Catch up on stories from the past week (and beyond) at the Slashdot story archive

 



Forgot your password?
typodupeerror
×

Comment Re:And it'll keep happening, again and again... (Score 1) 184


I agree that systems of such sensitive nature need to be isolated but the problem is always how do you do this?
You could take away so much functionality that you are impeding productivity.

People bring their own devices, phones are powerful enough to use for many more tasks these days, productivity will not go up. That's a myth.

If the system in question was on a separate infrastructure, sophisticated and determined attackers will simply infiltrate the new system. Sure, it's an added layer of complexity and thus a bit more secure.

The real problem is not prevention, it's detection. I can walk into a bank today and leave with a few thousands of dollars. The real questions is, how do I do that undetected? without being caught later?

Online attacks are unfortunately very easy to mask, the attackers themselves are easily hidden and very hard to catch. IF they knew there's a good chance they are caught later, despite being able to EASILY pull off their intended crime then they'd be an effective deterrent.

Detection, deterrent. Not more doors & locks.

Comment What really happened... (Score 1) 183


Naturally Gary was heavily engrossed with play testing and had a hardcore group of gamers. Unfortunately over time the group developed tension and animosity. Specifically, the relationship between Gary and the game referee became very difficult...

The Demented Mofo that sat all day in his mom's basement and thought up new ways to kill Gygax's character. This is because Gary had really good rolls throughout his game-play that foiled the DM's plans and made his encounters look too easy.
Even when it came to treasure Gary's rolls were amazing and he got so many great magical items that he was practically invincible. He could escape easily or overcome any obstacle and was critically close to dual class level 20 with his arsenal of wands, rings, magic swords and powerful spell scrolls.
He was practically unstoppable and was prone to maniacal laughter when he was obviously spoiling the adventure the DM spent a lot of money on purchasing.

Just after work that day they all got together. The group were downing fizzy drinks and were already making plans to order in pizza. The DM hurridly rolled encounters behind the mystic DM screen and said things like "Oh that's bad" & "you guys are screwed" as he giggled and suggested the dice roll was somehow 3 on the D6, 5 on the D20 and 73 on the D100 (none of which was actually seen as the screen hid the results) which meant 17 angry red dragons with 9 magically dominated beholders of at least 18HD each came to take Gary's character to Tiamat on the 1st plane of hell to do battle until death.

Later that day it was announced that Gary's character was fatally wounded after failing a saving throw vs death with a -23 modifier (there were a lot of dragon breath weapons) and shortly after being incinerated, electrocuted, frozen and disintegrated he passed away.
Naturally Gary broke into tears and protested against the unfair odds and accused the DM of setting him up. The DM pulled out the Dungeon Master's Guide and quoted irrelevant bits of text and then laughed maniacally as he slammed the book down, ripped Gary's character sheet to shreds and threw it around like cheap confetti.
It all went downhill from there as Gary sank into depression, alcoholism and debauchery.

Can we observe 1 minute of rolling saving throws on the D20 for Gary? -TA

Comment Big talk from a politician (Score 1) 135


Naturally for a person that is not on average income it's difficult to understand proportion.

Like a punishment (if found guilty) proportional to the crime (if proven as such).

Every so often someone calls for a tougher stance on copyright infringement. How about a more reasonable stance on copyright in general?
Maybe all this Gestapo copyright notions should be canned and a more enlightened, modern system be created?

I agree with some other posters, why not make false copyright complaints accountable? -You know for making lies available for download.

Comment Bloody nonsense (Score 1) 265


At the end of the day there is a SHORTAGE of qualified IT professionals. We need all the qualified tech workers we can get our hands on.

Big companies like FB, Microsoft, Google etc are SCARED SHITLESS from getting their image ruined by a big public discrimination lawsuit. You know why? because the maximum amount of compensation is UNLIMITED. That means it takes one badly handled discharge or some bigoted idiot to lose millions.

Why do you think they keep hammering their equality statements etc? A: Reputation, B: Fear of lawsuits

What about Amish people? how many Amish does FB employ? why are there no more Amish people in google? What about Sikhs in Microsoft?

Honestly, this is not tech news, this is garbage.

Comment Excellent idea (Score 2) 54


Let's face it, they are probably already doing most of what they propose to legislate, might as well make it official.

I guess it's still better than secret courts that approve actions that no one can oppose because that too is a secret.

It works really well for the US, why not for our good friends down under?

Comment Old business models (Score 1) 417


Innovate or die.

As usual the established trade is resisting any changes to the model. Why don't they take this moment & implement their own competing system & instead of owning cabs own an app?

But but but this is our lively-hood they tell you, think of the children! -no one said driving a car & knowing London's roads will land you a lifetime job.

We know this all too well, they will used their position and established financial base to throw an army of litigation at it and maybe they'll shut the app down but this is the beginning of the end because it's an eventuality.

So many people drive a 4 seat, 5 passenger vehicle with only themselves or perhaps another person with them. Why not use that?

Comment Go ahead and knock it (Score 2) 61


You see, diamonds are not really worth anything, neither are black pearls...but once people started marketing those with other goods that had an established perceived value guess what happened?

Sure, cryptocurrency is not physical so cannot have a smell but if this fragrance is any good it ADDS to the perceived value of bitcoin.

I've seen and heard a lot of criticism of bitcoin for all sorts of reasons but at the end of the day we did once move from bartering apples for goat to coins to the gold standard to currency (Which IS virtual money) & we will move to an all digital economy. Maybe that will be bitcoin.

Comment A step in the right direction (Score 4, Interesting) 152


Perhaps an unpopular opinion but I think this is overall a good thing. It will require more discipline from police and help reduce the number of unjustified police action.

As the same time this will serve to catch criminals and is a precursor to automatic face recognition (like they have with car number plates)

Just remember the next time you see police, you're on camera.

Comment Religion and evolution (Score 4, Interesting) 431


I find it amusing that through the decades and centuries some fundamentalists, religious groups etc simply do everything they can no to not change.

Resisting change in new and interesting ways. They come up with new counter arguments, new legislation proposals, new interpretations of the same old texts.

That very same behaviour is evolutionary in nature. We need no other explanation to demonstrate that evolution as a fact is quite well grounded in fact.Sure there are gaps in our ability to explain everything but every time we have stepped forward and discovered something, solved what was thought to be impossible etc the arguments against evolution then evolved with the discovery. Much like the "Irreducibly complex" malarkey.

So some sect/faction/aspect/cult of Judaism or some other belief want X removed or have removed it from their school. Good. Evolution at work, they are one step closer to removing themselves from the gene pool. While some religious groups may have 11 - 15 kids per family religion overall is in decline.

We can argue these points on slashdot, religious people can counter argue and millions will read and judge for themselves -all very evolved.

Comment Layers (Score 2) 109


You want security at the expense of usability? build layers!

A single system can be hacked, a single OS has bugs, a single app has backdoors, a single protocol has explots etc etc

Use LESS popular services in combination with layers of security. For instance; You can use the Tor Network to SSH into a proxy to tunnel chat with pidgin & OTR plugin. If you're even more paranoid assume your OS is already hacked, use some exotic image like Qubes, create temporary destructible VMs to carry information...there are options and many of them make basic functionality a nightmare.

If you really care that much about having your idle chitchat being "secure" you can always assume everything is being listened to. Good old fashion message encryption is probably much better than a special app.

I am quite happy there's more focus on security but let's be serious here, Tor is a target for snoops. they will find a way in because they already proved they can.

Comment Re:Why are network providers allowing FORGED packe (Score 1) 158


Forgive me if I'm wrong but given large volumes of traffic that are sold at the lowest rate, providers are not about to add hassle and overhead to their filtering...

So it's a "business decision" really. After all, is there anything to penalize network providers from not adding filters?

Personally I think this should really be in everyone's best interest given the implications of inaction, but how to start the ball rolling?

Comment The kind that teaches (Score 3, Interesting) 361


I for one will be happy to pay for in-depth, impartial analysis that takes complex matters and explains them to me simply.

There are enough people out there interested in different things, there's a market there, somewhere. Regardless of that I'm sure most people are sick and tired of tabloids, newspapers with a political agendas and media moguls pushing their views.

I'll pay if you empower me with no BS knowledge and thus a real chance of understanding. Ask me, the potential buyer what I care about, what I'd like to know about and what I do not care for.

Information should be free, instead of asking how you can charge for information maybe you should consider how to monetize transferring free information? wait a moment that's call an ISP. Tax the ISP? -do you see where this is going?

So far we've all been reading what we like for free on the internet, what will your pay service do better? can you demonstrate you're giving me, the reader better value over "free!"? -if you cannot answer that question you should not bother with a pay wall. If you tax at the ISP level and they transfer costs to the customers then customer will move.

So really, what information is not easily accessible to the masses, without passes and logins? high quality research, specialist and niche information. Essentially the sort that has a very low readership and cannot fund itself on ad revenues. Someone will pay for that.

Comment Now hear this (Score 1) 127


Pirate bay shows blockades have no effect. After all, what's a blockade that cannot block anything?

They can take it down, another one will come back. Since the days of the Lycos MP3 search engine file sharing has only increased...it's practically a miracle that the RIAA & MPAA have survived all those lost billions of dollars. After all they are constantly losing money to so called "piracy".

http://mafiaa.org/

Slashdot Top Deals

Neutrinos have bad breadth.

Working...