Comment Re:They grow up so fast (Score 1) 225
Internet Explorer will get its driver's license and crash its first car
And hopefully die
Comment Re:Link is to Flash - boooo! (Score 3, Funny) 81
Did you forget about the great features of Flash? If you choose Flash over HTML, you get:
- up to 90% shorter page loading times, because Flash is compiled and HTML is not
- increased security, because browsers are insecure, and plugins are secure by default
- unbelievable and very powerfull accesibility features
- a page which works and looks the same in any browser running on any computer
Comment Re:Turns out there is one fatal flaw (Score -1, Redundant) 81
Mod parent up
Comment Re:ImageMagick and remove metadata (Score 1) 175
I guess that everyone who has ever used ImageMagick, has enough brain cells to not post geotaged photos of their apartment, with comments like this: "Today I brought a new computer for 2000$. Had no time to play with it, because I am leaving for a two week vacation. P.S. I like leaving the door key under the mat"
Comment Re:Phfft. (Score 5, Insightful) 182
Terrorism and pedophiles has become the best argument for invading privacy nowadays.
FTFY
Submission + - Sourceforge Bans the "Evils" from Free Software 7
neo00 writes: "Syrians, Sudanese, N. Koreans, Cubans and Iranians will now be prohbitied from downloading or contributing to FOSS projects hosted by Sourceforge.net. According to sf.net terms of use, persons residing one of the countries on which the US government imposes sanctions, will be banned from accessing the site contents. An act that violates the Freedoms of Free Software and the "No Discrimination Against Persons or Groups" from the OSS definition.
US sanctions on these countries were initiated or hardened during the administration of Bush who called them the "Axis of Evil"."
US sanctions on these countries were initiated or hardened during the administration of Bush who called them the "Axis of Evil"."
Submission + - Anti-Piracy Group Refuses Bait, DRM Breaker Goes T (torrentfreak.com)
coaxial writes: In Denmark, it's legal to make copies of commercial videos for backup or other private purposes. It's also illegal to break the DRM that restricts copying of DVDs. Deciding to find out which law mattered, Henrik Anderson reported himself for 100 violations of the DRM-breaking law (he ripped his DVD collection to his computer) and demanded that the Danish anti-piracy Antipiratgruppen do something about. They promised him a response, then didn't respond. So now he's reporting himself to the police. He wants a trial, so that the legality of the DRM-breaking law can be tested in court.
Submission + - Japanese Man Marries a DS Game Character (yahoo.com) 1
uncholowapo writes: "In another sign that the world is about to collapse, multiple blogs are reporting that a fan of the Nintendo DS dating sim Love Plus (you know, the really creepy one) liked his virtual lady so much that he decided to marry her. For real.
Apparently, a Japanese gamer known as 'Sal9000' was officially wed to Nene Anegasaki, one of the game's three virtual girlfriends, in what must have been the weirdest ceremony in the history of ceremonies. We can only assume that Ms. Pac-Man was the maid of honor."
I can't imagine how the children will look like...
Apparently, a Japanese gamer known as 'Sal9000' was officially wed to Nene Anegasaki, one of the game's three virtual girlfriends, in what must have been the weirdest ceremony in the history of ceremonies. We can only assume that Ms. Pac-Man was the maid of honor."
I can't imagine how the children will look like...
Submission + - Plasma Device Kills Bacteria on Skin in Seconds
Ponca City, We love you writes: "In medicine, plasma, the fourth state of matter, is already used for the sterilization of surgical instruments as plasma works at the atomic level and is able to reach all surfaces, even the interior of hollow needle ends. Now BBC reports that researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics have demonstrated a plasma device that can rid hands, feet, or even underarms of bacteria, including the hospital superbug MRSA, by creating cold atmospheric plasma that produces a cocktail of chemicals that kills bacteria but is harmless to skin. "The plasma produces a series of over 200 chemical reactions that involve the oxygen and nitrogen in air plus water vapor — there is a whole concoction of chemical species that can be lethal to bacteria," says Gregor Morfill. "It's actually similar to what our own immune system does." The team says that an exposure to the plasma of only about 12 seconds reduces the incidence of bacteria, viruses, and fungi on hands by a factor of a million — a number that stands in sharp contrast to the several minutes hospital staff can take to wash using traditional soap and water. Morfill says that the approach can be used to kill the bacteria that lead to everything from gum disease to body odor and that the prototype is scalable to any size and can be produced in any shape. "One can treat plasmas like a medical cocktail, which contains new and established agents that can be applied at the molecular level to cells in prescribed intensities and overall doses.""
Submission + - Newspapers Face the Prisoner's Dilemma with Google
Hugh Pickens writes: "Nicholas Carr has an interesting analysis of Rupert Murdoch's threat to de-list News Corp's stories from Google and Microsoft's eager offer to make Bing Murdoch's exclusive search engine for its content. Carr writes that newspapers are caught in a classic Prisoner's Dilemma with Google because while Google's search engine "prevents them from making decent money online — by massively fragmenting traffic, by undermining brand power, and by turning news stories into fungible commodities" if any single newspaper opts out of Google, their competitors will pick up the traffic they lose. There is only one way that newspapers can break out of the prison — if a critical mass of newspapers opt out of Google's search engine simultaneously, they would suddenly gain substantial market power. Murdoch is signaling to other newspapers that "we'll opt out if you'll opt out" positioning himself as the would-be ringleader of a massive jailbreak, without actually risking a jailbreak himself and there are signs that Murdoch's signal is working with reports that the publishers of the Denver Post and the Dallas Morning News are now also considering blocking Google. In the meantime, Steve Ballmer is more than happy to play along with Murdoch because although a deal with News Corps would reduce the basic profitability of Microsoft's search business, it would inflict far more damage on Google than on Microsoft. "Faced with a large-scale loss of professional news stories from its search engine, Google would likely have little choice but to begin paying sites to index their content," writes Carr. "That would be a nightmare scenario for Google — and a dream come true for newspapers and other big content producers.""
Submission + - Open Media Bias in Covering Global Warming? (reuters.com) 1
K. S. Van Horn writes: Anthropogenic global warming skeptics have long accused the mainstream media of being biased on this subject, while the media claim objectivity. But how objective can your reporting be when you let an advocacy organization write your news stories? As of Thursday morning, the only story the Reuters website main news page is running about ClimateGate is the story, "Hacked climate emails called a 'smear campaign'", written by Stacey Feldman, co-founder of SolveClimate, an organization that promotes the AGW hypothesis and demands curbs on CO2 emissions. This isn't presented as an opinion piece — it's being run as a straight news story.
So maybe Reuters should ask Blackwater to cover military-contractor scandals; maybe they should have asked the Republican National Committee to cover Watergate; and maybe they should have asked AT&T to handle the controversy over immunity for telcos involved in the domestic wiretapping scandal. How about it?
So maybe Reuters should ask Blackwater to cover military-contractor scandals; maybe they should have asked the Republican National Committee to cover Watergate; and maybe they should have asked AT&T to handle the controversy over immunity for telcos involved in the domestic wiretapping scandal. How about it?
Submission + - The digital divide widens
LazyBoyWrangler writes: I don't know about everyone else, but like many Slashdotters (is that an Icelandic Matronymic?) I am de-facto tech support to everyone who knows my phone number. Family, friends, neighbors, their friends ... the list is every growing and endless.
After fixing a Windows networking problem about removing disconnected (VPN-routed Samba) shares that couldn't be removed, call waiting beeped and my Dad was having phone programming trouble. I'm supposed to be solving an OpenVPN on Macintosh Snow Leopard problem and also getting a security audit done.
I believe that civilians (not us tech folk) using technology are getting less and less capable of dealing with things and it is reaching a crisis point. My ten year old son is better equipped to deal with problems at his school than his teachers (or the other kids for that matter).
Just for giggles, who thinks a "nerd strike" protest day is a good idea? If all of us refused to do free tech support for products we don't get paid to support for one day, would the world cease rotating? Perhaps people would change their valuation of our time if we all put down our phones for 24 hours. Would this teach to world a lesson?
After fixing a Windows networking problem about removing disconnected (VPN-routed Samba) shares that couldn't be removed, call waiting beeped and my Dad was having phone programming trouble. I'm supposed to be solving an OpenVPN on Macintosh Snow Leopard problem and also getting a security audit done.
I believe that civilians (not us tech folk) using technology are getting less and less capable of dealing with things and it is reaching a crisis point. My ten year old son is better equipped to deal with problems at his school than his teachers (or the other kids for that matter).
Just for giggles, who thinks a "nerd strike" protest day is a good idea? If all of us refused to do free tech support for products we don't get paid to support for one day, would the world cease rotating? Perhaps people would change their valuation of our time if we all put down our phones for 24 hours. Would this teach to world a lesson?
Submission + - Mininova removes all 'infringing' torrents (torrentfreak.com)
Pabugs writes: I woke up this morning to cruise the Mininova movies category to find the torrents were removed and the line at the top stating 'From now on, only Content Distribution torrents are allowed' — Could it be that 'The Man" is gaining a foothold in the piracy battle? — I guess we'll have to wait and see, in the meantime, I'm a little less thankful on this Thanksgiving knowing that Corporate interests are now crushing my movie habits — Mininova was one of the few places I could find movies that most rental places won't carry and being forced into purchasing a crappy film for preview @ $9.99 isn't worth it to me.
Submission + - FreeBSD 8.0 Released 1
An anonymous reader writes: The FreeBSD Release Engineering Team is pleased to announce the availability of FreeBSD 8 stable release. Some of the highlights:
Xen DomU support, network stack virtualization, stack-smashing protection, TTY layer rewrite, much improved ZFS v13, a new USB stack, multicast updates including IGMPv3, vimage — a new virtualization container, Fedora 10 Linux binary compatibility to run Linux software such as Flash 10 and others, trusted BSD MAC (Mandatory Access Control), and rewritten NFS client/server introducing NFSv4. Inclusion of improved device mmap() extensions will allow the technical implementation of a 64-bit Nvidia display driver for the x86-64 platform. The GNOME desktop environment has been upgraded to 2.26.3, KDE to 4.3.1, and Firefox to 3.5.5.
There is also an in-depth look at the new features and major architectural changes in FreeBSD 8.0, including a screenshot tour, upgrade instructions are posted here.
You can grab the latest version from FreeBSD from the mirrors (main ftp server) or via BitTorrent. Please consider making a donation and help us to spread the word by tweeting and blogging about the drive and release.
There is also an in-depth look at the new features and major architectural changes in FreeBSD 8.0, including a screenshot tour, upgrade instructions are posted here.
You can grab the latest version from FreeBSD from the mirrors (main ftp server) or via BitTorrent. Please consider making a donation and help us to spread the word by tweeting and blogging about the drive and release.
Submission + - Dumbing down programming? (zdnet.co.uk) 1
RunRevKev writes: The unveiling of Revolution 4.0 has sparked a debate on ZDNet about whether programming is being dumbed down. The new version of the software uses an English-syntax that requires 90 per cent less code than traditional languages. A descendant of Apple's Hypercard, Rev 4 is set to "...empower people who would never have attempted programming to create successful applications". ZDNet report that "One might reasonably hope that this product inspires students in the appropriate way and gets them more interested in programming."
