Comment Re:Sorry, no "dirty tricks" campaign here... (Score 2) 1060
Do you mean the Swiss alps?
It's a different country, you know..
Comment Re:Bad omen? (Score 1) 303
If it is all about the cash, then let's think this another way.
How much money can you make by compromising the computer of millions of home users, so you can send billions of spam mail hoping a few thousand idiots will give you some credit card information, and not being able to use the cloned cards to buy shit without being profiled and probably arrested at some point?
Now how much money can you make by compromising a big company's server (a market segment dominated by linux) to steal some industrial secrets and sell that to competitors?
I doubt any serious companies would use a windows machine as a router / firewall to protect it's network. what we can see is that about 99% of all the firewalls installed in the internet to protect windows machines from the outside world are running linux... what does that tell us about the security flaws in windows and linux?
Submission + - Coder Accuses IBM of Patenting His Work (thinq.co.uk)
Stoobalou writes: It's every programmers' worst nightmare to have a giant company take what you worked so hard on and steal it from you, but it looks like that's exactly what IBM appears to have done to Thanassis Tsiodras — even going so far as to patent the coder's work.
Back in 2001, Tsiodras wrote a library for Windows called HeapCheck, designed to detect invalid access attempts on heap allocations during a program's runtime — greatly simplifying the process of debugging heap-related issues.
Back in 2001, Tsiodras wrote a library for Windows called HeapCheck, designed to detect invalid access attempts on heap allocations during a program's runtime — greatly simplifying the process of debugging heap-related issues.
Submission + - Eggs Thrown at German Street View Opt-Out Homes (thinq.co.uk)
Stoobalou writes: Vandals have attacked the houses of German home-owners who opted out of Google's Street View service, which began rolling out across the country this month.
Homes in the Bergerhausen area of Essen, western Germany were pelted with eggs, according to local media reports. Some houses had messages reading 'Google's cool' pinned to their doors.
All of the homes attacked were among the 250,000 German households who scrambled to opt out of Google Street View by having images of their homes removed from the service.
Homes in the Bergerhausen area of Essen, western Germany were pelted with eggs, according to local media reports. Some houses had messages reading 'Google's cool' pinned to their doors.
All of the homes attacked were among the 250,000 German households who scrambled to opt out of Google Street View by having images of their homes removed from the service.
Submission + - Once-Secret ACTA Copyright Treaty Approved By EU (itworld.com) 1
itwbennett writes: By a vote of 331 to 294, the EU Parliament has approved the controversial and once-secret Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA). According to an ITworld article, 'the most controversial paragraph in the final text leaves the door open for countries to introduce the so-called three-strikes rule. This would cut Internet users off if they download copyright material as national authorities would be able to order ISPs to disclose personal information about customers.... The proposed agreement would also place sanctions against any device or software that is marketed as a means of circumventing access controls such as encryption or scrambling that are designed to prevent copying. It also requires legal measures against knowingly using such technology.'
Submission + - facebook to own the word "face" (myfoxdc.com) 2
Dthief writes: The U.S. Patent And Trademark Office has sent Facebook a Notice of Allowance, which means it will grant the “Face” trademark to the popular social networking site.
Facebook now has three months to pay an issue fee before they officially own the word.
Facebook now has three months to pay an issue fee before they officially own the word.
Submission + - My GPL code has been... patented! 4
ttsiod writes: Back in 2001, I coded HeapCheck, a GPL library for Windows (inspired by ElectricFence) that detected invalid read/write accesses on any heap allocations at runtime — thus greatly helping my debugging sessions. I published it on my site, and got a few users who were kind enough to thank me — a Serbian programmer even sent me 250$ as a thank you (I still have his mails). After a few years, Microsoft included very similar technology in the operating system itself, calling it PageHeap. I had more or less forgotten these stuff, since for the last 7 years I've been coding for UNIX/Linux, where valgrind superseeded Efence/dmalloc/etc. Imagine my surprise, when yesterday, Googling for references to my site, I found out that the technology I implemented, of runtime detection of invalid heap accesses, has been patented in the States, and to add insult to injury, even mentions my site (via a non-working link to an old version of my page) in the patent references! After the necessary "WTFs" and "bloody hells" I thought this merrits (a) a Slashdotting, and (b) a set of honest questions: what should I do about this? I am not an American citizen, but the "inventors" of this technology (see their names in the top of the patent) have apparently succeeded in passing this ludicrous patent in the States. If my code doesn't count as prior art, Bruce Perens's Efence (which I clearly state my code was inspired from) is at least 12 years prior! Suggestions/cursing patent trolls most welcome.
Submission + - Jagex Wins Patent Infringement Lawsuit (gamasutra.com)
An anonymous reader writes: Gamasutra reports that a U.S. District Court judge has dismissed a patent infringement lawsuit brought against RuneScape developer Jagex covered previously on slashdot.
Judge David Folsom last week dismissed online chat company Paltalk's claims that Jagex infringed on Paltalk patents relating to online network communications. The judge's ruling only resolved Jagex's case. Microsoft settled with Paltalk for an undisclosed sum in 2009 after the online communication technology company sued over the patents in a $90 million claim. That settlement opened the door to Paltalk claims against other game companies including Blizzard, Turbine, SOE and NCSoft. Paltalk alleged in the Jagex-related suit that it had suffered "tens of millions of dollars" in damages.
Jagex CEO Mark Gerhard said in a statement "It is exceedingly unfortunate that the U.S. legal system can force a company with a sole presence in Cambridge, UK to incur a seven-digit expense and waste over a year of management time on a case with absolutely no merit," and that Jagex "will not hesitate to vigorously defend our position against any patent trolls who bring lawsuits against us in the future."
Judge David Folsom last week dismissed online chat company Paltalk's claims that Jagex infringed on Paltalk patents relating to online network communications. The judge's ruling only resolved Jagex's case. Microsoft settled with Paltalk for an undisclosed sum in 2009 after the online communication technology company sued over the patents in a $90 million claim. That settlement opened the door to Paltalk claims against other game companies including Blizzard, Turbine, SOE and NCSoft. Paltalk alleged in the Jagex-related suit that it had suffered "tens of millions of dollars" in damages.
Jagex CEO Mark Gerhard said in a statement "It is exceedingly unfortunate that the U.S. legal system can force a company with a sole presence in Cambridge, UK to incur a seven-digit expense and waste over a year of management time on a case with absolutely no merit," and that Jagex "will not hesitate to vigorously defend our position against any patent trolls who bring lawsuits against us in the future."
Submission + - Arduino based high powered LED lights over WiFi (youtube.com)
Gibbs-Duhem writes: This awesome video was produced by some MIT Engineers recently. They've started a fully open-source, open-hardware high power LED lighting project that they designed to be modular enough to control with the Arduino (or any other control system)! Using their open-source firmware, you can set up the Arduino to connect to WiFi and receive Open Sound Control packets. Then, they went further and released open-source software for PureData and Python to do music analysis and make the lights flash brilliantly in time with the music! A full Instructable was also posted in addition to the existing documentation for design and assembly on their website, http://saikoled.com
Submission + - Alternative To The "200 Lines Linux Kernel Patch (webupd8.org)
climenole writes: "Phoronix recently published an article regarding a ~200 lines Linux Kernel patch that improves responsiveness under system strain. Well, Lennart Poettering, a RedHat developer replied to Linus Torvalds on a maling list with an alternative to this patch that does the same thing yet all you have to do is run 2 commands and paste 4 lines in your ~/.bashrc file. I know it sounds unbelievable, but apparently someone even ran some tests which prove that Lennart's solution works. Read on!"
Submission + - Brazilian court absolves pirate (uol.com.br)
muyla writes: In a unanimous decision, a state court in Brazil absolved a man who used to sell pirated CDs and DVDs on the street, accepting the argument that this sort of piracy is diffused and accepted in all social economical levels of the society. When confronted with the fact, the executive manager of the anti-piracy association was surprised and claimed that if there are lots of people who use drugs, then they should also make drugs legal, clearly not understanding the difference between part of the society and all the society.
Submission + - NVIDIA diversifying out of GPUs
shmG writes: At its annual GPU conference, computer graphics chip maker NVIDIA mapped out a long-term plan which highlighted its diversification into new computing spaces. NVIDIA announced Tegra 3 will soon launch and Tegra 4 is already in development. Another strategy in the mobile space which could benefit NVIDIA is its willingness to work with ARM Holdings. It is also doing supercomuting with the Tesla, and its just announced Maxwell chip, which will be 16x faster.
Comment Farenheit? (Score 3, Insightful) 169
What about human readable units for once? maybe 1 Kelvin or -272C would be OK
Comment He who brings a date to the play (Score 3, Funny) 80
will be proclaimed their king!
Comment Re:Wait till the religion fanatics hear this. (Score 4, Informative) 183
Since TFA says that the decay has slowed down, that would be the case
