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Rusty Foster Isn't Dead 162

Posted by timothy from the pass-it-on dept.
While he was vacationing with his wife, Kuro5hin founder Rusty Foster was killed — at least in the eyes of Facebook. NBC News details how it happened: a "pal" pranked both Foster and Facebook by notifying the social site of Foster's supposed death, providing as documentation the obituary of another, much older man by the same name. Getting the Facebook version of his life back took some doing; based on this article it seems much easier to convince Facebook that you're dead than that you're alive.
Math

Goldbach Conjecture: Closer To Solved? 170

Posted by timothy from the eventually-knock-it-down-to-one dept.
mikejuk writes "The Goldbach conjecture is not the sort of thing that relates to practical applications, but they used to say the same thing about electricity. The Goldbach conjecture is reasonably well known: every integer can be expressed as the sum of two primes. Very easy to state, but it seems very difficult to prove. Terence Tao, a Fields medalist, has published a paper that proves that every odd number greater than 1 is the sum of at most five primes. This may not sound like much of an advance, but notice that there is no stipulation for the integer to be greater than some bound. This is a complete proof of a slightly lesser conjecture, and might point the way to getting the number of primes needed down from at most five to at most 2. Notice that no computers were involved in the proof — this is classical mathematical proof involving logical deductions rather than exhaustive search."
Idle

Submission + - The RMS Rider (mysociety.org)

Submitted by larry bagina
larry bagina writes: It's no secret that rock stars have riders — provisions on their contractual appearances that require a bowl of brown-free m&ms or specify the exact brand of bottled water, cocaine purity, etc. Well, Richard Stallman has his own list of provisions. Nothing about toe jam, oddly enough.

I can't wait to see Eric Raymond's rider!
Security

Prototyping Boards Make It Easier To Find Flaws in Specialized Hardware 56

Posted by timothy from the arduino-nuclear-plant dept.
wiredmikey writes "Author Robert Vamosi writes an interesting piece on how security researchers are using open source 'prototyping boards' and other open source tools now available via the Internet for rapid prototyping of tools used in hardware analysis. 'The days of saying it would take the resources of a nation-state to discover or exploit vulnerabilities in a particular piece of hardware in an industrial control system or a healthcare environment are rapidly fading,' he writes. Vendors who do not test their products before selling them into the field are doomed to be targets of future research and, perhaps, attacks."

Comment errrr (Score 1) 16

by zogger (#33399110) Attached to: Tell me again how Government Caused the Depression of 2008

Government is corrupt. government is rife with crony insiders from wall street and the casino banks who rotate in and out of government and are in the positions of ultimate economic authority, including at the Fed. All policies come from there. They also lobby/bribe off other government employees..politicians and 'regulators", to look the other way or to sponsor new legislation or remove old legislation that gets in the way of their skimming con games.

Government is 100% at fault, being so corrupt. Corporations are *corrupt by design*, the nature of the beast, it is the government's job to regulate them. None of those entities could do squat unless they were allowed to do it. They couldn't come up with toxic waste derivatives and sell them, or nuthin. the government should have said "WTF are these CDOs and so on? Are you crazy, this is bullshit, these are not "products", GTFO of here right now". These corporations couldn't manipulate the (now scam and counterfeit since 1913) money supply, manipulate the markets, without government lack of oversight, no matter how much tax money is stolen from the "people" for them to do their jobs correctly. Oh, but they are well paid, now government employees at the Fed level make way more than most non government workers and have carved in stone pensions and health insurance and other sorts of goodies.

    These are corporations and receive government charters to function as corporations.. they have to "incorporate", the government could say "no", and either not grant the corporate charters for scam businesses like these, or actually remove them if malfeasance is found, but they do neither, they just steal tax payer money and re-allocate it further upstream to those guys, and let them continue with their mass thievery. It's a mostly closed good ole boy loop, with "government" being the enforcer, the entity with dudes with guns who tell people what they can and can't do. Now, they tell the "people" to always support those billionaires and make them even richer.

  That's all they do, make already rich corporations richer, and get everyone else to believe they are "in debt" to them via constant mass brainwashing.

And so on, and man am I disappointed, it's like all those articles I did, all the typing..gone, worthless, waste of time.

Anyway, thanks for making me realize this, how much of a waste of time and effort it is here.

Comment man... (Score 2, Interesting) 302

by zogger (#33398068) Attached to: Pentagon Selects Companies To Build Flying Humvees

...is that stupid looking. Government sure does come up with some harebrained excuses to drop tons of cash on fatcats all the time...

Hey, here's a thought....don't invade other nations where the locals don't like you and resort to any weapon they can come up with to stop you. Of course I know this doesn't make the fatcats any *more* money, but really....

Look at those pics....geez....the "insurgents" will enjoy their skeet shooting. And the oil companies will enjoy their profits, after first having to transit five other fatcat DOD "contractors" pockets first. What is it in ashcanistan now, 400 bucks a gallon for fuel delivered, something like that? Can you imagine the fuel an even slightly armored flying dork mobile like that will need to burn to get off the ground and stay aloft?

Comment Re:Never let your parents throw away your stuff (Score 1) 4

by zogger (#33383400) Attached to: Only in Japan?

I could have saved confederate money and old stocks from the great depression blowout. They sold a bundled thick stack of either for ten cents at the five and dime back then.

Coulda woulda shoulda

Army surplus rifles and pistols were wicked cheap back then as well.

I have no idea what is worth saving today, but I have hung on to my old first computer, a mac 512k, and then a few more very slightly newer like an LC and some others I forget now.

Comment Here ya go (Score 1) 386

by zogger (#33380870) Attached to: Fun To Be Had With a 10-Foot Satellite Dish?

Scrounger's guide to Sat TV

http://www.nmia.com/~roberts/scrounge

Free to air Sat receivers

http://www.tech-faq.com/free-to-air-receivers.html

If you don't want to go TV, you can make spiffy outdoor table canopies from them, or use them for home solar thermal alt energy projects, once you have a tracker. I've seen them used for the tops/roofs on backyard small buildings as well.

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