If I had a trackball it would have to be cordless, as the computer and TV (its monitor) are across the room.

"Mediadefender doesn't count because the users install it"...sound familiar? if you go by THAT metric guess what? Windows is bug free! Yay, there are no malware infected systems, hey security guys, your all out of a job LOL!

Hate to break the news to ya friend but guess how the vast majority of malware spreads? PEBKAC and this proves that Linux is JUST AS VULNERABLE as any other OS. And can you show me ONE zero day that was caught and fixed by a user and NOT a corporation? Just one? You can't because you are falling for the many eyes fallacy that states because something COULD happen it HAS happened. You and others think because the code COULD be audited it HAS been audited with ZERO proof to back it up. Well by that logic since there COULD be zombies there ARE zombies...but I don't think i need to start carrying a shotgun to kill the undead, do you?

Since you seem like a normal person and not a FOSSie, which are like a Moonie only with FOSS as their religion you might want to read this which quickly and concisely explains why its a lie better than I ever could. Oh and just FYI you want to see a FOSSie go absolutely apeshit? Give him a TMRepo link. Of course just as a flat earther hates science so too does a FOSSie hate TMRepo because it has reduced their tired old talking points into cliches. I could take every pro Linux rant here and reduce it to 5 TMs or less, know why? Because its the SAME TIRED SHIT, for 20 fricking years they have been using the same tired ass excuses, "works for me(TM)" "Linux has more drivers(TM)" "Stable ABI nonsense(TM)" its the same shit.

But many eyes is just a variant of the man month. It doesn't work, isn't ever gonna work, and frankly just because you have the source for a low level subsystem doesn't magically give you the knowledge and experience required to repair that system. it would be like saying if I gave you the blueprints you could fab some O-Rings for the shuttle, not happening.

Considering that (TFA didn't mention but GMA did) the readers themselves were what was compromised, a PIN wouldn't have helped at all.

The government *WANTS* to splash it.

Which government? Jesus, Dave, that was really stupid. You do know that the I in ISS stands for "international", don't you?

This wasn't about "exposing" the NSA -- anyone with half a brain realizes that the very definition of a spy agency is that it spies on people. "They were spying on americans!" Yeah, ok, and?

And it's fucking ILLEGAL, damn it. Have a look at this article written by J. Kirk Wiebe, a retired NSA executive:

But how can anyone believe that Snowden would not be deserving of amnesty? Clearly it is the government and its senior officials who committed the crime -- people who took oaths to defend the Constitution from enemies both foreign and domestic and who failed to take to heart the words they swore to uphold. Indeed, Snowden did not -- nor does any government employee -- swear allegiance to the president of the United States, or even to the secretary of Defense or the director of NSA. No, he swore to uphold and defend the Constitution.

Unfortunately, while federal law protects whistleblowers who work in other government sectors from reprisals for truth-telling and have paths for reporting wrongdoing and mismanagement, those who work in intelligence are expressly denied such rights. When Senior Staff Representative Diane Roark and longtime senior NSA employees Bill Binney, Ed Loomis, and I submitted a formal complaint about mismanagement at the agency, the government's response on July 26, 2007, was to send the FBI to raid our homes, searching them for seven hours and seizing our computers, phones and other digital media. We are just now getting our property back after having successfully sued the government in December 2012.

The government even indicted Tom Drake, although it dropped its criminal charges in the case against him. Still, for the five of us, it was the equivalent of a punch in the face and a warning to other would-be "truth-tellers" not to report wrongful government activities or the government will come after you.

Snowden clearly saw what the government does to whistleblowers who try to work within government to fix things that are wrong. He knew that our complaint to the United States Department of Defense inspector general in September 2002 went for naught. Although the report agreed that our complaint was well-founded, nothing happened -- no one was found guilty of wrongful behavior or waste of hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars.

Even before writing the complaint, we -- all longtime and senior NSA employees -- along with Diane Roark, a senior staffer on the House Permanent Select Subcommittee on Intelligence, had approached Congress in 2001 about the matter of illegal collection of data about U.S. citizens. No action. Snowden might have known that we were ultimately punished by approaching officials, and even had our security clearances revoked when the FBI raided our homes -- despite the fact that four of the five of us were not indicted and none of us was found guilty of committing a crime.

For employees in the business of intelligence, there are no honest brokers, no viable paths to follow to report the subverting of the U.S. Constitution. It is the reason Snowden went first to Hong Kong and ultimately Moscow to seek refuge. He did not go to those places to give away national secrets, rather he needed a place to stay that was safe from extradition and where he could wait while the United States sorted through the facts, especially those regarding government leaders who violated the most basic of our nation's laws -- the right to privacy.

BTW, your sig is right on target this time -- you've pissed off fans of freedom and privacy.

Also written about by damned near every sci-fi writer there ever was. I'm wondering what someone who has never heard of it is doing at slashdot? Since he's AC he's probably a jocktroll. The lack of capitalization suggests he's a young jocktroll who wishes he was smart enough to be a nerd.

Really? Gates demanding that people and governments sign long term contracts with US Agriculture and Medical corporations and not produce or grow locally as a condition of receiving his "Free" medicine is a benefit to society? Who's society are you referring to, the starving people in Ethiopia that can't grow local food any more because they received "Free vaccines"?

Good grief man, use your head just a little. If Mr. Gates was really just "helping everyone with his money" why has his wealth continued to grow while the people he is supposedly helping go further down in poverty? Some of the vaccines being pushed overseas are illegal in numerous Western Countries after being proven harmful to recipients.

Your view of an "awesome model" seems to be very low and abstract.

More on topic, look for Facebook to report some major loss in value causing the stocks to drop. Zuckerberg is not the only one donating lots of stock. These people are not idiots, and didn't get to be as wealthy as they are because they are altruistic.

I certainly hope you saw a retina specialist, there may have been something he could have done to negate the harmful effects. Many welders go blind in their old age from unshielded glimpses of the arc welder (I knew one such fellow).

(By the way, "their" should have been "there").

The number of aliterates who are visiting slashdot these days astounds me. People who don't read on a nerd site? It's sad how many people here in the last five years or so can't handle homophones, use grocers' apostrophes, and think "lose" and "loose" are synonyms (if the word "synonym is even in their vocabulary).

As to the aliterate's comment, he was right -- just look at this comment. A humorous jab at Microsoft's most hated OS ever and he gets modded "troll". Nobody but a shill would downmod that comment, it should be +3 funny and the shill who modded him down should never get mod points again.

That's troll's getting a little old, son. Better quit now before you lose all your karma... if you have any left.

Hubble's mirror design changed to match the existing mirrors already deployed in spy satellites -- Aiming an army of Hubbles at earth? That's some awesome spying capability; No terrorists or enemies could make a significant move against us without us finding out immediately already thanks to space spying programs. And, when we launch more impressive satellites the old spy-sats can be donated to NASA and pointed into space, or sent to other planets. [space.com]

I think you have that backwards. The NSA gets the most advanced toys first, why do you thing they changed Hubble's design? Because the spy telescopes were more powerful.

That isn't what I logged in to say, though -- even though TFA was published yesterday, they must need some lead time because the Senate just voted for a budget, no more sequesters for two more years. My guess is the article was written and edited weeks ago.

There's a good point hidden in the above AC's trollish "joke"; inbreeding happens with almost all, if not all, species, especially when there is a small population of that species. That includes Neanderthals and modern humans, dogs, cats, bonobos...

This story brings to mind an old pop song by some one hit wonder I haven't heard in almost half a century --

I'm a neanderthal man
You're a Neanderthal girl
Lets make Neanderthal love
In this Neanderthal world

(IIRC it was that one verse repeated over and over, a really repetitious and stupid but catchy pop song)

The samples of assembler made me feel old! I'm familiar with x86 assembler, and the variations on MOV that go back to the 8086 (things like MOVSB, MOVSW), but this VMOVUPD was totally new to me. But then I have never looked at SSE, or even MMX.

Not connecting them to the internet wouldn't have helped. From what I heard on TV, the card readers themselves were physically compromised. It looks to me like a large criminal organization has infiltrated Target's employee ranks.

That statement is ridiculous. Christianity has been around a thousand times as long os BitCoin, do you really think BitCoin will be around 2000 years in the future?

A third of the world's population is Christian. What tiny fraction of a percent of the world's population uses BitCoin? I don't, and neither does a single pesron I know IRL.