Comment A common misconception that pigs can't fly. (Score 1) 148
Given sufficient thrust, pigs fly just fine.
Comment Obligatory KITH link. (Score 3, Funny) 498
Comment Spose so, but... (Score 2, Interesting) 64
If a conglomorate offers you a six+ figure salary to do what you essentially do for fun, are you really going to say no?
Comment My experience.... (Score 4, Interesting) 64
Last year I DJ'd for the CanSecWest dinner party, and I was kinda amused to see that a lot of the people who were at the conference were ex-blackhats anyway. A good number of them had criminal records and were now raking in hella money working on the legit side (a shitload more than they made during their blackhat careers). I even met a couple of them at a 2600 meeting once.
Hackers are hackers, regardless of which side of the legal coin they fall on. The exploits used are known to anybody with the resources to find them. In fact, last year nobody took home the Linux box not because they couldn't find any exploits, but because there was so much more effort and time involved in breaking the linux systems that everybody just went for the OSX or Windows machines. Versions of this contest probably exist in the blackhat world, but are a lot less publicized because they don't have industry heavyweights like Cisco or Microsoft sponsoring it.
Comment Not much of an ubuntu user are you? (Score 1) 654
I probably have to reboot every month or two. Or have you forgotten of the concept of a kernel update?
Comment I think he was running with it... (Score 1) 270
Am I the only one who read that and understood he was worried about chafing?
Comment When you're dealing with the Olympics (Score 1) 641
There are also scores & times to back them up.
When you watch gymnastics, and after the competitor does their routine, you hear a bunch of numbers being rattled off like "5.1, 5.4, 5.3, 5.3, 4.0" (fucking Russian judge). Those are the numbers backing up the results, so people can discern for themselves who came in first, second and third. This does not exist in the article, you're basically just taking their word for it.
It also keeps the reader from performing their own benchmarks and comparing their results with those of the article, meaning that this article really can't be looked at in any scrutiny, meaning that the conclusions that they make are about as reliable as the theory of Intelligent Design (that is to say, sure they're possible, but there's no way that we can verify that - hence why ID isn't considered a science).
Left 4 Dead Demo Includes Linux Steam Client Libraries 217
SheeEttin writes "If you've been longing to play games from Steam on your Linux machine, you may not have to wait much longer — the Left 4 Dead demo includes some Linux libraries, in particular, one named 'steamclient_linux.so.' While the game's full release does not include these libraries, their apparently accidental inclusion in the demo suggests that Steam games will have native Linux clients in the near future. (A job listing at Valve looking for someone whose responsibilities would include 'Port[ing] Windows-based games to the Linux platform' would seem to support this.) The libraries also include several strings nonessential to a pure server, including references to forgotten passwords. Hopefully, this indicates that at least some Valve-affiliated games will have native Linux clients."
Comment Enter the Physics vs. Math Holy War. (Score 4, Funny) 418
I love watching this one happen.
It's funny because no matter what, the only thing a physicist and a mathematician has ever been able to agree on is magic mushrooms.
Stanford's "Autonomous" Helicopters Learn 90
An anonymous reader writes "Stanford computer scientists have developed an artificial intelligence system that enables robotic helicopters to teach themselves to fly difficult stunts by 'watching' other helicopters perform the same maneuvers. The result is an autonomous helicopter that can perform a complete airshow of complex tricks on its own. The stunts are 'by far the most difficult aerobatic maneuvers flown by any computer controlled helicopter,' said Andrew Ng, the professor directing the research of graduate students Pieter Abbeel, Adam Coates, Timothy Hunter and Morgan Quigley. The dazzling airshow is an important demonstration of 'apprenticeship learning,' in which robots learn by observing an expert, rather than by having software engineers peck away at their keyboards in an attempt to write instructions from scratch.'" The title of the linked article uses the term "autonomous," but that's somewhat misleading. The copters can't fly on their own, but rather can duplicate complex maneuvers learned from a human pilot.
Comment John Scalzi on why it won't work (Score 1) 370
John Scalzi wrote a hilarious exchange on his blog the sums up perfectly why this idea is made of fail:
There's much more, but I didn't want to jack his entire post.Sony BMG spokesperson: We're pleased to announce we are the final major music corporation to release electronic tracks without that pesky DRM! All you have to do is leave your house, go to a selected retail outlet, buy a special card there, go back to your house, scratch off the back of the card to find a code, go to our special MusicPass Web site, enter said code, and download one the 37 titles we have available, from Celine Dion to the Backstreet Boys!
Kid #1: Or, in the time it takes me to jump through all those hoops, I could just download all 37 of those albums off of Pirate Bay.
Kid #2: Or, I could just scratch off the back at the store, record the pin number, go home and download the album through a Tor connection, so you can't trace my IP number.
Kid #1: Also, what's with this first slate of artists? Celine Dion? Backstreet Boys? Kenny Chesney? Barry Manilow? Are you high?
Comment opt-out (Score 1) 2
sadly, there is an opt-out, but it is cookie based!
in the "2o7.net opt-out policy" they state that you can voluntarily opt out, but that since it is cookie based you will need to get a new cookie any time you update your computer, or browser, or flush your cookies...
problem is, my browser isn't phoning home! the web-engine in photoshop is! (embedded opera??)
so, hypothetically, even if i were to click "opt-out" in the safari, camino, firefox and wyzo, i have installed, and even if i did so for every user on the system, photoshop isn't reading those cookie lists. so it isn't going to stop calling home...
question: assuming i play along with this "opt-out", how do i ensure that PhotoShop even gets this "opt-out cookie"?
2) IF the answer is that i have to "get" the cookie in one browser, find that cookie data, manually extract the line from the data file, open a resource file packaged with photoshop, then manually insert the cookie data... no go, just plain unacceptable...
plan B)
set HOSTS file: 2o7.net 127.0.0.1
collect that data myself :P
in the "2o7.net opt-out policy" they state that you can voluntarily opt out, but that since it is cookie based you will need to get a new cookie any time you update your computer, or browser, or flush your cookies...
problem is, my browser isn't phoning home! the web-engine in photoshop is! (embedded opera??)
so, hypothetically, even if i were to click "opt-out" in the safari, camino, firefox and wyzo, i have installed, and even if i did so for every user on the system, photoshop isn't reading those cookie lists. so it isn't going to stop calling home...
question: assuming i play along with this "opt-out", how do i ensure that PhotoShop even gets this "opt-out cookie"?
2) IF the answer is that i have to "get" the cookie in one browser, find that cookie data, manually extract the line from the data file, open a resource file packaged with photoshop, then manually insert the cookie data... no go, just plain unacceptable...
plan B)
set HOSTS file: 2o7.net 127.0.0.1
collect that data myself
Submission + - Is Adobe spying on CS3 users? (uneasysilence.com) 2
henrypijames writes: For months, users of Adobe Creative Suite 3 have been wondering why some of the applications regularly connect to
192.168.112.2o7.net which looks a lot like a private IP address but is actually a public domain address belonging to the web analytics company Omniture. Now allegations of user spying are getting louder, prompting Adobe Photoshop product manager John Nack to respond, though many remain unsatisfied with his explanation.
Journal Journal: Announcing the release of my new book 22
This feels like a mega-spam entry, and I'm very self conscious about posting it, but I'm excited about this and I wanted to share . .
Submission + - The Google Phone is a Reality.
MrCrassic writes: "It appears that Google is initiating talks with well-known PDA/smartphone manufacturer HTC to make the Google phone a reality. With impressive tech specs and an already impressive concept underway , could Google be the next company to make a mark in the wireless device industry?
From the main article:
However, a recent report by CrunchGear states that its own sources at mobile handset provider HTC have tipped the site off to multiple gPhone handsets being prepped for launch in the first quarter of 2008 and that the handsets will be coming out of Taiwan. There will supposedly be over 20 different handsets to choose from — some with GPS — and they will carry special versions of Google Maps, Google Calendar, Gmail, and VoIP-enabled Google Talk.
Speaking of software, Google is rumored to be developing its own operating system for the gPhone. According to reports by Engadget, the OS has been in development since 2005 after Google's acquisition of a mobile software company called Android. The Android team has since developed a Linux-based mobile OS while at Google — a detail that is corroborated by the CrunchGear report — which of course comes with tight Google integration. Both sites appear to agree that their sources indicate Google isn't currently looking to develop the hardware... for now.
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