Eremit - Slashdot User

Comment How might this affect privacy concerns? (Score 2) 40

by Eremit on Thursday January 12, 2012 @11:08AM (#38673586) Attached to: Major Financial Groups Share Data To Fight Online Theft

Of course it sounds good that the banks want to coordinate their security efforts. Probably one part of their analysis has to create profiles of common usage to be able to discern uncommon and possibly dangerous usage. These profiles will be much more detailed than their internal ones. Might they not use those profiles for other things like customer scoring, targeted advertising, etc., too? Or should I assume that they already share some data about their customers?

Joachim De Posada Talks About Delayed Gratification 105

Posted by samzenpus on Thursday August 13, 2009 @01:50PM from the a-bird-in-hand dept.

grrlscientist writes "Here is a short talk in which Joachim de Posada shares a landmark experiment on delayed gratification — and how it can predict future success. With priceless video of kids trying their hardest not to eat their marshmallow."

Even More Restriction For German Internet 330

Posted by kdawson on Monday August 03, 2009 @01:55AM from the nose-of-the-camel dept.

tikurion writes "It's only been a few weeks since the law dubbed Zugangserschwerungsgesetz (access impediment law) was passed in the German Parliament despite over 140,000 signatures of people opposed to it. The law will go into effect in mid-October 2009. Now Minister for Family Affairs Ursula von der Leyen implied in an interview that she is planning on extending the reach of the law, claiming '...or else the great Internet is in danger of turning into a lawless range of chaos, where you're allowed to bully, insult, and deceive limitlessly.' More on golem.de via Google translate (here is the German original)."

German Court Bans E-Voting As Currently Employed 82

Posted by timothy on Tuesday March 03, 2009 @09:56AM from the grandfathered-in dept.

Kleiba writes "The highest German Court (Bundesverfassungsgericht, Federal Constitutional Court) ruled that electronic voting machines like Nedap ESD1 and ESD2 are not permissible in Germany. Der Spiegel, a well-known German newspaper, is featuring article on today's decision (in German; Babelfish translation here) which was the result of a lawsuit by physicist Ulrich Wiesner and his father Joachim Wiesner, a professor emeritus of political science. The main argument against the voting machines in the eyes of the Court is that they conflict with the principle of transparency. 2009 is a major election year for Germany, with parliamentary elections in the fall." Reader Dr. Hok writes "Voting machines are not illegal per se, but with these machines it wasn't possible to verify the results after the votes were cast. The verification procedure by the German authorities was flawed, too: only specimens were tested, not the machines actually used in the elections, and the detailed results (including the source code) were not made public. The results of the election remain legally valid, though."

Italian Red Lights Rigged With Short Yellow Light 353

Posted by timothy on Thursday February 05, 2009 @10:42PM from the decent-pellet-gun-might-help dept.

suraj.sun writes with an excerpt from Ars Technica which brings to mind the importance of auditable code for hardware used in law enforcement: "It's no secret that red light cameras are often used to generate more ticket revenue for the cities that implement them, but a scam has been uncovered in Italy that has led to one arrest and 108 investigations over traffic systems being rigged to stop sooner for the sole purpose of ticketing more motorists."

Hackers Clone Passports In Driveby RFID Heist 251

Posted by CmdrTaco on Wednesday February 04, 2009 @09:48AM from the well-not-exactly dept.

pnorth writes "A hacker has shown how easy it is to clone US passport cards that use RFID by conducting a drive-by test on the streets of San Francisco. Chris Paget, director of research and development at Seattle-based IOActive, used a $250 Motorola RFID reader and an antenna mounted in a car's side window and drove for 20 minutes around San Francisco, with a colleague videoing the demonstration. During the demonstration he picked up the details of two US passport cards. Using the data gleaned it would be relatively simple to make cloned passport cards he said. Paget is best known for having to abandon presenting a paper at the Black Hat security conference in Washington in 2007 after an RFID company threatened him with legal action." Apparently this is a little unfair — he sniffed the data, he didn't actually make a fake passport.

New Sidekick Will Run NetBSD, Not Windows CE 262

Posted by kdawson on Tuesday February 03, 2009 @02:29AM from the daemon-in-the-details dept.

jschauma writes "Many sites are reporting that the next Sidekick LX 2009/Blade, from Danger (acquired by Microsoft early in 2008), is going to run NetBSD as their operating system, causing Microsoft's recruiters to look for NetBSD developers."

FSFE Launches Free PDF Readers Campaign 198

Posted by kdawson on Monday February 02, 2009 @10:37PM from the prety-darn-fine dept.

FSFE Fellow writes "The Fellowship of the Free Software Foundation Europe is proud to announce its latest initiative: pdfreaders.org, a site providing information about PDF with links to Free Software PDF readers for all major operating systems. FSFE president Georg Greve says: 'Interoperability, competition and choice are primary benefits of Open Standards that translate into vendor-independence and better value for money for customers. Although many versions of PDF offer all these benefits for formatted text and documents, files in PDF formats typically come with information that users need to use a specific product. pdfreaders.org provides an alternative to highlight the strengths of PDF as an Open Standard.'"

WarCloning, the New WarDriving? 154

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on Monday February 02, 2009 @06:27PM from the now-everyone-with-a-laptop-in-their-car-is-gonna-get-searched dept.

ChrisPaget writes "After my legal skirmishes with HID a while back, The Register has coverage of my latest RFID work — cloning Passport Cards and Electronic Drivers Licenses from a moving vehicle. Full details will be released at Shmoocon this weekend, but in the meantime there's video of the equipment and articles all over the place."

Submission + - Electric car to change the industry?

Submitted by on Monday July 30, 2007 @10:37AM

An anonymous reader writes: CNNMoney.com is running an article about a Norwegian car company that is hooking up with Google, Tesla, and others to bring an electric car to market that might change the automotive industry the way Dell changed the computer industry.

Submission + - The Swedish $150 Linux Laptop for the masses (medisoncelebrity.com)

Submitted by

Xemu

on Wednesday July 25, 2007 @06:03AM

Xemu writes: "Inspired by Negropontes laptop for children, the Swedish company Medison are now taking orders for their US$150 Linux laptop, the Medison Celebrity. The laptop is a 1.5 GHz Celeron M 370 with 14 inch screen, wireless network and it comes with Fedora Redhat pre-installed."

$298 Wal-Mart PC Has OO.org, No Crapware 422

Posted by kdawson on Thursday July 19, 2007 @09:37AM from the tell-me-again-why-dell-can't-do-this dept.

cristarol writes "Wal-Mart has begun selling a $298 PC (Everex IMPACT GC3502). It comes with Windows Vista Home Basic and OpenOffice.org 2.2, as well as a complete lack of crapware: 'Users accustomed to being bombarded with trialware offers and seeing their would-be pristine Windows desktops littered with shortcuts to AOL and other applications will likely be pleased at their absence from the GC3502.' The machine is targeted at the back-to-school market. The hardware is nothing to write home about: a 1.5GHz Via C7 with 1GB of RAM and integrated graphics, but as Ars points out, it should be more than capable of performing basic tasks." Dell sells a low-end PC through Wal-Mart for $200 more, and one assumes it is loaded with crapware. Anybody know for sure?

Submission + - All Humans Evolved from a Single Origin in Africa (sciencedaily.com)

Submitted by

Invisible Pink Unicorn

on Thursday July 19, 2007 @09:12AM

Invisible Pink Unicorn writes: "Researchers at the University of Cambridge have combined studies of global human genetic variations with skull measurements worldwide to conclusively show the validity of the single origin hypothesis. The alternative hypothesis contended that different populations independently evolved from Homo erectus to Home sapiens in different areas. The lead researcher explains, 'The origin of anatomically modern humans has been the focus of much heated debate. Our genetic research shows the further modern humans have migrated from Africa, the more genetic diversity has been lost within a population. However, some have used skull data to argue that modern humans originated in multiple spots around the world. We have combined our genetic data with new measurements of a large sample of skulls to show definitively that modern humans originated from a single area in Sub-saharan Africa.' The article abstract is available from Nature."

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