MannyO - Slashdot User

Intel Skylake & Broxton Graphics Processors To Start Mandating Binary Blobs 193

Posted by Soulskill on Saturday June 06, 2015 @09:32AM from the give-the-people-what-they-want-or-actually-maybe-not dept.

An anonymous reader writes: Intel has often been portrayed as the golden child within the Linux community and by those desiring a fully-free system without tainting their kernel with binary blobs while wanting a fully-supported open-source driver. The Intel Linux graphics driver over the years hasn't required any firmware blobs for acceleration, compared to AMD's open-source driver having many binary-only microcode files and Nouveau also needing blobs — including firmware files that NVIDIA still hasn't released for their latest GPUs. However, beginning with Intel Skylake and Broxton CPUs, their open-source driver will now too require closed-source firmware. The required "GuC" and "DMC" firmware files are for handling the new hardware's display microcontroller and workload scheduling engine. These firmware files are explicitly closed-source licensed and forbid any reverse-engineering. What choices are left for those wanting a fully-free, de-blobbed system while having a usable desktop?

Wikileaks' Assange Begins Extradition Battle 479

Posted by CmdrTaco on Monday February 07, 2011 @11:26AM from the let-the-battle-begin dept.

arisvega writes "Wikileaks founder Julian Assange has begun his court battle against extradition from the UK to Sweden. He faces allegations of sexual assault against two women, which he denies. Mr Assange, 39, argues Swedish prosecutors had no right to issue a warrant for his arrest because he has not yet been charged with any offences. At the extradition hearing, in London's Belmarsh Magistrates' Court, his lawyers are also challenging the move on human rights grounds. Mr Assange's legal team, led by Geoffrey Robertson QC, argues that if their client is forced to return to Sweden he could be extradited to the US, or even Guantanamo Bay, to face separate charges relating to the publication of secret documents by Wikileaks."

ATM Hack Gives Cash On Demand 193

Posted by samzenpus on Thursday July 29, 2010 @06:57AM from the one-card-bandit dept.

angry tapir writes "Windows CE-based ATMs can easily be made to dole out cash, according to security researcher Barnaby Jack. Exploiting bugs in two different ATMs at Black Hat, the researcher from IOActive was able to get them to spit out money on demand and record sensitive data from the cards of people who used them. Jack believes a large number of ATMs have remote management tools that can be accessed over a telephone. After experimenting with two machines he purchased, Jack developed a way of bypassing the remote authentication system and installing a homemade rootkit, named Scrooge."

Comment Re:Holy Biased Article, Batman! (Score 1) 413

by MannyO on Monday May 10, 2010 @10:28AM (#32156098) Attached to: Obama Will Nominate Elena Kagan To the Supreme Court

Not only that but I think Mr Pink Eyes is pimping his own site, which I don't think is cool.

Google Returns Chrome To Beta, Touts Speed Boost 110

Posted by timothy on Wednesday March 18, 2009 @04:44PM from the zippy-to-do-da dept.

CWmike writes "Google yesterday reversed its decision to ditch the beta label from its Chrome browser, saying it is restoring the moniker to some builds to get faster feedback to developers. 'Since we took the 'beta' tag off Google Chrome in December, we've been updating two release channels: developer and stable,' said Brian Rakowski, a Chrome product manager, in a new blog Google kicked off on Tuesday. 'With our latest release, we're re-introducing the beta channel for some early feedback.' The first beta, Chrome 2.0.169.1, includes several new features, said Rakowski, and it boasts a significant speed increase over the current stable version of the browser, 1.0.154.48. According to Google's tests, the beta is 35% faster than the stable build when measured by the SunSpider JavaScript benchmark suite, and 25% faster on the company's own V8 tests."

Comment Re:Closed Captioning? (Score 1) 165

by MannyO on Wednesday May 21, 2008 @11:07AM (#23493740) Attached to: $100 Roku Netflix Player Targets Apple TV

According to the "Netflix Ready Devices" FAQ at http://www.netflix.com/NetflixReadyDevices?tb=what

Do these movies and TV episodes have subtitles or closed captions?

Foreign-language titles always display subtitles in English. English language titles do not have subtitle options. None of the movies and TV episodes that you can watch instantly offer closed captioning.

Which sucks for me and my wife - English is not our first language and CC for the hearing impaired helps us out a lot when one is starting to learn the language.

I would love to get on of these boxes but this is a deal breaker for me; I've been speaking English for 15 years, I don't need CC but my wife benefits greatly from it...

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