If Facebook offered a "pro" version of the site with free extras (like bonus cheats for Farmville and other FB games), and the only condition was the user input their SSN and mother's maiden name, I'd venture to guess that plenty of FB users would sadly go along with it, even if the privacy settings to hide those two elements were added.
At the end of the article, it is revealed that the exploits are Adobe Reader problems that are going to be addressed starting with Adobe Reader 10. So people that do not use Adobe's Reader client to view PDFs are not at as much risk, depending on how their non-Adobe PDF-reader solution is configured.
Of course, we all know the vast majority of the world (especially corporate users) uses Windows, and thus, Adobe Reader, so the security problems mentioned in the article are a valid cause for general concern... But not a concern for the PDF format in general.
I tend to hold on to my tech for years. With the finite number of read/writes to flash memory, I don't want to be forced to part with a computer because it uses a proprietary flash storage system or be forced to purchase a proprietary replacement storage module.
Things like iPods, smart phones, and PDAs are cheaper and easily replaced in whole, but I wouldn't want to face a replacement cost for a laptop.
I would cringe to do secure erases (writing zeroes) to a flash memory drive (solid state drives or Apple's flash "drive" module in the new Airs), knowing I was prematurely killing my storage life.
Platter-based disks with sudden motion sensors will still be my huckleberry for a few more years...
I simply tuck the excess ribbon and power cables in the empty drive bays. Even easier if you get some cable management clips, the kind with adhesive to stick to the wall of the bays. This way you maximize airflow and such.
NASA routinely crashes its space probes after their extended missions to prevent any sort of contamination to possible life forms indigenous to the celestial bodies in the area.
I wonder if the Huygens probe's plunge to the surface may have introduced contaminants to Titan's "biosphere".
That would kind of suck. And now we'll never know, since future visits could very well detect readings caused/contaminated by Huygens.
I updated my carrier settings, rebooted my iPhone and sent my first iPhone MMS (a pic) to a friend with a Verizon phone. The friend promptly sent back an MMS (also a pic) who was pretty much rolling her eyes over the fact that I just got MMS and she's had it on various Verizon phones for years.
Then all the excitement of being able to MMS pretty much fizzled out.
If you find yourself in the jury box or otherwise being questioned by the judge, make sure you inform him/her that one of your hobbies is surfing the Internet.
It is not a civilian agency. It simply employs civilians along with its military talent.
So expect any money that is "better" spent (from the POV of $1000-plate politicians and ex-military people) on defense to go to those matters than to NASA.
... and all the "safety first" crap that's been going on in recent time. (e.g. the NASA of today would have never made the 1969 deadline for Apollo, it would have failed with the Apollo 1 fire and subsequent 3-4 year safety meeting and canceling launches because of lightning 100 mile away.)
AP's wire stories used to be delivered using arcane satellite-to-modem-to-serial solutions that functioned pretty faithfully unless you got snow/ice on your satellite dish on the roof.
Then the AP switched to a web-based delivery method which was a hardware improvement, but a Sarbanes-Oxley nightmare along with website/Internet outage issues and other new hijinks that were all new issues that made this web-based solution worse than the arcane solution it replaced.
Now they've gone further down the dark path with DRM.... just sounds like more fun for newspaper IT guys.
The current STS-127/Expedition 20 mission has shown us that troubleshooting a malfunctioning urine-recycling toilet and a tripped circuit breaker on a carbon scrubbing unit are far easier to fix in LEO than out father, especially considering how critical both systems are to a more distant mission.
and, more importantly, reduce calls during your off hours because a user locked out his/her account due to CAPS LOCK being on when entering a password.
Indeed. I was about to post how plenty of people out there use Notepad, TextEdit, nano, vi, and plenty of other text editors and word processors to write XML.
May as well fine Smith Corona, since a typewriter from 1970 can also edit XML with the appropriate white out fluid.
The Outer Space Treaty of 1969 prohibits land claims in space by member nations. Even if that "land" happens to be a shuttle or a space station.
The shuttle is the property of the United States and those on board are guests of the United States and subject to prosecution (and protections) of US laws and the management decisions of the US.
I used to work at a company that had a glacial workstation OS upgrade cycle. It took them nearly 4 years into XP's lifecycle to consider XP (they were still deploying Win2K), and XPSP2 changed so many of the inner workings of the OS that the deployment was delayed until mid-2006.
I just wonder if the changes in Vista SP2 will sideline similarly glacial Vista deployments or be a blessing, allowing people to skip Vista for Windows 7.
As much as I applaud Funcom for their work with Age of Conan, I still think they should make a next generation Anarchy Online game instead. The original AO has such a unique, rich world, that is only limited by its EverQuest 1-era graphics and engine.
It's so easy for users to click through the installer or post-install pop-up window asking if you'd like to send anonymous* diagnostic info to the vendor to allow them to improve the quality of the product with future software updates based on the data.
Many default with the "Do not ask again" option checked, so once you click through...
(* however anonymous "anonymous" means. Just because they give you a button to look at the contents of the report doesn't means they showed you the headers or all of the data.)
Amazon probably makes plenty of money off eBook sales. With tons of iPhone and iPod Touch users using Stanza and other eBook readers, it only makes sense to support this market. Now instead of having Amazon eBook sales tied to Kindle hardware, they can tie to iPhones and iPod Touches too.
While I don't think this will do anything to get iPhone/iPod Touch users to buy a Kindle, it will certainly quintuple their Kindle eBook sales.
Watch the Kindle software platform become available on other devices (Android, Windows Mobile) in the near future.
Slashdot Mirror
If Facebook offered a "pro" version of the site with free extras (like bonus cheats for Farmville and other FB games), and the only condition was the user input their SSN and mother's maiden name, I'd venture to guess that plenty of FB users would sadly go along with it, even if the privacy settings to hide those two elements were added.
At the end of the article, it is revealed that the exploits are Adobe Reader problems that are going to be addressed starting with Adobe Reader 10. So people that do not use Adobe's Reader client to view PDFs are not at as much risk, depending on how their non-Adobe PDF-reader solution is configured.
Of course, we all know the vast majority of the world (especially corporate users) uses Windows, and thus, Adobe Reader, so the security problems mentioned in the article are a valid cause for general concern... But not a concern for the PDF format in general.
I tend to hold on to my tech for years. With the finite number of read/writes to flash memory, I don't want to be forced to part with a computer because it uses a proprietary flash storage system or be forced to purchase a proprietary replacement storage module.
Things like iPods, smart phones, and PDAs are cheaper and easily replaced in whole, but I wouldn't want to face a replacement cost for a laptop.
I would cringe to do secure erases (writing zeroes) to a flash memory drive (solid state drives or Apple's flash "drive" module in the new Airs), knowing I was prematurely killing my storage life. Platter-based disks with sudden motion sensors will still be my huckleberry for a few more years...
I simply tuck the excess ribbon and power cables in the empty drive bays. Even easier if you get some cable management clips, the kind with adhesive to stick to the wall of the bays. This way you maximize airflow and such.
NASA routinely crashes its space probes after their extended missions to prevent any sort of contamination to possible life forms indigenous to the celestial bodies in the area.
I wonder if the Huygens probe's plunge to the surface may have introduced contaminants to Titan's "biosphere".
That would kind of suck. And now we'll never know, since future visits could very well detect readings caused/contaminated by Huygens.
Including the ability for me to skin the UI with an LCARS theme without "jailbreaking" or flashing custom firmware.
I'm serious.
I purchased an iPhone to replace my non-smartphone cellphone, my PDA, my iPod, and some of my USB flash drives.
For me, the convergence to an iPhone meant I no longer had to bear the inconvenience of the "Batman Belt".
And as a technogeek, I know I'm not going to be away from an outlet for more than the 8-12 hours it takes for my iPhone to lose its charge.
...to catch a critter that got into my basement.
God bless mobile Internet.
I recall reading about "free" PCs running Windows 98 that required the user to click and view ads every 30-60 minutes of computer use.
There were also plenty of "free" dial-up ISPs that required you to click their advertising banner every so often for the connection to stay alive.
I updated my carrier settings, rebooted my iPhone and sent my first iPhone MMS (a pic) to a friend with a Verizon phone. The friend promptly sent back an MMS (also a pic) who was pretty much rolling her eyes over the fact that I just got MMS and she's had it on various Verizon phones for years.
Then all the excitement of being able to MMS pretty much fizzled out.
Still, it's good to have the option now.
If you find yourself in the jury box or otherwise being questioned by the judge, make sure you inform him/her that one of your hobbies is surfing the Internet.
You will be dismissed.
...The U.S. Department of Defense.
It is not a civilian agency. It simply employs civilians along with its military talent.
So expect any money that is "better" spent (from the POV of $1000-plate politicians and ex-military people) on defense to go to those matters than to NASA.
... and all the "safety first" crap that's been going on in recent time. (e.g. the NASA of today would have never made the 1969 deadline for Apollo, it would have failed with the Apollo 1 fire and subsequent 3-4 year safety meeting and canceling launches because of lightning 100 mile away.)
...I find this move interesting and sad.
AP's wire stories used to be delivered using arcane satellite-to-modem-to-serial solutions that functioned pretty faithfully unless you got snow/ice on your satellite dish on the roof.
Then the AP switched to a web-based delivery method which was a hardware improvement, but a Sarbanes-Oxley nightmare along with website/Internet outage issues and other new hijinks that were all new issues that made this web-based solution worse than the arcane solution it replaced.
Now they've gone further down the dark path with DRM.... just sounds like more fun for newspaper IT guys.
The current STS-127/Expedition 20 mission has shown us that troubleshooting a malfunctioning urine-recycling toilet and a tripped circuit breaker on a carbon scrubbing unit are far easier to fix in LEO than out father, especially considering how critical both systems are to a more distant mission.
and, more importantly, reduce calls during your off hours because a user locked out his/her account due to CAPS LOCK being on when entering a password.
Indeed. I was about to post how plenty of people out there use Notepad, TextEdit, nano, vi, and plenty of other text editors and word processors to write XML.
May as well fine Smith Corona, since a typewriter from 1970 can also edit XML with the appropriate white out fluid.
The Outer Space Treaty of 1969 prohibits land claims in space by member nations. Even if that "land" happens to be a shuttle or a space station.
The shuttle is the property of the United States and those on board are guests of the United States and subject to prosecution (and protections) of US laws and the management decisions of the US.
So, they're not in Region 1.
I used to work at a company that had a glacial workstation OS upgrade cycle. It took them nearly 4 years into XP's lifecycle to consider XP (they were still deploying Win2K), and XPSP2 changed so many of the inner workings of the OS that the deployment was delayed until mid-2006.
I just wonder if the changes in Vista SP2 will sideline similarly glacial Vista deployments or be a blessing, allowing people to skip Vista for Windows 7.
As much as I applaud Funcom for their work with Age of Conan, I still think they should make a next generation Anarchy Online game instead. The original AO has such a unique, rich world, that is only limited by its EverQuest 1-era graphics and engine.
They make AO2, and I am there.
Biden. (prior to becoming VP, Biden took the train into Washington every single day.)
It's so easy for users to click through the installer or post-install pop-up window asking if you'd like to send anonymous* diagnostic info to the vendor to allow them to improve the quality of the product with future software updates based on the data.
Many default with the "Do not ask again" option checked, so once you click through...
(* however anonymous "anonymous" means. Just because they give you a button to look at the contents of the report doesn't means they showed you the headers or all of the data.)
Amazon probably makes plenty of money off eBook sales. With tons of iPhone and iPod Touch users using Stanza and other eBook readers, it only makes sense to support this market. Now instead of having Amazon eBook sales tied to Kindle hardware, they can tie to iPhones and iPod Touches too.
While I don't think this will do anything to get iPhone/iPod Touch users to buy a Kindle, it will certainly quintuple their Kindle eBook sales.
Watch the Kindle software platform become available on other devices (Android, Windows Mobile) in the near future.
Just like Halley's Comet, you won't be alive for another chance to see it. Hopefully, it will be more visible than Halley's was back in the day.
The first android was named "B4."
That means this one is "Lore!"