Submission + - Back to the Future! 3
wisdom_brewing writes: Notable mention for the day: Today is the day that Marty McFly arrived in the future after hitting 88mph in the Delorean back in 1985.
Scaling Algorithm Bug In Gimp, Photoshop, Others 368
Wescotte writes "There is an important error in most photography scaling algorithms. All software tested has the problem: The Gimp, Adobe Photoshop, CinePaint, Nip2, ImageMagick, GQview, Eye of Gnome, Paint, and Krita. The problem exists across three different operating systems: Linux, Mac OS X, and Windows. (These exceptions have subsequently been reported — this software does not suffer from the problem: the Netpbm toolkit for graphic manipulations, the developing GEGL toolkit, 32-bit encoded images in Photoshop CS3, the latest version of Image Analyzer, the image exporters in Aperture 1.5.6, the latest version of Rendera, Adobe Lightroom 1.4.1, Pixelmator for Mac OS X, Paint Shop Pro X2, and the Preview app in Mac OS X starting from version 10.6.) Photographs scaled with the affected software are degraded, because of incorrect algorithmic accounting for monitor gamma. The degradation is often faint, but probably most pictures contain at least an array where the degradation is clearly visible. I believe this has happened since the first versions of these programs, maybe 20 years ago."
Comment Re:Better ads (Score 1) 415
The old system i dont believe was broken. It gave me the privacy settings that i wanted.
Given it might be a bit confusing for novice users, but all they needed to give it was an interface facelift.
Right now i have less privacy than i had - i cant hide any comments/likes i make on the system and need to go through and individually delete them off my wall.
Comment Better ads (Score 5, Insightful) 415
What he's saying is it is his customers (advertisers not users) want less privacy, so they can target ads more profitably.
Submission + - vBulletin Management angers customers (theregister.co.uk)
ct2k7 writes: "vBulletin Management scoops low down to banning people who talk against their actions, do we see the times of detrimental reliance?"
Submission + - Legal Group Says ISP Allowed 100K Illegal Dowloads (itnews.com.au)
bennyboy64 writes: iTnews reports that Australian Federation Against Copyright Theft (AFACT) investigators claim to have recorded almost 100,000 instances of Australian internet service provider iiNet users making available online unauthorised copies of films and TV programs, lawyers for the film industry said in the Federal Court in Sydney today. The lawyers for the film industry claimed iiNet had done "nothing" to discourage copyright infringement on its network. For background on the case see iTnews' background piece which has a pretty graph. The case will be heard for four weeks. Today was day one.
Submission + - SPAM: Hydrogen fuel cell to charge your mobile phone
dreemteem writes: "Taiwanese researchers have built a new mobile-phone recharger based on fuel cell technology they say will cost little once manufacturing partners are on board.
The handset rechargers, which contains the fuel cell, will cost around £20, while the fuel itself will come in small blue plastic tubes for about 20p each, said Jerry Ku, a researcher at the Industrial Technology Research Institute, a government funded lab in Taiwan.
"The fuel canisters are inexpensive and small. They could be sold at 7-Eleven," he said."
Link to Original Source
The handset rechargers, which contains the fuel cell, will cost around £20, while the fuel itself will come in small blue plastic tubes for about 20p each, said Jerry Ku, a researcher at the Industrial Technology Research Institute, a government funded lab in Taiwan.
"The fuel canisters are inexpensive and small. They could be sold at 7-Eleven," he said."
Link to Original Source
Submission + - iSnack 2.0 gets Toasted (news.com.au) 3
hools1234 writes: "Australian icon 'Vegemite' released a new product name on Saturday called 'iSnack 2.0'. It was poorly received, with Vegemite enduring a storm of consumer outrage over its tampering with the Vegemite brand. The new product is a combination of the traditional Vegemite sandwich spread mixed with Cream Cheese. Within hours fury was unleashed on Twitter, Facebook and Blogs labeling the name as an 'epic fail' or #vegefail. The Australian is now reporting that within only three days of launch, Kraft has announced it will hold a national vote to come up with a new name.
The iSnack 2.0 name was suggested in a competition that attracted over 40,000 entries to name the product, with the orginal Vegemite spread named in the same fashion. iSnack 2.0 is believed to have been chosen so as to resonate with the young and hip iProducts phenomenon such as iPod and iPhone. To make matters worse, the iSnack name is already under copyright to sandwich-press maker Breville. We just hope the new name isn't iSnack 3.0!
It seems iSnack 2.0 wasn't compatible. FAIL."
The iSnack 2.0 name was suggested in a competition that attracted over 40,000 entries to name the product, with the orginal Vegemite spread named in the same fashion. iSnack 2.0 is believed to have been chosen so as to resonate with the young and hip iProducts phenomenon such as iPod and iPhone. To make matters worse, the iSnack name is already under copyright to sandwich-press maker Breville. We just hope the new name isn't iSnack 3.0!
It seems iSnack 2.0 wasn't compatible. FAIL."
Comment Re:use a hash/timestamp (Score 1) 283
Thanks to overbaud's reply below. By hash i was meaning a solution such as guid value. I was speaking generically and not taking the literal meaning of hash for the purpose of being database agnostic.
Comment use a hash/timestamp (Score 1) 283
Create a timestamp/random hash and store it against each record, then include it in your update query.
UPDATE table SET
data1 = @Data,
hash = NewHash()
WHERE ID = @ID
AND Hash = @Hash
Every save, change the hash to a new value.
If someone has changed the record and another person goes to save it, the hash wont match and 0 records will be updated. This can then be captured in your web application.
If 0 records updated - display error saying "user has already changed record, please reload page"
If 1 records updated - display success.
Parental Control Software Datamines Kids' Online Conversations 105
An AP report reveals that web-monitoring software from Sentry and FamilySafe, both developed by EchoMetrix Inc., is harvesting data from kids' online chats, trying to determine their opinions on games, movies, and music. The data is then sold to other companies for advertising purposes.
"In June, EchoMetrix unveiled a separate data-mining service called Pulse that taps into the data gathered by Sentry software to give businesses a glimpse of youth chatter online. While other services read publicly available teen chatter, Pulse also can read private chats. It gathers information from instant messages, blogs, social networking sites, forums and chat rooms. ... Parents who don't want the company to share their child's information to businesses can check a box to opt out. But that option can be found only by visiting the company's Web site, accessible through a control panel that appears after the program has been installed. It was not in the agreement contained in the Sentry Total Home Protection program The Associated Press downloaded and installed Friday."
How To Prove Someone Is Female? 1091
krou writes "Caster Semenya won the 800m at the World Athletics Championship in blistering style, leaving her competitors in the dust, but she has been thrown into the midst of a scandal amidst claims that she's not really a woman. According to the many press reports, she's believed to shave, is flat chested, has a very masculine physique, previously preferred playing physical games with boys, and shunned traditional female activities and clothing. Questions about her gender have dogged her entire career. Previously, acceptance that she is a women relied on simple inspection of female genitals. But now the IAAF claim that they want to conduct further tests to see if 'she may have a rare medical condition that gives her an unfair advantage.' An IAAF spokesmen noted that 'The [testing] process was started after Semenya made her startling breakthroughs — a 25-second improvement at 1500m and eight seconds at 800m, just some weeks ago.' I'm curious what the Slashdot community thinks: what can be considered proof of someone being male or female? Is it simply a case of having the right genitals, or are there other criteria that should be used? Is the IAAF right in claiming that someone should be prevented from competing because they have a rare medical or genetic advantage?"
Submission + - World's first fully formally proven OS (theengineer.co.uk) 2
An anonymous reader writes: Operating systems usually have bugs — the `blue screen of death', the amiga Hand, etc., are known by almost everyone. NICTA's team of researchers has managed to produce an OS kernel that can NEVER crash, and is guaranteed to meet its specification. It is fully formally verified — as such it exceeds the Common Criteria's highest level of assurance.
The researchers used an executable specification written in Haskell, C code that mapped to the Haskell, and the Isabelle theorem prover to generate a machine-checked proof that the C code in the kernel matches the executable and the formal specification of the system.
The researchers used an executable specification written in Haskell, C code that mapped to the Haskell, and the Isabelle theorem prover to generate a machine-checked proof that the C code in the kernel matches the executable and the formal specification of the system.
Making a Game of Hardware Design 60
no-life-guy writes "Researchers at the University of Michigan have developed a web-game to harness the natural human abilities for electronic design automation (EDA). Arguing that people are still much better than computers in games of strategy and visualization, and that we'll do anything as long as it's fun, a group created FunSAT — a game where an average Joe gets to solve a Boolean satisfiability problem. Known as SAT, this problem is an important component in various hardware design tools from formal verification to IC layout to scheduling. The pilot version is a puzzle-like single-player Java app (akin to those addictive web-games), but the researchers envision that it can be extended to a multi-player (and, perhaps, replace WoW as the favorite past-time of the millions), so anybody can be a hardware designer. If anything, this is definitely a great learning tool."
New Zealand Introduces Internet Filtering 215
Thomas Beagle writes "The New Zealand government has been stealthily introducing a centralised internet child-pornography specific filtering system. Voluntary for ISPs but not for their users, ISPs representing over 94% of the market are already intending to join. Read the general FAQ and technical FAQ about the proposed Netclean Whitebox implementation."
