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Comment Re:Media bias? (Score 2, Interesting) 120

I don't know what planet you're from, but this seems to me a fairly unremarkable canvassing of opinions on the topic without editorial comment. The format of the article goes:

Introduction
Police opinion
Westfield uses some words and says nothing
Australian Privacy Foundation opinion
Contextualisation
Professor Maciej Henneberg's opinion

Just because you don't agree with the opinions doesn't make the article biased, it makes those people wrong in your view (and in mine). But you can't deny that their opinions are relevant to the issue - the police, a privacy advocate group and an academic. The only failure on the part of the journalist is the selection of the academic they spoke to, who according to a quick search is in the field of biological anthropology and anatomy.

Comment Re:No Cheating (Score 4, Interesting) 738

When an Xbox 360 console is banned, there are offline features that are disabled too - the most significant are playing games from the hard disk, and using the console as a Windows Media Center Extender. Once banned, the console will corrupt the saves on memory cards and hard disks that it comes into contact with so that they can't be used on a non-banned console without re-downloading them from Live.
Games

Submission + - Wii Update 4.2 tries (and fails) to block homebrew (hackmii.com) 3

marcansoft writes: "On September 28, Nintendo released a Wii update, titled 4.2. This update was targeted squarely at homebrew, performing sweeping changes throughout the system. It hardly achieved that goal, though, because just two days later a new version of the HackMii installer was released that brings full homebrew capabilities back to all Wii consoles, including unmodified consoles running 4.2.

However, as part of their attempt to annoy homebrew users, Nintendo updated the lowest level updateable component of the Wii software stack: boot2 (part of the system bootloader chain). Homebrew users have been using BootMii to patch boot2 in order to gain low level system access and recovery functions (running Linux natively, fixing bricks, etc). The update hasn't hindered this, as users can simply reinstall BootMii after updating (it is compatible with the update). But there's a much bigger problem: Nintendo's boot2 update code is buggy. Boot2 had never been updated in retail consoles until now. During BootMii's development, its authors noticed that Nintendo's code had critical bugs and could sometimes permanently brick a console by writing incorrect or unchecked data to flash memory, so they decided to write their own, much safer flashing code. Now, Nintendo has pushed a boot2 update to all Wii users, and the results are what was expected: users are reporting bricks after installing 4.2 on unmodified consoles. Nintendo is currently attempting to censor posts and remove references to homebrew.

It is worth noting that the new boot2 does not attempt to block anything or offer any additional protection or functionality. Its sole purpose is to simply replace current versions which may or may not have been modified with BootMii. Another interesting tidbit is that Nintendo is not believed to have any method to repair this kind of brick at a factory, short of replacing the entire motherboard."

Comment Re:NYT? The irony... (Score 1) 539

The truth? Probably not many. Text to speech technology still has quite a way to go before it sounds human enough to not be jarring.

As for books, I'm not sure TTS will be able to express the emotion of a good book in my lifetime. If audiobooks were just about reading the text aloud then nobody except the blind would bother - and the preponderance audiobooks in real bookstores and even on torrent sites suggests to me that far more people than the blind are listening to books.

Comment Re:Last years winner really deserves some praise (Score 2, Interesting) 160

You mean the way it dumps the key amongst other junk in the output file one in every 256 times it's run with debugging off?

When was the last time you checked the output of an encryption program to make sure it was truly random? What about your boss? The CEO's secretary? The accountant? Someone in a government office dealing with your personal information?
Sci-Fi

Submission + - Goodbye from the STARTREK.COM Team 1

Curlsman writes: Goodbye from the STARTREK.COM Team

Sadly, we must report that CBS Interactive organization is being restructured, and the production team that brings you the STARTREK.COM site has been eliminated. Effective immediately.
We don't know the ultimate fate of this site, which has served millions of Star Trek fans for the last thirteen years.

If you have comments, please send them to editor @ startrek.com — we hope someone at CBS will read them.

Thank you for your loyal fandom over the years. It has been a pleasure to serve you.

http://www.startrek.com/startrek/view/news/article/2316633.html

Is this site worth a write-in campaign?
Censorship

Submission + - 2Clix Software sues Whirlpool over forum threads (whirlpool.net.au) 1

bigpondluser writes: "Whirlpool founder Simon Wright is being sued by accounting software firm 2Clix Australia Pty Ltd (ACN 118 044 198) for alleged "injurious falsehood". The Statement of Claim from the company alleges that Simon Wright allowed statements "relating to the Plaintiff and its software product that are both false and malicious" to be published on the Whirlpool forums."
Media

Submission + - The Pirate Bay taunts Hollywood with Oscartorrents

cursorx writes: Slyck reports that the MPAA loving Swedes from The Pirate Bay have just opened a new site called Oscartorrents.com. Not only do they provide links to torrents of most of this year's Academy Awards nominees, but they're also asking for users' votes. After the ceremony, they intend to publish a list of winners based on the torrent community's collective opinion. According to The Pirate Bay, "this is the way it should be done now that movie distribution is almost free. Hollywoodland might not like it, but some people always have to be dragged kicking and screaming into the future."

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