Mex - Slashdot User

Comment Re:Its a battle win, maybe not victory. (Score 2) 181

by Mex on Saturday December 17, 2011 @04:14PM (#38410722) Attached to: No SOPA Vote Until 2012

We could have literally half the country in the streets and these political cocksuckers wouldn't bat an eye. They might be a bit scared, but in the worst case scenario they'll fly away in a chopper surrounded by armed guards.

This is funny to me because that's literally what happened in Mexico in the last Presidential election.

Current mexican president Calderon won by a controversial advantage of a few hundred votes. The opposing candidate's supporters made a human blockade to stop him from swearing in as president before there was an official recount. No cars could get through, and the voters felt they had accomplished something and the people would be heard.

Then Calderon arrived in a helicopter, ignoring everyone on the ground and swearing in quite speedily.

Comment Re:FYI for Mac users (Score 4, Informative) 211

by Mex on Tuesday December 06, 2011 @01:13PM (#38281728) Attached to: Opera 11.60 'Tunny' Released With Ragnarök HT

I used Opera for a long time, but after switching to a Mac, I have to say the OSX version is not as good as windows.

Can't even get gestures to work with my multitouch trackpad, which led me to switch to Safari. Not unhappy with the switch, actually.

But Opera feels very neglected on the Mac...

Anonymous Threatens Robin Hood Attacks Against Banks 529

Posted by samzenpus on Wednesday November 30, 2011 @11:32PM from the forced-charity dept.

gManZboy writes "Just in time for the holidays, hacktivist collective Anonymous has announced that it has teamed up with like-minded group TeaMp0isoN to donate to charity. The catch: they're using stolen credit data from big banks to make donations, in a campaign they're calling Operation Robin Hood. Is the #OpRobinHood campaign for real, or like previous threats against Wall Street and Facebook, just another hoax? Aesthetically, at least, the OpRobinHood video ticks all of the traditional Anonymous aesthetic requirements: a mashed-up 'p0isoaNoN' logo (green on black), a liberal dose of swelling choral music (via that movie trailer staple 'Europa,' by Globus), together with selected clips of Kevin Costner as Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves."

Comment Re:Apple computers are already basically consoles (Score 1) 197

by Mex on Thursday October 13, 2011 @04:47PM (#37706218) Attached to: Valve Boss Expects Apple To Challenge Game Consoles

Not only that, you can now mirror the display from your iPad to a HDTV (via AppleTV), so yeah, they're pretty much there already.

Nintendo is probably freaking out right now, considering their next Wii U peripheral looks like a gimped iPad, and popular DS games like Scribblenauts are being released on an Apple platform now.

Comment Re:"His temperature shot up" (Score 1) 209

by Mex on Wednesday September 14, 2011 @05:56PM (#37404052) Attached to: Training an Immune System To Kill Cancer

I too have read that fevers are a way for the body to get rid of some extraneous bodies like harmful bacteria and viruses, basically "boiling" them alive inside your flesh (someone else might explain this much better, but that's the basic concept).

But since tumors are just masses of flesh created by a disfunction in the immune system, would fevers help at all?

You'd have to treat the reason that the immune system malfunctioned, no?

Just wondering, perhaps the fevers were not caused by his body "killing the cancer", but a side effect, a reaction to foreign bodies invading the system.

Microsoft Training May Have Helped Tunisian Regime To Spy On Citizens 129

Posted by Soulskill on Monday September 05, 2011 @06:55PM from the all-about-the-benjamins dept.

An anonymous reader writes "A document released in the recent Cablegate leak reveals that Microsoft provided training to the Tunisian Ministries of Justice and the Interior in exchange for exemption from the country's open software policy. These Ministries would soon put the training to use by phishing for the social networking credentials of bloggers, reporters, political activists and protesters. Microsoft's assistance resulted in the sale of 12,000 software licenses to the Tunisian government." The cable itself details the effort Microsoft put into negotiating a deal. Their clear intent was simply expanding into a new market, but the author of the cable was skeptical of the Tunisian government's adherence to its stated goals. Quoting: "In theory, increasing GOT law enforcement capability through IT training is positive, but given heavy-handed GOT interference in the internet, Post questions whether this will expand GOT capacity to monitor its own citizens."

Comment Re:To: Google (Score 1) 167

by Mex on Saturday September 03, 2011 @07:07PM (#37299012) Attached to: Google To Shut Down 10 Products

"This, combined with Chrome's increasingly "We're Google--we can do whatever we want" functionality, is edging me closer to abandoning Google completely."

Isn't it too late?

Google is the de-facto search monopoly. If you don't exist in Google, you're irrelevant. Bing? Ha-ha.

So what will you switch to, if you decide to abandon Google?

Too late...

Review: Green Lantern 201

Posted by CmdrTaco on Monday June 20, 2011 @01:06PM from the green-lanterns-light dept.

In summers past we've seen big guns like Superman and Spider-man and Batman make big screen appearances, but this summer it's lesser known heroes like Thor and Green Lantern taking to the big screen with varying degrees of success. What follows is my brief review of the new GL film with some spoilers and commentary. You have been warned.

Dozens of Tech Bigwigs Friend Facebook Spambot 81

Posted by timothy on Friday June 10, 2011 @11:34AM from the ooh-baby-let's-meet-again-in-2d-life dept.

jfruhlinger writes "If you've used Facebook or Twitter, you're almost certainly familiar with 'bimbots' — accounts that have profile pics of attractive women, but seem to exist only to send send spam links with varying degrees of subtlety. Henry Copeland, the founder of BlogAds, tracks the social network of one such Facebook bot, and finds that she's friends with a long list of influential tech and media folks. Copeland also tracks down the origin of the photo that accompanies the account."

Creator of China's Great Firewall Pelted With Shoes 220

Posted by samzenpus on Sunday May 22, 2011 @07:34PM from the shoes-and-stones dept.

Hugh Pickens writes "The Guardian reports that Chinese police are seeking a man who said he threw eggs and shoes at the architect of China's 'great firewall', the world's most sophisticated and extensive online censorship system as his claims were cheered by many internet users, in a reflection of growing anger among them about increasingly stringent controls. The office of Fang Binxing, known as the father of the great firewall, denied the attack had happened, but Associated Press said police were sent to the university to investigate a shoe-throwing incident targeting Fang, citing an officer at the Luojiashan public security bureau. The Twitter user who claimed to have pelted him, who posts under the pseudonym @hanunyi, wrote: 'The egg missed the target. The first shoe hit the target. The second shoe was blocked by a man and a woman.' Earlier this year Fang closed a microblog within days of opening it after thousands of Chinese internet users left comments, almost all of them deriding him as 'a running dog for the government' and 'the enemy of netizens'. Meanwhile admirers of the shoe attacker showered the anonymous young man with promises of everything from Nike trainers to replace his lost footwear, to iPads, sex and jobs."

GPS Maker TomTom Submits Your Speed Data To Police 422

Posted by timothy on Thursday April 28, 2011 @01:58PM from the put-your-speed-trap-riiiiight-here dept.

An anonymous reader writes "The GPS systems in TomTom's Live range all feature built-in 3G data cards, which feed location and route information back to a central server. According to CNET, this data, along with users' speed information, is being made available to local governments and the police." From the article: "Knowing the cops can see where you're driving and how fast you're going is eye-opening stuff, but TomTom says the data is anonymous and can never be traced back to an individual user or device. Ordinarily, we'd be reassured by this, but we recall Apple saying something similar before the location-tracking excrement hit the phone-carrying fan."

SCO Found No Source Code In 2004 154

Posted by CmdrTaco on Wednesday March 02, 2011 @01:13PM from the dying-from-nor-surprise dept.

doperative writes "A consultant hired by SCO in 2004 to compare UNIX and Linux, with the thought he could be used as an expert at trial, says that, after days and days, his comparison tool found 'very little correlation'. When he told that to SCO, it paid him and he never heard from SCO again."

Automatic Life Jacket Detection For Drones 85

Posted by samzenpus on Sunday February 20, 2011 @10:13PM from the eye-in-the-sky dept.

garymortimer writes "Sentient, an Australian company that makes drone software, has given UAVs the ability to search for small, high visibility objects such as life jackets. From the article: 'Kestrel Maritime is a software solution that processes electro-optical (EO) and infrared (IR) full motion video (FMV) from manned and unmanned vehicles (UAVs). The Life Jacket Detection enhances Kestrel Maritime EO capability to automatically detect small, high visibility objects whilst searching wide maritime areas.'"

GeoHot Asks For Donations To Fight Sony 470

Posted by samzenpus on Sunday February 20, 2011 @06:00PM from the fight-the-power dept.

mede writes "In an interesting turn of events, Sony might have stumbled into a tough nut to crack. George Hotz (aka GeoHot) famous for his iPhone hacking achievements, is planning on fighting the big corporation on removing his free speech rights at utilizing his fully paid for hardware. Hotz has always claimed being anti-piracy (since iPhone activities) and says he has never pirated any game or even signed PSN agreements. He's asking for donations to fight Sony back and try to achieve something similar to what was previously accomplished by the EFF with regard to cellphones. I've already donated."

NASA Invents New Technique For Finding Alien Life 71

Posted by samzenpus on Thursday February 10, 2011 @05:10AM from the take-me-to-your-leader dept.

RedEaredSlider writes "From the IB Times article: 'Researchers from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., have come up with an idea to improve on an old standby of space exploration instruments and improve the odds of finding life, if any, on Mars. By adding a laser and an ion funnel to a mass spectrometer, it is possible to analyze the elements from the Martian surface directly, without the complex handling samples usually needed... The new version uses a two-step technique. First it shoots a laser at the sample's surface. This creates a plume of molecules and ions. To get the ions into the mass spectrometer, the new system uses an ion funnel. The ion funnel uses conductive, progressively smaller electrodes in the shape of a ring that attract the ions, effectively vacuuming them into the mass spectrometer.'"

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