Please create an account to participate in the Slashdot moderation system

 



Forgot your password?
typodupeerror

Comment Well, Here's an idea for a "government standard" (Score 1) 373

"Is it time for the government to roll out legislation that will enforce safety standards for car computers as well?"

Here's a suggestion: make the maker of the car liable for successful remote-takeover attacks (not involving physical access). For actual damages. No matter what kind of waiver or "user agreement" the user is asked to sign (in fact, make those explicitly *illegal* if they attempt to subvert this, except in the case of experimental vehicles of very limited numbers). That way the lawyers would squash the "bright ideas" of the marketing guys, until there's security technology that management is willing to bet the company on. And, oh yes, if the government asks for a "remote kill switch"? Have the *government* be liable in court for abuse of it. That'll probably shut down *that* bright idea, too. For a little while.

This will probably retard things like self-driving cars for years. And that wireless access point in your car would for sure no longer be able to talk to the car itself. But I believe this would be a good thing. And if cars come, from now on, with only three indicator lights, that's a shame. But probably worth it. I don't like the idea of Unknown Hackers doing to highway traffic all over the country what they did to Sony's IT.

Comment Looking for this in the folds of my brain.... (Score 1) 91

I'd come down hard on the last line as still relevant.
/*
* If the new process paused because it was
* swapped out, set the stack level to the last call
* to savu(u_ssav). This means that the return
* which is executed immediately after the call to aretu
* actually returns from the last routine which did
* the savu.
*
* You are not expected to understand this.
*/

(credit to http://cm.bell-labs.com/cm/cs/...) And yes, let me forestall a lot of comment -- as the link above mentions, the code associated with this comment in the v6 UNIX kernel was wrong.

Comment From a faulty premise, any conclusion may follow (Score 2, Insightful) 175

"...but the news is promising if in fact it will bring more information to the information-starved masses of North Korea".

I don't see why the existence of ".kp" domains will bring more information to the folks in North Korea, any more than the words
"Democratic People's Republic" in the country's official name would make it owned by the people, democratic, or a republic.

Labels have power, sure, but not always the way one hopes.

Censorship

Australian AvP Ban Reversed 71

Earlier this month, we discussed news that Sega's new Aliens vs. Predator video game had been refused classification in Australia, effectively banning it. After a scathing response from the developer saying they wouldn't censor the game, and later news that the classification scheme may be updated to include an R18+ rating, it now seems that the Classification Board has seen fit to give the game a green light after all. Sega's Darren Macbeth told Kotaku, "We are particularly proud that the game will be released in its original entirety, with no content altered or removed whatsoever. This is a big win for Australian gamers. We applaud the Classification Review Board on making a decision that clearly considers the context of the game, and is in line with the modern expectations of reasonable Australians."
Australia

New Aliens Vs. Predator Game Doesn't Make It Past AU Ratings Board 277

An anonymous reader writes "Australia refused to give Rebellion's new Aliens Vs. Predator game a rating, effectively banning it in the country. Rebellion says it won't be submitting an edited version for another round of classifications, however. (As Valve did with Left 4 Dead 2.) They said, 'We will not be releasing a sanitized or cut down version for territories where adults are not considered by their governments to be able to make their own entertainment choices.'"

Comment I have some advice (Score 1) 468

The bald guy with the coffee cup is named "Wally" -- don't expect him to get any work done. Don't piss off the lady named Alice -- she turns violent at times. Dilbert would be a nice guy for your sister to marry, but it's not going to happen. Steer clear of HR entirely. And, oh yes, it's not polite to mention your boss's pointy hair to him.

This has "IT Strategy by Partly Comprehended Magazine Article" written all over it.

Businesses

Carbonite Stacks the Deck With 5-Star Reviews 197

The Narrative Fallacy writes "In the aftermath of disclosures that Belkin employees paid users for good reviews on Amazon, David Pogue reports in the NYTimes that Carbonite has gone one better with 5-star reviews of its online backup services written by its own employees. Pogue recounts how Bruce Goldensteinberg signed up for the backup service, and all went well until his computer crashed and he was unable to restore it from the online backup while Carbonite customer support kept him on hold for over an hour. Frustrated, Goldensteinberg started reading Carbonite reviews on Amazon and a few of them seemed suspicious. 'They were created around the same date — October 31, 2006 — all given 5 stars, and the reviewers all came from around the Boston, MA area, where Carbonite is located,' including a review by Swami Kumaresan that read more like a testimonial. 'It turned out that Swami Kumaresan is the Vice President of Marketing for Carbonite. His review gives no indication that he is employed by the company.' Another review posted by Jonathan F. Freidin extols Carbonite without mentioning Freidin's position as Senior Software Engineer at Carbonite. 'It doesn't matter to me that Carbonite's fraudulent reviews are a couple of years old,' writes Pogue. 'These people are gaming the system, deceiving the public to enrich themselves. They should be deeply ashamed.'"
Programming

Balancing Performance and Convention 171

markmcb writes "My development team was recently brainstorming over finding a practical solution to the problem that's haunted anyone who's ever used a framework: convention vs. customization. We specifically use Rails, and like most frameworks, it's great for 95% of our situations, but it's creating big bottlenecks for the other 5%. Our biggest worry isn't necessarily that we don't know how to customize, but rather that we won't have the resources to maintain customized code going forward; it's quite simple to update Rails as it matures versus the alternative. What have your experiences been with this problem? Have you found any best practices to avoid digging custom holes you can't climb out of?"

Comment Net Neutrality Not An Issue, Perhaps, But.... (Score 2, Interesting) 363

I love Australia and New Zealand, but a consequence of pervasively metered internet service means that you must check what an AU/NZ hotel means by "internet access". As one of the bandwidth hogs who (for example) downloads podcasts and uploads pictures, I found that it was startlingly easy to hit some limits. Further, the limits can bite you.

When checking a hotel in a country like AU or NZ, be sure and ask:

  • Is there an upper limit on how much I can download/upload without an additional fee? Some AU/NZ hotels would solemnly assure me that all hotels have such limits and such pricing schemes -- but this wasn't actually true.
  • If I go over the limit, does internet access stop? What would I have to do if I want it to start up again? Bear in mind that you might not know when those video podcasts you subscribed to last month will all suddenly have new episodes, or when your boss will send you a gig or two labeled "Better look at this" -- and fees on the order of (as I recall) $0.10/megabyte can really add up when a gigabyte is involved!

For markets to work, both sellers and buyers must be sharp dealers when it comes to pricing. At least once I changed hotels when "unlimited internet" turned out to be "unlimited in the sense that there's no upper limit on how much we'll charge you." After that, I made sure to have a tediously detailed conversation about internet pricing when choosing hotels.

I think hotels *should* charge by the bit if they want to -- I just think that they'll have to get by without my patronage -- just like a hotel that wanted to charge extra for towels, by the liter for hot water and toilet flushing, and by the joule for electricity (including elevator rides!) would find me checking out quickly, or more likely, never staying there.

If you don't want this sort of regime, use your wallet to try to stop it -- hunt around, find hotels and service providers who say things like "No, we used to charge by the bit, but it turned out to be a source of bad feeling, and not worth the money".

It's not inevitable that we'll wind up with by-the-bit pricing -- but it's inevitable that bean-counters will try it. And, who knows? Maybe that is the way things should work. But right now, you have a choice.
   

Slashdot Top Deals

God help those who do not help themselves. -- Wilson Mizner

Working...