otravi - Slashdot User

Comment Re:Programming without music? (Score 5, Insightful) 1019

by otravi on Saturday December 12, 2009 @06:26AM (#30412428) Attached to: Music While Programming?

Working without music is fine, as long as there isn't any noise to avert your concentration. The easiest way to solve this little issue it just go to work with a pair of earmuffs. Your argument for using them should be obvious.

Comment Rules are to be broken, but not on Wikipedia. (Score 5, Insightful) 632

by otravi on Wednesday November 25, 2009 @12:55PM (#30227374) Attached to: Contributors Leaving Wikipedia In Record Numbers

They also have a stupid rule regarding "how important stuff has to be" before it can be added as a new article on Wikipedia. That one alone is the main reason I never again will try to contribute anything to it.

Comment Re:What could possibly go wrong? (Score 1) 200

by otravi on Thursday November 12, 2009 @03:13PM (#30077060) Attached to: <em>StarCraft</em> AI Competition Announced

I remember Skynet back when it was called Google!

Submission + - Doom boxart artist dies of heart attack (bit-tech.net)

Submitted by mr_sifter on Tuesday November 03, 2009 @06:28AM

mr_sifter writes: Don Ivan Punchatz, the artist who helped id Software launch Doom to a greatness by designing the artwork on the box and promotional materials, has died of cardiac arrest. Don, who also provided art for publications such as Playboy, National Geographic, TIME and National Lampoon, suffered a cardiac arrest on October 11 and did not regain consciousness.

Submission + - Google's Chrome hit with patent suit (cio.com.au)

Submitted by Dan Jones on Wednesday October 28, 2009 @06:11PM

Dan Jones writes: Israeli company Red Bend filed a lawsuit this week against Google, charging the search giant with infringing one of its patents. The suit alleges that Google uses Red Bend's patented technology in Courgette, a method Google uses to compress updates and send them to its Chrome browser. Courgette is a compression algorithm that Google developed to shrink the size of updates in order reduce bandwidth requirements for Google and its users, and also to reduce the potential for vulnerabilities. The suit also charges Google with publishing and distributing the source code for Red Bend's technology.

Submission + - New Ransomware Encrypts Files Demands $100 to Decr (zdnet.com)

Submitted by suraj.sun on Wednesday October 28, 2009 @11:33AM

suraj.sun writes: New LoroBot Ransomware Encrypts Files, Demands $100 to Decrypt

Researchers from CA have intercepted a new ransomware variant ( http://community.ca.com/blogs/securityadvisor/archive/2009/10/27/lorobot-ransomware-unlock-price-100.aspx ) encrypting popular file extensions (.zip; .rar; .pdf; .rtf; .txt; .jpg; .jpeg; .waw; .mp3; .db; .xls; .docx; .xlsx; .doc) and demanding a $100 for the decryption software.

According to the message which replaces the desktop’s background upon execution, the files are encrypted with 256-bit AES encryption, and that “there’s a 0% chance that you will be able to manually decrypt the files without the encryption key“.

However, this particular cybercriminal appears to be bluffing since the ransomware encrypts the data using the XOR cipher.

Naturally, by doing so he allowed CA’s researchers to release a free decryptor for Win32/Gpcode.J ( http://community.ca.com/blogs/securityadvisor/Zarestel/Gpcode-j/Gpcode-J_Decryptor.zip ).

ZDNet : http://blogs.zdnet.com/security/?p=4748&tag=content;col1

Comment Ran ran ruu! (Score 1) 317

by otravi on Tuesday October 20, 2009 @06:25PM (#29815679) Attached to: NVIDIA Driver Developer Discusses Linux Graphics

It's slightly sad to see that NVIDIA most likely won't go through the same effort as AMD/ATi did with their internal documentation. The current open source drivers are quite amazing regardless tho'.