Comment kml files? (Score 4, Funny) 271
This year, for the first time since its inception, Norad is not making a simple
NORAD's been putting out
Comment Re:They should use clang instead of GCC (Score 1) 205
Apple maintains their own gcc fork which supports blocks/closures.
The probability that Apple migrates away from gcc is approaching 1 at great speed.
Comment Re:Reading comprehension (Score 1) 485
There is a big difference between seeing drugs on the back seat, or a dead body inside the car, and reporting that, and reporting on drugs found under the carpet in the trunk or in the glovebox if the car was brought in for an oil change...
The mechanic would have had no reasonable need to have searched those two areas to perform the job he was hired to do. Same with a PC tech, if someone brings in a PC to have a CD-ROM drive replaced, there is absolutely NO REASON for the tech to need to search the browser cache or the images directory...
The problem is, because there are different standards of service, what you you've purposed a construction that's beyond what the law and judges can apply equally. Each machanic does different things to the vehicals they're working on and because of that there would be different expectations as to what is private and what is not. A forgotten bag of weed under the seat? Oh, as part of your oil change service, we vacuum the inside carpet. Found a key of coke under the spare? They may have been inspecting it to see if it was still ok; they wouldn't want you to be surprised by a rotten spare on the side of the highway.
Shift this idea to computers. The cache directories are off limits, how about folders on the desktop named DONT_LOOK_HERE? The content of the system desktop backgrounds directory? Which parts of the system are private and which aren't, and how to you apply this equally? This is why you either abandon your expectation of privacy or you don't. If you turn your property over to a third party, you have abandoned any expectation you have in relation to that property.
As for not doing a filesystem search during a cdrom install, if I'm a pc tech, I'm going to run the standard diagnostics on each and every machine that enters my shop for two reasons. First, 90% of the machines I'm going to see are infected with something and I can't ethically allow that machine to leave the store in that state. Second, of that box has a ram problem, I want to know about it before I put a screwdriver to the case. It's not unreasonable to assume that a diagnostic scan is going to alert to a pile of suspiciously named image files in an obscure directory.
Using 1 Gaming Computer For 2 People? 424
True Vox writes "My fiance and I have recently taken interest in City of Heroes (she's currently got a character on my account). She's got a cute little netbook, but nothing nearly powerful enough for a 5-year-old MMORPG, let alone if we take interest in Champions Online! I am reticent to buy a new gaming computer simply for what amounts to a passing phase. Has anyone had any experience using one computer to control two monitors with two sets of input devices (e.g. two keyboards and two mice, or one keyboard, one mouse, and a 360 gamepad, perhaps)? I have seen one solution that might work, but not much information from users that I can find. In short, does anyone have any experience with setups like this?"
Wikipedia Community Vote On License Migration 95
mlinksva writes "A Wikipedia community vote is now underway on migrating to Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike as the main content license for Wikimedia Foundation projects. This would remove a legal barrier to reusing Wikipedia content (now under the Free Documentation License, intended for narrow use with software documentation, because Wikipedia started before CC existed) in other free culture projects and vice versa."
Sun's Phipps Slams App Engine's Java Support 186
narramissic writes "Sun Microsystems' chief open source officer, Simon Phipps, said in an April 11 blog post that Google committed a major transgression by only including support for a subset of Java classes in its App Engine development platform. 'Whether you agree with Sun policing it or not, Java compatibility has served us all very well for over a decade,' Phipps wrote. 'That includes being sure as a developer that all core classes are present on all platforms. Creating subsets of the core classes in the Java platform was forbidden for a really good reason, and it's wanton and irresponsible to casually flaunt the rules.' Phipps characterized his remarks as non-official, saying: 'This isn't something I could comment on on Sun's behalf. My personal comments come purely from my long association with Java topics.'"
Comment Re:No it wouldn't (Score 5, Insightful) 1127
The only thing they will respond to is a mass boycott. And considering this is Windows, which is pretty much locked into most large scale networks as it is, not to mention end users' homes, good luck.
It seems to have worked with Vista.
If Microsoft's largest customers (IT departments) reject this version of windows over it's anti-piracy measures just like they rejected last version of windows over it's performance issues, you'll get your wish.
Bittorrent To Cause Internet Meltdown 872
Gimble writes "Richard Bennett has an article at the Register claiming that a recent uTorrent decision to use UDP for file transfers to avoid ISP 'traffic management' restrictions will cause a meltdown of the internet reducing everybody's bandwidth to a quarter of their current value. Other folks have also expressed concern that this may not be the best thing for the internet."
TiVo PC Could Be a Game-Changer 191
An anonymous reader sends in an article by Andrew Keen (author of "The Cult of the Amateur") about TiVo's new TiVo PC, which he believes could seal the fate of advertising on online videos. Just as TiVo let viewers zap commercials on broadcast TV, TiVo PC — a TV tuner that can be plugged into a PC — will let Net viewers of the likes of Hulu.com and ABC.com skip commercials in the nascent medium of online video.
Keen believes that TiVo's business model involves (besides selling lots of $199 boxes) mining and selling the far richer stream of user behavioral data that TiVo PC will enable.
Comment Re:Vote with a bullet. (Score 1) 940
Ummmmmm
Funny, I've not had a day's worth of law school, but it's rare that I find a bill, law, legal brief or opinion that I don't understand at least at some level. Access to any of the case references often helps quite a bit. In other words, it's not anything more than reading comprehension just like we've all been doing since the 1st grade.
Legal documents are written in thick, complex language for a reason. The reason is to make it possible for judges to later infer legislative intent when interpreting laws later. Law written in loose language often cause us all problems later. See Jaynes v. Commonwealth of Virginia as a classic example; in that case the Virginia Legislature passed a law that forbid "false" routing information on email as opposed to "fraudulent" routing information. The difference in the two terms led the judge to conclude that the use of false information was akin to hiding one's identity as opposed to the real goal of shifting the blame onto an innocent third party.
There is a reason they get well paid... it takes forever to learn how to wade through the self made bullshit.
Well, our legal system is built upon 1000 years of case law, logic and legislation. As most lawyers will tell you, law school is less about learning the law than it is about learning logic of how law is constructed and how to find references (case law) to support your theory of a case.
Donald Knuth Rips On Unit Tests and More 567
eldavojohn writes "You may be familiar with Donald Knuth from his famous Art of Computer Programming books but he's also the father of TeX and, arguably, one of the founders of open source. There's an interesting interview where he says a lot of stuff I wouldn't have predicted. One of the first surprises to me was that he didn't seem to be a huge proponent of unit tests. I use JUnit to test parts of my projects maybe 200 times a day but Knuth calls that kind of practice a 'waste of time' and claims 'nothing needs to be "mocked up."' He also states that methods to write software to take advantage of parallel programming hardware (like multi-core systems that we've discussed) are too difficult for him to tackle due to ever-changing hardware. He even goes so far as to vent about his unhappiness toward chipmakers for forcing us into the multicore realm. He pitches his idea of 'literate programming' which I must admit I've never heard of but find it intriguing. At the end, he even remarks on his adage that young people shouldn't do things just because they're trendy. Whether you love him or hate him, he sure has some interesting/flame-bait things to say."
Acid3 Race In Full Swing, Opera Overtakes Safari 261
enemi writes "Just a few days after Safari released version 3.1, Opera employee David Storey writes on his blog that they've overtaken Apple's browser in the Acid3 test. In the race to be the first to reach the reference rendering, Opera's software leads now with 98%, closely following by Safari with 96% and Firefox 3 beta 4 with 71%. He also noted the implemented features will not make a public appearance in the following weeks, because they are getting close to releasing Opera 9.5. That version has been under public testing since September and the new CSS3 color modes and font rendering features might further delay this. They will probably show the score in a preview build soon and wait for a post 9.5 stable build to release the new features to the public." Update: 03/26 21:21 GMT by Z : Opera is now at 100%, apparently, with Safari close behind at 98%.
Update: 03/27 by J : Public build r31356 of WebKit (Safari's rendering engine) is at 100%.
First Details of Windows 7 Emerge 615
Some small but significant details of the next major release of Windows have emerged via a presentation at the University of Illinois by Microsoft engineer Eric Traut. His presentation focuses on an internal project called "MinWin," designed to optimize the Windows kernel to a minimum footprint, and for which will be the basis for the Windows 7 kernel.
Submission + - Server Company Hacked - 6000 Clients Data At Stake (layeredtech.com)
tsj5j writes: "On the evening of 9/17/2007, LayeredTech's support system was infiltrated. Upon closer inspection, LayeredTech determined that up to 5000 to 6000 clients could potentially be affected. Till date, LayeredTech has still not publicly confirmed the amount of data retrieved by the hackers. In fact, they have been very publicly unclear about the amount of damage done. LayeredTech is now cautioning all of it's clients to change passwords. Potential data compromised includes : Root/WHM/etc. passwords, Credit Card information, Helpdesk passwords, and any other private information exchanged via the support system. Personally identifiable information as well as email addresses may have been compromised as well. This may cause a blow to LayeredTech's reputation, who has always been a major player in the Dedicated Hosting industry.
"The Layered Technologies support database was a target of malicious activity on the evening of 9/17/2007 that may have involved the illegal downloading of information such as names, addresses, phone numbers, email addresses and server login details for 5 to 6,000 of our clients. Layered Technologies responded immediately to this specific incident by conducting a comprehensive security audit of internal processes and procedures.
Skype Linux Reads Password and Firefox Profile 335
mrcgran writes "Users of Skype for Linux have just found out that it reads the files /etc/passwd, firefox profile, plugins, addons, etc, and many other unnecessary files in /etc. This fact was originally discovered by using AppArmor, but others have confirmed this fact using strace on versions 1.4.0.94 and 1.4.0.99. What is going on? This probably shows how important it is to use AppArmor in any closed-source application in Linux to restrict any undue access to your files."
