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Comment Re:Netflix (Score 1) 336

Complete guess, but long term it is going to work in Linux through chrome.

It works for chromebooks which are based off of Linux. It appears that they are using Pepper/NaCl api in the chromebooks, so I would wager it is all there, except the DRM.

Per a possibly outdated web page, Pepper is marked as experimental in Chrome, so maybe when that settles down, we'll see it included.

Comment Re:Unions (Score 1) 479

There is way too much pressure on the teachers to take responsibility for their kids. They want the teachers to fill in the parental gap. Long term, that alone is a recipe for burnout. You make some very valid points, but there also need to be some other perspective changes from the administrative side.

My wife's a math teacher, who teaches primarily freshmen, with a high percentage of the classes having kids with learning disabilities. She's got attitude and behavior problems and is consistently sending the same kids to the office. If no action is taken to get rid of problem kids, how does that not engender an attitude of helplessness. If you can't take steps to make your situation better, how are you long term going to be motivated to try new things to get better results.

She's been teaching 5 years. She hasn't broken yet, but were I in her place... I'm not sure I'd be that resilient.

Comment Re:One thing at a time (Score 1) 424

If you do things too well, there will be no impetus for management to change. If you don't have time to correctly fix the problems you are just continuing your pain. Many of those problems/hacks likely exist because the guy before you was trying to get them features as quickly as they wanted and it snowballed on him.

It will likely continue unless you can communicate with management. I personally speak in too much detail for non-technical people and this has been a huge hindrance. If you aren't speaking on their level of understanding, you're Charlie Brown's teacher.

I'm not saying don't put in extra time to fix things. I am saying if they are going to keep expecting you to work miracles, that it's abuse.

People undervalue technical work. You see someone building a house and you know that it is an actual object. It has 3 dimensions. It has running water and can withstand all sorts of weather. You have a visible, touchable result. With IT work, all your doing is typing in notepad or clicking on images to them. You're effectively building an iceberg.

To the non-technical, programs are anthropomorphic. The program thinks for itself and it reasons about a problem on its own. If you're consistently hearing "all you have to do is" after you've already explained what you have insufficient data in order to make a decision, you're not going to make them happy. They will forget your compromise and continue thinking in their terms without any basis in reality. In that case, run.

Comment Novell can't afford it (Score 3, Insightful) 161

No matter how much VMWare is willing to pay, Novell can't afford to lose that part of the company. They are already hardly relevant. They need SuSe and the clout they have to make sure that they have a suitable place to run all of their other software. I'd guess they'd have to get the whole company instead of just the SuSe division.

Comment Re:Nice, but need more info (Score 1) 378

AT&T was supposed to release one(HTC Lancaster) at the end of July, but backed out with little fanfare. I dealt with a Blackberry with a non-working 0 for a month in order to get that one with my upgrade.... only to end up with another blackberry.

I wouldn't count on anything from AT&T until you can see it in the store.
Links

Submission + - The 10 Commandments for New Linux Users (linuxbraindump.org) 2

An anonymous reader writes: Thou shalt not log in as root. Use "sudo" or "su -" for administrative tasks. That's how it starts. The rest are at Linux Brain Dump. How does the Slashdot community feel about these commandments? Should new users adhere to these guidelines? Do you have other suggestions?
Programming

Submission + - AJAX-Solutions For Professional Coding: Reviewed (smashingmagazine.com)

Vitaly Friedman writes: Web-developers can create amazing web-applications with AJAX. Netvibes, GMail and dozens of further web-projects offer a new level of interactivity we've used to give up the idea of. Modern web-applications can be designed with enhanced user interfaces and functionalities, which used to be the privelege of professional desktop-applications. AJAX makes it possible to create more interactive, more responsive and more flexible web-solutions. The article 80+ AJAX-Solutions For Professional Coding presents over 90 useful AJAX-based techniques. Auto-completion, instant field editing, menus, calendars, interactive elements, visual effects, animation, basic javascripts, as well as an extensive develope's suite.
Security

Submission + - Someone Might Be Trying to Hack My Accounts

aplusjimages writes: I think I have someone trying to hack into my forum accounts that I have throughout the Internets. I've had 2 different forums email me that my account has been temporarily locked because someone has been trying, but failed to login to my account. Both forums have given me the IP Address 70.86.138.114. My question is what should I do about this? Both protection wise and possible retaliation wise. Thanks.
Hardware Hacking

Submission + - Flaws in ARM and XScale (and likely PowerPC)

V4Vendetta writes: Barnaby Jack developed a method for exploiting certain NULL pointer dereferences on the ARM and XScale architectures (and likely PowerPC).

In general, NULL pointer dereference flaws are considered non-exploitable. On the XScale and ARM architectures the memory address 0 is mapped, and also holds the exception vector table. The exception vector table is a set of branch instructions that correspond to different exceptions, such as software and hardware interrupts. When a case arises that writes to the 0 address with user-defined source data, it is possible to gain execution control by rewriting the exception table.

This method affects a lot of devices since most mobile phones and PDA are ARM based (iPhone?), and high-end routers often use the XScale architecture. The PowerPC architecture (used by Nintendo Wii, XBox360 and Playstation 3) also stores the vector table at a low address, and is likely vulnerable to this same attack.

This attack is more reliable than a remote stack overflow, due to the fact that no offsets are required. You will always be writing to address 0. The only data needed by an attacker is a copy of the vector table, which can be acquired by downloading and reversing the targets firmware. As embedded exploitation is still in its infancy, I don't foresee a worm in the very near future — but yes, if a worm was targeting embedded devices, this would be a reliable attack vector.
Patents

Submission + - Five Things Every Software Developer Should Know (saperlaw.com)

BBrown writes: Saper Law Offices, the same Chicago law firm that has been mentioned here twice before for their successes against the RIAA, has posted a blog article on the legal issues surrounding software development. The article, titled "Five Things Every Software Developer Should Know", gives a concise but informative legal tutorial on patents, trademarks, and trade secrets. Definitely a must-read for anybody involved in a small or personal business doing software development.
Enlightenment

Submission + - Father of scientific climatology says "hooey&#

An anonymous reader writes: "Reid Bryson, known as the father of scientific climatology, considers global warming a bunch of hooey.

The UW-Madison professor emeritus, who stands against the scientific consensus on this issue, is referred to as a global warming skeptic. But he is not skeptical that global warming exists, he is just doubtful that humans are the cause of it."

Bryson didn't see Al Gore's movie about global warming, "An Inconvenient Truth."

"Don't make me throw up," he said. "It is not science. It is not true."

http://www.madison.com/tct/mad/topstories/197613

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