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Submission + - Why is Slashdot ignoring the advice of so many developer articles. 2

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Over the years, Slashdot has recycled plenty of articles about lousy UX, lousy design, lousy graceful degradation, lousy development practices, lousy community management, even lousy JavaScript implementations creating security problems. Did Slashdot read any of those articles?

Submission + - Dice Holdings has written off Slashdot Media at the close of 2013 (prnewswire.com) 3

Submitted by moogla
moogla writes: Apparently Dice.com could not make Slashdot work they way they wanted to; with a murky plan to tap into the Slashdot-reader community to somehow drive attention or insight into other Dice Holdings properities, they've burned through

$7.2 million of intangible assets and $6.3 million of goodwill related to Slashdot Media

and have only started to realize some improvement on related sites. With ad revenue declining and not expected to pick up (read: everyone who uses Slashdot uses adblocking softwarwe), it appears that the Slashdot stewardship experiment by Dice Holdings has been a financial failure. Since the site has been redesigned in a user-hostile fashion with a very generic styling, this reader surmises Dice Holdings is looking to transform or transfer the brand into a generic Web 3.0 technology property. The name may be more valuable than the user community (since we drive no revenue nor particularly use Dice.com's services).

Submission + - User Backlash at Slashdot Beta Site (slashdot.org) 3

Submitted by hduff
hduff writes: Look at almost any current Slashdot story and see loyal, long-time members rail against the new site design, willing to burn precious karma points to post off-topic rants against the new design and it being forced on users by the Dice Overlords. Discussion has begun to create an alternate site.

Comment Re:hero (Score 1) 388

by cfulton (#46114713) Attached to: Edward Snowden and the Death of Nuance

"The Greatest Generation" is a term coined by journalist Tom Brokaw to describe the generation[1] who grew up in the United States during the deprivation of the Great Depression, and then went on to fight in World War II, as well as those whose productivity within the war's home front made a decisive material contribution to the war effort, for which the generation is also termed the G.I. Generation - Wikipedia

Just cause it is /. and we a required to respond: I would think that "The Greatest Generation" would include a whole lot of people who were in their 40's in 1954. The average age of a solider in WWII was 26 which meant that there must have been a bunch of 30 and 40 year olds in the army. So, Yeah a lot of vets in congress in 1954, JFK a WWII vet was in the senate at the time.

In response to your final thought - your generation and mine are responsible for the spying, use of torture, extraordinary rendition etc. You have been able to vote for more than 17 years. You, me and everyone else in this country are responsible.

Comment Re:hero (Score 5, Insightful) 388

by cfulton (#46111027) Attached to: Edward Snowden and the Death of Nuance
The "Greatest Generation" is a polite fiction my friend. The "Greatest Generation" did (for the good of all) fight and win WWII and I thank them for it. Let's not get too proud of them though. Their parents won WWI and their ancestors won the Civil War and theirs gave us our independence. So, They are not the first or last generation to go to bat for their country. And then let's really see what they did when they came home from the war.
  • -Nuclear Proliferation
  • -The Red Scare
  • -The McCarthy Hearings
  • -The continuation of the American version of Apartheid.
  • -No action taken to give voice and rights to women.
  • -A blind and bland national narrative based around a lifestyle that never existed ("Leave It to Beaver" anyone).

Now I am not so strident and inflexible in my views as to say that they were a "bad" generation, but the whole "Greatest Generation" thing is a little overblown.

Submission + - Goldman Small Cap Research states "New Product Could Displace Skype" (goldmanresearch.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: You have got to read this Report on Chitrchatr Comunications, Inc (OTC:CHICF) www.chitrchatr.com:

-“we believe the stock will be driven toward our $3.75 price target...”

-“...ChitrChatr UUCP will offer competitive long term advantages that could lead to the displacement of current, non-app integrated popular tools such as Skype or Whatsapp which have at one time or another been valued at over $1 billion...”

-“...Mobile VoIP Minute Growth Is Forecast to Grow From 15 Billion 470 Billion in 5 Years...”

-“...Juniper Research forecasts worldwide mobile VoIP application minutes via 3G growth from just over 343 million minutes in 2010 to 30 billion in 2015, and mobile VoIP minutes carried on 3G and 4G networks will increase from 15 billion in 2010 to a whopping 470 billion in 2015...”

“In our view, CHICF could ultimately be worth hundreds of millions since the ChitrChatr UUCP will offer competitive long term advantages that could lead to the displacement of current, non-app integrated popular tools such as Skype or Whatsapp which have at one time or another been valued at over $1 billion. As new users are signed up and development milestones are reached, we believe the stock will be driven toward our $3.75 price target”

Click below to view the full report:

http://www.goldmanresearch.com/20140116686/Opportunity-Research/integrated-platform-could-emerge-as-new-standard.html

Submission + - "Honey Encryption" to Bamboozle Attackers with Fake Secrets

Submitted by Hugh Pickens DOT Com
Hugh Pickens DOT Com writes: Tom Simonite writes at MIT Technology Review that security researcher Ari Juels says that trickery is the missing component from the cryptography protecting sensitive data and proposes a new encryption system with a devious streak. It gives encrypted data an additional layer of protection by serving up fake data in response to every incorrect guess of the password or encryption key. If the attacker does eventually guess correctly, the real data should be lost amongst the crowd of spoof data. The new approach could be valuable given how frequently large encrypted stashes of sensitive data fall into the hands of criminals. Some 150 million usernames and passwords were taken from Adobe servers in October 2013, for example. If an attacker uses software to make 10,000 attempts to decrypt a credit card number, for example, they would get back 10,000 different fake credit card numbers. “Each decryption is going to look plausible,” says Juels. “The attacker has no way to distinguish a priori which is correct.” Juels previously worked with Ron Rivest, the “R” in RSA, to develop a system called Honey Words to protect password databases by also stuffing them with false passwords. Juels says that by now enough password dumps have leaked online to make it possible to create fakes that accurately mimic collections of real passwords and is currently working on creating the fake password vault generator needed for Honey Encryption to be used to protect password managers. This generator will draw on data from a small collection of leaked password manager vaults, several large collections of leaked passwords, and a model of real-world password use built into a powerful password cracker. "Honeywords and honey-encryption represent some of the first steps toward the principled use of decoys, a time-honored and increasingly important defense in a world of frequent, sophisticated, and damaging security breaches."

Submission + - Developer Loses $50,00 Twitter Name Through Extortion

Submitted by Hugh Pickens DOT Com
Hugh Pickens DOT Com writes: Naoki Hiroshima, creator of Cocoyon and a developer for Echofon, writes at TNW that he had a rare one-letter Twitter username, @N and had been offered as much as $50,000 for its purchase. "People have tried to steal it. Password reset instructions are a regular sight in my email inbox," writes Hiroshima. "As of today, I no longer control @N. I was extorted into giving it up." Hiroshima writes that a hacker used social engineering with paypal to get the last four digits of his credit card number over the phone then used that information to gain control of his GoDaddy account. "Most websites use email as a method of verification. If your email account is compromised, an attacker can easily reset your password on many other websites. By taking control of my domain name at GoDaddy, my attacker was able to control my email." Hiroshima received a message from his extortionist. "Your GoDaddy domains are in my possession, one fake purchase and they can be repossessed by godaddy and never seen again. I see you run quite a few nice websites so I have left those alone for now, all data on the sites has remained intact. Would you be willing to compromise? access to @N for about 5 minutes while I swap the handle in exchange for your godaddy, and help securing your data?" Hiroshima writes that it'’s hard to decide what’s more shocking, the fact that PayPal gave the attacker the last four digits of his credit card number over the phone, or that GoDaddy accepted it as verification. Hiroshima has two takeaways from his experience: Avoid custom domains for your login email address and don’t let companies such as PayPal and GoDaddy store your credit card information.

Submission + - Edward Snowden Nominated for Nobel Peace Prize

Submitted by SmartAboutThings
SmartAboutThings writes: Edward Snowden has a chance of getting the 2014 Nobel Peace Price, as two Norwegian members of the Parliament have nominated him – Baard Vegard Solhjell, a former environment minister and Snorre Valen. For those who don't know, the Nobel prize has been running since 1901 and is awarded annually in Oslo, Norway. So, the fact that members of the Norwegian Parliament have proposed him for the Nobel Peace Prize could improve his chance of winning. After all, if Obama got this prize, why wouldn't Snowden get it?

Submission + - Why does Facebook need to read my Text Messages? (ibtimes.co.uk) 1

Submitted by DavidGilbert99
DavidGilbert99 writes: Facebook updates its Android app quite a lot, but the latest version asks for some rather odd permissions. Rolling out in the UK this week, some users have noticed that it now wants permission to read your text messages. While most suspected Facebook wanted to access the data to try and serve you more targeted ads, Facebook says it is only so it can facilitate two-factor authentication...apparently.

Submission + - Legendary folk singer Pete Seeger dies at 94 (cnn.com)

Submitted by TheGreatDuwanee
TheGreatDuwanee writes: Pete Seeger, the man considered to be one of the pioneers of contemporary folk music who inspired legions of activist singer-songwriters, died Monday at age 94. Known for his activism and songs including "Where Have All the Flowers Gone," "Turn! Turn! Turn! (To Everything There Is a Season)" and "If I Had a Hammer (The Hammer Song)."

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