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Submission + - sel4- World's most secure OS kernel now open source (sel4.systems)

An anonymous reader writes: sel4 — the world's first operating-system kernel with an end-to-end proof of implementation correctness and security enforcement has just been released as open source.
sel4 is a general purpose mircokernel with an object capability security architecture. It was designed with security and reliability foremost in mind for use across the board from military control systems to medical devices.

Submission + - Did the politicians do all the math on solar energy? (telegraph.co.uk)

gadget junkie writes: Funnily enough, Northern European countries have put the most solar panels in place. in this story on the Daily Telegraph, some of the foreseable problems seem to emerge: grid bottleneck, wide differences between peak output and average output. The suggested solution is mindboggling to an economic analyst like me: install them at an angle which would cause them to generate the most energy in the afternoon (namely: face west, and all will be fine). This adds to the cost obviously, since it is less efficient. Why is it practically impossible to get an unbiased economic study on alternative energy?
Piracy

London Police Placing Anti-Piracy Warning Ads On Illegal Sites 160

mrspoonsi (2955715) writes "The City of London police has started placing banner advertisements on websites believed to be offering pirated content illegally. The messages, which will appear instead of paid-for ads, will ask users to close their web browsers. The move comes as part of a continuing effort to stop piracy sites from earning money through advertising. Police said the ads would make it harder for piracy site owners to make their pages look authentic. "When adverts from well known brands appear on illegal websites, they lend them a look of legitimacy and inadvertently fool consumers into thinking the site is authentic," said Detective Chief Inspector Andy Fyfe from the City of London Police Intellectual Property Crime Unit (Pipcu). "This new initiative is another step forward for the unit in tackling IP crime and disrupting criminal profits. "Copyright infringing websites are making huge sums of money though advert placement, therefore disrupting advertising on these sites is crucial and this is why it is an integral part of Operation Creative.""
Businesses

How Gygax Lost Control of TSR and D&D 183

An anonymous reader writes "Sunday was the birthday of the late great Gary Gygax, co-creator of Dungeons & Dragons and Futurama guest star. With the fifth edition of D&D soon to come out at Gen Con this year, Jon Peterson, author of Playing at the World, has released a new piece to answer a historical question: how was it, back in 1985, that Gary was ousted from TSR and control of D&D was taken away from him? Drawn from board meeting minutes, stock certificates, letters, and other first-hand sources, it's not a quick read or a very cheery one, but it shows how the greatest success of hobby games of the 1980s fell apart and marginalized its most famous designer."

Submission + - Philip K Dick's "The Man in the High Castle" to be produced by Ridley Scott 1

hawkinspeter writes: Amazon has given the green light to produce the Hugo award-winning "The Man in the High Castle". This is after the four-hour mini-series was rejected by Syfy and afterwards by the BBC.

Philip K Dick's novel takes place in an alternate universe where the Axis Powers won the Second World War. It's one of his most successful works, probably due to him actually spending the time to do some editing on it (most of his fiction was produced rapidly in order to get some money). Ridley Scott has previously adapted PKD's "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep" as the film "Blade Runner", so it will be interesting to see how close he keeps to the source material this time.

This news has been picked up by a few sites: International Business Times; The Register and Deadline.

So, are any PKD fans excited about this and is this story already Godwinned?

Submission + - Gaza's Only Power Plant Knocked Offline

necro81 writes: Gaza's only power plant (see this profile at IEEE Spectrum — duct tape and bailing wire not included) has been knocked offline following an Israeli strike. Reports vary, but it appears that Israeli tank shells caused a fuel bunker at the plant to explode. Gaza, already short on electricity despite imports from Israel and Egpyt, now faces widening blackouts.

Submission + - Privacy Groups Fight Facebook's Plan To Track You Off Facebook (itworld.com)

jfruh writes: When Facebook launched social plugins that could be installed on third party websites, it promised the information those plugins gathered would not be used to target ads. But now the company has reversed course, announcing plans to track users across multiple websites and use their browsing history to target ads, just as Google does. Privacy groups are gearing up to try to stop them.

Submission + - China Conducts 3rd Anti-Satellite Missile Test

An anonymous reader writes: The Diplomat reports that the U.S. is accusing China of secretly conducting an anti-satellite (ASAT) missile test last week.

China originally claimed that it had conducted a ballistic missile defense test but the State Department says it was actually a non-destructive ASAT missile test. Both use hit-to-kill technologies but China has previously differentiated between them. Washington also called on Beijing to refrain from further tests.

Submission + - Police placing anti-piracy warning ads on illegal sites 1

mrspoonsi writes: The City of London police has started placing banner advertisements on websites believed to be offering pirated content illegally. The messages, which will appear instead of paid-for ads, will ask users to close their web browsers. The move comes as part of a continuing effort to stop piracy sites from earning money through advertising. Police said the ads would make it harder for piracy site owners to make their pages look authentic. "When adverts from well known brands appear on illegal websites, they lend them a look of legitimacy and inadvertently fool consumers into thinking the site is authentic," said Detective Chief Inspector Andy Fyfe from the City of London Police Intellectual Property Crime Unit (Pipcu). "This new initiative is another step forward for the unit in tackling IP crime and disrupting criminal profits. "Copyright infringing websites are making huge sums of money though advert placement, therefore disrupting advertising on these sites is crucial and this is why it is an integral part of Operation Creative."

Submission + - US Department of Homeland Security Providing Online Open Source Code Testing (zdnet.com) 1

cold fjord writes: ZDNet reports, "At OSCon, The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) ... quietly announced that they're now offering a service for checking out your open-source code for security holes and bugs: the Software Assurance Marketplace (SWAMP). ... Patrick Beyer, SWAMP's Project Manager at Morgridge Institute for Research, the project's prime contractor, explained, "With open source's popularity, more and more government branches are using open-source code. Some are grabbing code from here, there, and everywhere." Understandably, "there's more and more concern about the safety and quality of this code. We're the one place you can go to check into the code" ... funded by a $23.4 million grant from the Department of Homeland Security Science & Technology Directorate (DHS S&T), SWAMP is designed by researchers from the Morgridge Institute, the University of Illinois-Champaign/Urbana, Indiana University, and the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Each brings broad experience in software assurance, security, open source software development, national distributed facilities and identity management to the project. ... SWAMP opened its services to the community in February of 2014 offering five open-source static analysis tools that analyze source code for possible security defects without having to execute the program. ... In addition, SWAMP hosts almost 400 open source software packages to enable tool developers to add enhancements in both the precision and scope of their tools. On top of that the SWAMP provides developers with software packages from the National Institute for Standards and Technology's (NIST) Juliet Test Suite."

Comment Rule of law (Score 1) 58

I've been saying for years, leftists generally hate the rule of law. They just do. The rule of law means they are restrained from doing what they think is best. Therefore, they hate it. There is infinite evidence of this. They openly question whether we should follow the law at every turn, from the top (Justice Breyer and President Obama) to the bottom (pretty much every "occupy" protestor).

We actually had a majority of the federal legislature decry a Supreme Court decision that merely said -- in reference to Lily Ledbetter -- that you cannot punish a company under the law, unless it actually breaks the law. Not to mention the case that said the federal legislature cannot restrict political speech by a person or group of persons, just because they are organized a certain way under the law, that also got massive opposition from liberals.

Time and again, the left just demonstrates a very clear and palpable hatred for the rule of law. They would have us ruled by enlightened people who would be free to make up rules as they went along.

Impeachment is a stupid idea. It will likely give the country little benefit to shave a mere year or so off his presidency, and generate massive animosity that will increase the liklihood of another law-hater being elected.

Comment Re:It's worse than that, it's physics, Jim (Score 1) 49

I think you're missing my point.

The article I linked to said Hitler was bad, but at least he meant well, unlike that evil Bush.

I was being mocking, parodying leftist idiocy that will mitigate -- at least, by comparison -- the most dishonorable acts if we can pretend that they were done with noble intent.

Privacy

Ask Slashdot: Preparing an Android Tablet For Resale? 113

UrsaMajor987 (3604759) writes I have a Asus Transformer tablet that I dropped on the floor. There is no obvious sign of damage but It will no longer boot. Good excuse to get a newer model. I intend to sell it for parts (it comes with an undamaged keyboard) or maybe just toss it. I want to remove all my personal data. I removed the flash memory card but what about the other storage? I know how to wipe a hard drive, but how do you wipe a tablet? If you were feeling especially paranoid, but wanted to keep the hardware intact for the next user, what would you do?

Submission + - On Learning to Think Like A Programmer

danspalding writes: I'm an adult educator who's posted here before, about my book "How to Teach Adults". Now I'm learning to code to (hopefully) make quality adult ed available to more people around the world. And it's been hard. But I recently used my adult learning expertise to make a breakthrough in my ability to think like a programmer. So what does Slashdot think? What does thinking like a programmer mean to you — and how did you learn to do so?

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