Slashdot Mirror

Am I the only one who remembers the study that found people would give up their passwords for a chocolate bar?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/3639679.stm

(and that a good percentage didn't even need the chocolate)

Can't he just say...

Accio lightsaber!

Oh, wait. Wrong fictional universe that people take too seriously.

Perhaps. Though if this report is anything to go by, their celebrated longevity might be at least partly explained by the near quarter-million immortals whose relatives have been dutifully drawing their pensions for them for up to half a century

Yet for some reason the leaders of those telecom companies still desperately want a government.

Source

But despite their success, the telecoms companies say that like the population at large, they are desperate to have a government.

"We are very interested in paying taxes," says Mr Abdullahi - not a sentiment which often passes the lips of a high-flying businessman.

And Mr Abdulkadir at the Global Internet Company fully agrees.

"We badly need a government," he says. "Everything starts with security - the situation across the country.

"All the infrastructure of the country has collapsed - education, health and roads. We need to send our staff abroad for any training."

Another problem for companies engaged in the global telecoms business is paying their foreign partners.

At present, they use Somalia's traditional "Hawala" money transfer companies to get money to Dubai, the Middle East's trading and financial hub.

With a government would come a central bank, which would make such transactions far easier.

Taxes would mean higher prices but Mr Abdullahi says that Somalia's previous governments have kept taxes low and hopes this will continue under the regime due to start work in the coming months.

The BBC published an article about that today: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-16943314

I don't see this as WD doing very good: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-16691839
http://online.wsj.com/article/BT-CO-20120123-712851.html

Seagate did great, but that's what happens when your major competitor has big problems, and people buy from you instead.

Yes, if it has an image of [insert holy figure here]> magically appearing on it! Likewise for grilled cheese

Also, that 100,000 number is bullshit.

Not true. The Ministry of Defence's chief scientific adviser said "The study design is robust and employs methods that are regarded as close to 'best practice' in this area, given the difficulties of data collection and verification in the present circumstances in Iraq." And that is coming from a country that was part of the coalition. Iraqi deaths survey 'was robust'

They never really accomplish anything.

They're actually worse than useless because they lead lazy people to believe all they need to do is go to a website, click an "I agree" button and they've fixed the world.

Its as pathetic as a "Facebook Group", if not worse.

Well that's where you are wrong. An online petition along with a facebook group and other pressures helped raise awareness and created enough stink to have The Wallace Letter returned to Scotland to be displayed in the National museum instead of sitting in a drawer in Kew archives in London.
the petition and the facebook group helped raise awareness of the issue to a point where Members of theSociety of William Wallace along with members of the Scottish government were able to negotiate it's return.
the only thing that's pathetic bud is you aloof apathy which just goes to shows your own feeling of impotence hiding behind a false assumption that you know better when there are instances which prove you wrong... this letter being one of them

False. To start with, the blackberry platform has been audited, tested & certified by NATO & many governments that are not part of Echelon, such as Austria & Turkey:

http://us.blackberry.com/ataglance/security/certifications.jsp

Here is a citation for France. And here is a citation for Germany doing the same. And even Sweden and the EU issued the same warnings (although perhaps this was done just informally, as I can't seem to find the citations for those).

You made two exaggerations in your response. You shouldn't have said "many governments that are not part of Echelon". You should have said "_two_ governments that are not part of Echelon". Two governments doesn't make "many".

Also assuming Turkey and Austria were not coerced/pressured by the US/UK/Anglo coalition in their audits (an assumption I'm not willing to concede yet, because I've seen such coercions take place), it's not the "blackberry platform" which was audited by those "many" non-Echelon governments, it's just the "Blackberry Enterprise Solution" that was. This distinction is important because it's also common wisdom among high level people to keep two different phones, one for Enterprise use and one for personal use.

A European non-UK blackberry phone for personal use would not be going through company servers, but it would be going through the private BBM network in the UK (there is no way to opt out of that as per my understanding) and it would only give the user a false sense of security about being able to share personal sensitive information through it (when all of its text transmissions were indexed and analyzed through the Echelon program).

There are many governments that have threatened to ban blackberries, but none have threatened to ban iphone/android. Think about it.

"The German ministry was first advised to avoid using BlackBerry and iPhone devices in November 2009" (emphasis mine). Think about what? Your logic is flawed. Like you said yourself, some countries like the UA Emirates were upset because they couldn't view the traffic, but nothing of that means that RIM doesn't share its de-encrypted data with the Echelon program (and the country RIM originally originated from, Canada, which is indeed part of that Echelon program).

For example, given the volume of text messages, a mobile carrier in Hungary would notice if millions of messages are being routed outside the country instead of directly to their destination down the hall.

Yes, I do work and talk with some of those people. This is _my_ industry. And this is what some of those people have told me. The fact that I could back up my claims with articles from places like the BBC was sheer googling luck on my part.

And if you want to keep something secret, sending it in an unencrypted text message is a bad idea.

If you want to keep something secret, sending it as a message to anyone is a bad idea. But putting general platitudes aside, there is only one thing worse than using a knowingly unsecure communication channel, and that's the idea that you might be using an unsecure channel unknowingly (because then you'd be mislead and you simply wouldn't know to keep your mouth shut because of that false sense of security).

After all, it wouldn't take much to compromise high level people in an international negotiation. All you'd need to know is that one or two of the negotiators had used their personal Blackberry device to commit fraud, commit insider trading, or to coordinate a hot affair with their bosse's wife.

"Fact: Speed, 35 in a 25, 50 in a 40, is not necessarily the major factor in accidents."

Citation, please? The sources I find claim that there are substantial differences in safety for pedestrians hit at 20, 25, 30, and 35mph, never mind the ability of the pedestrian and driver to avoid the crash in the first place when lower speed allows more time to avoid the collision. Yeah, I know, you said "not necessarily", weasel words to make your claim actually content-free and uncontradictable.

http://www.bmj.com/content/339/bmj.b4469.full
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/8406569.stm
http://www.nhtsa.gov/people/injury/research/pub/hs809012.html

Interesting that you should bring up New Hampshire. They offer the option to trade your own convenience for your own (alleged) risk; they are not offering you the option to trade on someone else's risk. They're not encouraging antisocial behavior.

whatever process (e.g. "reason") they employ to arrive at a conclusion leaves them with utter certainty in their views.

This description does not match the majority of atheists, in my experience this kind of statement is more common: "There's probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life."

Afghanistan?

Not sure which one you're referring to, but yes, both were religious.

The Soviet-Afghan war was actually a civil war between socialist secularists and moderate-to-radical Islamists, with the first faction backed by USSR, and the second backed by Pakistan and USA. The primary reason for the war was that Islamists were offended at such horrible Soviet innovations as mixed-gender schools and universities.

The second war was against Taliban - 'nuff said.

Kosovo?

Definitely religious. Serbs are Orthodox Christian, Albanians are mostly Muslim. Kosovo itself is called "Kosovo and Metohija" in Serbian, and "Metohija" literally means "monastery lands" - because that was the historical seat of the Church in Serbia, and it's where most of its monasteries were. Then it also has Kosovo Polje, the place of the historical battle where (Christian) Serbian forces were defeated by the invading (Muslim) Ottoman army, after which Serbia was annexed into Ottoman Empire.

And yes, it also comes up in the fighting - Albanians burn down churches, and Serbs burned mosques.

Libya?

What, did you miss the jihad flag flying over Bengazi in the wake of rebel victory? Or that the country is transitioning to Sharia as its primary source of legislation?

Just to illustrate how full of bollocks Lord McNally actually is, take this example:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/4796579.stm ...or to sum up for those who can't be arsed to read the link, in 2006 we pardoned 306 World War 1 soldiers who were executed for cowardice. It was also perfectly legal action at the time. So the question is Lord McNally, why the hypocrisy?

This example displays only consistency, not hypocrisy, a point made in the well-argued article referred and linked to in the submitter's article.

Basically, the soldiers' had a medical condition which resulted uncontrollably in actions that were mistaken for cowardice. They should not have been found guilty of the law of the time, regardless of whether the law was just or not.

Turing however had a sexuality, which does not in itself uncontrollably result in actions that were illegal. Thus he did break the law of the time, even if the law was not a just one.

Also as noted in the article, the way forward would be to request a deletion under the Protection of Freedoms Bill which is nearing completion.

Just to illustrate how full of bollocks Lord McNally actually is, take this example:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/4796579.stm ...or to sum up for those who can't be arsed to read the link, in 2006 we pardoned 306 World War 1 soldiers who were executed for cowardice. It was also perfectly legal action at the time. So the question is Lord McNally, why the hypocrisy?

The WWI soldiers weren't pardoned because cowardice is no longer a crime; they were pardoned because the convictions were unsound. Essentially, most of the soldiers were probably suffering from shell shock, so should never have been expected to return to the front, and so it doesn't make sense to claim that they were cowards for refusing to do so. It's a blanket pardon rather than a bunch of individual ones because not enough evidence was preserved to tell which convictions should actually stand.

This is different to what happened with Turing. There's no real debate that he was gay, and that he was guilty of the crime of which he was convicted. There's therefore much less in the way of grounds for a pardon, even if his ``crime'' is no longer actually illegal.

Yup, it has more or less nothing to do with the Hindus, and everything to do with the easily-offended Muslims.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-india-16903765

"Mr Sibal was angered by morphed photos of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Congress president Sonia Gandhi, as well as pigs running through Islam's holy city of Mecca"

They are just trying to avoid specifically referring to the Mohammed cartoons, to not kick up a shit-storm. But yeah, this is coming from the Muslims.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-india-16903765 fake edit - I see you also mention that ... I'll get my coat

Because he's become a figurehead for the movement, and by saying yes, what was done to Turing was completely wrong, you're admitting that past stance on gay rights was completely wrong. It's symbolic acceptance of the fact times have changed, and a symbolic statement that we should never repeat that awful past.

I'd buy the Lord's argument if it weren't for the fact Britain has apologised and pardoned many a time for things like slavery in the past, which were also deemed right at the time, but wrong now. Discriminating on sexual preference is no better or no worse than discriminating based on race, so the fact we've apologised and pardoned over race related issues stemming from our imperialist past, but wont pardon over discrimination based on sexuality gives the impression that the Lords actually to this day do not actually take sexuality based discrimination seriously.

Just to illustrate how full of bollocks Lord McNally actually is, take this example:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/4796579.stm ...or to sum up for those who can't be arsed to read the link, in 2006 we pardoned 306 World War 1 soldiers who were executed for cowardice. It was also perfectly legal action at the time. So the question is Lord McNally, why the hypocrisy?

Really, this has nothing to do with the philosophical argument cited by McNally, as his excuse is contradicted by many past pardons. This is entirely to do with the fact that even to this day both the Lords and the Commons are far too full of ignorant bigots and it unfortunately shines through not just in terms of homophobia, but by the repeated xenophobic views of many members of parliament and not just limited to the Tories is as often stereotyped but even people in Labour like Margaret Beckett.

So if you really want to know why Turing isn't getting a pardon, then it's because it's not too far from the truth that some politicians in the UK still to this day don't really think the law back then was even far wrong.

The government owes Turing's family and the rest of the country, even the rest of the world an enormous apology.

Already done

Really, I think that's all the government can do. I suppose a pardon might make us feel better but it's not going to do much to help. I propose we simply recognise him as a pioneer and as an important part of the codebreaking at Bletchley Park.

Gordon Brown apologised a few years back -> http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/8249792.stm

Well this is inconsistent:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/8249792.stm

And backwards, and horrible. To think they'd uphold the integrity of a mere law that was clearly wrong in retrospect over the integrity of a good person...disgusting.

I'm not gonna bother coming to the US from the UK either:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-16810312

for initial negotiated fees i agree.. but for fees applied to a product made by a company that knowingly attempted to doge the fee..it isn't.

Me neither, but this link (found in other comments on this article) claims Motorola repeatedly declined payment from Apple.

As mentioned above, the 'reasonable' part doesn't apply if you don't pay when you should.

Source for the second (and hopefully last) time :)

Well... It's sometimes hard to pay what one should when:

[...] Motorola repeatedly refuses to license this patent to Apple [...]

source

No, I did my own research.

As to the retarded question of whether or not I'm retarded: you've never met me, so you have no idea and don't for one fucking minute try and convince anybody that you do - it makes you look stupid and brands you the liar that you are. My last WAIS-III composite, assessed four years ago, was 223. Make what you will of that.

As mentioned above, the 'reasonable' part doesn't apply if you don't pay when you should.

Source for the second (and hopefully last) time :)

Source.

Frand-type patents involve technologies that are deemed to be part of an industry standard. In this case Motorola's innovation is deemed crucial to the GPRS data transmission standard used by GSM cellular networks across the world.

Companies must offer Frand-type patents for a reasonable fee to anyone willing to pay.

Apple had previously said it would be willing to pay the fee going forward, but the two firms dispute how much Apple should pay for failing to license the technology up until now. Missed payments are not covered by the "reasonable" rule, and Motorola is able to demand a more expensive price.

Afghanistan is not at the center of the Islamic world The center of the Islamic world is in the Middle East.

The center of the Islamic world are Indonesia, Pakistan and India.

What happened in Afghanistan that led to the invasion by America (and the West) is Omar, the leader of Taliban, permitted Osama bin Laden to use Afghanistan as a base for Al Queda, and Al Queda, for one reason or another, decided to launch 9/11 on America because America is nothing but a pussy.

This is mostly true, but my point was that it doesn't fit in your conspiracy theory.

And please do respect the intellect of other Slashdot users - please do not substitute "The Western Power" with "UN Forces"

You seem to be uninformed: the NATO got the blessing of both the UN and the Arab League.

Please do not delude yourself that Gaddafi was removed by the "Libyan rebels" alone...Those "Libyan rebels" were nothing without the help from the Western powers.

The only help Western powers gave was the implementation of the no-fly zone and the naval blockade. The NATO didn't help any side, all they did was even the playfield and prevent civilian losses. The only support the rebels got was from Egypt.

The problem here boils down to "we make more money with this scheme than your piddly little fines can ever hope to 'punish' us",

Piddly as in what Microsoft faced in 2006? Admittedly, that situation was different but that kind of fines are not what I think of as "piddly".

and "we're not even based in your country, so your laws mean precisely as much as we allow them to"

How come Google are bending over backwards to follow chinese censoring laws? Google is based in US too and by your argument the should not have to care about those laws at all - yet they do.

... besides, it's not like these sites are providing a public service, or coercing people's "private" information. If you want to play the game, you gotta give your name. Wanna play some more? Give us your cell phone number. Don't like giving away your "private" info to just any website that asks? Be more selective about the stuff you do online, and only transact with sites you trust and/or don't actually care about the information they want. Or do what many are already doing, and simply lie.

Agreed - and that is indeed why I do not have a Facebook login.

No it wouldn't. Considering what China now has in industrial production, they really aren't looking to "make any waves" for themselves. In fact the their support has been waning. http://globalspin.blogs.time.com/2011/12/20/chinas-stake-in-a-stable-north-korea/

It seems the Chinese would like to back them, but stay under the rest of the worlds radar while doing so. Should North Korea launch a missile into Seoul like they promised this year over the "Christmas Tree Dispute". http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-16129633

Should they actually follow through with their threats how fast do you think China would be to say "you guys are on your own".

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/7399720.stm

"EBay acquired a 28.4% stake when it bought shares from a former employee who had been given equity by Mr Newmark.
A year after the deal was completed, eBay, which had said it wanted to learn from Craigslist, started Kijiji.com, a rival international network of classified ad sites that now sells ads in all 50 US states. "

They are hard workers

Japanese work ethic hides inefficiencies

have excellent education

Japanese history textbook controversies

are very smart

Japanese Higher Education as Myth

and highly motivated.

List of countries by suicide rate

Australia is not in the UK.

I appologize. I blame my US education for my ignorance of geography.

What utter trollish shit.

For sure sports themselves have sponsors,and so if taking photos or videos of sports and sportsmen, any logos they are wearing will be in the picture. But to suggest that the BBC go out of their way to include such sponsorship, let alone ads, is the very opposite of the truth.

Take for example Snooker, which has always been heavily sponsored. The snooker page (as server in the UK) has no sign of any sponsors or ads, other than in a single photo where the logo is incidentally to be seen on the referee's jacket.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/other_sports/snooker/default.stm

There is a link to another blog post about BBC coverage of the World Cup which is referenced in the story. That article is all about semantic web and rdf (even has diagrams and stuff). My guess is that the new sports page is another implementation of the same CMS framework. http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/bbcinternet/2010/07/bbc_world_cup_2010_dynamic_sem.html

> On the plus side, it's one of the few actively maintained sites that doesn't have advertising.

They run advertising for users outside of the UK. Users in the UK don't see any advertising.

More information is in the BBC Online FAQ:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbc.com/faq/

So if such an incredible amount of effort went into getting the HCI/UI/UX right, then why does it look... awful, just awful?

For consistency?

I think it's a corporate standard that things have to look like they were made by a 14 year old work experience boy.

The interesting part is behind a link buried deep inside this post. It's the dynamic semantic publishing engine, which was originally used on their World Cup 2010 site.

The interesting part is behind a link buried deep inside this post. It's the dynamic semantic publishing engine, which was originally used on their World Cup 2010 site.

Damn right. I just gave them some feedback (which you can too at http://ecustomeropinions.com/survey/survey.php?sid=878133413): "Why does the new site use so little screen space? On a fairly standard monitor, less than half of my screen space is being used by content. The yellow/black theme is fine, but throwing blue into the mix is horrible! The shade of blue chosen is also almost identical to that used in Windows 7 to highlighted text. There is also very little commonality in CSS - why are some section headings backed with a yellow banner, but other are not? Randomly scattered white boxes along with the yellow banner spreading out along the screen for no reason also distract. The whole design feels very rushed and unfinished, and not up to the usual BBC standards. The new BBC Food ( http://www.bbc.co.uk/food/ ) and Weather ( http://www.bbc.co.uk/weather/ ) pages (in particular) have been refreshed much more successfully. Extremely disappointing."

Damn right. I just gave them some feedback (which you can too at http://ecustomeropinions.com/survey/survey.php?sid=878133413): "Why does the new site use so little screen space? On a fairly standard monitor, less than half of my screen space is being used by content. The yellow/black theme is fine, but throwing blue into the mix is horrible! The shade of blue chosen is also almost identical to that used in Windows 7 to highlighted text. There is also very little commonality in CSS - why are some section headings backed with a yellow banner, but other are not? Randomly scattered white boxes along with the yellow banner spreading out along the screen for no reason also distract. The whole design feels very rushed and unfinished, and not up to the usual BBC standards. The new BBC Food ( http://www.bbc.co.uk/food/ ) and Weather ( http://www.bbc.co.uk/weather/ ) pages (in particular) have been refreshed much more successfully. Extremely disappointing."

Digital trinkets? Those numbers in bank accounts and stock market shares are digital trinkets too. The only difference is whether the courts and governments decide they are different or not.

When enough people think a stamp, a pokemon card, or a stockmarket share or a bunch of digits in a computer are valuable, it is valuable.

Denying it can cause bigger problems, like the case years ago in China when some guy "borrowed" another guy's "virtual sword" and then sold it (for a significant amount of real money). The victim went to the cops first, but apparently the cops just laughed, so in the end the victim handled it himself and murdered the perp. http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2005/mar/31/china.internationalnews

Not saying it was right to do so. But if someone borrowed something precious of yours, then sold it off (breach of trust/betrayal), and when you find out, just offered you the cash (presumably less than what you think it was worth), and you go to the cops who then laugh at you, I'd think you would be rather pissed off.

In contrast some places handle it better: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/10207486

Israel doesn't deny the Holocaust.

Interestingly, Israel has supported near-holocausts, on multiple occasions. This will likely get down-modded into oblivion, but here goes:

• Israel supplied weapons, logistics, and training to the Guatemalan dictatorship, while it was murdering its own citizens. (it is a mainstream POV that this was an actual "genocide" -- around 200,000 indigenous Mayans were exterminated.)
• Israel is a nuclear proliferator -- providing nuclear weapons technology to the South African government, in exchange for nuclear materials. South Africa actually built several functional nuclear warheads. Before anyone downplays this, consider that the racist Apartheid regime was more than willing to kill Black South Africans en masse -- to commit literal genocide.

Yes, take this story from yesterday for example:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-16788627

Virgin, one of the UK's only two cable TV providers actually paid the police to raid some people's houses who had been chipping the set top boxes so people could access the content without paying. These people then got 3 years in jail for it.

Keep in mind that people often get less time for burglary, rape, and in some rare occurences even murder.

Yes, giving people free content is now more serious than rape and murder, simply because companies have paid for this to be the case.

It's not clear though that McKinnon committed a crime in the US rather than committed a crime in the UK, (which is the point that I find concerning, particularly).

I hate this "all-eggs-in-one-basket" argument for preserving the human race. It misses the point entirely, because in the bigger picture Earth is not a sustainable system. The Sun is getting brighter; in less than a billion years it will be too intense for Earth's oceans to continue to exist. Like Mars did in ages past, Earth is going to lose its water. On the other side of the balance, Earth's interior is cooling, geological activity is diminishing, and so volcanic replenishment of the atmosphere is slowly winding down.It is clear, at such time scales, that if the entirety of life on Earth is to avoid extinction then life must branch out off the planet. That means launching equipment and people to build massive, robust infrastructure. Crops. Botanical gardens. Zoos.

Except that space is HARD. It's really expensive to get there and it is a high-vacuum radiation hell. It would take a long time and an expensive, sustained effort to construct off-planet habitats - a *tremendous* amount of effort and money before there is any payoff at all.

On the other hand, for example the asteroid 16 Psyche contains enough metal to construct a solid cylinder fivekm in diameter stretching from here to the Moon. Or cover North America in a layer 280 meters thick.The resources available to an outer space civilization are great enough to insure that if outer space habitats do reach the point where they can expand and grow, the payoff would be big enough to sustain life past the death of the Sun.

We are half-way through the era of animals on Earth. There have been at least a half dozen mass extinctions since animals first started evolving a half-billion years ago; there will be more. The glaciers have grown and retreated dozens of times over the last two million years; they will return. Yellowstone is going to explode again. And again. And again. Time is not unlimited.

But we have time. Abundant fossil fuels, and the internet - we are right now living in the decades of maximum wealth. At some point, within a few decades, we will either run out of fuel or we will run out of the capacity to sink carbon emissions. When this happens, it will mean the end of a way of life. Maximum wealth *right now* means that *right now* is the best and possibly the only time to lift off. Life on Earth only gets one pass at the fossil fuel heritage; if the next extinction event brings us to a place where launching is not possible, life will have missed its chance.

I'm not a nutter, I am a realist. I'm certain that outer space settlements will not solve our current growth vs. environment problems - the payoff will come way too late for that. None of our current issues will be solved, or even mitigated, by vigorous and immediate launches into the great expanse. Nonetheless, if DNA is to avoid extinction we need to start moving now as rapidly as we can. Nothing else matters.

The cocoon we call Earth is going to wither; whether or not she gives birthbefore she dies is entirely in the hands of human civilization. Our civilization,right now, we're the only chance. Sure, leaving Eden is a horrible burden. Suckit up. We have to go. Now.

Or, we can continue toasting marshmallows at the planet's one-time-only oil burning party.

"Tea Party" is just a replacement term for "neo-con" because, after eight years of GWB, the majority of Americans finally figured out that "neo-cons" are the scum of the fucking earth.

They seem to be very different. Take a look at the bullet point summary of neo-conservatism in this article - http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7825039.stm

Wifi really does damage sperm quality. If a lab is performing highly sensitive biological experiments then blasting it with wifi on high-beam might not be such a good idea.

Check the differences between today's Oakland vs yesterday's London.

Check the differences between today's Oakland vs yesterday's London.