Jake Ease - Slashdot User

Comment Re:Hmm (Score 1) 148

by Jake Ease on Thursday May 08, 2008 @08:51PM (#23345206) Attached to: Data Mining In Law Enforcement

2. I wonder what he means by "commercial data available in the public domain". Either it's commercial and you have to pay for it, or it's public domain. My long distance calling patterns are commercial data (and is sold by the phone company for marketing), but they're not "public domain" in the way that most of us would understand it.

You have a point, but he is probably referring to information that is in the public domain and maybe even available free of charge, but that has been harvested and combined commercially. Even if you walk into whatever government office may have some piece of data that is in the public domain, there may be a service charge to cover clerical time, copying and so on. Take Choicepoint; they purchase public records from just about every court in the country, from county clerk/assessor/, vehicle and driver records, headers from credit bureaus with SSNs, former addresses, aliases, etc. They then combine all this in different ways to create products that they sell to... the government and to insurance companies.

New iPod Checksum Cracked, Linux Supported 422

Posted by CmdrTaco on Monday September 17, 2007 @10:08AM from the well-that-didn't-take-long dept.

An anonymous reader writes "After 36 hours of reverse engineering, the method for producing the checksum on new iPods has been discovered." You can also get linux support working if that's what you crave for your shiny new toy.

The Real Problem With Alexa 372

Posted by CmdrTaco on Monday July 23, 2007 @12:00PM from the get-my-irk-on dept.

Alexa drives me nuts. It uses a broken methodology to measure the internet and is, for reasons unclear to anyone, regarded as somehow definitive simply because it allows you to compare two sites with a single simple number. Its sampling methodology is flawed and the numbers it produces are meaningless. And if you want to help me prove this, please install their toolbar. Of course since most of you are Slashdot readers, most of you won't and that only helps prove my point. Read on for what I mean by all of this, and why it matters.

Is the LUG a thing of the past? 162

Posted by CmdrTaco on Monday July 23, 2007 @10:40AM from the where-else-do-you-get-cds dept.

tinahdee writes "Linux User Groups dying out? LUG leaders report that attendance is down — but mailing list traffic is still good. Do we still need LUGs, given the ease of installation and ubiquitousness of online information about Linux? Lots of people say, yes, we still need LUGs (and some disagree)."

The Complete History of Format Wars 277

Posted by CmdrTaco on Monday July 23, 2007 @08:26AM from the one-way-to-put-it dept.

TheFrozenSink writes "The UK bit of Cnet have put up an article on old formats that should have won their respective format wars. The piece makes some pretty spectacular claims, like if Apple had bought BeOS then there would have been no iPod and of course, no iPhone. The article also claims that the Atari ST was better than the Amiga and that MiniDisc should have won over CD."

Security Flaw Found That Allows Control of iPhone 176

Posted by Zonk on Monday July 23, 2007 @07:05AM from the there's-always-a-catch dept.

i_like_spam writes "The NYTimes is running a story about an iPhone flaw that has been found and documented by researchers from Independent Security Evaluators. Attackers were able to gain full control of the iPhone either through WiFi or by visiting a website with malicious code. The exploit will be demonstrated at BlackHat on Aug. 2nd at 4:45pm. Until then, 'details on the vulnerability, but not a step-by-step guide to hacking the phone, can be found at www.exploitingiphone.com, which the researchers said would be unveiled today.'"

GCC 4.2.1 Released 449

Posted by Zonk on Monday July 23, 2007 @05:39AM from the licensing-with-drama dept.

larry bagina writes "GCC 4.2.1 was released 4 days ago. Although this minor update would otherwise be insignificant, it will be the final GPL v2 release; all future releases will be GPL v3. Some key contributors are grumbling over this change and have privately discussed a fork to stay as GPL v2. The last time GCC forked (EGCS), the FSF conceded defeat. How will the FSF/GNU handle the GPL 3 revolt?"

Linspire/Microsoft Agreement Useless to Users 155

Posted by Zonk on Monday July 23, 2007 @03:29AM from the par-for-the-course dept.

Stephen Samuel writes "Groklaw host PJ has dissected the 'patent peace' agreement between Linspire and Microsoft, and has determined that what Linspire agreed to is next to useless for many users. Essentially, under the agreement Linspire software is almost unusable: 'You can't share the software with others, pass it on with the patent promise, modify your own copy, or even use it for an "unauthorized" purpose, whatever that means in a software context. You must pay Linspire for the software, but then the "covenant" says to use Linux, you must also pay Microsoft. That payment doesn't cover upgrades. Linspire said it was absorbing the initial fees, but I don't know about upgrades. New functionality means you lose your coverage or presumably must pay again.'"

Slashdot Top Deals