innocent_white_lamb - Slashdot User

+ - Local Privilege Escalation 0-day affects Centos (and probably RHEL)-> 0

Submitted by innocent_white_lamb on Tuesday May 14, 2013 @12:57PM

innocent_white_lamb writes "The local privilege escalation bug described here gives you root on any fully updated Centos 6.4 box."
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+ - Outsourcing for someone who knows nothing about programming 1

Submitted by innocent_white_lamb on Wednesday May 08, 2013 @02:05PM

innocent_white_lamb writes "An acquaintance of mine who owns an small business is trying to outsource a programming project by putting it up for bid/proposal on some of the "offshore freelance coder" websites. She personally knows nothing about programming, which is why she is putting it out for bid in the first place. The proposals that she is getting apparently vary by a factor of about four in terms of time required and cost, and the lowest costs don't necessarily correspond to the least time required for the project. Since there is such a huge variation in the proposals and since she knows nothing about programming other than "this is what I want it to do", how can she evaluate the proposals and avoid getting screwed, especially since the proposals she is getting come from "far away places" where she likely wouldn't have much recourse in the event of a problem. What happens if it doesn't work the way that she thinks it will after she's paid for it?"

+ - Naked scammers blackmail men on web-> 0

Submitted by innocent_white_lamb on Monday February 18, 2013 @05:58PM

innocent_white_lamb writes "Police in Singapore have received many reports of a blackmail ring that uses attractive women to seduce men via webcam/chat. "They would commence a webcam conversation with the victims and initiate cybersex by undressing themselves first before persuading the male victims to appear nude or perform sexual acts in front of the webcams", according to the Singapore Police Force. The victim then received an email and/or phone call demanding $50,000."
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+ - Student expelled from Montreal college for finding "sloppy coding"-> 0

Submitted by innocent_white_lamb on Monday January 21, 2013 @01:35AM

innocent_white_lamb writes "In what appears to be a more-and-more common occurrence, Ahmed Al-Khabez has been expelled from Dawson College in Montreal after he discovered a flaw in the software that the college (and apparently all other colleges across Quebec) uses to track student information.

His original intention was to write a mobile app to allow students to access their college account more easily, but during the development of his app he discovered "sloppy coding" that would allow anyone to access all of the information that the system contains about any student.

He was initially ordered to sign a non-disclosure agreement stating that he would never talk about the flaw that he discovered, and he was expelled from the college shortly afterward."
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+ - Scrabble needs a new scoring system-> 0

Submitted by innocent_white_lamb on Wednesday January 16, 2013 @01:55PM

innocent_white_lamb writes "A researcher says that some letters are over valued and some are under-valued in Scrabble, due to recent changes to the lists of allowable words. Z and X are now much easier to play and should be worth less, while U, M and G should be worth more than they are now. Joshua Lewis wrote a program to re-calculate the value of each letter to better reflect the current usage. The co-president of the North American Scrabble Players Association says that he often hears criticism of Scrabble's scoring system, but any change would bring about "catastrophic outrage". A spokesman for Mattel says that they have no plans to change the game."
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+ - Red announces 4K digital cinema player and distribution system-> 0

Submitted by innocent_white_lamb on Thursday December 06, 2012 @12:07AM

innocent_white_lamb writes "Red has announced the availability of their Redray player (4k resolution video player) as well as Odemax, which is a distribution system for independent filmmakers to get their movies into both homes and movie theatres.

The hardware aspect of this is neat, but the distribution system could be disruptive to the current Hollywood studio system (and the MPAA)

An official announcement regarding the Odemax distribution system will be made at the Sundance Film Festival."
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+ - Looking at photos of baby animals improves productivity-> 0

Submitted by innocent_white_lamb on Wednesday October 03, 2012 @12:29AM

innocent_white_lamb writes "Japanese researchers have shown that looking at photos of cute baby animals improves your productivity."
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+ - The First Color Motion Picures Made in 1902-> 0

Submitted by innocent_white_lamb on Wednesday September 12, 2012 @11:36PM

innocent_white_lamb writes "The first color movies, taken in 1902, have recently been restored by the British National Media Museum."
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+ - Mint charges musician a pretty penny-> 0

Submitted by innocent_white_lamb on Monday September 10, 2012 @07:42PM

innocent_white_lamb writes "A Canadian musician put an image of a penny on his album cover. Now for every 2000 copies of the album he creates he has to fill out an application, wait for approval and be charged $1,200.

I never realized that images of a coin would be covered by copyright."
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+ - Canada dismisses U.S. concern over fake military parts-> 0

Submitted by innocent_white_lamb on Tuesday June 12, 2012 @02:52AM

innocent_white_lamb writes "While a US Congressional investigation found over 1800 cases involving over one million counterfeit parts from China in American-made military equipment, the Canadian defence minister isn't concerned, even though Canada purchases its military equipment from the same contractors as the US does."
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+ - How a techie can deal with a pacemaker 2

Submitted by innocent_white_lamb on Tuesday May 08, 2012 @12:12AM

innocent_white_lamb writes "My wife got a pacemaker last Thursday and now that she's home we are finding
that we have to make a few changes.

She (and I) spend a lot of time on our computers. She told me that she felt
dizzy after sitting in front of her computer for several minutes, and I figured
out that it was her wireless Microsoft mouse that was at fault, probably
because she has her hand right on a radio transmitter when using the mouse. I
removed that and replaced it with a wired mouse. She felt much better
immediately after I removed the wireless mouse, so that was obviously at least
part of the problem.

I am also thinking that I could move her computer far away from her if I
have to, using USB extension cables and a monitor extension cable. I haven't
done that yet, though — I'm not sure if it will be necessary or not.

I did get her a wired phone for her today to put on computer desk to replace the
wireless phone that she has been using up to now.

This all amounts to ongoing experimentation to find out what's going to work
and be beneficial, and what won't.

Do any of you folks have any experience with this pacemaker stuff? Any
suggestions for what I can do to minimize or eliminate anything that might
affect her pacemaker?

It's a whole new world of learning for both of us."

+ - Advanced robot telemarketers-> 0

Submitted by innocent_white_lamb on Monday April 09, 2012 @01:19PM

innocent_white_lamb writes "Can you tell when you're talking to a robot telemarketer? They will even ask for you by name!"
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+ - Fabric design included in book leads to lawsuit-> 0

Submitted by innocent_white_lamb on Saturday November 19, 2011 @02:21PM

innocent_white_lamb writes "Emily Cier writes books about making quilts. Manufacturers send her free samples of their fabrics in the hope that she will use their materials in her books. Now a fabric designer is threatening to sue her for "tens of thousands of dollars, plus lawyer fees, destroying all copies of the book, etc." for including a photo of a quilt made with their fabric design in one of her books. Amazing, considering that the fabric was provided to her by the manufacturer for, apparently, that exact purpose."
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+ - Browse a website, agree to the contract-> 0

Submitted by innocent_white_lamb on Wednesday September 21, 2011 @04:04AM

innocent_white_lamb writes "A Canadian judge has ruled that the mere act of browsing a website constitutes binding agreement with that website's terms of service. Open a webpage and you've just signed a contract."
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+ - Spammers discover Kindle self-publishing-> 0

Submitted by innocent_white_lamb on Friday June 17, 2011 @01:56AM

innocent_white_lamb writes "Make it easy to self-publish books and the spammers will be right along too. Amazon's Kindle marketplace has been deluged by low-quality "books" selling for 99 cents each."
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