Slashdot Mirror

KentuckyFC writes "Some 65 million years ago, an asteroid the size of a small city hit the Yucatan Peninsula in what is now Mexico, devastating Earth and triggering the sequence of events that wiped out the dinosaurs. This impact ejected 70 billion kg of Earth rock into space. To carry life around the Solar System, astrobiologists say these rocks must have stayed cool, less than 100 degrees C, and must also be big, more than 3 metres in diameter to protect organisms from radiation in space. Now they have calculated that 20,000 kilograms of this Earth ejecta must have reached Europa, including at least one or two potentially life-bearing rocks. And they say similar amounts must have reached other water-rich moons such as Callisto and Titan. Their conclusion is that if we find life on the moons around Saturn and Jupiter, it could well date from the time of the dinosaurs (or indeed from other similar impacts)."

Hugh Pickens DOT Com writes "CNN reports that two sailors were hurt when a drone malfunctioned and crashed into the Chancellorsville, a 567-foot Ticonderoga-class guided missile cruiser, as the ship operated off the Point Mugu area of Southern California in an area where BQM-74E aerial targets are widely used. The drone was being used to test the ship's radar tracking when it malfunctioned, veered out of control and struck the cruiser. 'No sailors were seriously injured, but two sailors were treated for minor burns,' the Navy said in a statement. 'The ship remains capable of operations. However, it did sustain some damage and will return to its homeport of San Diego to have the damage assessed. The Navy is investigating the cause of the malfunction.' Chancellorsville has one of the most advanced air defense systems in the Navy, and the ship regularly tests missiles off Southern California. In late August, Chancellorsville successfully used an SM-6 missile to hit a target drone off Point Mugu. The cruiser stocks a variety of missiles, including Tomahawks."

mask.of.sanity writes "Australia tracked calls by Indonesia's president, documents leaked by defence contractor Edward Snowden reveal. The nation's top spy agency the Australian Signals Directorate tracked phone calls made and received on the mobile phone of Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono for 15 days in August 2009, and also tracked his wife and inner political circle. Indonesia was Australia's nearest and most important regional neighbour."

mask.of.sanity writes "Australia tracked calls by Indonesia's president, documents leaked by defence contractor Edward Snowden reveal. The nation's top spy agency the Australian Signals Directorate tracked phone calls made and received on the mobile phone of Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono for 15 days in August 2009, and also tracked his wife and inner political circle. Indonesia was Australia's nearest and most important regional neighbour."

The L.A. Times reports on the discovery of seismic events (nearly 1400 tremors were recorded by researchers in 2010-2011) which seem to indicate the presence of volcanic activity 15 to 20 miles beneath the surface of western Antarctica. According to the article, "The area of activity lies close to the youngest in a chain of volcanoes that formed over several million years, and the characteristics and depth of the seismic events are consistent with those found in volcanic areas of Alaska’a Aleutian Islands, the Pacific Northwest, Hawaii and Mt. Pinatubo in the Philippines, the study concludes." Volcanism isn't a new discovery (Mt. Waesche, a volcanic mountain, is the believed origin of some ash mentioned in the article), but the newly detected seismic activity may be a harbinger for local melting from below of the Antarctic ice sheet, and possibly have long-term effects on the flow patterns of the overlying ice.

riverat1 writes "Now visible in the morning sky, comet ISON will swing around the Sun on November 28. ISON will pass 730,000 km above the surface of the Sun at closest approach (Mercury's perihelion distance is 46 million km). If it survives its near brush with the Sun it could provide a spectacular sky show from December into January. This NASA timeline shows that ISON will be the most observed comet ever as instruments ranging from a balloon carried telescope to the Hubble Space Telescope to the STEREO satellites will be brought into play. Lowell Observatory astronomer Matthew Knight lays out three possibilities for ISON: spontaneous disintegration before it gets to the Sun (less than 1% chance); disintegration as it rounds the Sun; or survival. If it survives, its closest approach to Earth will be on December 26 at about 1/3 of an AU."

Hugh Pickens DOT Com writes "As firefighters emerge from another record wildfire season in the Western United States, Robert Sanders reports at the UC Berkeley News Center that scientists have designed a satellite using state-of-the-art sensors, that could view the Western US almost continuously, snapping pictures of the ground every few seconds searching for small hot spots (12 m2) that could be newly ignited wildfires. Firefighting resources could then be directed to these spots in hopes of preventing the fires from growing out of control and threatening lives and property. "If we had information on the location of fires when they were smaller, then we could take appropriate actions quicker and more easily, including preparing for evacuation," says fire expert Scott Stephens. Fire detection today is much like it was 200 years ago, relying primarily on spotters in fire towers or on the ground and on reports from members of the public. This information is augmented by aerial reconnaissance and lightning detectors that steer firefighters to ground strikes, which are one of the most common wildfire sparks. But satellite technology, remote sensing and computing have advanced to the stage where it's now possible to orbit a geostationary satellite that can reliably distinguish small, but spreading, wildfires with few false alarms. Carl Pennypacker estimates that the satellite, which could be built and operated by the federal government, would cost several hundred million dollars – a fraction of the nation's $2.5 billion yearly firefighting budget. "With a satellite like this, we will have a good chance of seeing something from orbit before it becomes an Oakland fire," says Pennypacker. "It could pay for itself in one firefighting season.""

Hugh Pickens DOT Com writes "As firefighters emerge from another record wildfire season in the Western United States, Robert Sanders reports at the UC Berkeley News Center that scientists have designed a satellite using state-of-the-art sensors, that could view the Western US almost continuously, snapping pictures of the ground every few seconds searching for small hot spots (12 m2) that could be newly ignited wildfires. Firefighting resources could then be directed to these spots in hopes of preventing the fires from growing out of control and threatening lives and property. "If we had information on the location of fires when they were smaller, then we could take appropriate actions quicker and more easily, including preparing for evacuation," says fire expert Scott Stephens. Fire detection today is much like it was 200 years ago, relying primarily on spotters in fire towers or on the ground and on reports from members of the public. This information is augmented by aerial reconnaissance and lightning detectors that steer firefighters to ground strikes, which are one of the most common wildfire sparks. But satellite technology, remote sensing and computing have advanced to the stage where it's now possible to orbit a geostationary satellite that can reliably distinguish small, but spreading, wildfires with few false alarms. Carl Pennypacker estimates that the satellite, which could be built and operated by the federal government, would cost several hundred million dollars – a fraction of the nation's $2.5 billion yearly firefighting budget. "With a satellite like this, we will have a good chance of seeing something from orbit before it becomes an Oakland fire," says Pennypacker. "It could pay for itself in one firefighting season.""

Hugh Pickens DOT Com writes "As firefighters emerge from another record wildfire season in the Western United States, Robert Sanders reports at the UC Berkeley News Center that scientists have designed a satellite using state-of-the-art sensors, that could view the Western US almost continuously, snapping pictures of the ground every few seconds searching for small hot spots (12 m2) that could be newly ignited wildfires. Firefighting resources could then be directed to these spots in hopes of preventing the fires from growing out of control and threatening lives and property. "If we had information on the location of fires when they were smaller, then we could take appropriate actions quicker and more easily, including preparing for evacuation," says fire expert Scott Stephens. Fire detection today is much like it was 200 years ago, relying primarily on spotters in fire towers or on the ground and on reports from members of the public. This information is augmented by aerial reconnaissance and lightning detectors that steer firefighters to ground strikes, which are one of the most common wildfire sparks. But satellite technology, remote sensing and computing have advanced to the stage where it's now possible to orbit a geostationary satellite that can reliably distinguish small, but spreading, wildfires with few false alarms. Carl Pennypacker estimates that the satellite, which could be built and operated by the federal government, would cost several hundred million dollars – a fraction of the nation's $2.5 billion yearly firefighting budget. "With a satellite like this, we will have a good chance of seeing something from orbit before it becomes an Oakland fire," says Pennypacker. "It could pay for itself in one firefighting season.""

dcblogs writes "One year ago this month, the U.S. Department of Energy announced a $120 million plan to develop a technology capable of radically extending battery life. 'We want to change the game, basically,' said George Crabtree, a senior scientist at Argonne National Laboratory and a physics professor who is leading the effort. The goal is to develop a battery that can deliver five times the performance, measured in energy density, that's also five times cheaper, and do it in five years. They are looking at three research areas. Researchers are considering replacing the lithium with magnesium that has two charges, or aluminum, which has three charges. Another approach investigates replacing the intercalation step with a true chemical reaction. A third approach is the use of liquids to replace crystalline anodes and cathodes, which opens up more space for working ions."

KentuckyFC writes "Until now, the largest known structure in the Universe was the Huge-LQG (Large Quasar Group), a cluster of 73 quasars stretching over a distance of 4 billion light years. Now astronomers say they've spotted something even bigger in data from gamma ray bursts, the final explosions of energy released by stars as they die and the universe's most energetic events. Astronomers have measured the distance to 283 of these bursts and mapped their position in the universe. This throws up a surprise. At a distance of ten billion light years, there are more gamma ray bursts than expected if they were evenly distributed throughout the universe. This implies the existence of a structure at this distance that is about ten billion light years across and so dwarfs the Huge-LQG. What's odd about the discovery is that the Cosmological principle--one of the fundamental tenets of cosmology--holds that the distribution of matter in the universe will appear uniform if viewed at a large enough scale. And yet, structures clearly emerge at every scale astronomers can see. The new discovery doesn't disprove the principle but it does provide some interesting food for thought for theorists."

The last time we talked with Dr. Poor (who is now a Senior Editor at aNewDomain.net), we ran out of time and didn't get around to discussing 3-D and ultra-high-def TV and whether they're worth buying. So here he is again on the Slashdot TV screen (which is *not* high-definition), talking about the TV marketplace. This is a perfect time for that discussion, since Dark Friday is only a few weeks away, and after that we move into the month during which TVs and a lot of other items sell at a lot higher rate than they do during the rest of the year. If you're thinking about buying a new TV for yourself or as a gift this holiday season, you might want to listen to what Dr. Poor has to say on the subject before you do.

An anonymous reader writes "Starting with version 3.7, POV-Ray is released under the AGPLv3 (or later) license and thus is Free Software according to the FSF definition. 'Free software' means software that respects users' freedom and community. Roughly, the users have the freedom to run, copy, distribute, study, change and improve the software. With these freedoms, the users (both individually and collectively) control the program and what it does for them. Full source code is available, allowing users to build their own versions and for developers to incorporate portions or all of the POV-Ray source into their own software provided it is distributed under a compatible license (for example, the AGPL3 or — at their option — any later version). The POV-Ray developers also provide officially-supported binaries for selected platforms (currently only Microsoft Windows, but expected to include OS X shortly)." Update: 11/14 21:57 GMT by U L : The previous distribution terms and source modification license.

stoolpigeon writes "Yesterday marked the release of Dart SDK 1.0, a cross-browser, open source toolkit for structured web applications. The Dart SDK 1.0 includes everything you need to write structured web applications: a simple yet powerful programming language, robust tools, and comprehensive core libraries. The language has been somewhat controversial, but Google continues to move it forward." Reader slack_justyb adds some more detail: "The new release brings a much tighter dart2js compiler reducing overall JavaScript output up to 40%; Dartium — a version of Google Chrome that has the DartVM in addition to the JavaScript VM as native to the browser; PUB, a package manager for Dart add-ons; and several favorite 3rd party plug-ins that now come out-of-box, in addition to a lot of work for Dart server-side tools that can work to automate server side tasks and help in the construction of web pages. However Dart has many critics not only from the IE and Apple camps, as one would guess, but from the Firefox and Opera camps as well. In addition to the low adoption of Dart from third parties there are some asking where does Dart go from here? Especially considering that Google is one of the strongest pushers for EcmaScript 6."

KentuckyFC writes "Back in 2002, Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome or SARS killed about 10 per cent of the 8,000 people it infected in southern China and Hong Kong. The severity of the disease and its high death rate triggered panic in many countries where health agencies worked feverishly to prevent its further spread, largely successfully. Then in September 2012, a virologist working in Saudi Arabia noticed a similar virus in a patient suffering from acute pneumonia and renal failure. Since then, so-called Middle East Respiratory Syndrome or MERS has also begun to spread. The World Health Organization says it knows of 63 deaths from only 149 cases, a death rate that seems to dwarf that of SARS. So how worried should we be? Now epidemiologists who have modeled how the disease spreads have some reassuring news. They say MERS is unlikely to cause a global pandemic. But with Saudi Arabia expecting the imminent arrival of millions of pilgrims for the 2013 Hajj, there are still good reasons to be concerned."

KentuckyFC writes "Back in 2002, Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome or SARS killed about 10 per cent of the 8,000 people it infected in southern China and Hong Kong. The severity of the disease and its high death rate triggered panic in many countries where health agencies worked feverishly to prevent its further spread, largely successfully. Then in September 2012, a virologist working in Saudi Arabia noticed a similar virus in a patient suffering from acute pneumonia and renal failure. Since then, so-called Middle East Respiratory Syndrome or MERS has also begun to spread. The World Health Organization says it knows of 63 deaths from only 149 cases, a death rate that seems to dwarf that of SARS. So how worried should we be? Now epidemiologists who have modeled how the disease spreads have some reassuring news. They say MERS is unlikely to cause a global pandemic. But with Saudi Arabia expecting the imminent arrival of millions of pilgrims for the 2013 Hajj, there are still good reasons to be concerned."

Daniel_Stuckey writes "At the start of this year, President Obama nicely summed up the grandiose promise of 3D printing — or rather, the hype surrounding it. In his State of the Union address the president suggested the fledgling technology could save manufacturing by ushering in a second industrial revolution. That shout-out inspired a spate of buzzkill blog posts pointing out — rightly enough — that despite its potential, 3D printing is still in its infancy. It's not the panacea for the struggling economy we want it to be, at least not yet. Apparently the naysayers weren't enough to kill the 3D-printing dream, because, with support from the federal government, MakerBot announced its initiative to put a 3D printer in every school in America. The tech startup and the administration are betting big that teaching kids 3D printing is teaching them the skills they'll need as tomorrow's engineers, designers, and inventors." Caveat: Makerbot no longer produces open hardware, and they are pushing proprietary Autodesk software and educational materials as part of the free 3D printer. Makerbot also launched a call for open models of math manipulatives on Thingiverse (you might remember them from elementary school) so that teachers have something useful to print immediately.

muterobert writes with an article about a new head mounted virtual retinal display (technology last covered ages ago). The folks over at Road to VR took a look at an engineering prototype; from the article: "The Avegant HMD uses a virtual retinal projection display consisting of a single LED light source and an array of micro-mirrors. This differs from normal screens in that with a VRD there is no actual screen to look at. Instead, a virtual image (in the optical sense) is drawn directly onto your retina. . ... 'At one point I was looking at a sea turtle in shallow coral waters. Sunlight was beaming down from the surface and illuminating the turtle's shell in a spectacular way — it was one of the most vivid and natural things I've ever seen on any display. The scene before me looked incredibly real, even though the field of view is not at immersive levels.'"

sproketboy writes "WikiLeaks releases the secret negotiated draft text for the entire TPP (Trans-Pacific Partnership) Intellectual Property Rights Chapter." The Syndney Morning Herald took a look at the leaked documents, from their article: "An expert in intellectual property law, Matthew Rimmer, said the draft was 'very prescriptive' and strongly reflected U.S. trade objectives and multinational corporate interests 'with little focus on the rights and interests of consumers, let alone broader community interests.'"

ananyo writes "When Europe's Large Hadron Collider (LHC) started up in 2008, particle physicists would not have dreamt of asking for something bigger until they got their US$5-billion machine to work. But with the 2012 discovery of the Higgs boson, the LHC has fulfilled its original promise — and physicists are beginning to get excited about designing a machine that might one day succeed it: the Very Large Hadron Collider. The giant machine would dwarf all of its predecessors (see 'Lord of the rings'). It would collide protons at energies around 100 TeV, compared with the planned 14TeV of the LHC at CERN, Europe's particle-physics lab near Geneva in Switzerland. And it would require a tunnel 80-100 kilometres around, compared with the LHC's 27-km circumference. For the past decade or so, there has been little research money available worldwide to develop the concept. But this summer, at the Snowmass meeting in Minneapolis, Minnesota — where hundreds of particle physicists assembled to dream up machines for their field's long-term future — the VLHC concept stood out as a favorite."

Red Hat has two primary Cloud Evangelists: Gordon Haff and Richard Morrell. Richard says this about himself: "I'm Red Hat's Cloud Security Blogger and Cloud Evangelist based in Europe. Passionate about good code and Open Hybrid Cloud. Founder of SmoothWall protecting millions of networks for 13 years globally. My blogging and my podcasting is my own editorial and does not represent the views of Red Hat..." We have known Richard since the 20th Century, so this interview has been a long time coming. In it, he talks about how Red Hat is working to become as strong in the Open Source cloud world as it already is in GNU/Linux. This interview may not "represent the views of Red Hat," but it obviously represents the views of a loyal Red Hat employee who is also a long-time Linux enthusiast.

Hugh Pickens DOT Com writes "As we come up on Veteran's Day, Barrie Barber reports for the Dayton Daily News that the last Doolittle Raiders symbolically said goodbye to a decades-old tradition and to a history that changed the course of the Pacific war in World War II. Gathering from across the country together one last time, three surviving Raiders sipped from silver goblets engraved with their names and filled with 1896 Hennessy cognac in a once-private ceremony webcast to the world at the National Museum of the U.S. Air Force. Robert E. Cole, 98, led the final toast to the 80 members of 'the Greatest Generation' who took off in 16 B-25 Mitchell bombers April 18, 1942, from the deck of the USS Hornet to bomb Japan four months after a Japanese surprise naval and air attack on Pearl Harbor. 'Gentleman, I propose a toast,' said Cole, as about 700 spectators watched one final time, 'to those we lost on the mission and those that passed away since. Thank you very much and may they rest in peace.' Acting Secretary of the Air Force Eric Fanning said the raid showed the courage and innovation of the World War II airmen flying from a carrier in a bomber that had never seen combat to attack a heavily defended nation and to attempt to land at unseen airfields in China in a country occupied by Japanese troops. More than 70 years after the attack, Edward J. Saylor, 93, remembered ditching at sea once he and his crew dropped their bombs and several close calls with being discovered by the Japanese Army while making his way through China. 'This may be the last time I see them together,' said the 92-year-old raider who has attended Raider reunions since 1962. 'It's a little sad for me because I've known them so long and know the story of what they did in 1942.'"

Hugh Pickens DOT Com writes "As we come up on Veteran's Day, Barrie Barber reports for the Dayton Daily News that the last Doolittle Raiders symbolically said goodbye to a decades-old tradition and to a history that changed the course of the Pacific war in World War II. Gathering from across the country together one last time, three surviving Raiders sipped from silver goblets engraved with their names and filled with 1896 Hennessy cognac in a once-private ceremony webcast to the world at the National Museum of the U.S. Air Force. Robert E. Cole, 98, led the final toast to the 80 members of 'the Greatest Generation' who took off in 16 B-25 Mitchell bombers April 18, 1942, from the deck of the USS Hornet to bomb Japan four months after a Japanese surprise naval and air attack on Pearl Harbor. 'Gentleman, I propose a toast,' said Cole, as about 700 spectators watched one final time, 'to those we lost on the mission and those that passed away since. Thank you very much and may they rest in peace.' Acting Secretary of the Air Force Eric Fanning said the raid showed the courage and innovation of the World War II airmen flying from a carrier in a bomber that had never seen combat to attack a heavily defended nation and to attempt to land at unseen airfields in China in a country occupied by Japanese troops. More than 70 years after the attack, Edward J. Saylor, 93, remembered ditching at sea once he and his crew dropped their bombs and several close calls with being discovered by the Japanese Army while making his way through China. 'This may be the last time I see them together,' said the 92-year-old raider who has attended Raider reunions since 1962. 'It's a little sad for me because I've known them so long and know the story of what they did in 1942.'"

jones_supa writes "ABC Australia is reporting extensively about the progress of the Typhoon Haiyan, which has reached the status of being one of the strongest tropical cyclones ever recorded. Over the weekend it has caused severe destruction and misery passing through Philippines with maximum sustained winds of 315 km/h, where the authorities are now struggling to bring relief to areas worst affected, there being 10,000 people dead. The storm is now heading towards Vietnam, where already over 600,000 people have been evacuated. Meanwhile, China announced its highest alert for Typhoon Haiyan as six crew members of a cargo boat were reported missing. Vietnam is likely to be spared the storm's initial ferocity as it has weakened over the South China Sea and is now expected to hit as a category 1 storm, with wind speeds of about 74 km/h, meteorologists say."

mask.of.sanity writes "Kiwis could have their names, addresses, dates of birth and phone numbers exposed by flaws in the Christchurch public transport system that could also allow locals to travel on buses for free. The flaws in the MiFare Classic system allow anyone to add limitless funds to their transport cards and also buy cheap grey market cards and add them to the system. The website fails to check users meaning attackers could look up details of residents and opens the potential for someone to write a script and erase all cards in existence. Several flaws have been known to the operator since 2009." There are two sets of problems: their website is not adequately secured, allowing identity harvesting attacks, and the transit cards themselves are easy to forge.

An anonymous reader writes "'We can enormously extend the record; yet even in its present bulk we can hardly consult it' wrote Vannevar Bush in a 1945 Atlantic Monthly article. Nearly 70 years later, academics are still wrapping research in inaccessible journal articles. Might they be doing it wrong?"

An anonymous reader writes "Oracle acquired GlassFish when it acquired Sun Microsystems, and now — like OpenSolaris and OpenOffice — the company has announced it will no longer support a commercial version of the product. Mike Milinkovich, executive director of the Eclipse Foundation. said in an interview the decision wasn't exactly a surprise: "The only company that was putting any real investment in GlassFish was Oracle," Milinkovich said. "Nobody else was really stepping up to the plate to help. If you never contributed anything to it, you can't complain when something like this happens." An update to the open source version is still planned for 2014." GlassFish is an open source application server.

KentuckyFC writes "One of the central concepts in quantum theory is wave-particle duality — that every object can be thought of as a particle and a wave. Indeed every object has a quantum wavelength associated with it and so can form a quantum superposition with itself. That's easy to demonstrate with fundamental particles such as photons and electrons by passing a beam of them through a double slit and watching the interference pattern that forms on the other side. In this way, physicists have observed the interference patterns associated with atoms and even molecules such as buckyballs. Now, a group at the University of Vienna has observed the interference pattern formed by the quantum superposition of molecules containing over 800 atoms, or around 5,000 protons, 5,000 neutrons and 5,000 electrons. That's the most macroscopic occurrence of wave-particle duality ever observed, they say."

Slashdot contributor Bennett Haselton writes "In 2007, I wrote that you could find troves of credit card numbers on Google, most of them still active, using the simple trick of Googling the first 8 digits of your credit card number. The trick itself had been publicized by other writers at least as far back as 2004, but in 2013, it appears to still be just as easy. One possible solution that I didn't consider last time, would be for Google itself to notify the webmasters and credit card companies of the leaked information, and then display a warning alongside the search results." Read on for the rest of Bennett's thoughts.

If you have a Visa, Mastercard, or Discover Card number handy, do a Google search for the first 8 digits in the form "1234 5678" (don't forget the double quotes around the numbers, and the space in the middle). The odds are that you will find at least some pages among the search results which include other credit card numbers that begin with the same 8 digits. Those Google hits will frequently be in the form of a spreadsheet or document that looks like it was made for someone's internal use and wasn't meant to be leaked on the Web, and some of those documents will include entire lists of other credit card numbers as well. (The search trick doesn't work for American Express cards, since their card numbers are usually stored in the form "3xxx xxxxxx xxxxx", and it's far less likely for your card to share the same initial 10 digits with someone else's credit card. But of course if you hit on a page that contains a list of credit card numbers, there will probably be some AmEx cards in that list.) Of the pages that I found containing leaked credit cards, often they would also contain other sensitive data like passwords and social security numbers. Don't do anything I wouldn't do.

In my 2007 article, I wrote, "Of course, it's not the card companies' fault that these card numbers are leaked onto the Web; it's the fault of the merchants that allowed them to get leaked. But the credit card companies are the only ones who are in a position to do something about it." I suggested for credit card companies to run a Google search every day or week for all of the possible 8-digit prefixes that could correspond to their card numbers, and then to deactivate any card numbers that were found in this way. They could also send a request to Google to remove the page from Google's index because it contains credit card numbers (there is already a public-facing removal request tool for this purpose). And finally, if it was a merchant that leaked customers' credit card numbers online, then the merchant should be sanctioned as well.

The problem with all of these suggestions is that there doesn't seem to be sufficient incentive on the part of the people who have to implement them. If a credit card company has to refund a fraudulent charge, they usually just take the money back from the merchant who originally received it, and it costs the credit card company nothing. (During my brief stint running a company that accepted online credit card payments, sometimes a "customer" that we had interacted with and who definitely knew who we were, would decide to call their credit card company and "dispute" the charge for no reason, and the card processor would just take the money out of our balance and hand it back to the customer.) So credit card companies themselves apparently lack the incentive to fix the problem.

So perhaps the easiest fix could come from Google, a company that actually has no incentive at all to fix the problem, except for the fact that it would be a neat idea. Although their "Don't Be Evil" motto has taken a lot of beatings, they still do some basically responsible things for reasons that don't seem to contribute directly to their bottom line. (The fact that they have a tool at all for requesting the removal of pages containing credit card numbers, for example.)

It should be pretty easy for Google to run its own queries internally, based on all possible 8-digit credit card prefixes, to find pages that list any sequence of 16 digits beginning with those 8. Then could do a quick mathematical test on the 16-digit sequence to see if it's a valid credit card number. Then scan their own cached copy of that web page to see how many other valid credit card numbers they can find. Then propagate all of those numbers back to contact points at Visa, MasterCard, American Express and Discover, saying, "We found this credit card number leaked onto the Web; you should cancel the number and issue a new one."

After that point, should Google delete the page from their search results themselves? On the one hand, it clearly helps reduce credit card fraud to remove pages from their index that contain working credit cards. On the other hand, the purist in me doesn't like the thought of Google removing information from their index. After all, if the problem is that a list of credit card numbers has been leaked on a webpage, having that page show up in Google shines a light on the problem; removing it from the index doesn't make the problem go away. (The page could still be found through other search engines; or credit card thieves could have already found the page on Google and saved a copy before Google de-indexed it.) Perhaps a compromise could be that once Google has received confirmation from the credit card companies that all of the card numbers on a given page had been de-activated, it could restore the page to their index, but it would be displayed in search results with a warning saying, "This page contains personal credit card account information; all of the credit card account numbers listed have been de-activated."

Unfortunately this doesn't work if the page also contains other sensitive information that can't be un-compromised just by closing an account — e.g., Social Security Numbers, or addresses and phone numbers. (In any case, Google's removal policies specifically say that they won't remove a page from their index just because the page contains a person's address or phone number.) So maybe the better answer really is to just leave the page out of the search results permanently, over the objections of the "purists."

(I may or may not have found some evidence that Bing is more aggressive about removing pages from search results that contain credit cards. I took a "trove" of 11 credit cards that I found through one of my Google searches, and for each of the 11 card numbers, ran a query on both Google and Bing for the first 8 digits. On Google, 8 out of the 11 queries returned at least one page containing more credit card numbers, not counting the original page which had had supplied the "trove" of numbers that I started with. On Bing, however, only 3 out of 11 queries returned pages with more card numbers. This could indicate that Bing is more conscientious about removing pages from search results that contain sensitive personal information. Or it might just mean that they're not as good as Google.)

Of course the fundamental problem with credit card number security has always been that you have to use the same "token" — your credit card number — for every purchase, with every merchant. (There are card companies that let you generate one-time-use numbers for every purchase, but almost nobody uses those.) Maybe in a few years, credit card numbers will be supplanted by more secure payment protocols and fall by the wayside, but that's also what I thought in 2007.

Slashdot contributor Bennett Haselton writes "In 2007, I wrote that you could find troves of credit card numbers on Google, most of them still active, using the simple trick of Googling the first 8 digits of your credit card number. The trick itself had been publicized by other writers at least as far back as 2004, but in 2013, it appears to still be just as easy. One possible solution that I didn't consider last time, would be for Google itself to notify the webmasters and credit card companies of the leaked information, and then display a warning alongside the search results." Read on for the rest of Bennett's thoughts.

If you have a Visa, Mastercard, or Discover Card number handy, do a Google search for the first 8 digits in the form "1234 5678" (don't forget the double quotes around the numbers, and the space in the middle). The odds are that you will find at least some pages among the search results which include other credit card numbers that begin with the same 8 digits. Those Google hits will frequently be in the form of a spreadsheet or document that looks like it was made for someone's internal use and wasn't meant to be leaked on the Web, and some of those documents will include entire lists of other credit card numbers as well. (The search trick doesn't work for American Express cards, since their card numbers are usually stored in the form "3xxx xxxxxx xxxxx", and it's far less likely for your card to share the same initial 10 digits with someone else's credit card. But of course if you hit on a page that contains a list of credit card numbers, there will probably be some AmEx cards in that list.) Of the pages that I found containing leaked credit cards, often they would also contain other sensitive data like passwords and social security numbers. Don't do anything I wouldn't do.

In my 2007 article, I wrote, "Of course, it's not the card companies' fault that these card numbers are leaked onto the Web; it's the fault of the merchants that allowed them to get leaked. But the credit card companies are the only ones who are in a position to do something about it." I suggested for credit card companies to run a Google search every day or week for all of the possible 8-digit prefixes that could correspond to their card numbers, and then to deactivate any card numbers that were found in this way. They could also send a request to Google to remove the page from Google's index because it contains credit card numbers (there is already a public-facing removal request tool for this purpose). And finally, if it was a merchant that leaked customers' credit card numbers online, then the merchant should be sanctioned as well.

The problem with all of these suggestions is that there doesn't seem to be sufficient incentive on the part of the people who have to implement them. If a credit card company has to refund a fraudulent charge, they usually just take the money back from the merchant who originally received it, and it costs the credit card company nothing. (During my brief stint running a company that accepted online credit card payments, sometimes a "customer" that we had interacted with and who definitely knew who we were, would decide to call their credit card company and "dispute" the charge for no reason, and the card processor would just take the money out of our balance and hand it back to the customer.) So credit card companies themselves apparently lack the incentive to fix the problem.

So perhaps the easiest fix could come from Google, a company that actually has no incentive at all to fix the problem, except for the fact that it would be a neat idea. Although their "Don't Be Evil" motto has taken a lot of beatings, they still do some basically responsible things for reasons that don't seem to contribute directly to their bottom line. (The fact that they have a tool at all for requesting the removal of pages containing credit card numbers, for example.)

It should be pretty easy for Google to run its own queries internally, based on all possible 8-digit credit card prefixes, to find pages that list any sequence of 16 digits beginning with those 8. Then could do a quick mathematical test on the 16-digit sequence to see if it's a valid credit card number. Then scan their own cached copy of that web page to see how many other valid credit card numbers they can find. Then propagate all of those numbers back to contact points at Visa, MasterCard, American Express and Discover, saying, "We found this credit card number leaked onto the Web; you should cancel the number and issue a new one."

After that point, should Google delete the page from their search results themselves? On the one hand, it clearly helps reduce credit card fraud to remove pages from their index that contain working credit cards. On the other hand, the purist in me doesn't like the thought of Google removing information from their index. After all, if the problem is that a list of credit card numbers has been leaked on a webpage, having that page show up in Google shines a light on the problem; removing it from the index doesn't make the problem go away. (The page could still be found through other search engines; or credit card thieves could have already found the page on Google and saved a copy before Google de-indexed it.) Perhaps a compromise could be that once Google has received confirmation from the credit card companies that all of the card numbers on a given page had been de-activated, it could restore the page to their index, but it would be displayed in search results with a warning saying, "This page contains personal credit card account information; all of the credit card account numbers listed have been de-activated."

Unfortunately this doesn't work if the page also contains other sensitive information that can't be un-compromised just by closing an account — e.g., Social Security Numbers, or addresses and phone numbers. (In any case, Google's removal policies specifically say that they won't remove a page from their index just because the page contains a person's address or phone number.) So maybe the better answer really is to just leave the page out of the search results permanently, over the objections of the "purists."

(I may or may not have found some evidence that Bing is more aggressive about removing pages from search results that contain credit cards. I took a "trove" of 11 credit cards that I found through one of my Google searches, and for each of the 11 card numbers, ran a query on both Google and Bing for the first 8 digits. On Google, 8 out of the 11 queries returned at least one page containing more credit card numbers, not counting the original page which had had supplied the "trove" of numbers that I started with. On Bing, however, only 3 out of 11 queries returned pages with more card numbers. This could indicate that Bing is more conscientious about removing pages from search results that contain sensitive personal information. Or it might just mean that they're not as good as Google.)

Of course the fundamental problem with credit card number security has always been that you have to use the same "token" — your credit card number — for every purchase, with every merchant. (There are card companies that let you generate one-time-use numbers for every purchase, but almost nobody uses those.) Maybe in a few years, credit card numbers will be supplanted by more secure payment protocols and fall by the wayside, but that's also what I thought in 2007.

Hugh Pickens DOT Com writes "Karla Cripps reports at CNN that a combination of overfishing, warming water, low oxygen and pollution are creating perfect conditions for jellyfish to multiply. "The jellyfish seem to be the ones that are flourishing in this while everything else is suffering," says Australian jellyfish researcher Lisa-ann Gershwin. In 2000, a bloom of sea tomato jellyfish in Australia was so enormous — it stretched for more than 1,000 miles from north to south — that it was even visible from space. While most blooms are not quite that big, Gershwin's survey of research on jellyfish from the last few decades indicate that populations are most likely on the rise, and that this boom is taking place in an ocean that is faced with overfishing, acid rain, nutrient pollution from fertilizers and climate change, among other problems. This past summer, southern Europe experienced one of its worst jellyfish infestations ever. Experts there have been reporting a steady increase in the number of jellyfish in the Mediterranean Sea for years. With more than 2,000 species of jellyfish swimming through the world's waters, most stings are completely harmless, some will leave you in excruciating pain, then there are the killers. There are several species of big box jellyfish that have caused many deaths — these include chironex fleckeri in Australia, known as the "most lethal jellyfish in the world whose sting can kill in three minutes. "Just the lightest brush — you don't even feel it — and then, whammo, you're in more pain than you ever could have imagined, and you are struggling to breathe and you can't move your limbs and you can't stop vomiting and your blood pressure just keeps going up and up," says Gershwin. "It is really surprising how many places they occur around the world — places you would never expect: Hawaii, Caribbean, Florida, Wales, New Caledonia, Thailand, Malaysia, Philippines, India ... as well as Australia.""

Hugh Pickens DOT Com writes "Karla Cripps reports at CNN that a combination of overfishing, warming water, low oxygen and pollution are creating perfect conditions for jellyfish to multiply. "The jellyfish seem to be the ones that are flourishing in this while everything else is suffering," says Australian jellyfish researcher Lisa-ann Gershwin. In 2000, a bloom of sea tomato jellyfish in Australia was so enormous — it stretched for more than 1,000 miles from north to south — that it was even visible from space. While most blooms are not quite that big, Gershwin's survey of research on jellyfish from the last few decades indicate that populations are most likely on the rise, and that this boom is taking place in an ocean that is faced with overfishing, acid rain, nutrient pollution from fertilizers and climate change, among other problems. This past summer, southern Europe experienced one of its worst jellyfish infestations ever. Experts there have been reporting a steady increase in the number of jellyfish in the Mediterranean Sea for years. With more than 2,000 species of jellyfish swimming through the world's waters, most stings are completely harmless, some will leave you in excruciating pain, then there are the killers. There are several species of big box jellyfish that have caused many deaths — these include chironex fleckeri in Australia, known as the "most lethal jellyfish in the world whose sting can kill in three minutes. "Just the lightest brush — you don't even feel it — and then, whammo, you're in more pain than you ever could have imagined, and you are struggling to breathe and you can't move your limbs and you can't stop vomiting and your blood pressure just keeps going up and up," says Gershwin. "It is really surprising how many places they occur around the world — places you would never expect: Hawaii, Caribbean, Florida, Wales, New Caledonia, Thailand, Malaysia, Philippines, India ... as well as Australia.""

New submitter BitVulture writes "The hardcore Bitcoin community is abuzz with news of the closure of Inputs.io, a supposedly secure online Bitcoin wallet, after an attack resulted in the loss of 4100 Bitcoins. A PGP-signed message at the home page of the now mostly non-operational site briefly explains the situation: 'Two hacks totalling about 4100 BTC have left Inputs.io unable to pay all user balances. The attacker compromised the hosting account through compromising email accounts (some very old, and without phone numbers attached, so it was easy to reset). The attacker was able to bypass 2FA due to a flaw on the server host side.' There's no word yet whether Inputs.io will eventually resume operations or whether the security breach will force the Bitcoin bank out of business."

An anonymous reader writes "HP has been the sole holdout on the Itanium, mostly because so much of the PA-RISC architecture lives on in that chip. However, the company recently began migration of Integrity Superdome servers from Itanium to Xeon, and now it has announced that the top of its server line, the NonStop series, will migrate to x86 as well, presumably the 15-core E7 V2 Intel will release next year. So while no one has said it, this likely seems the end of the Itanium experiment, one that went on a lot longer than it should have, given its failure out of the gate."

An anonymous reader writes "HP has been the sole holdout on the Itanium, mostly because so much of the PA-RISC architecture lives on in that chip. However, the company recently began migration of Integrity Superdome servers from Itanium to Xeon, and now it has announced that the top of its server line, the NonStop series, will migrate to x86 as well, presumably the 15-core E7 V2 Intel will release next year. So while no one has said it, this likely seems the end of the Itanium experiment, one that went on a lot longer than it should have, given its failure out of the gate."

cartechboy writes "There are few places in the world outside of a race track that you can safely--and legally-- go faster than 130 mph, but the Autobahn in Germany is one of them. After Tesla announced it'll offer a future special 'autobahn' tuning package to improve the Model S's high-speed driving characteristics, one owner took his car for a high-speed run on the infamous Germany highway. He hit a maximum speed of 212 km/h, or 132 mph. With 416 horsepower on tap and full torque available from a standstill thanks to the electric motor, the Model S went from 60 mph to 100 mph in less than five seconds. (Given the included video is mostly focused on the speedometer, lets hope the driver at least glanced at the road.) Only once the car passed 100 mph did its acceleration begin to slow."

neo12 writes "India has successfully launched a spacecraft to the Red Planet — with the aim of becoming the fourth space agency to reach Mars." As our previous mention of the launch notes, getting to Mars by rocket is a long haul: if all goes well, it will be about 10 months until Mangalyaan reaches orbit.

New submitter bmurray7 writes "You might think that the country that has the fastest average home internet speeds would be a first adapter of modern browsers. Instead, as the Washington Post reports, a payment processing security standard forces most South Koreans to rely upon Internet Explorer for online shopping. Since the standard uses a unique encryption algorithm, an ActiveX control is required to complete online purchases. As a result, many internet users are in the habit of approving all AtivceX control prompts, potentially exposing them to malware."

An anonymous reader writes "Intel shipped open-source Broadwell graphics driver support for Linux this weekend. While building upon the existing Intel Linux GPU driver, the kernel driver changes are significant in size for Broadwell. Code comments from Intel indicate that these processors shipping in 2014 will have "some of the biggest changes we've seen on the execution and memory management side of the GPU" and "dwarf any other silicon iteration during my tenure, and certainly can compete with the likes of the gen3->gen4 changes." Come next year, Intel may now be able to better take on AMD and NVIDIA discrete graphics solutions."

If you happen to be one of the other five people who own an Atari Jaguar, you've probably played the excellent Tempest 2000. As chance would have it, a few months ago Llamasoft announced they were approached by Sony to write TxK, based "...on the essence of the original T2K. ... . We're not going to overload you with ultra psychedelia, but we will make it fluid and colourful and awesome-looking ... We're going to give you a perfect treat for your eyes, ears and thumbs with a modern extrapolation of one of the best shooters ever made on hardware that's just perfectly suited for it, and in a way that retains the purity of the original design." A couple of weeks ago, a working version of TxK was demoed at Play Expo. Read below to see the video. It really seems to retain the aesthetic of Tempest 2000 enhanced by modern hardware and a full color range, with a touch of Space Giraffe tactics (you can kill enemies at the rim somehow at least).

If you happen to be one of the other five people who own an Atari Jaguar, you've probably played the excellent Tempest 2000. As chance would have it, a few months ago Llamasoft announced they were approached by Sony to write TxK, based "...on the essence of the original T2K. ... . We're not going to overload you with ultra psychedelia, but we will make it fluid and colourful and awesome-looking ... We're going to give you a perfect treat for your eyes, ears and thumbs with a modern extrapolation of one of the best shooters ever made on hardware that's just perfectly suited for it, and in a way that retains the purity of the original design." A couple of weeks ago, a working version of TxK was demoed at Play Expo. Read below to see the video. It really seems to retain the aesthetic of Tempest 2000 enhanced by modern hardware and a full color range, with a touch of Space Giraffe tactics (you can kill enemies at the rim somehow at least).

An anonymous reader writes "Do you think an airgap can protect your computer? Maybe not. According to this story at Ars Technica, security consultant Dragos Ruiu is battling malware that communicates with infected computers using computer microphones and speakers." That sounds nuts, but it is a time-tested method of data transfer, after all.

Many of today's adult video gamers grew up with a gaming industry that was still trying to figure itself out. In the early-to-mid 1990s, most of the gaming genres we're familiar with today were still indistinct, half-formed concepts waiting for that one game necessary to define them. Thus, many players sat up and took notice when a relatively unknown company named Blizzard managed to exemplify not one, but two separate types of game in quick succession. Warcraft: Orcs and Humans put real-time strategy on the map, and Diablo set the standard for action RPGs. The two games immediately elevated Blizzard to the top of the industry, and many gamers wondered how one studio could put out two games like these so quickly. As it turns out, it wasn't one studio; it was a blending of two very different but extremely creative groups who had a passion for making video games. In Stay Awhile and Listen, author David Craddock lays out the history of the two groups, from how they first got into the gaming business to their eventual success launching now-legendary games. Read on for our review of the book. Stay Awhile and Listen author David Craddock pages 399 publisher DM Press rating 9/10 reviewer Jeff Boehm ISBN 978-0-9884099-0-3 summary A look into the humble beginnings of Blizzard

Before going into the content of the book, I want to discuss its form. Stay Awhile and Listen, unlike most books that chronicle past events, flows almost like a documentary film. Craddock conducted years worth of interviews with former Blizzard staff, and the story of what happened is tightly interwoven with actual quotes from those interviews. The effect is illustrative; during the narrative parts, it's easy to imagine, for example, a group of young developers hunched in front of faintly glowing screens. During the quotations, you can picture the older and wiser industry veterans sitting in front of a camera and explaining those early days with smiles on their faces.

The structure of the book itself is rather unusual as well. Because of the author's extensive research, the sheer volume of historical material is almost overwhelming. In order to keep it focused on the development of Blizzard's early games, Craddock narrowed down the main story to only the most relevant events. However, to preserve all of the extra background information without cluttering the pages with endless footnotes, he added a secondary section appropriately named "Side Quests." When the author or the one of the developers mention a side-topic, there's a small link noting the availability of a Side Quest. Hitting the link takes you to the exact page it's on, and when you're done, there's a link returning you to the exact page you left. Some of these excerpts are even sourced with shortened URLs, in case you want to dive even more deeply into the history.

The Side Quests contain anecdotes, lessons on game design, technical bits from early development, and even information on content that never made it into the games. When reading Stay Awhile and Listen, I was struck by how nice it was for somebody to finally take advantage of the flexibility of digital books. One of the advantages of real books over ebooks is that it's much easier to flip backward or forward with a physical copy. The links within this book made that a non-issue. In addition to the Side Quests, there are a few extra chapters called Bonus Rounds, which contain background on the parts of the gaming industry that supported Blizzard during its rise.

For somebody who played a lot of the early Blizzard games, I was still surprised by a lot of the information in this book. I remember years ago firing up Diablo and seeing the Blizzard North logo. I wondered what made that group different from the "normal" Blizzard developers. It's easy to look at a company and assume uniform identity or uniform goals, but Stay Awhile and Listen makes clear that Blizzard Entertainment and Blizzard North were two fundamentally different studios that had their own ways of doing things, and strong opinions about how their games should work. Fortunately for them (and for us), the biggest thing they had in common was a real love for gaming, and for making the best game they could. This let them work well together despite their frequent and contentious debates.

Getting a look into the development of Diablo and Warcraft was interesting as well. Usually, when we think about design decisions, we imagine the developers debating the finer points of the finished product. (Do we let players use a rail gun or a rocket launcher? Is our last class a Paladin or a Mage?) So, learning that some of the most basic aspects of these games were almost very different was fascinating and perplexing. For example, Dave Brevik conceived of Diablo as a graphical interpretation of the text-based dungeon crawlers of the 80s. These games were largely turn-based — and so was the earliest incarnation of Diablo. Looking back on it now, it's jarring to think of Diablo as a turn-based game. It's like finding out that Looney Tunes was almost stop-motion animated, or that pizza was almost salad. Stay Awhile and Listen provides perspectives on the game's transition, and a fascinating description of how, once the decision was made, Brevik sat down and hammered out the code necessary to turn the game into the Diablo we now.

It was also nice to read about some of the technical details behind the games. Strip away the last 20 years worth of lessons in how to develop software, and you end up with talented programmers putting out brilliant, but ugly and hard-to-maintain code. I'm always curious to know what technologies underpin the software I use; if you're the same way, you'll enjoy reading about what they used and how they decided to use it. (Necessity is a powerful thing.) At the same time, you'll get a feel for how shaky the whole business proposition was to start. Nowadays, Blizzard is largely inscrutable as a business. But budding game developers will be heartened to see how a successful company arose from humble beginnings.

Stay Awhile and Listen is incredibly well sourced. Over three dozen former Blizzard employees contributed to this book. This goes all the way to the top — Dave Brevik, Erich Schaefer, and Max Schaefer were the three co-founders of Condor Inc., which became Blizzard North, and all three feature prominently. We also hear from Mike Morhaime, Frank Pearce, and Allen Adham, who founded Silicon & Synapse, which went on to become Blizzard Entertainment. There are also discussions with Blizzard veterans like Pat Wyatt (whose anecdotes we've discussed before), Bill Roper, and composer Matt Uelmen.

The book is well-written, and the story flows well. If you played these games when you were younger and you're interested in how they came to be, Stay Awhile and Listen is well worth picking up. It'd also be useful to anybody jumping into game development (probably start-up software development, too), as it gives a perspective on how Blizzard adopted the ideals it still holds to this day, like "we'll release when it's finished," and "if you can defend your idea, everybody will consider it." It's also the first in a series documenting Blizzard's history; future volumes will focus on StarCraft, World of Warcraft, and the continuation of each franchise.

Stay Awhile and Listen is published by DM Press on the Kindle and iBooks platforms, and will soon be available for the Nook as well. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews (sci-fi included) — to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.

First time accepted submitter calinduca writes "Artificial blood that could one day be used in humans without side effects has been created by scientists in Romania. The blood contains water and salts along with a protein known as hemerythrin which is extracted from sea worms. Researchers from Babe-Bolyai University in Cluj-Napoca, Romania, hope it could help end blood supply shortages and prevent infections through donations." Wikipedia's entry on hemerythrin explains its unusual oxygen binding mechanism.

Daniel_Stuckey writes "Republican Congressman Jim Sensenbrenner will introduce an anti-NSA bill tomorrow in the House, and if it makes its winding way to becoming law, it will be a big step towards curtailing the NSA's bulk metadata collection. Wisconsin Rep. Sensenbrenner, along with 60 co-sponsors, aims to amend one section of the Patriot Act, Section 215, in a bill known as the United and Strengthening America by Fulfilling Rights and Ending Eavesdropping, Dragnet Collection, and Online Monitoring Act — also known by its less-clunky acronym version, the USA Freedom Act."

An anonymous reader writes "Debian has been one of the last holdouts using SysVinit over a modern init system, but now after much discussion amongst Debian developers, they are deciding whether to support systemd or Upstart as their default init system. The Debian technical committee has been asked to vote on which init system to use, which could swing in favor of using Upstart due to the Canonical bias present on the committee."

An anonymous reader writes "The NSA sought the Japanese government's cooperation to wiretap fiber-optic cables carrying phone and data across the Asia-Pacific region but the request was rejected. The NSA wanted to intercept personal information including Internet activity and phone calls passing through Japan from Asia including China. The Japanese government refused because it was illegal and would need to involve a massive number of private sector workers. Article 35 of the Japanese Constitution protects against illegal search and seizure."

jfruh writes "Apple is now offering upgrades to the latest version of OS X for free. When Linux inventor Linus Torvalds was asked whether this threatened Linux (presumably by someone who had only a passing knowledge of all the things 'free' can mean when applied to software) it gave him an opportunity for a passionate defense of open source. Torvalds also says that he'll keep programming until it gets 'not interesting,' which hasn't happened yet." The newest version of OS X may be gratis for Apple hardware buyers, but it's notably far from the original, (literally) un-branded sense of "mavericks."

sl4shd0rk writes "Michael Powell, A former United States FCC chairman, is pushing for 'usage-based internet access' which he says is good for consumers who are 'accustomed to paying for what they use'. Apparently Time Warner and Comcast (maybe others) are already developing plans to set monthly rates based on bandwidth usage. The reasoning on the NCTA website lays out the argument behind Powell's plan."

First time accepted submitter waslap writes "I have a leading role at a small software development company. I am responsible for giving guidance and making decisions on tool usage within the shop. I find the task of choosing frameworks to use within our team, and specifically UI frameworks, exceedingly difficult. A couple of years back my investigation of RIA frameworks lead me to eventually push for Adobe Flex [adobe.com] as the UI framework of choice for our future web development. This was long before anyone would have guessed that Adobe would abandon the Linux version of Flash. I chose Flex mainly for its maturity, wealth of documentation, commercial backing, and the superior abilities of Flash, at a time when HTML 5 was still in the early stages of planning. Conversely, about 15 years ago I made a switch to Qt for desktop applications and it is still around and thriving. I am trying to understand why it was the right choice and the others not. Perhaps Qt's design was done so well that it could not be improved. I'm not sure whether that assessment is accurate. I cannot find a sound decision-tree based on my experiences to assist me in making choices that have staying power. I hope the esteemed Slashdot readers can provide helpful input on the matter. We need a set of fail-safe axioms" Read on for more context. The backing of Adobe, an industry giant, gave me what I later discovered was a false sense of security. I thought that the Flex framework would not get lost in a back alley like so many open source projects. We invested heavily in Flex and were disillusioned a couple of years later when Linux support for Flash was ended. (Linux support is vital for us for reasons outside this discussion.)

I had evaluated Adobe Flex alongside OpenLaszlo, which at the time had the ability to use a DHTML back-end instead of Flash with the flick of a switch. In retrospect, this alone apparently made it a better choice in the long run regardless of its flaky state when I first looked at it.

A similar scenario arose with CodeIgniter, which we chose for getting away from classical spaghetti PHP. CodeIgniter was recently dropped after we've invested a Tesla Model X worth of money into using it. (EllisLab Seeking New Owner for CodeIgniter.)

I am standing at a cross-roads once again as people are pushing Laravel [laravel.com] for PHP, and giving other suggestions. I am scratching my (sore) head and wondering how to prevent eventual failures in the future. It seems there is no way to predict whether a tool will survive.

Even in retrospect, when I consider my decision-making processes, everything was reasonable at the time I made the choices, yet some turned out to be wrong.