 | Last login: 3 days agoPcalnon is a person from Kansas, USA. "the truth may be puzzling. it may take some work to grapple with. it may be counterintuitive. it may contradict deeply held prejudices. it may not be consonant with what we desperately want to be true. but our preferences do not determine what's true."
- carl sagan |
 Share This- Conveying the 3D Shape of Smoothly Curving Transparent Surfaces via...
 Jun 26, 5:50am  (1 review) computer-graphics, academics, mathematics http://www-users.cs.umn.edu/~interran/tv...- from the page: "Transparency can be a useful device for depicting multiple overlapping surfaces in a single image. The challenge is to render the transparent surfaces in such a way that their three-dimensional shape can be readily understood and their depth distance from underlying structures clearly perceived."
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- UW scientists unlock major number theory puzzle (Feb. 26, 2007)
- Jun 21, 9:58am (2 reviews) mathematics http://www.news.wisc.edu/13497
- from the page: "Mathematicians have finally laid to rest the legendary mystery surrounding an elusive group of numerical expressions known as the 'mock theta functions.'"
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- Iran election: state moves to end Facebook revolution - Times Online
- Jun 15, 8:43am
 (1 review) government, elections, politics, civil-liberties http://technology.timesonline.co.uk/tol/... - from the page: "The Iranian government is mounting a campaign to disrupt independent media organisations and websites that air doubts about the validity of the re-election of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as the nation's president, according to various sources."
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- Dear CNN, Please Check Twitter for News About Iran - NYTimes.com
- Jun 14, 4:43pm (1 review) government, elections, politics, news http://www.nytimes.com/external/readwrit...
- from the page: "The western world's most feared government is shaking with insurrection in the streets after a contested election and the leading name in news, CNN, is shockingly absent from the story. Twitter, meanwhile, is how Iranians are communicating with the outside world. It's the best place to follow events going on in that country and CNN's failure to engage with the story is one of the hottest topics of conversation there."
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- Reporters Sans Frontières
- Jun 14, 4:42pm (1 review) government, elections, politics, civil-liberties, democracy http://www.rsf.org/An-election-without-f...
- from the page: "Reporters Without Borders urges the international community, especially European countries, not to recognise the results of the first round of the presidential election that Iran held on 12 June because censorship and a crackdown on journalists are preventing a democratic electoral process. Arrests of journalists and media censorship measures are growing as Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's 'victory' continues to be disputed."
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- Technology Review: Extracting Meaning from Millions of Pages
- Jun 13, 2:07pm (1 review) ai, computer-science, computers, science, internet http://beta.technologyreview.com/computi...
- from the page: "A software engine that pulls together facts by combing through more than 500 million Web pages has been developed by researchers at the University of Washington. The tool extracts information from billions of lines of text by analyzing basic relationships between words.
Some experts say that this kind of 'automated information extraction' will likely form the basis for far more intelligent next-generation Web search, in which nuggets of information are first gleaned and then combined intelligently."
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- NSA ill-suited for domestic cybersecurity role
- Jun 13, 9:19am (1 review) government, computer-security, civil-liberties, telecommunications http://www.examiner.com/x-13426-CIA-Exam...
- from the page: "In one of those under-the-table announcements that Washington power players like to make on Friday afternoons, the Obama administration announced its sweeping new 'Cyberspace Policy Review.'
Regardless of the shape of America's new cyber policy, the National Security Agency could end up playing an expanded role in America's private sector cybersecurity. NSA has long been involved with the security of US telecoms infrastucture, through such esoteric entities as the National Security Telecommunications and Information Systems Security Committee (NSTISSC), which coordinates security for national-level telecommunications infrastructure.
Nonetheless, giving more responsibility for domestic and private sector cybersecurity to NSA--a secretive, hidebound culture incapable of keeping up with innovation, or even working with industry--is a bad idea."
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- The healthcare war has officially begun | Salon
- Jun 12, 9:29pm (1 review) government, politics, health-care http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/200...
- from the page: "Wednesday the American Medical Association came out against a public option for healthcare. The President has reaffirmed his support for it. The next weeks will show what Obama is made of -- whether he's willing and able to take on the most formidable lobbying coalition he has faced so far on an issue that will define his presidency."
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- Waiting for Obama | Salon
- Jun 12, 9:23pm (1 review) government, politics http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/200...
- from the page: "States are pushing ahead with their own reforms instead of waiting for the president to act."
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- Security Fix - Microsoft Update Quietly Installs Firefox Extension
- Jun 2, 9:03am (5 reviews) computer-security, oss, windows http://voices.washingtonpost.com/securit...
- from the page: "Apparently, the .NET update automatically installs its own Firefox add-on that is difficult -- if not dangerous -- to remove, once installed.
Annoyances.org, which lists various aspects of Windows that are, well, annoying, says "this update adds to Firefox one of the most dangerous vulnerabilities present in all versions of Internet Explorer: the ability for Web sites to easily and quietly install software on your PC." I'm not sure I'd put things in quite such dire terms, but I'm fairly confident that a decent number of Firefox for Windows users are rabidly anti-Internet Explorer, and would take umbrage at the very notion of Redmond monkeying with the browser in any way."
m$, still evil after all these years. this goes far beyond their practice of recklessly releasing fundamentally insecure software and their philosophy of embrace, extend, and extinguish. this seems to be a deliberate case of sabotage. a competing browser--firefox--is rapidly gaining market share, in large part because it is far more secure than internet explorer. m$ responds by secretly (and automatically in many cases) changing--or more accurately breaking--the users browser by inserting the same security flaw that m$'s browser has. which security flaw? only most serious and visible flaw that ie has--the one that allows the automatic and hidden installation of malicious software, the flaw that allows "drive by downloads." can this be anything other than grotesque incompetence, deliberate sabotage, or corporate hacking?
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