platypus - Slashdot User

Comment Doesn't pass the laugh test (Score 4, Insightful) 381

by Frater 219 on Sunday March 16, 2014 @03:10PM (#46499991) Attached to: <em>Sons of Anarchy</em> Creator On Google Copyright Anarchy

But the big G doesn't contribute anything to the work of creatives.

You never use a search engine while writing? They're awfully handy for fact-checking, looking up sources, and so on.

But I suppose those sorts of activities are not required these days ....

Comment Easy enough (Score 1) 573

by Groo Wanderer on Thursday February 06, 2014 @01:00PM (#46175125) Attached to: HTML5 App For Panasonic TVs Rejected - JQuery Is a "Hack"

"Any thoughts on how I can better explain jQuery to an app reviewer?"

Try this...

Panasonic good, hacks bad. Panasonic good, JQuery good too. Panasonic good and shiny, JQuery not a hack and shiny too. Boing boing, whee! Panasonic good.

That should do it.

Now On Video: GCHQ Destroying Laptop Full of Snowden Disclosures 237

Posted by timothy on Saturday February 01, 2014 @03:32AM from the ask-not-what-your-country-can-destroy-for-you dept.

An anonymous reader writes "On Saturday 20 July 2013, in the basement of the Guardian's office in Kings Cross, London, watched by two GCHQ technicians, Guardian editors destroyed hard drives and memory cards on which encrypted files leaked by Edward Snowden had been stored. This is the first time footage of the event has been released."

Comment That's obvious (Score 2) 171

by Groo Wanderer on Sunday January 19, 2014 @03:01PM (#46006711) Attached to: Translating President Obama's NSA Reform Promises Into Plain English

"Okay, who is this magical third party?"

There is only one entity that could be trusted with the security and sanctity of such a trove, the TSA of course.

-Charlie

Comment Late? (Score 1) 198

by Groo Wanderer on Monday January 13, 2014 @11:08PM (#45947199) Attached to: EA Caves: SimCity Offline Mode Coming

You mean there was someone EA hadn't terminally pissed off before this debacle? Could have fooled me.

-Charlie

Comment MIT's failure to intervene (Score 0, Flamebait) 199

by byolinux on Friday January 03, 2014 @10:03AM (#45855783) Attached to: Losing Aaron

Was a failure to stop what happened, no doubt about that.

Comment GNU Savannah supports git (Score 4, Informative) 252

by byolinux on Thursday January 02, 2014 @10:35AM (#45845359) Attached to: Emacs Needs To Move To GitHub, Says ESR

No need to move to a proprietary hosting service like Github.

I wrote about this previously: http://www.fsf.org/blogs/community/savannah

Comment The economics are wonderful (Score 2) 241

by Groo Wanderer on Wednesday December 25, 2013 @03:04PM (#45782927) Attached to: Why Don't Open Source Databases Use GPUs?

Gee, a $1000 GPU that runs 7x as fast a 1/8th of an $1500 CPU. It woud be good idea if you didn't need that CPU to run it, but just barely so. If you cheap out on the CPU and only spend ~$750 on it, assuminng there is no slowdown on the GPU because of it, then the economics break. And people wonder why GPU compute on databases isn't catching on.

Then there is the power use aka TCO/running costs to think about. And everything mentioned above. And.... This study has all he hallmarks of an Nvidia research project who's targets are financial analysts rather than potential customers. The science is fine but that is not the intent.

-Charlie

Google Fixes Credit Card Security Hole, But Snubs Discoverer 127

Posted by timothy on Thursday December 12, 2013 @05:37PM from the and-that's-the-thanks-I-get dept.

Frequent contributor Bennett Haselton writes: "Google has fixed a vulnerability, first discovered by researcher Gergely Kalman, which let users search for credit card numbers by using hex number ranges. However, Google should have acknowledged or at least responded to the original bug finder (and possibly even paid him a bounty for it), and should have been more transparent about the process in general." Read on for the rest of the story.

SourceForge Appeals To Readers For Help Nixing Bad Ad Actors 198

Posted by timothy on Thursday November 14, 2013 @04:44PM from the please-don't-punch-the-monkey dept.

Last week, we mentioned that the GIMP project had elected to leave SourceForge as its host, citing SourceForge's advertising policies. SourceForge (which shares a parent company with Slashdot) has released a statement about those policies, addressing in particular both ads that are confusing in themselves and their revenue-sharing system called DevShare, based on the provision of third-party software along with users' downloads. Among other things, the SF team is appealing to users to help them find and block misleading ads, and has this to say about the additional downloads: "The DevShare program has been designed to be fully transparent. The installation flow has no deceptive steps, all offers are fully disclosed, and the clear option to completely decline the offer is always available. All uninstallation procedures are exhaustively documented, and all third party offers go through a comprehensive compliance process to make sure they are virus and malware free."

Comment Perks? (Score 1) 388

by Groo Wanderer on Friday November 08, 2013 @04:38PM (#45372011) Attached to: The NSA Is Looking For a Few Good Geeks

Does an employment contract come with the perk of war crimes indemnification in writing? Just curious.

Comment You are missing the point. (Score 1) 254

by Groo Wanderer on Thursday November 07, 2013 @05:21PM (#45360675) Attached to: A Playstation 4 Teardown

You missed the point, it is not a case of "My platform isn't quite as shitty as yours." this time around.

That said we have reached a state of meta-fanboi-ism, the new argument is, "The platform I don't have and have no real clue about isn't quite as shitty as the platform you don't have and have no real clue about." And for the record, yes this is yet another internet derived regresion of the human species.

Comment Story is a PR plant (Score 4, Informative) 224

by Groo Wanderer on Thursday November 07, 2013 @12:16AM (#45352981) Attached to: Microsoft Donates Windows 8.1 To Nonprofit Organizations

I work with a charity that has access to the MS discounts and there is one authorized outlet for it, Tech Soup. MS has ALWAYS made the latest version available so this is nothing new. It is just an astroturfing post to try and drum up some good PR for the embattled and truly miserable OS.

That said why is MS so cruel to those in need?

UK MPs: Google Blocks Child Abuse Images, It Should Block Piracy Too 348

Posted by timothy on Thursday September 26, 2013 @08:47AM from the blacklist-provided-by-democracy dept.

nk497 writes "If Google can block child abuse images, it can also block piracy sites, according to a report from MPs, who said they were 'unimpressed' by Google's 'derisorily ineffective' efforts to battle online piracy, according to a Commons Select Committee report looking into protecting creative industries. John Whittingdale MP, the chair of the Committee — and also a non-executive director at Audio Network, an online music catalogue — noted that Google manages to remove other illegal content. 'Google and others already work with international law enforcement to block for example child porn from search results and it has provided no coherent, responsible reason why it can't do the same for illegal, pirated content,' he said."

Apple Starts Blocking Unauthorized Lightning Cables With iOS 7 663

Posted by timothy on Saturday September 21, 2013 @06:57PM from the there-there's-smoke dept.

beltsbear writes "Your formerly working clone Lightning cable could stop working with the latest iOS update. Previously the beta version allowed these cables to charge with a warning message but the final release actually stops many cables from working. Apples Lightning connector system is locked with authentication chips that can verify if a cable is authorized by Apple. Many users with clone cables are now without the ability to charge their iPhones."

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