Comment Re:Youtube and the death of the advertising model (Score 2, Informative) 290
Obligatory Zapp Brannigan (Futurama) quote...
"If we hit that bull's eye, the rest of the dominoes will fall like a house of cards. Checkmate."
The State of UK Broadband — Not So Fast 279
Barence writes "The deplorable speed of British broadband connections has been revealed in the latest figures from the Office of National Statistics, which show that 42.3% of broadband connections are slower than 2Mb/sec. More worryingly, the ONS statistics are based on the connection's headline speed, not actual throughput, which means that many more British broadband connections are effectively below the 2Mb/sec barrier. Better still, a separate report issued yesterday by Ofcom revealed that the majority of broadband users had no idea about the speed of their connection anyway."
Afghan Student Gets 20 Years For Blasphemy 618
Invisible Pink Unicorn writes "Despite nationwide public support for his initial death sentence, a three-judge appeals court has reduced the sentence of Sayed Parwez Kambakhsh to 20 years in prison. Kambakhsh was charged with circulating an article on women's rights that he found online. From the article: 'Family members have said Kambakhsh was beaten and threatened with death until he signed a confession and that local journalists who expressed support for him were warned they would be arrested if they persisted.'"
Top Indie Games You Wouldn't Mind Paying For 116
Alan Skorkin writes "If you are sick of the boring and overpriced commercial games, then have a look at this list. These are
some of the best indie games out there — innovative, immersive, great gameplay and very reasonably priced (some are even free). You would never feel cheated after buying and playing these games. In fact, you would feel like you got the better end of the deal, and that is a lot more than can be said for the vast majority of commercial games out there."
Comment Something that always bother me about this... (Score 1) 493
If you need to decode this on a consumer (i.e. cheap, easy to obtain) processor and, make it simple for average Joe to use (not require an internet connection, entering a code for every use, etc.) - How can the encryption be all that good?
People looking to steal and resell you data from will have machines that are fast enough to crack it in a relatively short time (brute force crack using a cluster, may not be pretty or efficient, but some major crunching power can be put together on the cheap.) If it can be viewed, there is some way of copying it - quality is not the highest priority of "pirates." It may prevent casual copying, but that could be accomplished for much less.
Who are they trying to protect their work from?
I am a mechanical engineer, I know nothing about encryption, DRM, or how it's done - So I may be completely wrong with my thoughts on this subject. (Please correct what I got wrong.)
Feed Brits thinking about GPS tracking every car on the road (engadget.com)
Filed under: Transportation
Wow, those Brits sure do love surveilling each other. Even as both Houses of Parliament conduct independent investigations on how nearly-constant CCTV monitoring is affecting British citizens, a group of researchers issued a report on future transportation policy that recommended the growing British traffic problem be solved by tracking every car on the road with GPS. While every-car tracking in the name of security is nothing new for the Brits -- they already do it with cameras -- the GPS scheme is primarily meant to reduce congestion and pollution, an idea we've definitely heard before. The researchers say that satellite-tracking will allow for variable speed limits and road-user access charges, making for faster journeys and fewer carbon emissions. The major hiccup in the plan, of course, is outfitting all 30 million cars in Britain with the appropriate transceivers, a rollout that the researchers say will take up to 10 years, but can be aided by requiring auto manufacturers to build the devices in -- something they claim is a "simple extension" to current GPS navigation units. Oh, and how do they plan to deal with those pesky personal privacy issues everyone's getting so worked up about? With "appropriate laws," of course! Yep, that'll be enough to keep those stalkers at bay.Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments
Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!
Steve Jobs Personally Resolves Customer Complaint 341
An anonymous reader writes "The Consumerist recently published a story about an Apple customer who went through support hell with a broken Macbook. After escalating the issue up the support chain, and a month wait for his Macbook, the guy gave up and simply wrote Steve Jobs a blistering flame-mail. So, was he surprised when Jobs' executive assistant responded back the next day! He got both a brand new Macbook, as well as his old one to copy the hard drive. The guy also responded in a comment, and he turns out to be a slashdotter! He even wrote a journal entry here about the story."
Feed National ID card a disaster in the making (com.com)
Security experts Richard Forno and Bruce Schneier say Homeland Security is committing a blunder of historic proportion.
Slashdot Top Deals
(1) Never draw what you can copy. (2) Never copy what you can trace. (3) Never trace what you can cut out and paste down.
