Coutal - Slashdot User

Google, Apple Call Workers' Race & Gender Trade Secrets 554

Posted by kdawson on Wednesday February 17 2010, @12:24AM
from the no-using-face-recognition dept.

theodp writes "The Mercury News reports that Google, whose stated mission is to make the world's information universally accessible, says the race and gender of its work force is a trade secret that cannot be released. So do Apple, Yahoo, Oracle, and Applied Materials. The five companies waged a successful 18-month FOIA battle with the Merc, convincing federal regulators who collect the data that its release would cause 'commercial harm' by potentially revealing the companies' business strategy to competitors. Law professor John Sims called the objections — the details of which the Dept. of Labor declined to share — 'absurd.' Many industry peers see the issue differently — Intel, Cisco, eBay, AMD, Sanmina, and Sun agreed to allow the DOL to provide the requested info. 'There's nothing to hide, in our view,' said a spokesman for Intel. Some observers note it's not the first time Google has declined to put a number on its vaunted diversity — in earlier Congressional testimony, Google's top HR exec dodged the question of how many African-American employees the company had."

Nmap 5.20 Released 36

Posted by Soulskill on Saturday January 23 2010, @11:32AM
from the more-and-better dept.

ruphus13 writes "Nmap has a new release out, and it's a major one. It includes a GUI front-end called Zenmap, and, according to the post, 'Network admins will no doubt be excited to learn that Nmap is now ready to identify Snow Leopard systems, Android Linux smartphones, and Chumbies, among other OSes that Nmap can now identify. This release also brings an additional 31 Nmap Scripting Engine scripts, bringing the total collection up to 80 pre-written scripts for Nmap. The scripts include X11 access checks to see if X.org on a system allows remote access, a script to retrieve and print an SSL certificate, and a script designed to see whether a host is serving malware. Nmap also comes with netcat and Ndiff. Source code and binaries are available from the Nmap site, including RPMs for x86 and x86_64 systems, and binaries for Windows and Mac OS X. '"

Will going abroad kill your gmail account? 0

Submitted by on Tuesday July 07 2009, @11:31AM

An anonymous reader writes "Will going abroad kill your gmail account? well, it might just do that. It is apparent google employs account disablement restrictions "for your own security" if it feels your account has been compromised. logging in from china, or eastern europe, might just get you to that state, as it appears. From there, it's a long process to try and prove ownership of the account (do you really remember what month you opened it?). You are further not even guaranteed any kind of response by gmail, and sometimes you just don't get any (e.g. this guy). Would you really trust your e-mail to a service that disables access to your account "for your own protection" without the guaranteed capabilty to convince some kind of human that it is indeed your account? what about the content stored in it, and ownership?"

VideoLAN 1.0.0 Released!-> 0

Submitted by rift321 on Tuesday July 07 2009, @09:36AM

rift321 writes "VLC media player, which we all know for simplifying the playback of, well, pretty much any codec out there, has finally released version 1.0.0.

Here's a quick list of improvements:

Live recording
Instant pausing and Frame-by-Frame support
Finer speed controls
New HD codecs (AES3, Dolby Digital Plus, TrueHD, Blu-Ray Linear PCM, Real Video 3.0 and 4.0, ...)
New formats (Raw Dirac, M2TS, ...) and major improvements in many formats...
New Dirac encoder and MP3 fixed-point encoder
Video scaling in fullscreen
RTSP Trickplay support
Zipped file playback
Customizable toolbars
Easier encoding GUI in Qt interface
Better integration in Gtk environments
MTP devices on linux
AirTunes streaming
New skin for the skins2 interface

Might be a good time to donate..."
Link to Original Source

Comment: Petition disclosure of filtering software sold!! (Score 4, Interesting) 156

by Coutal on Sunday June 21 2009, @11:06AM (#28410809) Attached to: Researchers Find Gaps In Iranian Filtering

According to this: http://opennet.net/research/profiles/iran
Nokia/siemens sold filtering software to iran, quite the nefarious thing to do, perhaps even bypassing some boycott agreements and US export regulations, if containing any US code. now's the time to make them disclose what sofware they sold, and everything they know about the filtering system. a lot of lives are at stake, now's the time.
if any nokia/siemens employees are reading this, pass this on!

Comment: Re:Register the unit as stolen (Score 1) 4

by Coutal on Wednesday December 26 2007, @10:57AM (#21821166) Attached to: A new low in restrictive software licensing

it's not possible. the unit is upgraded in an offline fashion with an SD card reader. however, that user cannot enter the download portal without a valid serial number, which is already registered to my account.

i consider the unit itself (bought for 500$) a loss which i'm responsible for. the 250$ worth of software i don't consider lost, in particular because i took due care in perserving it. i still cannot fathom how a license can be stolen, which is the core part of the story here. i wonder if it will stand up to court.

Egypt to Copyright Pyramids and Sphynx-> 0

Submitted by empaler on Tuesday December 25 2007, @06:01PM

empaler writes "We all know the usual pro-copyright arguments. Most of them hinge on the fact that the individual or company that has a copyright needs an incentive to make something that is copyrightable, and therefore ensure a revenue stream in a period after the copyright has been granted. In a never-surpassed move, Egypt is working on legislation to extend copyright well above 3000 years — they are going to start claiming royalties for using likenesses of the Sphynx and the Pyramids. It is still unclear whether the original intent of the Pyramids included "making sure them bastards pay for a plastic copy in 3000 years" alongside "securing a pathway to the heavens for the God King". Speaking as a Greenlandic national, I want dibs on ice cubes."
Link to Original Source

A new low in restrictive software licensing 4

Submitted by Coutal on Tuesday December 25 2007, @05:52PM

Coutal writes "Licensing is usually looked upon as a burden by software customers, although one we're grudgingly used to living with. However, at times one encounters new lows which can still invoke sufficient outrage — a stealable license.
Recently, my i-go based pocket pc navigation unit was stolen. However, I still retained my valid serial number, certificate of authenticity, proof of purchase and even a backup of the software. I figured restoring my software to another device should be a matter of unit service or (tops) minimal fee for media restoration. Tech support, however, had other ideas in mind. They informed me that my license was stolen with the unit. No amount of explanation of the lack of logic in that statement made through. They insisted that my backups were also void because I no longer have the original SD card and that I am not allowed to use them (which kind of defeats the whole purpose of backup, as the device only stores extremely little other data than the original software — no more than a few points of interest and marginal settings)."

A 5-Year Deal With Microsoft To Dump Novell/SUSE 174

Posted by kdawson on Thursday November 09 2006, @11:02AM
from the wake-up-call dept.

Nicholas Petreley writes, "Wake up little SUSE, wake up. No, that's not good enough. Wake up SUSE customers, wake up. Novell is jeopardizing the future of Linux for its own short-term rewards. If you want to see Linux flourish, let alone survive, after Novell's five year deal with Microsoft expires, I suggest we make an alternative five-year deal with Microsoft. In this case, our part of the deal is to spend the next five minutes, months, or years migrating away from every shred of Novell/SUSE software in our home, office, or enterprise."