submeta writes "Researchers in Munich have successfully performed a quantum key exchange between a moving aircraft and a ground station. Quantum key distribution, which exploits the phenomenon of entanglement, offers theoretically perfect encryption (although it can be vulnerable in practice). This advance is an important step on the way to key exchange with a satellite, which could enable practical usage of the technology."

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Stal från medvetslös man på tunnelbanespår.

Modern Perl editor

Modular Perl Debugger (akin to Ruby "Trepanning" Debuggers).

Time zone object base class and factory

The Organization for Economic and Cooperation and Development (OECD), a forum of the top 34 developed economies, has released an annual education report, and guess what? The U.S. has once again ranked poorly in relation to many other developed countries. An article at TechCrunch argues that we needn't worry because it doesn't matter: "However, the report implies that education translates into gainful market skills, an assumption not found in the research. For instance, while Chinese students, on average, have twice the number of instructional hours as Americans, both countries have identical scores on tests of scientific reasoning. 'The results suggest that years of rigorous training of physics knowledge in middle and high schools have made significant impact on Chinese students’ ability in solving physics problems, while such training doesn’t seem to have direct effects on their general ability in scientific reasoning, which was measured to be at the same level as that of the students in USA,' wrote a team of researchers studying whether Chinese superiority in rote scientific knowledge translated into the kinds of creative thinking necessary for innovation."

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Henry Blodget has a graph showing newspaper ad revenue over time.

Jay Rosen observed that its fall started as the blogs rose.

Proves that the right thing for the news industry to do back at the beginning of blogging was to fully embrace the change. Open the floodgates, and help the new amateurs create news for each other.

I wrote about this over and over, urged them to offer blogging to their communities. But change doesn't come easily esp when you've climbed the ladder. You don't want to hear the ladder doesn't matter anymore.

At a recent meeting we were talking about the reversal of fortunes for Twitter and Facebook and wondering why Google wasn't suffering as much. You had to be there to understand all the premises.

It isn't about money because Twitter is shrinking in order to make more money. But the stuff that was exciting about Twitter, the way it acted as a conduit for all other software, it was sort of a message operating system on a global scale, the exciting stuff is exactly what they're taking out to get to profitability.

Facebook is wilting because the thing that was lifting them up was their stock, and that's not working for them anymore. In fact it's working against them.

True, Google has multiple revenue flows, but I theorized that that isn't why they have a pretty strong future. It's because they're open where Twitter is not. Think about it. I don't have to be vetted by anyone to be part of their search engine. No one says yay or nay, and there are no funny rules about stuff flowing in or out, or using their code to display search results. Google is fairly laissez-faire. All you ahve to do to be in their index is to put it on the web, and we all know the web is the platform with no platform vendor. Anyone can put stuff there.

I believe Twitter would have a much brighter future, Facebook too, if they trusted the web If they let every bit of their service be replaced. That would force them to compete based on service and value and features. Now they get to be lazy and that's fine for a while. But the crazy chaos of the web will eventually do something so exciting and you won't be able to match it on Twitter. Had they been more trusting they would have guaranteed that whatever excitement comes along would be automatically include them.

Google, on the other hand, has a better chance. It would be good for them if they were more open-minded about accepting formats and protocols from people who don't work for Google, but even with that inefficiency, they still have a pretty strong basis for continued growth.

And of course Amazon is the smartest of them all. They're automatically part of everything because they do everything to support and enhance the existing protocols. They are very respectful of the web and choice. I can deploy my apps on Amazon if I want, but if Rackspace gives me a better deal, Amazon won't fight me. Same with Rackspace of course. This is the way we like it. :-)

Who did Apple bet on in this field? Twitter. They'll never get networking right, imho. (I am a very happy Apple shareholder, btw.)

I 51 år har foton av FN:s illa tilltygade generalsekreterare hållits inlåsta.

Protesterna i världen mot den så kallade Muhammedfilmen fortsätter, men tycktes ändå ha bedarrat något i dag.

Storbritanniens prins William och hans hustru Kate ska polisanmäla publiceringen av topless-bilderna av henne, enligt en talesman för brittiska hovet.

another random user writes "A Q&A on Ars Technica asks about an old adage that many programmers stick to: 'It takes a certain type of mind to learn programming, and not everyone can do it.' Users at Stack Exchange are wading in with their answers, but what do Slashdot users think?"

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