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Comment: Re:Unintended effects (Score 1) 406

by joaobranco (#37662452) Attached to: High School Kills Color-Coded ID Program

If America wants schools that can teach kids to compete and get good scores in standardized tests, they need to import the entire school's staff, from the top, to all the teachers, from Asia. Then you can see what difference it will make to the kids.

Actually, from what you're saying, it would make much more sense to import the parents (and their hard effort / strong academic motivation) from Asia... The main problem seems to be the culture/parents, not the academic establishment.


+ - Intel warns of chipset flaw->

Submitted by Incisive
Incisive (1846318) writes "ntel is expecting to take a financial hit following the discovery of a flaw in its latest Core PC chipsets.

The company said that a design flaw in the "Cougar Point" support chip could lead to long-term performance issues with SATA devices such as hard drives and optical drives."

Link to Original Source

+ - Wikileaks "a clear and present danger"

Submitted by
bedmison writes "In an op-ed in the Washington Post titled "WikiLeaks must be stopped", Marc A. Thiessen writes that "WikiLeaks represents a clear and present danger to the national security of the United States.", and that the United States has the authority to arrest its founder, Julian Assange, even if it has to contravene international law to do so. Thiessen also suggests that the new USCYBERCOM be unleashed to destroy WikiLeaks as an internet presense. From the article:





Comment: Re:Not that I mind longer games but... (Score 1) 462

by joaobranco (#32096660) Attached to: Do Gamers Want Simpler Games?


Sorry, but can't do that. If that happens it means you will consume your game at a much slower pace, and therefore won't buy version 3 of the same title next fall (after buying all DLC and expansions and version 2, of course). Why, you may even enjoy your game, rather than rush to the end...

Comment: Re:Will these be all public too? (Score 1) 186

by joaobranco (#30749012) Attached to: Google Docs To Host Any File Type

I don't care how technical you want to get about the definition of theft, depriving someone of money is wrong.

If someone creates and sells a software that replaces Photoshop, it will also deprive Adobe of money. It is not the act of depriving someone of (potential) money that is wrong (although it may be illegal). You don't have a "natural" right to force someone to give you money, you know, although you may convince the state to grant you that benefit.

Intelectual/Imaginary Property is a fiction. It may be a useful fiction, but as with all fictions, once you try to extend it and to treat it as reality, it breaks and loses much of its usefulness.

Comment: The successful atempt wasn't about the system (Score 2, Informative) 143

by joaobranco (#30105136) Attached to: Hackers Fail To Crack Brazilian Voting Machines
According to the newspapers, the successful attempt was on the carrying bag for the media (which I assume carries the data required). It seems lack of physical security still can happen, but the media is supposedly cryptographically signed, so replacing it would be hard in any case.

Comment: Re:!secure (Score 1) 109

by joaobranco (#29865567) Attached to: Anonymous Browsing On Android Phones Using Tor

Another thing is that you are still usually leaking DNS queries to your ISP, which may even return false results if you're being censored in China or something and they still see what sites you're visiting.

I believe you don't leak DNS queries if you use tor like a SOCKS proxy (therefore proxying the DNS queries). Although the exit note could mess with your DNS queries if you do so (a hard security trade-off, to be sure).


+ - "Windows 7 compatible" PCs must be 64-bit ->

Submitted by
Barence writes "Microsoft has started certifying PCs as "compatible with Windows 7" — and looks to have avoided the mistakes that dogged the Vista Capable scheme. Whereas Microsoft certified PCs that could only run Vista Home Basic last time round, this time PCs will have to work with all versions of Windows 7 to qualify for the sticker, including 64-bit versions of the OS. Microsoft also claims that "products that receive the logo are checked for common issues to minimise the number of crashes, hangs, and reboots experienced by the user.""
Link to Original Source

Comment: Re:Awesome (Score 4, Informative) 104

by joaobranco (#29478165) Attached to: NCSoft Drops GameGuard From Western Launch of <em>Aion</em>

Now if they promise not to 'include it' in future patches that would be swell. I might actually considering trying it.

Yeah, that really stopped people from buying World of Warcraft.

Notice that the WoW Warden is much less intrusive than GameGuard (it even allows for playing WoW on Linux using wine, which means it is very much standards compliant). Big difference here.

Comment: Re:You can calculate the speed and it's damning (Score 1) 406

by joaobranco (#29380879) Attached to: Pigeon Turns Out To Be Faster Than S. African Net

That's... pathetic. I have 50 megabit fiber (in Japan) and I've downloaded 5-gigabyte files in minutes before.

I don't have fiber - I have hybrid cable, but I can achieve the download speeds you mention. However, we are talking about uploads, and most ISPs prefer to sell grossly assymetric connections (don't know about Japan but where I live, although I can get 100Mbps download using fiber, it only achieves 10MBps upload on the more expensive option - and 2 MBps on the cheapest).


+ - Andromeda absorbs its neighbour. We're next.-> 2

Submitted by
Scientific Ninja
Scientific Ninja writes "Astronomers in the University of Sydney have captured pictures of a 'union' between our closest neighbouring galaxy, Andromeda, and its smaller neighbour, the Triangulum Galaxy. Published in the journal Nature on 3 September 2009, the research shows how large galaxies grow by incorporating stars from surrounding smaller galaxies. This popular model of galaxy evolution, called the 'hierarchical model', predicts that large galaxies such as Andromeda, which can be seen with the naked eye from the northern hemisphere, should be surrounded by relics of smaller galaxies it has connected with."
Link to Original Source

+ - Foundation trilogy update: Can Emmerich deliver?-> 1

Submitted by
bowman9991 writes "Now that Oscar nominated Robert Rodat, the screenwriter behind 'Saving Private Ryan' and 'The Patriot', is writing the screenplay for the first adaptation of Isaac Asimov's 'Foundation' series, is this production looking more promising? Director Roland Emmerich is not known for his delicate touch and story telling depth, which Isaac Asimov's 'Foundation' series is likely to need. Emmerich talks about why he choose Rodat and why he's set to direct all 3 'Foundation' movies, rather than just one. Perhaps Robert Rodat may help soften the approach of a director with all the subtlety of a nuclear detonation. "
Link to Original Source

Comment: Re:Depend on something... pay for admin (Score 2, Insightful) 408

by joaobranco (#29279441) Attached to: GMail Experiences Serious Outage

Umm, an hour of downtime doesn't mean your data is gone. I'll also echo earlier comments -- locally hosted email generally has more problems, as no company but the largest enterprise has the same magnitude of IT equipment and experience as Google.

I've never really understood why so many Slashdotters have this attitude about hosted services. Perhaps they are local IT folks for smaller companies, and fear for their jobs?

Could be in part that. Another explanation is that most that work as local IT folks (for any kind of business) know that when anything breaks, its always considered their fault (they are the people-facing shields, not the actual service providers elsewhere). And everything anything remote "breaks", or suffers any kind of troubles THEY will know it (because people will complain to them). Therefore, they both consider remote services less reliable than the average person (they know about more outages) as well as consider them less flexible (they can fix local problems, but are impotent to fix remote ones).

Comment: Re:One more nail in the coffin.... (Score 1) 853

by joaobranco (#29237417) Attached to: Emergency Government Control of the Internet?

You know, after the Roman Republic turned into the Empire (with the attendant loss of freedoms), it survived for over 400 years. And we're nowhere near that point - no US presidents are ex-generals who conquered Washington, D.C. with their troops.

This is not the end.

Just a little history lesson... the loss of freedoms that happened in Rome happened in fact a little before the transition to Empire (Sulla, the civil wars, etc.) And in fact the plebe was just as oppressed before as after (only the aristocrats were really moved in the transition since the Roman Senate was never nowhere near democratic, not even by the poor Athenian standards)

Comment: Re:Biased and misleading summary - read TFA (Score 1) 91

by joaobranco (#29237205) Attached to: Publisher Whining Prompts Italian Investigation of Google

What they want is for Google to boost their PageRank to where it would be with the Google linklove, without wanting Google's linklove. Which seems like a perfectly unreasonable demand to me.

Precisely. And that doesn't even assume that google probably trusts more the link data it gets from its own sites (which it controls) over the one from the public at large (therefore again boosting web search rank for the sites that are cited in google news or indeed, any google generated content...
