Want to read Slashdot from your mobile device? Point it at m.slashdot.org and keep reading!

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
×

Comment Re:Of course they can (Score 1) 560

by vldragon (#33146118) Attached to: Denials Aside, Feds Storing Body Scan Images
Here is the thing though, TSA only accepts certain government ID's to begin with and they already have access to all the information on your ID. When you buy a plane ticket now you have to give certain information to prove you are "you". So in essence they do not need to scan your ID as they already have it on file. And by they I don't mean TSA directly but the government as a whole.
Education

Submission + - Mixed Signs on the State of IT Education (infoworld.com)

Submitted by
snydeq
snydeq writes: "Advice Line's Bob Lewis comments on the mixed state of IT education in the U.S., one that sees some students graduating with computer-related degrees despite never having written a line of code. And while some institutions are emphasizing the value of teamwork in their curricula, an approach that fosters specialization in lieu of uniform standards, others are simply advertising their 'success rates' in graduating students. 'Education is a marketplace, and if you have the money and want to buy, you can find someone willing to sell,' Lewis writes. In other words, 'If you want a degree that indicates you know something about computers without having to actually know very much about computers, you can get one.' Sure, a meaningful education in IT is still very much obtainable. But you may have to work to find it. 'There's a school of thought that says actual programming shouldn't be a required skill anymore, because that work is no longer conducted in the United States — it's all sent offshore.'"

Submission + - Clusty.com acquired and censored by right-wingers

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Yippy, Inc. has acquired the popular Clusty metasearch engine from Vivisimo. What makes this story interesting — and ominous for people who care about freedom of speech — is the radical way in which Yippy is revising Clusty's strong anti-censorship policy, which stated: "Neither Clusty.com nor Vivisimo.com censors search results. That is, neither site removes from its output, in an ad-hoc manner, politically-oriented search results that would otherwise appear and that would be objectionable to governments or would be unlawful in unelected, non-democratic regimes." However, the new Yippy censorship policy states explictly that Yippy may filter results deemed to be "politically-oriented propaganda," "anti-Christian," "anti-Conservative," or "anti-sovereign USA," among others. Yippy CEO Richard Granville has stated that he wants to attract "conservative, right-of-center eyeballs to our environment."
Games

Submission + - Video Gamers Have Power Over Their Dreams

Submitted by
Ponca City, We love you
Ponca City, We love you writes: "Live Science reports that researchers say that playing video games before bedtime may give gamers an unusual level of awareness and control in their dreams which could provide an edge when fighting nightmares or even mental trauma. "If you're spending hours a day in a virtual reality, if nothing else it's practice," says Jayne Gackenbach, a psychologist at Grant MacEwan University in Canada who says that hard core gamers represent the leading edge of immersion in virtual worlds that increasingly has come to define a large part of contemporary entertainment and communication. "Gamers are used to controlling their game environments, so that can translate into dreams." One intriguing theory holds that that dreams are a sort of threat simulation where nightmares help organisms hone their skills in a protective environment, and ideally prepare organisms for a real-life situation. To test that theory, Gackenbach conducted a study using independent assessments that coded threat levels in after-dream reports and found that gamers experienced less or even reversed threat simulation (in which the dreamer became the threatening presence), with fewer aggression dreams overall. In other words, a scary nightmare scenario turned into something "fun" for a gamer. "What happens with gamers is that something inexplicable happens. They don't run away, they turn and fight back," says Gackenbach. "If you look at the actual overall amount of aggression, gamers have less aggression in dreams. But when they're aggressive, oh boy, they go off the top.""
Encryption

Submission + - Operating on Encrypted Data (bristol.ac.uk)

Submitted by hargrand
hargrand writes: Nigel Smart, Professor of Cryptology in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Bristol, will present a paper in Paris this week [Friday 28 May], which makes a step towards a fully practical system to compute on encrypted data. The work could have wide ranging impact on areas as diverse as database access, electronic auctions and electronic voting.

Professor Smart said: “Our scheme allows for computations to be performed on encrypted data, so it may eventually allow for the creation of systems in which you can store data remotely in a secure manner and still be able to access it.”
Privacy

Submission + - How to Fix Privacy Policies (threatpost.com)

Submitted by Trailrunner7
Trailrunner7 writes: The notice-and-consent model of providing privacy policies to users is completely useless. No one, outside of attorneys and privacy advocates researching op-ed columns, reads them, and yet everyone is forced to affirm that they have read and understood the policies. It's the same model that has protected software makers from lawsuits for all these years, and it's time for it to go. Perhaps there's a way to develop user-defined privacy policies in which each user specifies the ways in which a given site can use her personal information and the site agrees to abide by that policy.
Firefox

Submission + - Breakthroughs in HTML Audio & JavaScript (vocamus.net)

Submitted by jamienk
jamienk writes: Imagine if you could grab and manipulate audio with JavaScript just like you can images with canvas... Firefox experimental builds let you do just that: crazy audio visualizations, a graphic equalizer, even text-to-speech, all in JavaScript! Work in progress, you need a special build of Firefox (videos available), being worked on via W3C. Weren't people just saying that Firefox doesn't innovate?
Apple

Submission + - Apple briefly becomes largest tech company (reuters.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Apple Inc briefly became the largest tech company in the world by market capitalization on Wednesday, after surpassing Microsoft Corp's market value, according to Reuters data.

Submission + - Art and Mental Illness+ Martín Ramírez g (makeahistory.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Swedish researchers believe they have uncovered a possible explanation for the link between mental health and creativity... Last year, The New York Times called the Mexican artist Martín Ramírez “simply one of the greatest artists of the 20th century.” What is so remarkable about his achievement, beyond the mesmerizing repetition of lines and images in his drawings, is that all of the work was created inside a mental institution.

Submission + - BP has NEVER shown us the main leak! (abovetopsecret.com)

Submitted by SpicyBrownMustard
SpicyBrownMustard writes: BP has NEVER shown us the main leak: This has been troubling me for several weeks now. I knew there was something wrong with the live feed we were being shown by BP from the gulf oil spill. I just couldn't figure it out until now. They are still showing the PIPE leak from the two smaller pipes, not the actual wellhead leak. To prove it, here is a video from Yahoo of the feed from a couple weeks ago along with the attempt at dropping the dome onto the leak.
Iphone

Submission + - Ubuntu shows hole in iPhone data encryption (h-online.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: A lost iPhone is a bigger problem than previously thought. Despite encryption the finder can gain easy access to data including photos and audio recordings, even if the owner has set up their iPhone to require a pass code. And, of all things, this is made possible with Linux — the very operating system which Apple regularly cold-shoulders. heise Security was able to reproduce this finding by Bernd Marienfeldt.

Submission + - UK newspaper web sites to become nearly invisible

Submitted by smooth wombat
smooth wombat writes: Various web sites have tried to make readers pay for access to select parts of their sites. Now, in a bid to counter what he claims is theft of his material, Rupert Murdoch's Times and Sunday Times web sites will become essentially invisible to web users. Except for their homepages, no stories will show up on Google.

Starting in late June, Google and other search engines will be prevented from indexing and linking to stories. Registered users will still get free access until the cut off date.
Idle

Submission + - Bedrooms of the biggest geeks in the world (thekartel.com)

Submitted by
almehdaaol
almehdaaol writes: "Some of the world's most pronounced "otaku", a Japanese term for someone who obsesses in everything geek like anime, videogames and comics, have bedrooms that scream personal command center. Check out these pictures of some of the zaniest and truly hardcore otaku bedrooms you'll ever see."
Programming

Submission + - DOS Batch files in 2010? 2

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: I am working on a project that would allow our customers to test our sending different PCL commands to LAN printers. My initial thought was that a DOS batch file will allow users to select some simple options, send the tests to printers, and even generate a small web page which, when launched from the batch file, will provide email feedback on the tool. This all worked. To spice it up I added some ANSI color commands to the menus, though the implementation of that may prove tricky without resorting to .COM files or forcing the load of the ansi.sys via the command.com shortcut. And this implementation goes against my initial idea that I want the entire thing to be contained in a standalone batch file.

My questions are: Is there a better option for this? Are DOS Batch files too 1990's to be taken seriously in 2010? The application need to (1) be simple (2) be easy to update (3) be able to send PCL commands to LAN attached printers and (4) allow email feedback. I don't know what other programming language would allow this and be as simple.

I tend to think that I have found the best tool for the job but if you have another idea let me know. Call me crazy but I love DOS.
Apple

Submission + - FSF Asks Apple to Comply With the GPL (fsf.org)

Submitted by
I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property
I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property writes: "The Free Software Foundation has discovered that an application currently distributed in Apple's App Store is a port of GNU Go. This makes it a GPL violation, because Apple controls distribution of all such programs through the iTunes Store Terms of Service, which is incompatible with section 6 of the GPLv2. It's an unusual enforcement action, though, because they don't want Apple to just make the app disappear, they want Apple to grant its users the full freedoms offered by the GPL. Accordingly, they haven't sued or sent any legal threats and are instead in talks with Apple about how they can offer their users the GPLed software legally, which is difficult because it's not possible to grant users all the freedoms they're entitled to and still comply with Apple's restrictive licensing terms."

Slashdot Top Deals

"A car is just a big purse on wheels." -- Johanna Reynolds

Close