Comment Re:Pretty easy. (Score 1) 374
Good luck restoring iOS to that device and making it usable as anything other than a stylish paperweight, if it was running iOS 7 and had Find my iPhone enabled.
Court Denies NSA Request To Hold Phone Records Beyond 5 Years 46
itwbennett writes "As Slashdot readers will remember, last month the U.S. government 'petitioned the court system' to let the NSA retain phone call metadata for more than 5 years, ironically 'because it needs to preserve it as evidence for the various privacy lawsuits filed against the government.' Well, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court has ruled against that request. The FISC's Presiding Judge Reggie B. Walton ruled Friday (PDF) that the proposed amended procedures would further infringe on the privacy interests of U.S. persons whose 'telephone records were acquired in vast numbers and retained by the government for five years to aid in national security investigation.'"
Comment Re:You keep using that word (Score 1) 479
Welcome to the real world, where old systems operate together in a mish-mash of different protocols and standards. Why do you think companies even exist solely to provide the service of screen-scraping old terminal-based servers in order to provide a "modern" GUI (that is often times just as archaic and messy, if not more so, than the old text-based setup).
Sony & Panasonic Next-Gen Optical Discs Moving Forward 250
jones_supa writes "From last summer you might remember the Sony & Panasonic plans to bring next generation optical discs with recording capacity of at least 300GB. Various next-gen optical discs from different companies have been proposed, but this joint effort seems to be still moving forward. The disc is called simply Archival Disc and, roadmap and key specifications are out. First-wave ADs are slated to launch in summer of 2015 and will be able to hold up to 300GB of data. Archival Discs will be double-sided, so this works out to 150GB of data per side. Future versions of the technology will improve storage density, increasing to 500GB (or 250GB per side) and 1TB (500GB per side) as the standard matures."
Comment Victim blaming (Score 5, Insightful) 479
Why the hell is there a trend nowadays to call it "victim blaming" to give people advice on protecting themselves? Is it really such a bad idea for people to do things to protect their passwords?
I guess telling people to run antivirus is now "victim blaming", too.
Comment Re:Why? (Score 1) 465
Technically correct, but pragmatically useless. Devices running iOS 7 with Find my iWhatever enabled will not be able to activate, even after a DFU restore, without the original Apple ID and password. The only way around this I know of would be to have an A4 device with the requisite SHSH blobs to downgrade below iOS 7.0, and whether one could then change the Apple ID and restore to iOS 7 I don't know.
Comment Re: No, not those who don't understand... (Score 1) 921
She didn't start recording until she was in fear of bodily harm. You know, in case she was actually attacked, there would be video evidence? She was demonstrating it to someone, and someone mouthed off to her out of fear, because they had obviously been misled into thinking that Glass is some sort of uber spy device that records everything that's happening with no external notification. Which is precisely how all the detractors paint the issue, so that's not unsurprising. What is surprising is the number of people on a supposedly tech-savvy site who have this misconception.
Comment Re: Not generally accepted!? (Score 2) 921
There are no general laws about wearing Glass in public, ergo it's a right thanks to the 9th and 10th. Unless you're aware of a state legislature that has passed such a law?
Comment Re: It's a keyboard (Score 1) 91
You just said that to tepples, one of the more prolific commenters on here.
Comment Re: Still abusive (Score 1) 511
You didn't actually read what they did. Or the fact that they're not doing it anymore because it lost it's usefulness.
Comment Re: what price increases? (Score 1) 424
Blu-ray is not an inferior product. It has one chief advantage that streaming can never match - permanence. You will always be able to play the Blu-ray, but you have no control over whether your chosen video streaming provider keeps the content available for streaming.
Comment Re: Cellular is the business model (Score 2) 424
If you have portions of the outside of your dwelling that are "exclusive access" to you as a tenant, then the property owner can not legally prevent you from putting up a dish. One of the few things the FCC gets right.
Comment Re: I don't understand (Score 1) 129
Mega Man isn't a Nintendo franchise, btw.
Comment Re: Anything to not admit they screwed up (Score 2) 129
GBC was more than turning the grey into color. It surpassed even the Super Game Boy in total color count (excluding the SGB OBJ mode which almost no games used). It also increased the CPU speed. It certainly wasn't a four-color system unless you were playing legacy GB games.
NES/SNES weren't really slower than their counterparts. Sure, the number of CPU cycles per second was lower. However, the 6502-based architecture had lower IPC than the Z80 and 68000, and if you analyze that you'll see that the NES/SNES were a lot more competitive in performance than you might think by CPU speed alone.
Comment Re: Texas Barely Registers (Score 1, Insightful) 544
It's odd because the law doesn't say "Christianity is off limits but everything else is ok", it says "no establishment of religion". It's equally wrong for a public school to teach Islam, Judaism, or any other religion outside of a general historical and cultural sense. That's the scope of private school, of which many such schools legally exist, near most of the people posting here.
All athiests and anti-theists who specifically attack Christianity and not other religions are just as bad as the ones in Christianity that they oppose.
