Comment Re:NASA Visualization (Score 1) 218
And yet, if I change what my browser reports, it will work fine. Go figure.
Submission + - Mozilla Handing Out Free Firefox OS Developer Phones To Bolster App Marketplace (hothardware.com)
MojoKid writes: Is the world really ready to shift from native apps to HTML5 Web apps? Probably not, at least not in North America yet, but developing nations may see it differently. That's the hope with Firefox OS, a web-based operating system that's (in theory) a lot more open. Of course, one needs only look at Microsoft's battle to get Windows Phone into a place of competition to realize that gaining market share is no easy task, which is why Mozilla will soon be handing out Firefox OS developer phones in order to bolster that. The company's goal is to get app builders to build for Firefox OS, so Mozilla is sending out free Preview handsets for folks to tinker with.
Submission + - First person saved by a police drone in Canada (theverge.com)
AchilleTalon writes: As the US continues to grapple with the idea of letting drones fly through the country's airspace, our neighbors to the north have reported a new milestone for unmanned aerial technology: the first life saved using a drone. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police in the province of Saskatchewan announced yesterday that they successfully used the small Draganflyer X4-ES helicopter drone to locate and treat an injured man whose car had flipped over in a remote, wooded area in near-freezing temperatures. Zenon Dragan, president and founder of the Draganfly company that makes the drone, said in a statement: "to our knowledge, this is the first time that a life may have been saved with the use of a sUAS (small Unmanned Aerial System) helicopter."
Submission + - Are software and pattents about to seperate?
laitcg writes: According to PJ at Groklaw: CLS Bank v. Alice Corp. has been decided [PDF] by the the Federal Circuit en banc. And Patently O says the court "finds many software patents ineligible"!
As described more fully below, we would affirm the district court’s judgment in its entirety and hold that the method, computer-readable medium, and corresponding system claims before us recite patent-ineligible subject matter under 35 U.S.C. 101.1
_____
1 While Chief Judge Rader is correct to note that no single opinion issued today commands a majority, seven of the ten members, a majority, of this en banc court have agreed that the method and computer-readable medium claims before us fail to recite patent-eligible subject matter. In addition, eight judges, a majority, have concluded that the particular method, medium, and system claims at issue in this case should rise or fall together in the 101 analysis.
As described more fully below, we would affirm the district court’s judgment in its entirety and hold that the method, computer-readable medium, and corresponding system claims before us recite patent-ineligible subject matter under 35 U.S.C. 101.1
_____
1 While Chief Judge Rader is correct to note that no single opinion issued today commands a majority, seven of the ten members, a majority, of this en banc court have agreed that the method and computer-readable medium claims before us fail to recite patent-eligible subject matter. In addition, eight judges, a majority, have concluded that the particular method, medium, and system claims at issue in this case should rise or fall together in the 101 analysis.
Comment Re:astounding that defaults are not tougher (Score 1) 210
Then your particular laptop is not a secure product. Imagine scenario where it was stolen.
Good point. It's a Dell. But if I did not have HD encryption anyway, what good would changing the bios do? Allow them to boot whatever external OS of their choosing? So be it. I would have lost the box, but not the data on my HD (unless they really, really, really, want it).
Comment Re:astounding that defaults are not tougher (Score 1) 210
"No default password could be secure. The only way is to force password change on first use."
Normally I'd agree with this, however a sibling of mine passed away and I wound up with a laptop that I could not change the BIOS. Fortunately through a quick google search, I was able to find default passwords used by the manufactures to allow access to the issue. Problem solved.
Comment Slackware (Score 2) 573
"enjoy challenges, and am perfectly willing to spend hours and hours for months on end to learn command line."
The only real Linux is Slackware. You have total control of what daemons your running so it is a very secure system, you just have to keep up with the daemons your running, and Patrick V. takes care of that. It has a package manager, an easy install system, and if you start out with a full install, you will not be disappointed. If you really want to know Linux, then Slackware is the way to go.
Submission + - MIT Student Invents LED Ice Cubes to Track Alcohol Intake (go.com)
laitcg writes:
An MIT grad student is turning a bad party night into a product with potential.
An accelerometer keeps track of how often the glass is raised to someone’s lips; a timer helps estimate how intoxicated the person is. The LED inside each cube will light up in green, yellow or red.
“I believe in open-source. My inventions are are open to be hacked, developed and played around,” said Dand. “True innovation are like ideas with wings, once they take birth in a mind, nothing, not even the inventor, can stop them.”
Too bad patents will soon be first to file.
Submission + - My IT department wants you to hack my account 1
An anonymous reader writes: I work for a publicly traded company. When I submit tickets to helpdesk, they reply with an automated response which has a link to the ticket. Nothing special there, right? The only thing is, it is a plain http: link, leading to a page that immediately asks for my password. If I add an s after the http, there is not even a listener there. So the only way I can access that page is to send my password in the clear. That server is geographically distant, so I am pretty sure I would be sending my password in the clear over the internet. (And even if it is fully intranet-based, isn't this still a pretty big risk?) Again, it is my IT department which is sending this link. This is not the first company where I have seen this. So I am starting to think that the easiest way for a hacker to compromise a company is actually provided as a service by that company's IT department. How common is this, and how can it possibly be happening? More generally, how safe is my personal data that I provide to corporations, when they may be so astoundingly easy to compromise?
Submission + - WH Responds to Software Patents Petition (whitehouse.gov)
laitcg writes: I just got an email after signing the petition awhile ago with a link to the White House's response to the petition and this was at the end of it:
"We understand that the concern about software patents stems, in part, from concerns that overly broad patents on software-based inventions may stifle the very innovative and creative open source software development community. As an Administration, we recognize the tremendous value of open source innovation and rely on it to accomplish key missions. For example, the U.S. Open Government National Action Plan recently announced that the source code for We the People and Data.gov would be open sourced for the entire world. Federal agencies are likewise spurring innovation through open source energy. For example, the Department of Defense issued clarifying guidance (PDF) on the use of open software at the Department. And, the Department of Health and Human Services has become a leader in standards-based, open sourced policy to power innovations in health care quality and enable research into efficient care delivery. The tremendous growth of the open source and open data communities over the years, for delivery of both commercial and non-commercial services, shows that innovation can flourish in both the proprietary and open source software environments. "
