Want to read Slashdot from your mobile device? Point it at m.slashdot.org and keep reading!

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
×

Comment Tech writers these days (Score 2) 79

TFA,

For those not familiar, imagine Facebook for the office and you are down the right alley.

No its not facebook for the office, that would be more like socialcast. Why does everything have to be about socialmedia these days ? The way we currently use slack where Im at is nowhere near facebook, and yes we have irc gateways enabled.

Submission + - Lucasfilm, Disney use DMCA to take down picture of legally purchased toy figure (torrentfreak.com)

Submitted by think_nix
think_nix writes: Torrentfreak reports in the awaking of the new star wars film, how Lucasfilm and Disney are gearing up for DMCA take down notices regarding the new film. However, reports have come in when Star Wars Action News posted an update to facebook with a picture of a legally purchased Star Wars Rey action figure, which was taken down through the DMCA. Further abusive take downs have occured, which in turn have caused some fan sites to go down. starwarsunity.net explained through their twitter account, which had to be taken down simply for reposting the picture from Star Wars Action News.

Will You Be Able To Run a Modern Desktop Environment In 2016 Without Systemd? 785

Posted by samzenpus from the let-the-flamewar-begin dept.
New submitter yeupou writes: Early this year, David Edmundson from KDE, concluded that "In many cases [systemd] allows us to throw away large amounts of code whilst at the same time providing a better user experience. Adding it [systemd] as an optional extra defeats the main benefit". A perfectly sensible explanation. But, then, one might wonder to which point KDE would remain usable without systemd?

Recently, on one Devuan box, I noticed that KDE power management (Powerdevil) no longer supported suspend and hibernate. Since pm-utils was still there, for a while, I resorted to call pm-suspend directly, hoping it would get fixed at some point. But it did not. So I wrote a report myself. I was not expecting much. But neither was I expecting it to be immediately marked as RESOLVED and DOWNSTREAM, with a comment accusing the "Debian fork" I'm using to "ripe out" systemd without "coming with any of the supported solutions Plasma provides". I searched beforehand about the issue so I knew that the problem also occurred on some other Debian-based systems and that the bug seemed entirely tied to upower, an upstream software used by Powerdevil. So if anything, at least this bug should have been marked as UPSTREAM.

While no one dares (yet) to claim to write software only for systemd based operating system, it is obvious that it is now getting quite hard to get support otherwise. At the same time, bricks that worked for years without now just get ruined, since, as pointed out by Edmunson, adding systemd as "optional extra defeats its main benefit". So, is it likely that we'll still have in 2016 a modern desktop environment, without recent regressions, running without systemd?
The Almighty Buck

"Clock Boy" Ahmed Mohamed Seeking $15 Million In Damages 818

Posted by samzenpus from the paying-the-price dept.
phrackthat writes: The family of Ahmed Mohamed, the boy who was arrested in Irving, Texas has threatened to sue the school and the city of Irving if they do not pay him $15 million as compensation for his arrest. To refresh the memories of everyone, Ahmed's clock was a clock he disassembled then put into a pencil case that looked like a miniature briefcase. He was briefly detained by the Irving city police to interview him and determine if he intended for his clock to be perceived as a fake bomb. He was released to his parents later on that day and they publicized the matter and claimed Ahmed was arrested because of "Islamophobia".

Submission + - "Clock boy" threatens to sue city and school if they don't pay him $15 million. 2

Submitted by phrackthat
phrackthat writes: The family of Ahmed Mohamed, the boy who was arrested in Irving, Texas, when a clock he had went off in school, has threatened to sue the school and the city of Irving, Texas if they do not pay him $15 million as compensation for the supposed indignities he endured when he was arrested.

To refresh the memories of everyone, Ahmed's clock was a clock he disassembled then put into a pencil case that looked like a miniature briefcase. He was briefly detained by the Irving city police to interview him and determine if he intended for his clock to be perceived as a fake bomb. He was released to his parents later on that day and they publicized the matter and claimed Ahmed was arrested because of "Islamophobia".

Comment Dear Dave (Score 1) 316

by think_nix (#50987395) Attached to: Mozilla Is Removing Tab Groups and Complete Themes From Firefox

Seriously WTF !? I work in tech support for a huge vendor. For each case Ill keep tabs open per case the end amount is insane everything from bugzilla, to engineering specs to whatever is needed in reference.

Looks like myself and most other colleagues will be looking for a new choice in browser soon, hell maybe we'll even code our own for internal purposes, considering the way things are going.

Just because the normal user (base) may not use a feature doesnt mean there are many of us who actually work in tech dont.

Submission + - NASA contracting development of new ion/nuclear engines

Submitted by schwit1
schwit1 writes: NASA has awarded three different companies contracts to develop advanced ion and nuclear propulsion systems for future interplanetary missions, both manned and unmanned.

These are development contacts, all below $10 million. However, they all appeared structured like NASA’s cargo and crew contracts for ISS, where the contractor does all of the development and design, with NASA only supplying some support and periodic payments when the contractor achieves agreed-upon milestones. Because of this, the contractors will own the engines their develop, and will be able to sell them to other customers after development, thereby increasing the competition and innovation in the field.

Submission + - What the Sony Hack Looked Like to Employees (slate.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The cyber attack on Sony was one of the highest profile hacks in the past several years. Slate tracked down two dozen people who worked there at the time, and asked them what it was like on the inside while it was happening. Quoting: "The telephone directory vanished. Voicemail was offline. Computers became bricks. Internet access on the lot was shuttered. The cafeteria went cash-only. Contracts—and the templates those contracts were based on—disappeared. Sony’s online database of stock footage was unsearchable. It was near impossible for Sony to communicate directly with its employees—much less ex-employees, who were also gravely affected by the hack—to inform them of what was even happening and what to do about it. 'It was like moving back into an earlier time,' one employee says." Some employees had their workloads doubled, some had nothing to do. While the hack brought the company together at the beginning, it eventually descended into recriminations and lawsuits.

Submission + - Dell Accused Of Installing 'Superfish-Like' Rogue Certificates On Laptops

Submitted by Mickeycaskill
Mickeycaskill writes: Dell has been accused of pre-installing rogue self-signing root certificate authentications on its laptops. A number of users discovered the 'eDellRoot' certificate on their machines and say it leaves their machines, and any others with the certificate, open to attack.

“Anyone possessing the private key which is on my computer is capable of minting certificates for any site, for any purpose and the computer will programmatically and falsely conclude the issued certificate to be valid," said Joe Nord, a Citrix product manager who found the certificate on his laptop.

It is unclear whether it is Dell or a third party installing the certificate, but the episode is similar to the 'Superfish' incident in which Lenovo was found to have installed malware to inject ads onto users' computers

Submission + - VirtuallyGhetto VMware blogger detained and deported in Paris (twitter.com) 1

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: William Lam the VMware blogger behind virtuallyGhetto is now being sent back to the US after being detained, jailed for 24 hours and stripped of all belongings. According to William Lam's twitter page,

"*sigh* Apparently Interpol has an interest in virtuallyGhetto, not the good kind :( There's chance I might not make #VMworld"

Comment Atmospheric changes ? (Score 2) 260

by think_nix (#50615333) Attached to: Scientists Have Spotted the Signs of Flowing Water On Mars

If these signs are indeed water as we know it here on Earth, what does this tell us about the overlying upper Martian atmosphere? Any signifigant changes to what we have previously analyzed or hypothesized ? Is it possible that another type of atmosphere or environment could exist under the overlying crust ?

Comment Everything (Score 1) 698

Condolences to you and your family. Many have touched upon many things to share humanitarian, ethics, geek stuff and how to do xyz. Basically everything and anything that has touched your life and made you who you are.

What I would do in such a situation is keep that recorder handy. When you have an idea or something you even think is up there that you want to share, DO IT! Dont second guess, just say/record it! Regardless of what condition emotionally or otherwise you may find yourself in, she will treasure it for the rest of her life.

Wishing all the best,
think_nix

Comment Re:Signs clear enough even for a layman (Score 1) 581

by think_nix (#48417013) Attached to: Debian Votes Against Mandating Non-systemd Compatibility

Nope. It's a clear enough sign that the some people are incapable of adapting to change and cling to outdated concepts for no good rational reason. These people don't ever get any better. They simply die and younger people without such preconceptions take over. Some people think the social and cultural ideals of the 1950's are perfect and should live forever. Others think the Unix system architecture of the 1980's through the 1990's is the ideal and should life forever.

So are you saying brilliant minds such as Ken Thompson , Dennis Ritchie and Brian Kernighan (to just name a few) had it all wrong ? Quoting [wikipedia.org] as I couldn't put it better myself. The Unix philosophy emphasizes building short, simple, clear, modular, and extensible code that can be easily maintained and repurposed by developers other than its creators. The Unix philosophy favors composability as opposed to monolithic design.

Slashdot Top Deals

"If I do not want others to quote me, I do not speak." -- Phil Wayne

Close