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Submission + - Nvidia Removed Linux Driver Feature Due to Windows

Submitted by RemyBR
RemyBR writes: Softpedia points to a Nvidia Developer Zone forum post revealing that the company has removed a specific Linux feature as of the v310 drivers due to the Windows platform. A BaseMosaic user on Ubuntu 12.04 noticed a change in the number of displays that can be used simultaneously after upgrading from the v295 drivers to v310.
Another user, apparently working for Nvidia, gave a very troubling answer: "For feature parity between Windows and Linux we set BaseMosaic to 3 screens".

Submission + - Hacker who breached Zuckerberg's facebook account to get US12k

Submitted by RemyBR
RemyBR writes: The Palestinian hacker Khalil Shreateh, who broke into the Mark Zuckerberg's Facebook Timeline to expose a security lapse will be awarded nearly $12,000 but not from Facebook, it will come from an online crowdsourced campaign.

'Let us all send a message to security researchers across the world and say that we appreciate the efforts they make for the good of everyone.', said Marc Maiffret, CTO of BeyondTrust and the starter of the campaign.

It's still possible to donate on the campaign website.

Submission + - AI Is Funny - A Generative Joke Model (i-programmer.info) 1

Submitted by RemyBR
RemyBR writes: Can computers tell a good joke? Is comedy just a matter of statistics or is there something only a human can bring to creating a joke? A joke generator created at the University of Edinburgh suggests that AI can be funny.
Some AI generated jokes: "I like my relationships like I like my source, open", "I like my coffee like I like my war, cold", "I like my boys like I like my sectors, bad". Full paper here.

Submission + - Lance Armstrong: A Fallen Hero (wordpress.com)

Submitted by
gautampai
gautampai writes: "Will admitting to doping save him or imprison him? The jury has not yet decided on Armstrong’s confession to doping on The Oprah Winfrey show. Lawyers are yet to decide on what will be the legal implications when the show will be aired for the first time tonight. And how will the general public take to the news of the already tarnished reputation of Lance?"
Government

Submission + - TSA terminates its contract with Rapiscan, nude-o-scope maker (latimes.com) 2

Submitted by McGruber
McGruber writes: The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) has ended a contract with Rapiscan, a unit of OSI Systems Inc., manufacturer of half of all of those ineffective and controversial full-body scanner used on air passengers.

TSA officials claim that Rapiscan failed to deliver software that would protect the privacy of passengers, but the contract termination happened immediately after the TSA finally got around to studying the health effects of the scanners (http://yro.slashdot.org/story/12/12/18/1629258/tsa-finally-studying-health-effects-of-body-scanners) and Congress had a hearing on TSA's "Scanner Shuffle" (http://news.slashdot.org/story/12/11/15/2311230/house-subcommittee-holds-hearing-on-tsas-scanner-shuffle). I'm sure the timing is pure coincidence.

Comment The juicy bits (Score 5, Informative) 478

by RemyBR (#40018703) Attached to: Judge to Oracle: A High Schooler Could Write rangeCheck

For those of you who don't want to read all the transcript, this is what the judge said:

Oracle: I think the law with respect to infringer's profits, rather than damages, only requires us to show that there was a product that contained infringing material and that the product produced revenue, and then the burden shifts to the other side. If I'm wrong about that, I still think it's possible to demonstrate a nexus by showing that speed was very important to Google in getting Android out, and by copying they accelerated that.

Judge: We heard the testimony of Mr. Bloch. I couldn't have told you the first thing about Java before this problem. I have done, and still do, a significant amount of programming in other languages. I've written blocks of code like rangeCheck a hundred times before. I could do it, you could do it. The idea that someone would copy that when they could do it themselves just as fast, it was an accident. There's no way you could say that was speeding them along to the marketplace. You're one of the best lawyers in America, how could you even make that kind of argument?

Oracle: I want to come back to rangeCheck.

Judge: rangeCheck! All it does is make sure the numbers you're inputting are within a range, and gives them some sort of exceptional treatment. That witness, when he said a high school student could do it--
Google

Submission + - Judge to Oracle's attorney: I can code - can you? (law.com)

Submitted by
RemyBR
RemyBR writes: "One month into the Oracle v. Google judgement, judge Alsup said this to Oracle's attorney David Boies: "You're one of the best lawyers in America. I don't know how you could make that argument", in response to Boies' claim that the tiny amount of computer code Google has been found liable for infringing helped it get the Android mobile operating system to market sooner, therefore Oracle should be entitled to a slice of the profits.
He then proceeded to reveal his own personal knowledge of the technology in question. Alsup said he has personally written computer code, not in the Java language involved in the lawsuit, but in other languages. And rangeCheck, he said of the nine lines of infringed Java code that Google said it mistakenly put in a version of Android, "is so simple." — "I could do it. You could do it," the judge told Boies. "It was an accident.""
Microsoft

Submission + - Microsoft censors The Pirate Bay links on Windows Live Messenger (theregister.co.uk)

Submitted by
RemyBR
RemyBR writes: "Microsoft has confirmed that users of its instant messaging app will not be able to send each other links to popular torrent site The Pirate Bay, citing malware fears.
"We block instant messages if they contain malicious or spam URLs based on intelligence algorithms, third-party sources, and/or user complaints. Pirate Bay URLs were flagged by one or more of these and were consequently blocked," Redmond told The Register in an emailed statement."
Facebook

Submission + - How Facebook can defeat password-demanders 1

Submitted by heretic108
heretic108 writes: In response to people like employers who demand Facebook credentials for current and prospective workers, a simple solution would be for Facebook to allow all account holders to create "sandbox accounts". Once you create a sandbox account, you can (from your main account) selectively set your posts, photos, likes etc to be visible or invisible to the sandbox account. You can also choose which of your friends (and your friends' activities) will be visible. For instance, you can set it so Sandy Smith's activities are hidden by default, while Jim Stone's activities are visible by default.
The idea is that when logged in to the sandbox account, there will be nothing to indicate that it's a sandbox login. You will even be able to create a nested sandbox within this sandbox, with no nesting restriction.
With this in place, an employer will never know whether his/her employee or candidate has given up the master password, or just a sandbox password — with the ability to nest the sandboxes, account holders will have plausible deniability and will regain some control over their privacy in the event of duress attacks.

Submission + - Congress Capitulates to TSA; refuses to let Bruce Schneier testify (schneier.com)

Submitted by McGruber
McGruber writes: Following up on the earlier Slashdot story "Congress Wants Your TSA Stories" (http://yro.slashdot.org/story/12/03/23/2312228/congress-wants-your-tsa-stories), earlier today, the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Oversight and Government Reform and the Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure held a hearing titled 'TSA Oversight Part III: Effective Security or Security Theater?' that was streamed line by CSPAN (http://www.c-span.org/Events/House-Hearing-Examines-TSA-Security-Initiatives/10737429331-1/).

In a blog update (http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2012/03/congressional_t.html), Bruce Schneider says that "at the request of the TSA" he was removed from the witness list.

Bruce also said "it's pretty clear that the TSA is afraid of public testimony on the topic, and especially of being challenged in front of Congress. They want to control the story, and it's easier for them to do that if I'm not sitting next to them pointing out all the holes in their position. Unfortunately, the committee went along with them."

Comment Re:Btrfs (Score 2) 271

by RemyBR (#38596838) Attached to: Linux 3.2 Has Been Released

This.

Don't know about this new version, but I tried btrfs on ubuntu a few months ago, on a box I use mostly with photo and video editing software. It was slow to the point of being completely unusable. Specially for non destructive photo editing, where the software creates and modifies (replaces) small files with metadata for each action you perform on the images. Have being using ext4 since then, and everything is ok.

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