Comment Re:It is a superior control system (Score 1) 387
So... you're saying that having lots of keys to press by having a keyboard is not a hardware advantage... but an OS one?
Comment Re:The shoe bomber. (Score 1) 354
Judging by the wiki article on him, it looks like he was only caught after getting onto the plane and trying to set off the bombs by lighting them with a match. I don't think that counts as a win for the TSA's system.
Comment Re:What? (Score 1) 257
And I see six links not more than a dozen pixels below it, to the pertinent ticker symbol's page on six big financial sites, of which five aren't Google, and of which two don't show up on the first page of results.
Comment Re:What? (Score 1) 257
Search for 'GOOG'. Top of the page is the finance service result for GOOG, with links to Google Finance, Yahoo, MSN, and etc., with the fancy graph underneath.
The first search result is the Yahoo Finance page for GOOG, and the second is the Google Finance page for GOOG, both of which were linked in the list of sites in the finance service result at the top of the page.
Fedora Project Drops SQLNinja 'Hacker' Tool 159
simonb writes, "In what can only be described as a fit of insanity, the Fedora Board have declared a 'hacker tool' not fit for entry into their software repositories. Today your SQL injection tools, tomorrow your nmap?" The Register links the Fedora board's meeting minutes. From the story: "The move came on Monday in a unanimous vote by the Fedora Project's board of directors rejecting a request that SQLNinja be added to the archive of open-source applications. It came even as a long list of other hacker tools are included in the bundle and was harshly criticized by some security watchers. 'It seems incredibly short sighted to reject software based on perceived legal usage,' said Jacob Appelbaum, a full-time programmer for the Tor Project. 'They have decided to become judges of likely usage based on their own experience. That is a path of madness.' ... [T]he board unanimously decided to add a new statement to Fedora's legal guidelines concerning the inclusion of hacking tools. ... Smith said the language is intended to clarify its stance on a class of software that can be used both to secure and penetrate protected networks."
Comment Re:interesting pic (Score 1) 55
For extra fun, compare the pic in the article to this actual population density map: http://i.treehugger.com/files/population-density-us.jpg
Comment Re:It was a TRAP!! (Score 1) 412
And judging by the current score of the GP, one man's 'flamebait' is yet another man's 'insight of the day'.
Comment Re:Not quite (Score 2, Interesting) 203
I myself have gotten it working under Ubuntu 9.04 and 10.04 with minimal hassle. Worked straight out of the box aside from sound, but I honestly just experimented with audio output selections in Wine config for a few minutes, and it worked after that. Performance was comparable to that on my Windows machine, to boot.
And I'm confident that any students using Linux on their school laptop are comfortable enough with it to figure out most issues they may come across.
Attacking Game Consoles On Corporate Networks 79
A pair of security researchers speaking at DefCon demonstrated how video game consoles, which are becoming increasingly common break room or team-building toys, can open vulnerabilities in corporate networks.
"[They] found that many companies install Nintendo Wii devices in their work places, even though they don’t let you walk into the company with smartphones or laptops. (Factories and other sensitive work locations don’t allow any devices with cameras). By poisoning the Wii, they could spread a virus over the corporate network. People have a false sense of security about the safety of these game devices, but they can log into computer networks like most other computer devices now. In the demos, the researchers showed they could take compromised code and inject it into the main game file that runs on either a DS or a game console. They could take over the network and pretty much spread malware across it and thereby compromise an entire corporation. The researchers said they can do this with just about any embedded device, from iPhones to internet TVs."
Cow Clicker Boils Down Facebook Games 237
mjn writes "Game designer and academic Ian Bogost announces Cow Clicker, a Facebook game implementing the mechanics of the Facebook-games genre stripped to their core. You get a cow, which you can click on every six hours. You earn additional clicks if your friends in your pasture also click. You can buy premium cows with 'mooney,' and also use your mooney to buy more clicks. You can buy mooney with real dollars, or earn some free bonus mooney if you spam up your feed with Cow Clicker activity. A satire of Facebook games, but actually as genuine a game as the non-satirical games are. And people actually play it, perhaps confirming Bogost's view that the genre of games is largely just 'brain hacks that exploit human psychology in order to make money,' which continue to work even when the users are openly told what's going on."
Comment Re:Just in case you were wondering why... (Score 1) 414
And I suppose you'd also recommend against getting Half-Life 2 for the same reasons?
It's three games because Starcraft II has three games worth of campaign content. ~30 missions in each case, just like the original SC+BW. It's also been noted that Heart of the Swarm and Legacy of the Void will be priced as expansions, not full games. I'd also suspect that since all three are being developed at once, playing SC2 on Battle.net won't be segregated into groups based on which expansions you have, as compared to the original SC+BW, so if you're only interested in multiplayer, you won't have to ever buy the expansions.
Chinese News Reports the Taliban Are Training Monkey Soldiers 232
According to a Chinese news publication, soldiers in Afghanistan may soon come up against a deadly new weapon in the war: monkey soldiers. The report claims that the Taliban are training the monkeys to shoot and kill American soldiers. They also claim to have pictures of monkeys holding AK-47s and Bren light machine guns. From the article: "The New York Magazine has reported about this in jest and stated on Friday, 'No invader has ever conquered Afghanistan, and now we know why. The monkeys will not allow it. It was a good effort, but it's time to pack it in. This is no longer a fight we can win.'”
Comment Re:This isn't dangerous in the way they claim (Score 2, Insightful) 134
It may be pointless now, but there's always the possibility that they're using cards with both the old strip and the new chip as an intermediate step, to try to shift card owners over to using just the chip a little more softly.
Of course, it could also just be another example of incompetence in security.
Comment Re:NOT zero day attack. (Score 1) 497
Not to mention he released the vulnerability last Thursday, and we're only hearing about an exploit now. I'd really like to know what definition of "Zero-day attack" they're using, because I certainly can't reason out what it is.
Comment Re:Give stuff away = still evil? (Score 0, Offtopic) 225
This is all I have to say on the matter: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend_and_extinguish
