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Comment Can't wait for other nail-biters such as... (Score 1) 47

by Archis (#60132910) Attached to: After a Breach, Users Rarely Change Their Passwords, Study Finds
"After head-on collisions, few drivers put on seatbelts until first-responders arrive." Now don't get me wrong - changing a password is important in general. Not all breaches are "lost passwords". Changing my password after someone opens their S3 bucket isn't going to be very helpful either retroactively or in the future, unless what was leaked some analogue of the shadow file (not the most common case.)

Comment Re:Rebuilding not a problem? (Score 1) 80

Sorry about that. Forgot to login. But it's entirely possible to recompile ALL of Linux effectively. If Microcode could change op-codes, and that dictionary were available, every single machine could have a different instruction set. Is it effective 100% all the time? No. However, it does stop fly-by attacks effectively. Code written for one host can't easily jump without being rewritten. Change it twice a day, and you've made it fairly expensive. We tried that with PHP and scripting languages too, and it's been working quite well so far.

Comment Perhaps it's time for a speedometer alongside it. (Score 1) 736

by Archis (#42884345) Attached to: Ask Slashdot: Why Is It So Hard To Make An Accurate Progress Bar?
I've seem them once or twice before. There are two reasons to have a progress-bar. One is to know the "rate of progress", and another the, amount of work done so far. When a progressbar freezes, it could also be because some background process just died, or someone forgot to catch an exception in time, or an async call that doesn't handle a timeout or has a long timeout. Most technical users just use -v or --verbose options to see what's happening, rather than how much has happened as an unquantified bar. Maybe the solution is to have a sort of speed-dial like that on cars. Backend processes can ping the log-collector or some other globally accessible entity everytime they "do" something useful. That would allow the speed-dial to show the frequency of operations, giving a good idea of whether or not something is happening or not.
Earth

Submission + - Curiosity's Latest High-Res Photo Looks Like Earth (wired.com)

Submitted by bbianca127
bbianca127 writes: Curiosity sent a picture down to us, and it looks a lot like Earth. Actually, the picture's color quality has been changed — to human eyes, the landscape would look a lot more reddish. Still, it looks remarkably like the southwestern United States (bringing to mind the AD quote about how Lucille Bluth would rather be dead in California than alive in Arizona).

Submission + - Ecuador Grants Asylum to Julian Assange (guardian.co.uk)

Submitted by
paulmac84
paulmac84 writes: "The Guardian are live blogging the Ecuadorian Foreign Minister's announcement that Ecuador is to grant asylum to Julian Assange. In the announcement Minister Patino said, "We can state that there is a risk that he will be persecuted politically... We trust the UK will offer the necessary guarantees so that both governments can act adequately and properly respect international rights and the right of asylum. We also trust the excellent relationship the two countries have will continue.". The Guardian also carries a translated copy of the letter the UK sent to Ecuador regarding the threat to "storm" the Ecuadorian embassy."
Music

Submission + - Musopen Kickstarter PD music project completes! (kickstarter.com)

Submitted by yourlord
yourlord writes: Just under 2 years ago Musopen launched a Kickstarter campaign covered here on slashdot. Today that project is complete with the release of a large amount of classical recordings into the public domain. This brings an extensive collection of high quality classical music into the public domain. The project music is hosted on the Musopen site, and on archive.org.

Submission + - UK Authorities Threaten to Storm Ecuadorian Embassy to Arrest Julian Assange (bbc.co.uk)

Submitted by
paulmac84
paulmac84 writes: "According to the BBC, the UK have issued a threat to storm the Ecuadorian Embassy to arrest Julian Assange. Under the terms of the Diplomatic and Consular Premises Act 1987 the UK has the right to revoke the diplomatic immunity of any embassy on UK soil. Ecuador are due to announce their decision on Assange's asylum request on Thursday morning."
Verizon

Submission + - Verizon justifies $5 fee based on 'systems and IT' costs (networkworld.com)

Submitted by
coondoggie
coondoggie writes: "Let’s say that for whatever reason, you’d rather your telephone number not be published. If you are a Verizon customer, that privacy privilege will cost you $5 a month. And how does Verizon justify such a significant fee for such an insignificant service? “The cost charged to offer unlisted phone numbers is chiefly systems and IT based,” a media relations spokesman for the company tells Network World. (Asking the same question of online customer service elicited a predictably unenlightening response.) Sixty dollars a year to keep an unpublished number unpublished? Does that seem plausible?"

Submission + - BitTorrent to make uTorrent Ads Optional in a Bid to Appease Angry Users (paritynews.com)

Submitted by hypnosec
hypnosec writes: BitTorrent has backtracked on uTorrent ads cannot be ‘turned off’ stance following a user revolt and has announced that users can opt-out of sponsored torrents if they don’t wish to see them. Last weekend BitTorrent announced that is going to make uTorrent ad-enabled and that it will now have ‘sponsored torrents’ feature which can’t be disabled. As one would have imagined, this didn’t go quite well with many users and they let out their anger on the uTorrent forums. “You seriously think that uTorrent is going to survive now? The Admin/Devs are seriously deluded. Pure greed has turned your once loved app into a bloated and buggy cash cow.” said one user.
Medicine

Submission + - Scientists reverse engineer animal brains to create bionic prosthetic eyes (extremetech.com)

Submitted by
MrSeb
MrSeb writes: "Utilizing neuroscience, gene therapy, and optogenetics, a pair of researchers from Cornell University have created a bionic prosthetic eye that can restore almost-normal vision to animals blinded by destroyed retinas. Prosthetic eyes have been created before, but for the most part these have been dumb prosthetics — chips that wire themselves into the ganglion cells behind the retina, which are the interface between the retina and optic nerve. These chips receive optical stimuli (via a CMOS sensor, for example), which they transmit as electrical signals to the ganglion cells. These prosthetic eyes can produce a low-resolution grayscale field that the brain can then interpret — which is probably better than being completely blind — but they don’t actually restore sight. The Cornell prosthetic eye however, developed by Sheila Nirenberg and Chethan Pandarinath, is a much closer analog to a real eye, almost completely restoring sight in mice — and within 1 or 2 years, humans."

Submission + - What is the best position to work for long hours?

Submitted by
damitr
damitr writes: "What is the most ergonomic position if you are working with a laptop or a desktop (with or without wireless keyboard and mouse) for long hours at stretch. Is bean bag for sitting with a laptop a good option? What is the better way to use a desktop without causing tennis elbow and backache/neck problems?"
Australia

Submission + - Australian Government drops Internet plan to spy on public... for now (smh.com.au)

Submitted by CuteSteveJobs
CuteSteveJobs writes: Australian Attorney-General Nicola Roxon has been forced to back down on her government's unpopular plan to force ISPs to store the web history and social networking of all Australians for two years. The plan has been deeply unpopular with the public, with hackers attacking the government's spy agency. Public servants at the spy agency promoting the scheme been scathing of the government saying: "These reforms are urgently needed to deal with a rapidly evolving security environment, but there isn't much appetite within the government for anything that attracts controversy," but a document on the scheme released under the Freedom of Information Act had 90% of it redacted to prevent "premature unnecessary debate." Roxon hasn't dropped the unpopular scheme entirely, but only delayed it until after the next election
Windows

Submission + - You can't bypass the UI formerly known as Metro on Windows 8 (networkworld.com) 1

Submitted by colinneagle
colinneagle writes: The final build of Windows 8 has already leaked to torrent sites, which is giving the propellerheads a chance to dig through the code. One revelation will probably not sit well with enterprise customers: you can't bypass the don't-call-it-Metro UI.

Normally, you have to boot Windows 8 and when the tiled desktop UI (formerly known as Metro) came up, you had to click on one of the boxes to launch Explorer. Prior builds of Windows 8 allowed the user to create a shortcut so you bypass Metro and go straight to the Explorer desktop.

Rafael Rivera, co-author of the forthcoming Windows 8 Secrets, confirmed to Mary Jo Foley at ZDNet that Microsoft does indeed block the boot bypass routine from prior builds.

He also believes that Microsoft has blocked the ability for administrators to use Group Policy to allow users to bypass the tiled startup screen. There had been hope that Microsoft would at least relent and let corporate users have a bypass, if only for compatibility’s sake.

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