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What was highest label on your first car speedometer?

  • 80 mph
  • 88 mph
  • 100 mph
  • 120 mph
  • 150 mph
  • it was in kph like civilized countries use you insensitive clod
  • Other (please specify in comments)

[ Results | Polls ]
Comments:45 | Votes:100

posted by cmn32480 on Sunday May 03 2015, @09:55PM   Printer-friendly
from the make-them-live-under-a-bridge dept.

Timothy B. Lee writes at Vox that the PATENT Act is focused on dealing with patent trolls: fly-by-night companies that get rich by exploiting flaws in the way the courts handle patent lawsuits. If trolls are the primary problem with the patent system, then the PATENT Act will go a long way toward fixing it. But according to Lee patent trolls aren't the primary problem with the patent system. They're just the problem Congress is willing to fix. The primary problem is the patent system makes it too easy to get broad, vague patents, and the litigation process is tilted too far toward plaintiffs. But because so many big companies make so much money off of this system, few in Congress are willing to consider broader reforms.

A modern example is Microsoft, which has more than 40,000 patents and reportedly earns billions of dollars per year in patent licensing revenues from companies selling Android phones. That's not because Google was caught copying Microsoft's Windows Phone software (which has never been very popular with consumers). Rather, it's because low standards for patents — especially in software — have allowed Microsoft to amass a huge number of patents on routine characteristics of mobile operating systems. Microsoft's patent arsenal has become so huge that it's effectively impossible to create a mobile operating system without infringing some of them. And so Microsoft can demand that smaller, more innovative companies pay them off.

But according to Lee there is hope that the courts may help. The most important decision might have been last year's Alice v. CLS Bank ruling, which addressed the patentability of software for the first time. Lower courts are still working out the exact implications of that decision, but the ruling led to the destruction of a dozen software patents within three months. It's likely to destroy hundreds more in the future. "Over the last decade, the high court has handed down a series of opinions that have very slowly corrected the law's pro-patent tilt," writes Lee. "The pro-patent laws that produced today's patent litigation crisis were developed by the courts over a 25-year period, from about 1980 to 2005. Since 2005, the Supreme Court has been working to restore balance to the patent system, but it could take another decade or more for them to complete their work."

posted by cmn32480 on Sunday May 03 2015, @08:12PM   Printer-friendly
from the whoopsie! dept.

Google has been obliged to revise its Password Alert anti-phishing protection just hours after releasing it when security researchers showed how the technology was easily circumvented.

Security consultant Paul Moore (@Paul_Reviews) has published a proof-of-concept JavaScript exploit that skirted the defensive technology with just seven lines of code.

The Password Alert for Chrome browser plug-in is meant to trigger alerts for users in cases when they are induced to hand over their password to counterfeit sites impersonating Google (other online services aren't covered).

The extension only kicks into action after users have signed into their Google account; thereafter it puts up warnings to reset Gmail passwords in cases where users are taken in by a phish.

The problem is these alerts can be shut down with minimum effort and a few lines of JavaScript planted on counterfeit sites. More specifically, Moore's script looks for a warning banner every five milliseconds before removing anything it detects. Other approaches aimed at preventing humans actually seeing a warning – effectively killing off alerts kill[sic] as soon as they are generated – might also have been possible.

Moore posted a short video on YouTube to highlight his concerns.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/05/01/google_password_alert_easily_disabled_6_lines_javascript/

[Also Covered By]: http://arstechnica.com/security/2015/04/30/behold-the-drop-dead-simply-exploit-that-nukes-googles-password-alert/

posted by cmn32480 on Sunday May 03 2015, @06:36PM   Printer-friendly
from the what-about-the-Hippocratic-oath? dept.

The leading American professional group for psychologists secretly worked with the Bush administration to help justify the post-9/11 US detainee torture program, according to a watchdog analysis [PDF] released on Thursday.

The report, written by six leading health professionals and human rights activists, is the first to examine the alleged complicity of the American Psychological Association (APA) in the “enhanced interrogation” program.

Based on an analysis of more than 600 newly disclosed emails, the report found that the APA coordinated with Bush-era government officials – namely in the CIA, White House and Department of Defense – to help ethically justify the interrogation policy in 2004 and 2005, when the program came under increased scrutiny for prisoner abuse by US military personnel at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.

A series of clandestine meetings with US officials led to the creation of “an APA ethics policy in national security interrogations which comported with then-classified legal guidance authorizing the CIA torture program,” the report’s authors found.

http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/apr/30/psychologists-bush-officials-torture-program

posted by cmn32480 on Sunday May 03 2015, @04:43PM   Printer-friendly
from the can't-we-all-just-get-along dept.

Bruce Byfield addresses the all-too-often-seen ugliness in open source software circles, and the tendency of open source enthusiasts, to start flame wars based on their personal preference.

He explains that most people working in open source development and free software have very strong feelings of satisfaction in their contributions to the community. But often these feelings have an ugly side.

The issue was brought to a head in an article about the decline of Apache OpenOffice, and the ascendance of LibreOffice. His email indicated that many writers wanted to see Apache humiliated due to differences in their approach even though the products were basically the same code-base.

What disturbs me is when the strong feelings devolve into insularity that excludes other free software projects.

Why, for example, would I possibly want to see OpenOffice humiliated? I prefer LibreOffice's releases, and -- with some misgivings -- the Free Software Foundation's philosophy and licensing over that of the Apache Foundation. I also question the efficiency of having two office suites so closely related to each other. Yet while exploring such issues may be news, I don't forget that, despite these differences, OpenOffice and the Apache Foundation still have the same general goals as LibreOffice or the Free Software Foundation.

[More after the Break]

This reminded him of the Desktop Environment wars, KDE vs Gnome, while several smaller players like XFCE, LXDE, and Enlightenment and a host of others, chug along largely unscathed. We see the same sort of camps forming around File Systems, Init Systems, as well as many user-space programs. We see user communities vilified, and companies trashed, usually for something tangential to the actual free or open source software involved. People become insular.

Sometimes, this kind of insularity may reflect which projects a person works on. However, at least as often, it is voiced by average users with no direct connection to any of the projects involved. It appears an expression of the human need to belong, although an unusually misguided one. ... In fact, I suspect that this insularity is responsible for much of the opposition to diversity efforts. After all, when your sense of who you are depends on externals and what you define yourself as not being, any change becomes uncomfortable -- and, often, an outright threat to your sense of self.

Personally, I'd have to say that what annoys me most about free and open source software are the forced marches imposed on the users, for frivolous reasons. To combat the insularity I see in myself, I try to install a different Distro, or a different OS every 6 months or so. I guess it's time to add a new Desktop Environment to those experiments. virtual machines are a godsend for this.

Bruce goes on to say

In theory, maybe some way exists to encourage the enthusiasm that free software inspires while discouraging the ugliness of insularity.

Soylentils: Do you ever force yourself to step outside your comfort zone with your choices of free software? If so, how, and how often?

posted by cmn32480 on Sunday May 03 2015, @02:07PM   Printer-friendly
from the fighting-tyranny dept.

RT Times reports that Alexanderplatz square in Berlin has become the stage for a provocative art piece which celebrates whistleblowers and encourages ordinary citizens to speak out. "They have lost their freedom for the truth, so they remind us how important it is to know the truth,” says sculptor Davide Dormino. The life-sized statues of the three whistleblowers stand upon three chairs, as if speaking in an impromptu public meeting. Next to them is a fourth, empty chair. "The fourth chair is open to anyone here in Berlin who wants to get up and say anything they want," says the artist. Dormino, who came up with the idea together with the US journalist Charles Glass, specifically chose a classical bronze statue for his depiction – and not an installation or abstract piece – since statues are usually made of establishment figures. According to Domino while men who order others to their deaths get immortalized, those who resist are often forgotten, so “the statue pays homage to three who said no to war, to the lies that lead to war and to the intrusion into private life that helps to perpetuate war.” Activists and members of Germany’s Green party unveiled the life-size bronze statues on May Day.

posted by CoolHand on Sunday May 03 2015, @12:30PM   Printer-friendly
from the icann-do-it-yes-i-can dept.

Mismanagement and greed continues to plague the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), which doesn't know what to do with over $58 million it has collected from gTLD auctions.

The International Centre For Dispute Resolution (ICDR) has issued a ruling that says ICANN has acted in a way "fundamentally inconsistent with the requirements in ICANN's Bylaws for it to act openly, transparently, fairly and with integrity." The ruling relates to an ICANN dispute with DotConnectAfrica, which wants to manage the .africa gTLD. The ICDR has demanded that two ICANN officials, Cherine Chalaby and Heather Dryden, appear at a Washington D.C. hearing to answer questions. However, ICANN has other plans:

How can the Panel ensure that the parties to this [Independent Review Panel] are treated with equality and that each party has the right to be heard and is given a fair opportunity to present its case with respect to the mandate the Panel has been given, if as ICANN submits, "ICANN's Bylaws do not permit any examination of witnesses by the parties or the Panel during the hearing"?

The Register notes that "the issue is of particular interest at the moment since ICANN is going through a formal process of review on its accountability before it is allowed to take control of the critical IANA contract from the US government." In fact, the Senate's Judiciary Committee has told the White House's "IP Czar" Daniel Marti that "there are longstanding concerns within both the business community and the Congress regarding ICANN's transparency and accountability mechanisms with respect to its existing functions and responsibilities." Specifically, intellectual property concerns such as "the 'whack-a-mole' problem that plagues copyright holders online, where illegal content or sites are taken down only to spring back up again moments later in a new location." Meanwhile, ICANN has spent $7 million in an attempt to secure the IANA contract, raised staff wages 10% over two years to a new average of $187,000, and expanded its travel budget by 85% to $17 million in just a single year.

Finally, ICANN has confirmed that misconfigured Salesforce software resulted in at least 330 instances where confidential information about 96 gTLD applicants was exposed:

ICANN said it realizes that "any compromise of our users' data is unacceptable," and that it "deeply regrets this incident." It pledged "to accelerate our efforts to harden all of our digital services."

Incredibly, however, it appears to place blame on the [19] users that used the advanced search feature: "ICANN is contacting the user or users who appear to have viewed information that was not their own and requiring that they provide an explanation of their activity. We are also asking them to certify that they will delete or destroy all information obtained and to certify that they have not and will not use the data or convey it to any third party."

posted by takyon on Sunday May 03 2015, @09:26AM   Printer-friendly
from the garbage-in-garbage-out dept.

Tim O'Reilly has advocated for the idea of algorithmic regulation - reducing the role of people and replacing them with automated systems in order to make goverment policy less biased and more efficient. But the idea has been criticized as utopianism, where actual implementations are likely to make government more opaque and even less responsive to the citizens who have the least say in the operation of society.

Now, as part of New America's annual conference What Drives Innovation Around the Country? Virginia Eubanks has written an essay examining such automation in the cases of pre-crime and welfare fraud. Is it possible to automate away human judgment from the inherently human task of governance and still achieve humane results? Or is inefficiency and waste an unavoidable part of the process?

posted by CoolHand on Sunday May 03 2015, @06:39AM   Printer-friendly
from the you-tell-me dept.

I recently updated my list of Seattle Tech Employers. All the way at the bottom is a link to Zoomingo, a local shopping site. When viewed on the iPhone, but not on Android, Windows nor Mac OS X, Zoomingo's Jobs page serves pr0n.

I attempted to contact Zoomingo through their contact page a few days ago but met with no response. I called the Domains by Proxy number listed in their WHOIS, only to reach a totally clueless customer service agent. He was generally nice about it, but quite confused.

"We only pass on your phone messages when they call in for it."

"Suppose they don't call in until a month from now. Are they going to be happy that a local sales website has been serving pr0n for a solid month?"

My understanding is that the Uniform Domain Dispute Resolution Policy requires up-to-date contact information in one's WHOIS record; I recall specifically that a domain was lost due to a stale postal address.

I don't have a problem with WHOIS privacy services but there should be a way for anyone who wants to reach the admin of a faulty server, to reach it immediately.

(My guess is that Zoomingo's jobs page depends on Javascript from some other domain, and that other domain's nameservers have been 0wnz0r3d.)

posted by CoolHand on Sunday May 03 2015, @03:59AM   Printer-friendly
from the pioneers-should-have-guns-and-coonskin-caps dept.

Peter Moore has a fascinating article on BBC about how Admiral Robert FitzRoy, the man who invented the weather forecast in the 1860s faced skepticism and even mockery in his time but whose vision of a public forecasting service, funded by government for the benefit of all, is fundamental to our way of life. Chiefly remembered today as Charles Darwin's taciturn captain on HMS Beagle, during the famous circumnavigation in the 1830s, in his lifetime FitzRoy found celebrity from his pioneering daily weather predictions, which he called by a new name of his own invention - "forecasts". There was no such thing as a weather forecast in 1854 when FitzRoy established what would later be called the Met Office. With no forecasts, fishermen, farmers and others who worked in the open had to rely on weather wisdom - the appearance of clouds or the behaviour of animals - to tell them what was coming as the belief persisted among many that weather was completely chaotic. But FitzRoy was troubled by the massive loss of life at sea around the coasts of Victorian Britain where from 1855 to 1860, 7,402 ships were wrecked off the coasts with a total of 7,201 lost lives. With the telegraph network expanding quickly, FitzRoy was able to start gathering real-time weather data from the coasts at his London office. If he thought a storm was imminent, he could telegraph a port where a drum was raised in the harbour. It was, he said, "a race to warn the outpost before the gale reaches them".

For FitzRoy the forecasts were a by-product of his storm warnings. As he was analysing atmospheric data anyway, he reasoned that he might as well forward his conclusions - fine, fair, rainy or stormy - on to the newspapers for publication. "Prophecies and predictions they are not," he wrote, "the term forecast is strictly applicable to such an opinion as is the result of scientific combination and calculation." The forecasts soon became a quirk of this brave new Victorian society. FitzRoy's forecasts had a particular appeal for the horse racing classes who used the predictions to help them pick their outfits or lay their bets.

But FitzRoy soon faced serious difficulties. Some politicians complained about the cost of the telegraphing back and forth. The response to FitzRoy's work was the beginning of an attitude that we reserve for our weather forecasters today. The papers enjoyed nothing more than conflating the role of the forecaster with that of God and the scientific community were sceptical of his methods. While the majority of fishermen were supportive, others begrudged a day's lost catch to a mistaken signal. FitzRoy retired from his west London home to Norwood, south of the capital, for a period of rest but he struggled to recover and on 30 April 1865, FitzRoy cut his throat at his residence, Lyndhurst-house, Norwood, on Sunday morning. "In time, the revolutionary nature of FitzRoy's work would be recognised," says Moore. "FitzRoy's vision of a weather-prediction service funded by government for the benefit of its citizens would not die. In 1871, the United States would start issuing its own weather "probabilities", and by the end of the decade what was now being called the Met Office would resume its own forecasts in Britain."

posted by CoolHand on Sunday May 03 2015, @01:37AM   Printer-friendly
from the shutdown-and-restart dept.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/05/01/787_software_bug_can_shut_down_planes_generators/

The US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has issued a new airworthiness directive (PDF) for Boeing's 787 because a software bug shuts down the plane's electricity generators every 248 days.

“We have been advised by Boeing of an issue identified during laboratory testing,” the directive says. That issue sees “The software counter internal to the generator control units (GCUs) will overflow after 248 days of continuous power, causing that GCU to go into failsafe mode.”

When the GCU is in failsafe mode it isn't making any power. That'll be bad news if all four of the GCUs aboard a 787 were powered up at the same time, because all will then shut down, “resulting in a loss of all AC electrical power regardless of flight phase.”

And presumably also turning the 787 into a brick with no power for its fly-by-wire systems, lighting, climate control or in-flight movies. The fix outlined in the directive is pretty simple: make sure you turn the GCUs off before 248 days elapse. Boeing is working on a fix and the FAA says “Once this software is developed, approved, and available, we might consider additional rulemaking.”

For now, before you board a 787 it's probably worth asking the pilot if he can turn it off and turn it on again.

posted by CoolHand on Saturday May 02 2015, @11:02PM   Printer-friendly
from the wine-and-dine-with-brine dept.

Scientists have discovered bacteria living in sub-surface brine in the Dry Valleys in Antarctica, in conditions similar to those that might still exist on Mars.

At the end of Taylor Glacier, which spills into one of the Dry Valleys (Taylor Valley, actually), a mysterious red trickle of salty, iron-rich water periodically stains the ice as it spills out like blood from a wound. It’s a good thing that it isn’t a paranormal message from ghosts warning researchers to leave the valley, because it has had the opposite effect—it draws them in. In 2012, for example, biologists looking for signs of life eking out an existence in the Dry Valleys discovered that Blood Falls contained an impressive community of microbial life.

It is thought that the weight of the glacial ice is squeezing these periodic flows out of the sediment beneath, but the bigger question is what that water is doing there in the first place. It’s cold enough in this area that Taylor Glacier should be frozen to its bed—which ought to be made of frozen sediment. But that assumes fresh water. The Blood Falls water is salty enough to stay liquid down to -6 degrees Celsius at surface pressure (and could go lower at higher pressure).
...
And if there are bacteria living in the water of Blood Falls, it stands to reason those bacteria live in the groundwater, as well—an unexpected ecosystem in a terribly inhospitable environment surviving because the water is too salty to yield to the frigid temperatures. Those bacteria are probably getting their energy from breaking down minerals in the sediment.

Given recents reports that brine could form on Mars, there's a chance that life once did, or still could, inhabit it. It would rather put the "extreme" in "extremophile," though.

posted by takyon on Saturday May 02 2015, @08:05PM   Printer-friendly
from the free-comes-at-a-cost dept.

Today comic book stores around the world celebrate "Free Comic Book Day", offering anyone who pays them a visit some free comic books. This year there's 50 different titles to choose from, including a reprint of Neil Gaiman's "Lady Justice" (not seen in print in nearly 25 years) and a new Fight Club story by Chuck Palahniuk. The Marvel and D.C. universes are represented, as well as Doctor Who, The Simpsons, Jim Henson's Labyrinth, and even something called Steampunk Goldilocks. Saturday many bookstores will also be recognizing "Independent Bookstores Day" with special events, though ironically, some fans may be tempted to visit Amazon.com instead to download some free Kindle editions of last year's free comic books.

posted by CoolHand on Saturday May 02 2015, @05:56PM   Printer-friendly
from the still-looking-for-solutions dept.

http://theconversation.com/space-debris-what-can-we-do-with-unwanted-satellites-40736

There are thousands of satellites in Earth orbit, of varying age and usefulness. At some point they reach the end of their lives, at which point they become floating junk. What do we do with them then?

Most satellites are not designed with the end of their life in mind. But some are designed to be serviced, such as the Hubble Space Telescope, which as part of its final service was modified to include a soft capture mechanism. This is an interface designed to allow a future robotic spacecraft to attach itself and guide the telescope to safe disposal through burn-up in the Earth’s atmosphere once its operational life has ended.

Thinking about methods to retire satellites is important, because without proper disposal they become another source of space debris – fragments of old spacecraft, satellites and rockets now orbiting Earth at thousands of miles per hour. These fragments travel so fast that even a piece the size of a coin has enough energy to disable a whole satellite. There are well over 100,000 pieces this size or larger already orbiting Earth, never mind much larger items – for example the Progress unmanned cargo module, which Russian Space Agency mission controllers have lost control of and which will orbit progressively lower until it burns up in Earth’s atmosphere.

posted by cmn32480 on Saturday May 02 2015, @03:29PM   Printer-friendly
from the this-could-mean-superpowers dept.

A week after a Chinese team reported semi-successful modification of human embryos, Dr. Francis Collins, director of the National Institutes of Health, has said in a statement that his agency will not fund any research involving human germline modification:

The concept of altering the human germline in embryos for clinical purposes has been debated over many years from many different perspectives, and has been viewed almost universally as a line that should not be crossed. Advances in technology have given us an elegant new way of carrying out genome editing, but the strong arguments against engaging in this activity remain. These include the serious and unquantifiable safety issues, ethical issues presented by altering the germline in a way that affects the next generation without their consent, and a current lack of compelling medical applications justifying the use of CRISPR/Cas9 in embryos.

Practically, there are multiple existing legislative and regulatory prohibitions against this kind of work. The Dickey-Wicker amendment prohibits the use of appropriated funds for the creation of human embryos for research purposes or for research in which human embryos are destroyed (H.R. 2880, Sec. 128). Furthermore, the NIH Guidelines state that the Recombinant DNA Advisory Committee, "...will not at present entertain proposals for germ line alteration". It is also important to note the role of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in this arena, which applies not only to federally funded research, but to any research in the U.S. The Public Health Service Act and the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act give the FDA the authority to regulate cell and gene therapy products as biological products and/or drugs, which would include oversight of human germline modification. During development, biological products may be used in humans only if an investigational new drug application is in effect (21 CFR Part 312).

However, some scientists aren't joining the chorus of "universal" criticism:

George Church, a geneticist at Harvard Medical School in Boston, Massachusetts, disagrees that the technology is so immature. He says that the researchers did not use the most up-to-date CRISPR/Cas9 methods and that many of the researchers' problems could have been avoided or lessened if they had.

Although researchers agree that a moratorium on clinical applications is needed while the ethical and safety concerns of human-embryo editing are worked out, many see no problem with the type of research that Huang's team did, in part because the embryos could not have led to a live birth. "It's no worse than what happens in IVF all the time, which is that non-viable embryos are discarded," says John Harris, a bioethicist at the University of Manchester, UK. "I don't see any justification for a moratorium on research," he adds. Church, meanwhile, notes that many of the earliest experiments with CRISPR/Cas9 were developed in human induced pluripotent stem cells, adult cells that have been reprogrammed to have the ability to turn into any cell type, including sperm and eggs. He questions whether Huang's experiments are any more intrinsically problematic.

posted by cmn32480 on Saturday May 02 2015, @01:07PM   Printer-friendly
from the drill-baby-drill dept.

The UK generated 19.2% of its electricity from wind, solar, and hydropower in 2014. The country's demand for electricity has also fallen 10% over the last 5 years.

Change doesn't happen in a linear fashion.

Indeed, those of us who have been pushing for a low carbon future would have been forgiven for thinking it was a futile cause just a few years ago. Yet now, change seems to be picking up pace. Dramatically. The latest example of this is news from the UK, reported over at Business Green, that renewables made up 19.2% of the country's power supply last year, up from just 14.9% a year earlier. At the same time, both coal and nuclear dipped, while gas increased its share a little bit too. Digging into what those renewables actually were, it looks like wind and solar were up 16.6% on the previous year, due mainly to new capacity, while hydropower was up 26%. (This was the result of heavier rainfall, so can't necessarily be counted on year-over-year.)

We're going to be seeing many more stories like this in the next few years. It's already been reported that Germany generated 30% of its electricity from renewables in 2014. As industrialized countries, they could well find energy independence through renewables confers key competitive advantages and many positive externalities (such as better air quality). Will the United States ever follow suit?

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