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Security

Submission + - Huge security risks in PDF standard (h-online.com)

Submitted by crabel
crabel writes: At the 27. Chaos Communication Congress in Berlin security researcher Julia Wolf pointed out numerous, previously hardly known, security problems in connection with Adobe's PDF standard. For instance, a PDF can reportedly contain a database scanner that becomes active and scans a network when the document is printed on a network printer.
Censorship

Submission + - Hungarian Officials Can Now Censor the Media

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Hungary is set to regulate the media, including web-published content, under a new law applicable today. The law requires all the media to provide a "balanced view" and must not go against
"public morality", and places all publications under the control of a new regulating body, whose top members have all been nominated by Prime minister Viktor Orban.

Orban, whose strong ways have been compared to Putin's, has been tightening his grip over Hungary. "In the seven months since Orban came to power with a two- thirds parliamentary majority, he has implemented retroactive taxes in violation of the constitution, curbed the Constitutional Court’s power, effectively nationalized private pension funds and put ruling-party allies in charge of at least four independent institutions, including the audit office".

Citizens sentenced in application of the new law can still challenge it at the European Court of Human Rights — see you in a few years.
Displays

Submission + - New Year's Resolutions for Nerds (pcpro.co.uk)

Submitted by Barence
Barence writes: PC Pro has issued its alternative New Year's Resolutions — a history of the different screen resolutions from over the years. The guided tour of resolution relics starts with 64 x 48 from 1981, when "early Space Invaders clones pretty much involved squares shooting squares at other squares", although "using clever hardware tricks some programmers did manage to make use of the ZX81’s full 256 x 192 resolution". It concludes in 2011, when the author looks forward to a "redonkulous native resolution of 2,560 x 1,600 — enough pixels to play 48 Megadrive games at once in an 8 x 6 grid, or to watch two simultaneous 1080p movies, albeit in awkwardly chopped up segments."

Comment Re:them ancient egyptian hieroglyphics (Score 3, Informative) 195

by plut4rch (#32312932) Attached to: New iConji Language For the Symbol-Minded Texter
If you really want to be pedantic, it's not hieroglyphics but hieroglyphs. Also, the signs can be made to represent objects/ideas instead of sounds. If you want the hieroglyphic character to represent what it looks like, one just needs to add a small determinative stroke underneath. For example 'r' can be made to mean 'mouth' just be adding a small stroke underneath the mouth shaped sign.

Submission + - Pandora's Box Opened at last (pandorapress.net)

Submitted by neogramps
neogramps writes: It's been a long time coming but the first Pandora consoles are finally rolling off of the production line (well this one actually walked out the door to a customer who lived near the "factory").

Initial estimates had put production and development at taking two months, but Murphy had other ideas. Banking issues, design problems, problems communicating with the Chinese moulding company, escalating assembly costs and even a volcano all managed to get in the way, but the small and dediced team soldiered on, and just over a year and a half later, the wait is coming to an end for the four thousand pre-orderers.

Timmy O'Riley By L. Hadron and the Colliders Screenshot-sm 62

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the shameless-self-promotion dept.
Making music has never been quite this awesome! Using only ThinkGeek products (Bliptronic 5000, Guitar Shirt, Drumkit Shirt, Stylophone, and Otamatone Electronic Instrument) the ultra-geeks over at ThinkGeek have created this ultra-cool cover of The Who's Baba O'Reilly. This also qualifies as a full blown shameless plug since ThinkGeek shares a corporate overlord with Slashdot.

Comment Hardware (Score 1) 284

by plut4rch (#28896401) Attached to: Amazon US Refunds Windows License Fee, Too
I don't think software and hardware should be sold in bundles as the norm. If bundling an browser with an OS is considered 'bad' why isn't bundling an OS with a computer, which is, IMO, much worse. Forcing the user into a web browser is not as bad as forcing the user into an operating system. For a start, the browser is often free, whereas in the OS case, the user is paying for something they may not want. Maybe they need to ship systems with no OS, with a leaflet showing the various options available, and possibly a selection of free OS disks, such as various linux distros, bsd, freedos etc... I suppose retailers could do bundle offers if they like, for example, some custom PC builders will sell with no OS, or the OS of your choice from a selection. If your choice isn't there you can order the OS-less machine and purchase/download the OS elsewhere.

Comment Re:Videogames in 1982? (Score 1) 320

by plut4rch (#28841833) Attached to: Tron Legacy Exposed
Elite on the BBC Micro/Acorn Electron/etc... from 1984 had full 3D wireframes, and beats Battlezone by removing lines that shouldn't have been visible through an object. IIRC David Braben had created a rotating wireframe of one of the ships a few years earlier than that too, before he started work on the game with Ian Bell. Fantastic game!

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