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Comment Slashdot Takes Next Step After "Anonymous Coward" (Score 3, Insightful) 187

Slashdot, obviously, has to innovate in order to stay current. Thus, they are now taking the next step after "Anonymous Cowards". The new "Identified Troll" feature will include interviews of people who have prostituted their personal credibility to some company's calculated disinformation campaign.

Comment Re:WTF? (Score 1) 265

There seems to be an easy end-route around Gmail's filters that I get hit with. Someone sends me spam from "royalwatches[nn]@gmail.com" and has done for years now. Every time Gmail blocks royalwatches19@gmail.com, they start sending out spam from royalwatches20@gmail.com. And so on. And on. And on.

I don't know whether the reserved royalwatches up to 100 or 1000 or 1,000,000 or beyond, but if they have, it looks like Gmail is never going to figure out that they're all bloody spam before the heat death of the universe kicks in.

Comment How not to write a screenplay! (Score 2) 238

If the Terminator comes from the future, let's be realistic! He'll show up with lots of bloatware. Not only will ke kill you, he'd go through your social media accounts to track down and kill everyone on Facebook that you ever went to high school with. He'd also check your mail, handle phone calls, self-install software updates from the future, keep track of your bank account, play second-person-shooter video games, autoplay video advertisements, and sound cool alarm tones to remind you of your impending appointment with death.

Submission + - Details of iOS and Android Device Encryption

swillden writes: There's been a lot of discussion of what, exactly, is meant by the Apple announcement about iOS8 device encryption, and the subsequent announcement by Google that Android L will enable encryption by default. Two security researchers tackled these questions in blog posts:

Matthew Green tackled iOS encryption, concluding that at bottom the change really boils down to applying the existing iOS encryption methods to more data. He also reviews the iOS approach, which uses Apple's "Secure Enclave" chip as the basis for the encryption and guesses at how it is that Apple can say it's unable to decrypt the devices. He concludes, with some clarification from a commenter, that Apple really can't (unless you use a weak password which can be brute-forced, and even then it's hard).

Nikolay Elenkov looks into the preview release of Android "L". He finds that not only has Google turned encryption on by default, but appears to have incorporated hardware-based security as well, to make it impossible (or at least much more difficult) to perform brute force password searches off-device.
Facebook

Facebook Ready To Get Into Healthcare 99

New submitter Ted_Margaris_Chicago sends a report from Reuters indicating Facebook will be adding healthcare features to their social network. The company is exploring creating online "support communities" that would connect Facebook users suffering from various ailments. A small team is also considering new "preventative care" applications that would help people improve their lifestyles. In recent months, the sources said, the social networking giant has been holding meetings with medical industry experts and entrepreneurs, and is setting up a research and development unit to test new health apps. Facebook is still in the idea-gathering stage, the people said. The article notes two reasons in particular that spurred Facebook to this course of action. First, the day that Facebook let people share their organ donor status, the U.S. saw a 21-fold increase in people registering to be organ donors. Second, they noticed users with chronic conditions had a tendency to search Facebook for advice.

Comment Re:This is what happens.... (Score 1) 274

All of our criminal code in the US with regards to sex crimes needs to be scrapped and rewritten by people from another planet who haven't been influenced by religion and/or tradition.

You should think that through a little more. Extraterrestrials might breed like spiders where the males get cannibalized after mating. Can you imagine "To Catch a Predator" on another planet?

CHRIS HANSEN: Tonight, we're waiting for NudeSpiderMan as he crawls up... he thinks he's just here for sex. Little does he know that he's about to get trapped in our web.
NudeSpiderMan: Hi, are you "Charolette"?
DECOY: Wow, you look cute! Hold on while I finish spinning this orb around the lunch I just caught for us!
NudeSpiderMan: Sure babe, take your time...
CHRIS HANSEN: Hi! How are you doin'?
NudeSpiderMan: Oh no! All the way here I wanted to turn around! I knew I was being stupid!
CHRIS HANSEN: well, NudeSpiderMan, I don't understand. You knew she was going to rip your head off, but you came here anyway...?
NudeSpiderMan: Yeah, yeah... sigh... I knew I was stupid... I kept telling myself to turn around... Now I'm losing everything!
DECOY: Oooh, yeah! SWIPE *munch* *munch*
NudeSpiderMan: Chris? Chris? Are you OK? Oh no... she went for him instead... I'm such a loser!
DECOY: You know, I might want seconds!
NudeSpiderMan: Well babe, I still want to stick my head in your mouth, even if I'm not your first...

Technology

Robotic Taster Will Judge 'Real Thai Food' 103

HughPickens.com (3830033) writes The NYT reports that Thailand's former prime minister, Yingluck Shinawatra repeatedly encountered a distressing problem while traveling the world: bad Thai food. Too often, she found, the meals she sampled at Thai restaurants abroad were unworthy of the name, too bland to be called genuine Thai cooking. The problem bothered her enough to raise it at a cabinet meeting. Even though her political party has since been thrown out of office, in a May military coup, the Thai government is unveiling its project to standardize the art of Thai food using a robot. The government-financed Thai Delicious Committee, which oversaw the development of the machine, describes it as "an intelligent robot that measures smell and taste in food ingredients through sensor technology in order to measure taste like a food critic." Thailand's National Innovation Agency has spent about $100,000 to develop the e-delicious machine. The e-delicious machine has 10 sensors that measure smell and taste, generating a unique fingerprint (signature) for each sample of food that passes its digital maw. Generally with electronic tasting, there are electronic sensors that work just like the taste buds on your tongue, measuring the quantity of various taste-giving compounds, acidity, etc. While these electronic sensors can't actually tell you how something tastes — that's a very subjective, human thing — they are very good at comparing two foods scientifically. Meanwhile at a tiny food stall along one of Bangkok's traffic-clogged boulevards, Thaweekiat Nimmalairatana, questioned the necessity of a robatic taster. "I use my tongue to test if it's delicious or not," said Nimmalairatana. "I think the government should consider using a human to gauge authenticity."

Comment Re:BASIC vs. Z80 assembly language (Score 1) 167

I dimly recall that method too but IIRC the array couldn't be saved to tape- you needed POKE statements underneath the DIM. There was also another method involving adjusting the SP register to lower the top of the stack and claiming a few kilobytes of RAM for whatever purpose- but that approach had the same problem with not getting saved to tape.

Comment Re:BASIC vs. Z80 assembly language (Score 1) 167

I remember I had a yellow book that was for kids learning assembler, and it had a cartoon CPU with registers for hands and feet. I can't remember the title- I just pulled the ZX81 out of the closet to look for it, but it isn't in the box anymore. I still have the 16K pack and the awful little ZX Printer that sparked onto rolls of aluminum thermal paper.

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