

Chrome OS Benchmarked Against Moblin, Ubuntu Netbook, More 193

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the feels-a-little-like-apples-to-oranges dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Using the latest build of Google's Chromium OS source code, Phoronix built it out to run on a Samsung netbook and ran sixteen benchmarks, putting it up against Moblin 2.1, Ubuntu Netbook Remix 9.10, openSUSE 11.2, and Fedora 12. They ran some of their usual desktop benchmarks (encoding, video, etc..), but more interestingly they ran a number of battery, CPU usage, and memory consumption tests under different settings that show some of the advantages and disadvantages for each of the Linux distributions, and spotted a few bugs along the way."

Comment Re:CBG (Score 1) 343

by cmclean (#22545914) Attached to: Pakistan YouTube Block Breaks the World

Unless it's all a cunning plan by my Governemnt to make it seem like I can connect, but reality I'm behind Hadrian's Firewall and surfing the UK Intranet. Which, admittedly, knowing the UK Government is perfectly possible


Really? Are you sure you don't mean: "Which, admittedly, knowing the UK Government is unlikely as it's impossible for them to do something related to IT without ballsing it all up and spending skip-loads more taxpayer money than they promised (mostly to consultancy firms, with whom the MPs involved co-incidentally have board membership) then eventually dropping the whole thing after two years of laborious committee-based failuremongering blaming the sub-contractors for everything and giving CBEs to the management so they don't leak to the press"?
The Almighty Buck

Toshiba To Halt HD-DVD Production 494

Posted by Soulskill from the one-format-to-rule-them-all dept.
Multiple users have written to tell us that Toshiba is planning to halt production of devices related to HD-DVD. According to Japanese broadcasting network NHK, Toshiba will lose "hundreds of millions of dollars" as the format war finally draws to a close. Regardless, investors are pleased that Toshiba has made the decision to cut its losses. This comes after a last-ditch price cut was unable to prevent Wal-mart from throwing their lot in with Blu-ray, although some sources suggest that Wal-mart was already aware of Toshiba's plans to withdraw from fight.
Technology

China Plans to Surpass the U.S. in Nanotech Development 282

Posted by Soulskill from the don't-let-them-have-wil-wheaton dept.
SoyChemist writes "Sociologists at the American Association for the Advancement of Science annual meeting have reported that China is making major investments in nanotechnology. Their aim is to 'leapfrog' past the United States in technological development by focusing on long-ranging scientific goals. So far, the Chinese government has poured about $400 million into the young field of research. Considering the low cost of equipment and labor over there, that is a very large sum of money, and China's investment is expected to 'rise considerably.'"
Government

Australian Government Considers Copying UK Copyright Law Ideas 190

Posted by Soulskill from the copying-copyright-right dept.
msim brings word that Australian legislators are considering an anti-piracy measure that would require ISPs to terminate internet access for people who repeatedly download copyrighted material. The legislation would set up a three-strikes system similar to the one proposed in the UK recently. While British ISPs resisted suggestions that they act as internet police, the response may not be the same in Australia, where the government has already tried to censor the internet. "Under the three-strikes policy, a warning would be first issued to offenders who illegally share files using peer-to-peer technology to access music, TV shows and movies free of charge. The second strike would lead to the offender's internet access being suspended; the third would cancel the offender's internet access."
Biotech

Natural Selection Can Act on Human Culture 239

Posted by Zonk from the people-are-people-so-why-should-it-be dept.
Hugh Pickens writes "Scientists at Stanford University have shown for the first time that the process of natural selection can act on human cultures as well as on genes. The team studied reports of canoe designs from 11 Oceanic island cultures, evaluating 96 functional features that could contribute to the seaworthiness of the vessels. Statistical test results showed clearly that the functional canoe design elements changed more slowly over time, indicating that natural selection could be weeding out inferior new designs. Authors of the study said their results speak directly to urgent social and environmental problems. 'People have learned how to avoid natural selection in the short term through unsustainable approaches such as inequity and excess consumption. But this is not going to work in the long term,' said Deborah S. Rogers, a research fellow at Stanford."
Power

U of MI Produces Strongest Laser Ever 244

Posted by Zonk from the now-we-just-need-a-really-big-shark-and-we're-set dept.
eldavojohn writes "Weighing in at a mere 20 billion trillion watts per square centimeter and containing a measly 300 terawatts of power, the University of Michigan has broken a record with a 1.3-micron speck wide laser. It's about two orders of magnitude higher than any other laser in the world and can perform for 30 femtoseconds once every ten seconds — some of the researchers speculate it is the most powerful laser in the universe. 'If you could hold a giant magnifying glass in space and focus all the sunlight shining toward Earth onto one grain of sand, that concentrated ray would approach the intensity of a new laser beam made in a University of Michigan laboratory ... To achieve this beam, the research team added another amplifier to the HERCULES laser system, which previously operated at 50 terawatts. HERCULES is a titanium-sapphire laser that takes up several rooms at U-M's Center for Ultrafast Optical Science. Light fed into it bounces like a pinball off a series of mirrors and other optical elements. It gets stretched, energized, squeezed and focused along the way.'" And ... cue the evil chortling.

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Prof: So the American government went to IBM to come up with a data encryption standard and they came up with ... Student: EBCDIC!"

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