mayhem79 - Slashdot User

Facebook Masks Worse Privacy With New Interface 446

Posted by CmdrTaco on Thursday December 10, 2009 @10:59AM from the it's-a-book-of-faces dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Facebook launched new privacy settings this week. Cosmetically, this means that the settings are explained more clearly and are marginally easier to manage. Unfortunately, some of the most significant changes actually make preserving privacy harder for its users: profile elements that could previously be restricted to 'Only Friends' are now designated as irrevocably publicly available: 'Publicly available information includes your name, profile picture, gender, current city, networks, friend list, and Pages.' Where you could previously preserve the privacy of this information and remain publicly searchable only by name, Facebook now forces you to either give up this information (including your current city!) to anyone with a Facebook account, or to restrict your search visibility — which of course limits the usefulness of the site far beyond how not publicly sharing your profile picture would. That Facebook made this change while simultaneously rolling out major changes to the privacy settings interface seems disingenuous."

Mega Man 10 Confirmed For WiiWare 104

Posted by Soulskill on Thursday December 10, 2009 @02:01AM from the with-new-bosses-chair-man-and-bread-man dept.

The upcoming issue of Nintendo Power revealed that Capcom is working on Mega Man 10 for a release via WiiWare sometime in the future. "Like Mega Man 9 (released for WiiWare in 2008), Mega Man 10 remains true to the series's roots with 8-bit-style graphics and sound, and tried-and-true Mega Man gameplay." According to the early look at Nintendo Power's article, the game may include an easier difficulty mode, likely inspired by complaints that the previous game was too hard. It also previews one of the new bosses, who is apparently called "Sheep Man." Make of that what you wool.

Malware Found Hidden In Screensaver On Gnome-Look 611

Posted by timothy on Wednesday December 09, 2009 @06:39PM from the sudo-you-know-what-you're-sudoing dept.

AndGodSed writes "OMG! UBUNTU! Reports the following: 'Malware has been found hidden inside an innocuous 'waterfall' screensaver .deb file made available on popular artwork sharing site Gnome-Look.org. The .deb file installs a script with elevated privileges designed to perform a DDoS attack as well as keep itself updated via downloads. The dodgy screensaver in question has since been removed from gnome-look, and this incident was a very basic, if potentially successful, attempt.'" A similar report at Digitizor.com says that similar malware was also found in a theme called Ninja Black. For those affected, both sites also provide instruction on cleansing your system.

Copyright and the Games Industry 94

Posted by Soulskill on Friday December 04, 2009 @03:51AM from the your-super-mario-toilet-paper-is-probably-illegal dept.

A recent post at the Press Start To Drink blog examined the relationship the games industry has with copyright laws. More so than in some other creative industries, the reactions of game companies to derivative works are widely varied and often unpredictable, ranging anywhere from active support to situations like the Chrono Trigger: Crimson Echoes debacle. Quoting: "... even within the gaming industry, there is a tension between IP holders and fan producers/poachers. Some companies, such as Epic and Square Enix, remain incredibly protective of their Intellectual Property, threatening those that use their creations, even for non-profit, cultural reasons, with legal suits. Other companies, like Valve, seem to, if not embrace, at least tolerate, and perhaps even tacitly encourage this kind of fan engagement with their work. Lessig suggests, 'The opportunity to create and transform becomes weakened in a world in which creation requires permission and creativity must check with a lawyer.' Indeed, the more developers and publishers that take up Valve's position, the more creativity and innovation will emerge out of video game fan communities, already known for their intense fandom and desire to add to, alter, and re-imagine their favorite gaming universes."

Malware Could Grab Data From Stock iPhones 127

Posted by timothy on Friday December 04, 2009 @02:20AM from the swamp-of-bog-standard dept.

Ardisson writes "Swiss iPhone developer Nicolas Seriot presented last night a talk on iPhone Privacy in Geneva. He showed how a malicious application could harvest personal data on a non-jailbroken iPhone (PDF) and without using private APIs. It turns out that the email accounts, the keyboard cache content and the WiFi connection logs are fully accessible. The talk puts up several recommendations. There is also a demo project on github."

Comment EFIT-V (Score 1) 84

by mayhem79 on Tuesday December 01, 2009 @05:29AM (#30280882) Attached to: Genetic Algorithm Helps Identify Criminals

My name is Dr Matthew Maylin, I developed this software at the university of Kent during my PhD, and continue to develope it as the sole software engineer for the company. The algorithm used is an evolutionary algorithm, implementing random mutations, but no cross-over or mutation. Although the user does have the option to 'bred'/combine certain faces within the software. The method uses a statistical model of the human face (Cootes et el 2001), and at anyone time is restricted to a sample to a single ethnicity and gender. The are however, many databases of face statistcs that are used. Here is a movie of the process: http://www.visionmetric.com/images/stories/EFIT-V_demo.htm I believe here is the original slashdot post: http://slashdot.org/articles/04/05/17/1042231.shtml?tid=133&tid=152&tid=185&tid=186 There have been many controlled studies on this system, it has been trialled by the forces in the UK over 3 years ago, and now is actively sold across the world. Psychological studies have been made by Dr Graham Pike (seen in the video) at the Open University. The quality of the images vary and are ultimately limited by the users ability to recall the face - some users are better than others - but generally composites are produced more quickly - to a higher quality - than 'jigsaw' based methods.

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