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Submission + - Valve Offering Free Games To Larger Amount of Developers

Submitted by jones_supa
jones_supa writes: Last year, Valve made it possible for Debian developers to get free subscription to all Valve games. In the dri-devel mailing list, Daniel Stone informs that now the game company is expanding the offer to Mesa developers as well. If you have 25 or more commits to Mesa in the past 5 years, read the post for instructions on how to get VIP access to the Valve catalogue.

Comment Re:Disturbing. (Score 3, Insightful) 106

If you are single, the "correct" answer is mu which means "not applicable."

As in, the question _presupposes_ conditions which are not true. If you are single, you are not married by definition.

Truth is not a mutually exclusive binary state of True / False.

> One can stop before performing the action.

No, one never started

Comment Re:ad blocker? (Score 1) 358

by UnknownSoldier (#49446599) Attached to: Google To Offer Ad-Free YouTube - At a Price

> This is the deal that they offer. If you use AdBlock, you drop your part,

Read what you wrote again.

You keep assuming there is an obligation, namely, an ethical obligation.

You are begging the question.

There is no ethical obligation because there never was an agreement in the first place.

Your ethical claim is meritless.

Submission + - "Let's Encrypt" Project Strives To Make Encryption Simple

Submitted by jones_supa
jones_supa writes: As part of an effort to make encryption a standard component of every application, Linux Foundation has launched its Let's Encrypt project (announcement) along with its intention to provide access to a free certificate management service. Jim Zemlin, executive director for the Linux Foundation, says that the goal for the project is nothing less than universal adoption of encryption to disrupt a multi-billion dollar cracker economy. While there may never be such a thing as perfect security, Zemlin says it's just too easy to steal data that is not encrypted. In its current form, encryption is difficult to implement and a lot of cost and overhead is associated with managing encryption keys. Zemlin claims that the Let's Encrypt project will reduce the effort it takes to encrypt data in an application down to two simple commands. The project is being hosted by the Linux Foundation, but the actual project is being managed by the Internet Security Research Group (ISRG). This work is sponsored by Akamai, Cisco, EFF, Mozilla, IdenTrust, and Automattic, which all are Linux Foundation patrons. Visit Let's Encrypt official website to get involved.

Comment Start of a FAQ for /. (Score 1) 315

by UnknownSoldier (#49443055) Attached to: Ask Slashdot: How To Introduce a 7-Year-Old To Programming?

Comment Re:ad blocker? (Score 1) 358

by UnknownSoldier (#49443011) Attached to: Google To Offer Ad-Free YouTube - At a Price

> YouTube allows you to watch videos in exchange of seeing some advertisements.

First, allows, as in "not required."

> This is the deal that they offer. If you use AdBlock, you drop your part,

Second: You are failing to understand what a contract is. There is no obligation to something that was never agreed upon in the first place.

You keep assuming that a user gave their tacit consent to this behavior. That is a fallacy.

When a user watches a video there is no checkbox to agree to their obnoxious Terms of Service. Ergo, there is no "ethical choice" to be made, because there never was one in the first place.

> you are being unfair towards the other party.

Quick, somebody call the wambulance.

Are you next going to arguing the stupidity of "someone closing their eyes for a youtube ad" is "being "unfair" and unethical" ??

That horse has already left the barn. Closing the barn doors aren't going to work, no matter how hard they try. Trying to force users to watch ads they don't want is only idiotic and damages the YouTube brand. If their business model is broken and archaic they are being unfair to all their shareholders.

When YouTube beings to pay my internet bill for _my bandwidth_ for their shitty ads THEN, maybe, they can talk. Until then, they are just wasting my time AND bandwidth.

Submission + - German teenager gets job offer by trying to use FOI for his exam papers! (theguardian.com)

Submitted by Bruce66423
Bruce66423 writes: "A German schoolboy has taken exam preparation to ingenious new levels by making a freedom of information request to see the questions in his forthcoming Abitur tests, the equivalent of A-levels in the UK." and SATS in the USA.

The media attention from his FoI request has already garnered him an offer of work from another transparency-related organisation, the research website Correctiv.

Submission + - The 'Page 63' Backdoor to Elliptic Curve Cryptography 3

Submitted by CRYPTIS
CRYPTIS writes: The security of Elliptic curve cryptography is facilitated by the perceived 'hard' problem of cracking the Discrete Logarithm Problem (DLP) for any given curve. Historically, for FIPS (Federal Information Processing Standards) compliance it was required that your curves conformed to the FIPS186-2 document located at http://csrc.nist.gov/publicati... . Page 63 of this specifies that the 'a' and 'b' elliptic curve domain parameters should conform to the mathematical requirement of c*b^2 = a^3 (mod p).

Interestingly, back in 1982, A. M. Odlyzko, of AT & T Bell Laboratories, published a document entitled “Discrete logarithms in finite fields and their cryptographic significance” ( http://www.dtc.umn.edu/~odlyzk... ). Page 63 of this document presents a weak form of the DLP, namely a^3 = b^2*c (mod p).

It seems then, that the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), driven in turn by the NSA, have required that compliant curves have this potentially weak form of the DLP built in; merely transposing the layout of the formula in order to obtain what little obfuscation is available with such a short piece of text.

Comment Re:I can offer the same thing for free (Score 1) 358

by UnknownSoldier (#49438287) Attached to: Google To Offer Ad-Free YouTube - At a Price

> The only way they can win is to render the ads into the video itself.

The technical term is "Dynamic (content) Ingestion"

That's what the cable industry does. Want to watch something on demand? Be prepared for a 30 second ad every 20 minutes.

Fortunately Google hasn't figured this out, yet. They are still probably weighing the pro's and con's.

That's the funny thing about the internet. Piss the mass community off too much and they will abandon ship for yet-another-site that offers the same functionality without the hassles.

Comment Re:Stupid-Tax (Score 2) 358

by UnknownSoldier (#49438181) Attached to: Google To Offer Ad-Free YouTube - At a Price

Why is YouTube not being respectful of my time?

> YouTube lets you watch videos for free, provided that you watch these small advertisements every now and then.

You keep using this word "Free." It doesn't mean what you think it means.

Free means: "No Strings Attached"

Not "First you need to fulfill this requirement."

Quite hijacking "free" and perverting its definition.

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