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Comment Small steps to Total Surveillance (Score 2) 109

This is just another in a long line of baffling (and user hostile) decisions Google has made for Chrome. What made me uninstall Chrome was the decision not to clear session cookies after Chrome exits.

Even if you signed into a website without ticking "remember me" or "log me in automatically", Chrome would happily keep those session cookies so that on restart you find yourself still logged into those websites.

Again in response to the uproar, Google said this was the behaviour they wanted for Chrome and user should manually sign out of each and every website each and every time before closing Chrome.

DRM

Battlefield 4 DRM Locking Out Part of North America Until EU Release 312

An anonymous reader writes "On the whole, Battlefield 4 had a reasonable launch. The have clearly learned from their past experiences with Battlefield 3 and, more notably, SimCity. Still, some customers are unable to access the game (until, presumably, October 30th at 7PM EDT, 39 hours after launch) because they are incorrectly flagged by region-locking. Do regional release dates help diminish all the work EA has been putting into Origin with their refund policy and live technical support? Should they just take our money and deliver the service before we change our minds?"
Programming

How Your Compiler Can Compromise Application Security 470

jfruh writes "Most day-to-day programmers have only a general idea of how compilers transform human-readable code into the machine language that actually powers computers. In an attempt to streamline applications, many compilers actually remove code that it perceives to be undefined or unstable — and, as a research group at MIT has found, in doing so can make applications less secure. The good news is the researchers have developed a model and a static checker for identifying unstable code. Their checker is called STACK, and it currently works for checking C/C++ code. The idea is that it will warn programmers about unstable code in their applications, so they can fix it, rather than have the compiler simply leave it out. They also hope it will encourage compiler writers to rethink how they can optimize code in more secure ways. STACK was run against a number of systems written in C/C++ and it found 160 new bugs in the systems tested, including the Linux kernel (32 bugs found), Mozilla (3), Postgres (9) and Python (5). They also found that, of the 8,575 packages in the Debian Wheezy archive that contained C/C++ code, STACK detected at least one instance of unstable code in 3,471 of them, which, as the researchers write (PDF), 'suggests that unstable code is a widespread problem.'"

Comment Epic fail (Score 4, Funny) 223

It is being made by an American company. Rest of the world does not and should not trust you anymore.

NSA: Hey Epic Exec, insert this complied module into your app
Epic Exec: Go fuck yourself NSA. We are all about protecting users here
NSA: I see. I also see that you visited a gay bar in SF last week and Boston the week before. Are you going to tell your wife and children or should we?
Epic Exec: Oh I see you are talking about National Security. Why didn't you say that before? Here at Epic we are loyal Murcans and we will be happy to help anyway we can.
NSA: That's a good bitch. Next time roll over and show your belly faster or else.....

Comment Political stupidity at it's zenith (Score 5, Insightful) 87

These morons would rather put the entire country and it's IT infrastructure to the expense and trouble of a Opt out system, instead of just making it a Opt In system for those families or organizations like schools that may need such a filter.

You think the ISP or the smartphone or modem manufacturers are going to absorb the cost of this additional layer of government mandated censorship? No they are going to pass on the cost to the consumer. So for every one household that might actually use this filter, nine would not and yet those nine would still pay for it.

PS: I don't understand the logic. How does censoring my internet protect your children from porn? It just doesn't make any sense.

Handhelds

Samsung's Smart Watch Coming September 4th, Without Flexible OLED Screen 89

First time accepted submitter lager_monste sent in a tidbit from Mashable about the upcoming Samsung Galaxy Gear Smart Watch: "Samsung will launch its smart watch, the Galaxy Gear, on Sept. 4 ahead of the IFA consumer electronics trade show in Berlin, Germany. Lee Young-hee, VP of Samsung's mobile business, confirmed the date and some details about the device in an interview with The Korea Times." Ars Technica notes that the Gear is nothing like what was expected from a patent filing for a watch with a flexible OLED. Maybe next generation.

Comment Form over function. Typical iSheep (Score 1, Troll) 214

You can see why he got RSI in the first few minutes of the video. He is using a Macbook Pro attached to three large monitors. First of all Macbooks have the worst fucking keyboards. It is complete and utter victory of form over function. Steve Jobs wanted his machine to look beautiful, who gives a fuck if it is uncomfortable to type on. Secondly look that the absurd height he has placed his monitors. Of course your neck and shoulder muscles will be wrecked working like that day after day.

Comment Useless (Score 3, Interesting) 87

I have never understood Japanese robot innovations or the hype around them. What they are doing so superficial and useless. They intently focus on the mechanics of robotic movement and facial design while either ignoring or paying superficial lip service to the Artificial Intelligence aspect. The moment the robot interacts with a human the illusion will be broken. Most of these Japanese robots have essentially the same AI as an IRC bot. Restricted list of recognized commands and related actions. Obsessively focusing on the form and ignoring the soul of the machine.

These are useless toys outside of manufacturing and very specialized industries. And frankly the problem of robot mechanics is an easy one to solve. Just copy Nature.

Comment Oh well I guess that's it then (Score 1) 100

And this brings to a end my ever using the free internet at Starbucks. It was fun while it lasted but Privacy & Not being tracked the packet level > a few bucks saved. Go Fuck Yourself Mr Do No Evil. Citizen 165258 does not agree with your corporate plan. Google can pry my privacy from my cold dead hands.

I would like to thank The Academy, my family and fans. Thank you and Good Night.

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