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Government

Florida Activates System For Citizens To Call Each Other Terrorists 501

Posted by Soulskill
from the won't-ever-be-misused-ever dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Sheriffs in 13 Northeast Florida counties announced an online system Thursday for residents to report suspicious activity they think may be terrorism-related. The site provides examples of red flags to watch for, such as people with an unusual interest in building plans or who are purchasing materials useful in bomb making. Important places to watch include hobby stores and dive shops."
Cellphones

The Days of Cheap, Subsidized Phones May Be Numbered 329

Posted by timothy
from the installment-plans-are-not-for-your-benefit dept.
In the U.S., subsidized phones are the norm: for post-paid, long-term contract use, getting a low up-front price on a phone is one of the few upsides. New submitter Apptopia writes "After T Mobile mostly did away with subsidized phone plans, the other major carriers (Verizon, AT&T, Sprint) are paying attention. Carriers lose money with phone subsidies for high-end smartphones (particularly Apple's iPhone). If they do away with the subsidy, you will have to pay full retail price for phones, but your monthly bill will be lower." If people had a better idea what they were paying for, though, manufacturers might fight harder on price. There are lots of well-reviewed, multi-band, unlocked phones on Amazon and DealExtreme from lesser-known companies, and Nokia's new Asha 501 (though limited in many ways, including availability, having just launched in India) shows that the "smartphone" label can apply even to a sub- $100 phone.

Comment: Re:Money well spent (Score 1) 347

... followed by the tedious process of downloading and waiting for update after update to install, then installing virus and security software, "productivity suites" and any other software that they need, each likely to have its own updates...

Who the hell would do that if they got more than a few machines, update the frekkin image, then clone. Follow up with some polish.

Comment: Re:An obvious extrapolation... (Score 2) 82

by heson (#43502421) Attached to: Coelacanth Genome Sequenced

That said, it's not like the ocean is dominated by coelecanth, so it doesn't mean they've reached optimality or anything. Just that they're good enough to continue reproducing and surviving.

I would say that their genes are stuck in a local maxima where they can't evolve. Any mutation dies off or are so different that they leave the area and become a new species.

Comment: Re:Is this not your local net police? (Score 1) 238

by heson (#43385291) Attached to: Ask Slashdot: Dealing With Unwanted But Official Security Probes?
I would fear what unforseen bugs the pen testing causes (database gioing down, queries cut short etc) bugs that are good to find but absolutely not in a production environment. Dangeorus in a hospital enviroment.
I would send their packets to a honeypot machine (possible with less security for the giggles) to get more information about the "attac".
In reality they are probably just running foundstone or some other security suite.
Businesses

Ask Slashdot: Dealing With Unwanted But Official Security Probes? 238

Posted by timothy
from the surely-you-have-nothing-to-hide dept.
An anonymous reader writes "I manage a few computers for an independent private medical practice connected to a hospital network. Recently I discovered repeated attempts to access these computers. After adjusting the firewall to drop connections from the attacking computers, I reported the presumed hacker IP to hospital IT. I was told that the activity was conducted by the hospital corporation for security purposes. The activity continues. It has included attempted fuzzing of a web server, buffer overrun attacks, attempts to access a protected database, attempts to get the password file, etc. The doctors want to maintain a relationship with the hospital and are worried that involving law enforcement would destroy the relationship. What would you advise the doctors to do next?"
Classic Games (Games)

Capcom Remastering DuckTales Game 94

Posted by Soulskill
from the hope-they-do-justice-to-the-moon-level-music dept.
jones_supa writes "Many Slashdotters are probably aware of the 1989 Nintendo Entertainment System platformer classic DuckTales (video, designed around the Disney cartoon series. Capcom announced today at their PAX East panel that they are resurrecting the beloved game. Developed by Wayforward and Capcom, DuckTales: Remastered is something of a remake based on the original version. The embedded video shows some solid back-to-basics platformer action. The game will be out this summer for Xbox Live, PSN, and Wii U."
Hardware Hacking

Ask Slashdot: How To Donate Older Computers to Charity? 260

Posted by timothy
from the curbside-charity-pickup dept.
yanom writes "My school gave me several circa-2006 computers with no operating system. I fixed them up, and now they run Lubuntu fairly well, making them great internet/LibreOffice/general Linux workstations. I've been wanting to donate them to local nonprofits where they'll go to good use — for example, I've already given several to a local church for them to use in their afterschool care/tutoring program. However, I'm having trouble finding other places where these machines could go to good use. How should I best conduct this search? How can I find nonprofits that could benefit from these workstations?"
GNU is Not Unix

GNU Texinfo 5.0 Released 173

Posted by Unknown Lamer
from the aged-to-perfection dept.
Four years after the last release, version 5.0 of Texinfo, the GNU documentation language, has been released. The primary highlight is a new implementation of makeinfo info in Perl rather than C. Although slower, the new version offers several advantages: cleaner code using a structured representation of the input document, Unicode support, and saner support for multiple output backends. There are over a dozen other improvements including better formatting of URLs, improved cross-manual references, and a program to convert Perl POD documentation to Texinfo.
GNU is Not Unix

GNU Hurd To Develop SATA, USB, Audio Support 274

Posted by timothy
from the ear-to-the-ground-gets-you-trampled dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Hurd, the GNU micro-kernel project that was founded by Richard Stallman in 1983, may finally be catching up with Linux on the desktop... Plans were shared by its developers to finally bring in some modern functionality by working on support for Serial ATA drives, USB support, and sound cards. There are also ambitions to provide x86-64 CPU architecture support. GNU Hurd developers will be doing an unofficial Debian GNU/Hurd 'Wheezy' release this year but they hope for the Debian 'Jessie' release their micro-kernel in Debian will make it as part of some official CDs."

Creditor, n.: A man who has a better memory than a debtor.

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