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Submission + - Daniel Ellsberg criticizes Kerry for calling Snowden a coward and traitor (theguardian.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Daniel Ellsberg, the former Defence Department staff who leaked the Vietnam War Pentagon Papers to the New York Times has some harsh criticism of Kerry's recent call for Snowden to come back to USA and "man up".

"Nothing excuses Kerry's slanderous and despicable characterisations of a young man who, in my opinion, has done more than anyone in or out of government in this century to demonstrate his patriotism, moral courage and loyalty to the oath of office the three of us swore: to support and defend the Constitution of the United States," he concludes.

Submission + - Long but brilliant explanation of why Snowden did right 1

Submitted by Bruce66423
Bruce66423 writes: http://www.theguardian.com/tec...
Gives a very full exposition of the mess that we are in and the need for real change. An interesting revelation — at least for me — Obama had indicated his intention to filibuster the law that protected telecoms from the consequences of their failure to resist NSA snooping. Then suddenly he voted in favour, after he was all but the Democratic candidate for President. The only question — how did they get to him...

Submission + - Is your textbook studying you? (ruwenzori.net)

Submitted by drkim
drkim writes: Shades of "Snow Crash"?

A number of schools have started using a program called CourseSmart, which uses e-book analytics to alert teachers if their students are studying the night before tests, rather than taking a long-haul approach to learning.

In addition to test scores, the CourseSmart algorithm assigns each student an “engagement index” which can determine not just if a student is studying, but also if they’re studying properly.

(BTW: We are holding a 'In Soviet Russia....' reference contest on this one, too.)

Submission + - AMD Preparing To Give Intel A Run For Its Money (itworld.com) 1

Submitted by jfruh
jfruh writes: AMD has never been able to match Intel for profits or scale, but a decade ago it was in front on innovation — the first to 1GHz, the first to 64-bit, the first to dual core. A lack of capital has kept the company barely holding on with cheap mid-range chips since; but now AMD is flush with cash from its profitable business with gaming consoles, and is preparing an ambitious new architecture for 2016, one that's distinct from the x86/ARM hybrid already announced.

Submission + - Ask Slashdot: Practical alternatives to systemd?

Submitted by systemDead
systemDead writes: I looked mostly with disinterest at Debian's decision last February to switch to systemd as the default init system for their future operating system releases. The Debian GNU/Linux distribution is, after all, famous for allowing users greater freedom to choose what system components they want to install. This appeared to be the case with the init system, given the presence of packages such as sysvinit-core, upstart, and even openrc as alternatives to systemd.

Unfortunately, while still theoretically possible, installing an alternative init system means doing without a number of useful, even essential system programs. By design, systemd appears to be a full-blown everything-including-the-kitchen-sink solution to the relatively simple problem of starting up a Unix-like system. Systemd, for example, is a hard-coded dependency for installing Network Manager, probably the most user-friendly way for a desktop Linux system to connect to a wireless or wired network. Just this week, I woke up to find out that systemd had become a dependency for running PolicyKit, the suite of programs responsible for user privileges and permissions in a typical Linux desktop.

I was able to replace Network Manager with connman, a lightweight program originally developed for mobile devices. But with systemd infecting even the PolicyKit framework, I find myself faced with a dilemma. Should I just let systemd take over my entire system, or should I retreat to my old terminal-based computing in the hope that the horde of the systemDead don't take over the Linux kernel itself?

What are your plans for working with or working around systemd? Are there any mainstream GNU/Linux distros that haven't adopted and have no plans of migrating to systemd? Or is migrating to one of the bigger BSD systems the better and more future-proof solution?

Submission + - A call for rollbacks to previous versions of software (networkworld.com)

Submitted by colinneagle
colinneagle writes: In a blog post, Andy Patrizio laments the trend — made more common in the mobile world — of companies pushing software updates ahead without the ability to roll-back to previous versions in the event that the user simply doesn't like it. iOS 7.1, for example, has reportedly been killing some users' battery power, and users of the iTunes library app TuneUp will remember how the much-maligned version 3.0 effectively killed the company behind it (new owners have since taken over TuneUp and plans to bring back the older version).

The ability to undo a problematic install should be mandatory, but in too many instances it is not. That's because software developers are always operating under the assumption that the latest version is the greatest version, when it may not be. This is especially true in the smartphone and tablet world. There is no rollback to be had for anything in the iOS and Android worlds.

Until the day comes when software developers start releasing perfectly functioning, error-free code, we need the ability to go backwards with all software.

Submission + - Can an Old Programmer Learn New Tricks? (elso9.com)

Submitted by alfalakii
alfalakii writes: An anonymous reader writes "I have been programming in some fashion, for the last 18 years. I got my first job programming 15 years ago and have advanced my career programming, leading programmers and bringing my technical skill sets into operations and other areas of the business where problems can be solved with logical solutions. I learned to program on the Internet in the 90s.. scouring information where ever I could and reading the code others wrote. I learned to program in a very simple fashion, write a script and work your way to the desired outcome in a straight forward logical way. If I needed to save or reuse code, I created include files with functions. I could program my way through any problem, with limited bugs, but I never learned to use a framework or write modular, DRY code. Flash forward to today, there are hundreds of frameworks and thousands of online tutorials, but I just can't seem to take the tutorials and grasp the concepts and utilize them in a practical manner. Am I just too old and too set in my ways to learn something new? Does anyone have any recommendations for tutorials or books that could help a 'hacker' like me? Also, I originally learned to program in Perl, but moved onto C and eventually PHP and Python."

Submission + - One of the Most Alarming Internet Proposals I've Ever Seen (vortex.com)

Submitted by Lauren Weinstein
Lauren Weinstein writes: You'd think that with so many concerns these days about whether the likes of AT&T, Verizon, and other telecom companies can be trusted not to turn our data over to third parties whom we haven't authorized, that a plan to formalize a mechanism for ISP and other "man-in-the-middle" snooping would be laughed off the Net.

But apparently the authors of IETF (Internet Engineering Task Force) Internet-Draft "Explicit Trusted Proxy in HTTP/2.0" (14 Feb 2014) haven't gotten the message.

What they propose for the new HTTP/2.0 protocol is nothing short of officially sanctioned snooping.

Submission + - U.S. Plunges To 46th In World Press Freedom Index... Below Romania (rsf.org) 1

Submitted by schwit1
schwit1 writes: As one might expect, the economic decline of a nation into rule by a handful of corrupt oligarchs will have many other negative repercussions. One of these is a loss of civil rights and freedoms that many of us have taken for granted. Reporters Without Borders puts out their Press Freedom Index every year, and the 2014 ranking came out today. It was not a good showing for the USA. Specifically, the U.S. registered one of the steepest falls of all nations, down 13 slots to the #46 position, just above Haiti and just below Romania.

Submission + - What "news for nerds" sites should I use? 8

Submitted by stderr_dk
stderr_dk writes: I used to visit Slashdot quite often, but if Dice Holdings decide to switch the interface to what is currently known as "Beta", I'll have to find another site for my "stuff that matters"-fix.

So, Slashdot, what sites can you recommend for a "maybe-ex" /. user?

Submission + - New Precambrian Fossil Bed Found (www.cbc.ca)

Submitted by jfbilodeau
jfbilodeau writes: Scientists recently located a new fossil site in B.C. and west of Calgary that is already yielding major new discoveries about early animal evolution. The Marble Canyon fossil beds were located in 2012 by a team of Canadian, U.S. and Swedish researchers in Kootenay National Park, about 40 kilometres from the 505-million-year-old Burgess Shale in Yoho National Park, which is considered one of the most important fossil fields in the world.

Submission + - Oldest Known Star in the Universe Discovered (gizmag.com)

Submitted by Zothecula
Zothecula writes: A team of astronomers at The Australian National University (ANU) working on a five-year project to produce the first comprehensive digital survey of the southern sky has discovered the oldest known star in the Universe. Just a 6,000 light year astronomical hop, skip and jump from Earth, the ancient star formed shortly after the Big Bang 13.7 billion years ago.

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