id est - Slashdot User

Comment References (Score 1) 1

by id est on Monday August 25, 2008 @09:45AM (#24736117) Attached to: Obama picks Hollywood sock-puppet for running mate

Does anyone have references to original works in order to verify that the Violent Crime Control Act was the impetus for the creation of PGP? Are we talking about the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994 - H.R.3355? That bill, introduced in 1993, didn't fail, but became law. Also, from what I see, PGP was created in 1991.

Submission + - FCC Order scolds Comcast for changing story on P2P (arstechnica.com)

Submitted by

negRo_slim

on Wednesday August 20, 2008 @10:12PM

negRo_slim writes: "Comcast has 30 days to disclose the details of its "unreasonable network management practices" to the Federal Communications Commission, the agency warned Wednesday morning as it released its full, 67-page Order. As FCC Chair Kevin Martin said it would, the Commission's Order rejects the ISP giant's insistence that its handling of peer-to-peer applications was necessary. "We conclude that the company's discriminatory and arbitrary practice unduly squelches the dynamic benefits of an open and accessible Internet," the agency declares."

Submission + - SPAM: Gmail Account Hacking Tool

Submitted by

Ashik Ratnani

on Tuesday August 19, 2008 @09:13AM

Ashik Ratnani writes: "A tool that automatically steals IDs of non-encrypted sessions and breaks into Google Mail accounts has been presented at the Defcon hackers' conference in Las Vegas.

Last week Google introduced a new feature in Gmail that allows users to permanently switch on SSL and use it for every action involving Gmail, and not only, authentication. users who did not turn it on now have a serious reason to do so as Mike Perry, the reverse engineer from San Francisco who developed the tool is planning to release it in two weeks."
Link to Original Source

Submission + - Company Sells Open-Source Software As Its Own (zabbix.com) 4

Submitted by

teknopurge

on Monday August 18, 2008 @09:15AM

teknopurge writes: "After using the software for years I was shocked to find that one of my favorite open-source projects, Zabbix, had its code stolen, rebranded and sold for profit as Firescope. Touting thier product as "revolutionary", Firescope has apparently copied the Zabbix repository and themed the interface without adhering to the GPL that Zabbix is distributed with. Is this not the worst fear of every open source project?"

Submission + - SPAM: More indignity: Checkpoint friendly laptop bags

Submitted by

coondoggie

on Tuesday August 05, 2008 @03:47PM

coondoggie writes: "It's not enough now that you have to pay for pillows and water on airline flights, you now have to replace your laptop bag. The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) said today that beginning August 16 it will let passengers leave their laptop computers in bags that meet new "checkpoint friendly" standards. [spam URL stripped]"
Link to Original Source

Submission + - Software price differences between USA & EU 1

Submitted by

Kensai7

on Tuesday July 29, 2008 @04:50AM

Kensai7 writes: "A quick comparison between same versions of mainstream software sold in the USA and the EU markets show a big difference in the respective price tags. If you want to buy online [store.adobe.com] let's say Adobe's "Dreamweaver CS3" you'll have to pay $399 if you live in the States, but a whopping E570 (almost $900 in current exchange rates!!) if you happen to buy it in Germany. Same story for Microsoft's newest products [msstore.digitalriver.com]: "Expression Web 2" in America costs only $299 new, but try that in Italy and they will probably ask you no less than E366 ($576!).

How can such an abyssal difference be explained? I understand there are some added costs for the localized translated versions, but I also thought the Euro was supposed to be outbuying the Dollar. Where's the catch?!"

Submission + - SPAM: Hunt for the elusive rootkit 'Rustock.C' revealed

Submitted by alphadogg on Wednesday July 16, 2008 @09:11AM

alphadogg writes: Rootkits are software code designed to hide from detection. So Kaspersky Lab's hunt for the elusive Rustock.C rootkit, rumored to exist for almost two years, reads like a detective plot. Alexander Gostev, Kaspersky Lab's senior virus analyst, tells the tale in his blog Tuesday on Viruslist. According to Gostev, the Russian security firm Dr. Web in early May announced its experts had obtained a sample of Rustock.C in March but the sample it shared with the rest of the antivirus community lacked a 'dropper', the file designed to install the rootkit on the system. If the dropper had been provided, "this file could have significantly simplified the work carried out by other antivirus laboratories to analyze the rootkit and develop procedures to detect and treat Rustock.C.
Link to Original Source

Submission + - Why is Firehose so hostile? 15

Submitted by

NewYorkCountryLawyer

on Friday May 23, 2008 @10:18PM

NewYorkCountryLawyer writes: "Can anyone explain to me why Slashdot's Firehose is made to be so unfriendly? It's a great idea, but in practice it's infuriating. If you see a submitted article, and click on one of the links, you can't go back to the story. You have to start all over again. If you set the filters to what you're interested in, you have to re-set them all over again. Even if you just RTFA you are punished by losing your settings. Why shouldn't Slashdot encourage people to participate in the Firehose. For a busy person, it's almost impossible to be involved. And this bizarre lack of 'stickiness' makes everything take 10 times as much times as it needs to."

Submission + - Computer Quotations Project Needs Your Assistance

Submitted by

Hugh Pickens

on Thursday March 27, 2008 @07:18AM

Hugh Pickens writes: "Fred Shapiro, the editor of "The Yale Book of Quotations," published in 2006, recently inaugurated The Computer Quotations Project and is seeking contributions of documented information about the following computer sayings of unclear origin: "640K ought to be enough for anybody." "Do not fold, mutilate, or spindle." "Garbage in, garbage out." "I think there is a world market for about five computers." "That's not a bug, it's a feature." "That's not a bug, it's a feature." "To err is human. To really foul up — it takes a computer." Shapiro asks respondents to be precise, with references to dated documentation like newspaper articles or technical reports Take a look at the earliest references that Shapiro has already found and help him find an earlier usage or suggest your own favorite computer quotation."

Submission + - Very Large Array Gets Expanded Capability

Submitted by

Active Seti

on Friday February 22, 2008 @11:02PM

Active Seti writes: "The National Science Foundation (NSF) is in the process of transforming its Very Large Array radio telescope into the Expanded Very Large Array, Half of the Very Large Array's (VLA) 28 dish antennas — each weighing 230 tons — have already been upgraded with the rest to go digital by 2012. The EVLA will be 10 times more sensitive, cover more frequencies, and provide far greater analysis capabilities than the current VLA. A new, state-of-the-art correlator — a special-purpose supercomputer — is also being built to handle the increased data flow, providing vastly expanded capabilities for analyzing data to gain scientific insight about astronomical objects. After the upgrade, the EVLA's receiving system will be sensitive enough to detect the weak radio transmission from a cell phone at the distance of Jupiter — half a billion miles away — at a projected cost of $94 million. "We're leapfrogging several generations of technological progress to make the EVLA a completely modern, 21st-Century scientific facility," said Fred K.Y. Lo, NRAO Director. Dedicated in 1980, the array is best known for its appearance in the 1997 movie Contact, starring Jodie Foster and based on the science fiction novel by Carl Sagan and has become a popular tourist attraction in New Mexico with 50,000 visitors a year."

Journal Journal: How to Convince Non-IT Friends that Privacy Matters?

Journal by mmtux on Saturday February 16, 2008 @11:50PM

As technology becomes more advanced I am more and more worried about my privacy in all aspects of my life. Unfortunately, whenever I attempt to discuss the matter with my friends, they show little understanding and write me off as a hyper-neurotic IT student. They say they simply don't care that the data they share on social networks may be accessible by others, that some laws passed by governments today might be privacy infringing and dangerous or that they shouldn't use on-line banking with

Submission + - Making a List for Santa Patented by Microsoft

Submitted by

theodp

on Wednesday January 02, 2008 @03:48AM

theodp writes: "Yes Virginia, there is a Santa Claus. But making a list for him now constitutes patent infringement. USPTO officials were busy over the holidays wrapping up the paperwork to grant Microsoft its wish for a patent on the Wish List, which was issued to the software giant on New Year's Day."

Submission + - 1.7 Million Public Domain Books in Print

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 31, 2007 @06:15PM

An anonymous reader writes: Free service that can take any public domain book from Internet Archive or Google Book Search, and make it available in print via Lulu. Over 1.7 million books available. Take a look at PublicDomainReprints.org.

Submission + - Lifesaving hospital hygiene checklist banned (nytimes.com) 2

Submitted by on Monday December 31, 2007 @01:18PM

An anonymous reader writes: From the article:
Johns Hopkins University published a simple five-step checklist designed to prevent certain hospital infections. It reminds doctors to make sure, for example, that before putting large intravenous lines into patients, they actually wash their hands and don a sterile gown and gloves.

The results were stunning. Within three months, the rate of bloodstream infections from these I.V. lines fell by two-thirds. The average I.C.U. cut its infection rate from 4 percent to zero. Over 18 months, the program saved more than 1,500 lives and nearly $200 million.

Yet this past month, the Office for Human Research Protections shut the program down.

Submission + - Fox stealing photo content off the blogs.

Submitted by rasjani on Saturday December 29, 2007 @10:52AM

rasjani writes: Remember that company that tried to sue youtube for having some of their content online ? Remember that tv network who airs copyright warnings about every 5 minutes on NFL game ? Yep, its called FOX. And to show how they really feel about copyright laws an d "re-using" other peoples content, i'll let Tracey to describe how she felt when she spotted her dog on FOX.

Earlier this afternoon I was in our kitchen doing dishes, minding my own business. Jamie was in the living room, watching some NFL football.
It was quiet.
Too quiet.
Suddenly, Jamie called to me from the other room, claiming I had to come see something. When I entered the room, he unpaused the broadcast he had been watching (thanks, TiVo!), and immediately I saw the image of an adorable pug, dressed in festive Santa gear, pop up at the bottom of the screen beside FOX's Happy Holiday's ticker. I vaguely remember Jamie saying something to me to the effect of, "Gee, that dog looks a lot like Truman, doesn't it?"

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