That robots could serve us humans with food sounds like a great idea.
Instead of spending perhaps one hour getting the food and later cook it you will have more time to work.
And no lunch breaks since the robot can serve your lunch where your workplace is.
Makes me wonder. Who is the robot?

'Dirt poor'? WTF were they doing at a fast-food burger joint? SNAP is not applicable to fast-food purchases. Besides, that schizz ain't healthy, especially trying to live on it. Go to the store, buy real food, take it 'home' and cook it.

You missed one or two important items there, which was brought to me by someone I know who works voluntary in the "Food Banks", that give food and other basics is those in absolute need here, a lot of "Dirt Poor" either don't have cooking facilities and/or the electricity/gas to power them.

'Dirt poor'? WTF were they doing at a fast-food burger joint? SNAP is not applicable to fast-food purchases. Besides, that schizz ain't healthy, especially trying to live on it. Go to the store, buy real food, take it 'home' and cook it.

You missed one or two important items there, which was brought to me by someone I know who works voluntary in the "Food Banks", that give food and other basics is those in absolute need here, a lot of "Dirt Poor" either don't have cooking facilities and/or the electricity/gas to power them.

What, you must have missed the '' I used around the word home.

You never heard of cooking over a fire? Even a fire in a barrel? Where there is a will, there is a way. 'Hobos' over here used to do so frequently.

Yes, we have food banks over here. And when I donate to them, I try to always keep in mind the possibility of 'alternative cooking arrangements'.

Being hungry sucks. Been there and done that a few times. But then, I do tend to forget that many 'city people' don't have the first clue about how to catch, kill, butcher, and then cook an animal without 'modern conveniences'. Maybe they need to start teaching that in the schools.

You get hungry enough, the pigeons, squirrels, and raccoons start to look good...

Or just where do you think the terms 'city chicken' and 'mystery meat' come from?

One thing that CEO is not thinking about .

How to destroy a company . Put Robots in to serve the public in it's store !!

I ask this will you stop buying McDonalds if there are no staff and you are served buy a Robot ?

I won't !!

I already get the poos with the super markets and there self serve tellers .You only have to look at the people waiting to be served where there are people serving you .

You may get away with Robots in the factory's but when it comes to serving customers people like to be served buy Humans not Robots .

So bring it on McDonalds and we can all watch as another Stupid American Company choices to implode for making decisions purely on the bottom line and greed

Glenn,

One thing you are not considering... Order accuracy and menu choice.

The human order-takers at some of these burger joints frequently have... difficulty getting even simple orders correct. Just the other day at Catfish King, the human order taker left off part of the order for one of my children. She just flat out didn't ring it up correctly. You ever try to explain to a six-year old exactly why he didn't get his food without being... offensive to the order taker (who was within earshot)?

Automated order-taking equipment is nothing NEW. Ten years ago, another 'burger joint', Jack in the Box, started putting in order-taking kiosks (similar in appearance to an ATM). Many customers waited in line at the kiosks while very few (if any) walked up to the human order-takers/cashiers. Why?

You could tell EXACTLY what was on the order before you paid, plus you could get quite a bit more latitude on exactly what you wanted on your burger at the automated ordering kiosk than you could at the human-manned (personed?) cash register.

More choice...
More accuracy...
Same price...
No surprises...

Better service...

Some poor schmuck is out of a job taking orders down at the burger joint? Who gives a sh**... And I am far from the only one that feels this way.

I go to the burger joint to get the kind of burger that I want when I want it, not to give some bozo that doesn't even know which button to push on the POS system a job.

well, I simply don't CARE...why?
1. I don't eat "junk food", 'cause I don't want to feel like "junk"!
2. robots will come in a this 2nd or 3rd industrial revolution...it's inevitable!
3. use your brain to become more than you are today...so you can give more you can tomorrow!
;)

---

non-profit org. Play4Life in Zagreb, Croatia, EU

Interesting.

Information security firm Rapid7 established the National Exposure Index that shows the countries most vulnerable to hacking attacks by scanning the entire worldwide web for servers with their front doors wide open. It turned out that the most vulnerable country in the world is Belgium. Tajikistan ranks second, Samoa third, and Australia forth. Rapid7’s Project Sonar is a tool that allows to produce the map of the Internet by scanning every single public-facing IP address in a matter of hours and looking at which services they are offering to the wider Internet.

In fact, most of those services will be appropriate – for example, a web server with an open port 80, the “door” through which HTTP web pages are sent through. The problem is that 80% of the top services offered by servers on the Internet are unencrypted – for example, POP3 (an outdated email protocol) and FTP (an insecure method of transferring files).

The researchers were surprised by their own findings, as they expected to find that the most exposed countries were also the richest (by aggregate GDP), which were likely to have the most net-connected devices making them proportionally the most potential for damage. But the most vulnerable country appeared to be Belgium – while the country has fewer nodes than larger countries like China, a greater proportion of them are offering connections to services which are often insecure.

The mapping project was launched as part of an attempt to comprehensively determine quite how insecure the Internet is. Security experts remind of previous comprehensive scans – for example, the 2012 Internet Census – which all have been one-off measures to date. The Internet Census, for instance, traded comprehensiveness for repeatability, because its methodology involved legally questionable access to household routers in order to perform the scans. Unlike Rapid7’s approach, which involves pushing on doors to see if they’re open, the Internet Census actually went in the building to see what it could find.

The information security firm hopes to repeat the survey regularly and eventually discover whether or not the worldwide web is developing in a good direction. Rapid7 hopes that the worst of the insecure servers will go offline in the near future.

Interesting.

Information security firm Rapid7 established the National Exposure Index that shows the countries most vulnerable to hacking attacks by scanning the entire worldwide web for servers with their front doors wide open...

Yep. I see that first hand. Widespread.

For some systems techs, they really have been 'dumbed down' by Marketing gloss and very pretty (almost Star Trek style) graphical interfaces such that the techs have got no clue as to what the default settings are or what actually happens when some pretty button is pressed.

Worse still... There is an overriding pressure from the combination of: "Marketing" for certain products claiming (supposed) "perfect security" (and 'trust us'); management screaming "is it done yet?!"; and the techs either uninterested or simply not given any time to properly set up secured systems.

It is then that I come along to find that the defaults are designed to "enable EVERYTHING to just work(tm)" with particular design emphasis on minimizing support calls.

Then when everything goes wrong due to malware, that is a "cost extra" to fix.


Added to that, my personal experience for the roll-out of Windows 10 is that there appears to be complete disregard for the proper use of network protocols such that the technicians are very prone to just give up and turn all firewalling and network filtering off.

(The Windows 10 updates have tripped our malware alarms a few times now... Looks like it uses file torrenting also to jam up our bandwidth!)



All a recipe for disaster. Not how IT should be but all a consequence of coercive design?

IT is what we make it...
Martin

---

See new freedom: Mageia Linux
Take a look for yourself: Linux Format
The Future is what We all make IT (GPLv3)

10 million infected Linux machines ....
http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-36744925

Up to 10 million Android smartphones have been infected by malware that generates fake clicks for adverts, say security researchers.

The software is also surreptitiously installing apps and spying on the browsing habits of victims.

The malware is currently making about $300,000 (£232,000) a month for its creators, suggests research.
...
Hummingbad is a type of malware known as a rootkit that inserts itself deep inside a phone's operating system to help it avoid detection and to give its controllers total control over the handset.

The ability to control phones remotely has been used to click on ads to make them seem more popular than they actually are. The access has also been used to install fake versions of popular apps or spread programs the gang has been paid to promote.

"It can remain persistent even if the user performs a factory reset," wrote Kristy Edwards from Lookout in a blogpost. "It uses its root privileges to install additional apps on to the device, further increasing ad revenue for the authors and defeating uninstall attempts."

---

Thought you were protected? ...
http://www.techtimes.com/articles/169031/20160708/feds-issue-alert-that-symantec-norton-antivirus-products-could-let-hackers-hijack-computers.htm

"Symantec and Norton branded antivirus products contain multiple vulnerabilities. Some of these products are in widespread use throughout government and industry," notes the alert. "Exploitation of these vulnerabilities could allow a remote attacker to take control of an affected system."

It's not a small issue, either, as the problem is quite widespread. Based on data from industry tracker OPSWAT, Symantec ranks as the fifth most popular antivirus and anti-malware software, running on millions of PCs worldwide. It's used to protect corporate and government computers worldwide, but its security flaws could have grim outcomes.

Symantec, due to its status as a top security product, enjoys wide access to people's computers. Flaws in code, however, could turn that trust into weakness and exploit it.

That trust, which implies giving Symantec access to the insides of your computer, could facilitate the success of a virus to spread all throughout an entire network of computers, warns the federal alert. Simply getting an email with an infected file on a computer, or accessing a link to an infected site, could put the whole network of computers at risk.

Other antivirus and anti-malware products would not let that happen, CNN points out.

"These vulnerabilities are as bad as it gets," says Tavis Ormandy, who discovered the flaws. "A hacker could easily compromise an entire enterprise fleet." Ormandy is a security researcher part of Google's Project Zero.

The security researcher warned Symantec about the issues in April, and the company finally issued some patches last week. It remains to be seen, however, just how quickly government offices, companies and individuals will be able to update every PC on their networks.

---

The copyright world getting murkier.

"A few days ago, a copyright complaint was filed against Getty Images by a photographer Carol Highsmith, after the latter was threatened by an agent for using her own photo without Getty’s permission. The stock-imaging company is now fighting back, claiming that it will defend itself vigorously in this case.

It all began back in 2015, when Highsmith’s own foundation received a threatening letter from a company called License Compliance Services (LCS), which was sent on behalf of Getty-affiliated Alamy. LCS warned that Highsmith violated the company’s licensing terms for the content by using her own photograph and demanded a cash settlement of $120.

This settlement demand was later dropped, but the photographer discovered that Getty and Alamy were offering more than 18,000 of her other images on their websites, despite the fact that Highsmith had previously donated them to the Library of Congress for public use. However, Getty was misrepresenting the photos by stating that users must buy a copyright license from it. As a result, the photographer filed a $1 billion dollar lawsuit against Getty Images. In response, the company made a public statement before responding in the court, saying that it hopes to rectify the situation with the plaintiff, but if that is not possible, it will defend itself vigorously.

On the one hand, this may mean that Getty Images wants to come to an arrangement with Highsmith, but on the other hand, the wording suggests that the company is also prepared for a fight. Getty believes it has done nothing wrong, and the fact that the photographer placed her content in the public domain supports its point of view.

However, the photographer’s complaint claims that Getty is not only unlawfully charging licensing fees for the donated photographs that can be reproduced and displayed for free by default, but also holds itself out as the exclusive copyright owner and threatens users with copyright infringement lawsuits. In response, Getty shifts the responsibility for copyright-trolling to Alamy and LCS, the companies that sent the original settlement demand to Highsmith. At the same time, both Getty and Alamy have enough reserves to put up an extremely spirited defense, especially when a billion dollars is at stake.

In any case, the very existence of a business model involving sending out threatening letters to users of public domain images cannot but worry."

Linux hits the world is locked so I'll post this here:

http://arstechnica.com/security/2016/08/linux-bug-leaves-usa-today-other-top-sites-vulnerable-to-serious-hijacking-attacks/

Looks like that Dan Goodin is up to his anti-*nix shenanigans again! Bringing up Linux bugs that could effect major websites. But hey, they've already released a fix for it!

Linux hits the world is locked so I'll post this here:

http://arstechnica.com/security/2016/08/linux-bug-leaves-usa-today-other-top-sites-vulnerable-to-serious-hijacking-attacks/

Looks like that Dan Goodin is up to his anti-*nix shenanigans again! Bringing up Linux bugs that could effect major websites. But hey, they've already released a fix for it!

And a workaround for systems where a patch is not yet available. Hopefully the admins of non-secure sites (e.g. seti@home) will implement that asap (seems the worst that can happen to https/ssh connections is a forced disconnect).

---

I think you'll find it's a bit more complicated than that ...

QUANTUM COMMUNICATION SATELLITE
from China:
http://gbtimes.com/china/china-launches-worlds-first-quantum-science-satellite-jiuquan

---

non-profit org. Play4Life in Zagreb, Croatia, EU

Remember Microsoft started by stealing CP/M.

Here is my take on the early DOS issue. Back in the mid 70's or so I remember teaching computer programming at a brand new community college. Radio shack had the TRS-80 computer. It had 16K of main memory and would support a local network for printer sharing. The computer that ran the printer had 32 K.

We ran an ALGOL interpreter; but the underlying machine language was TRS-DOS. When I came back from IRAN in 1978 we had an IBM desktop computer in my office at the University of Illinois. The DOS of the day was essentially identical to TRS-DOS.

I always thought that DOS was a rip-off of the earlier Radio Shack operating system. Perhaps all of the early stuff was very closely related.

Remember Microsoft started by stealing CP/M.

Here is my take on the early DOS issue. Back in the mid 70's or so I remember teaching computer programming at a brand new community college. Radio shack had the TRS-80 computer. It had 16K of main memory and would support a local network for printer sharing. The computer that ran the printer had 32 K.

We ran an ALGOL interpreter; but the underlying machine language was TRS-DOS. When I came back from IRAN in 1978 we had an IBM desktop computer in my office at the University of Illinois. The DOS of the day was essentially identical to TRS-DOS.

I always thought that DOS was a rip-off of the earlier Radio Shack operating system. Perhaps all of the early stuff was very closely related.

They were absolutely related. CP/M, which was released in 1973, was the golden standard at the time. TRS-DOS and 86-DOS (which became MS-DOS) were both implementations of, or borrowed heavily from CP/M, thus they were very similar in operation.

Crazy

Won't be long before they have one for each political party.

Just had a wicked thought...

...naw, better not, I like it here :-)

Has Apple made a mistake?

iPhone 7 - No headphone socket

Has Apple made a mistake?

iPhone 7 - No headphone socket

No. They will more than make up for a few lost sales to dinosaurs like us in selling blue tooth earbuds as fashion accessories to the hip.

---

At £159 a pair, expensive earrings.

---