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Comment Re:Question (Score 2) 230

by TheNumberSix (#45248019) Attached to: ACLU: Lavabit Was 'Fatally Undermined' By Demands For Encryption Keys
The entire story is given by this in-depth interview with Ladar himself. http://twit.tv/show/triangulation/125 I highly recommend this if you are interested. He also explains that he was personally cited in the warrants, so even if Lavabit gos away, Ladar himself is still liable to give up the info.

Comment Sesame Street First Steps (Score 1) 417

by TheNumberSix (#33471666) Attached to: Software (and Appropriate Input Device) For a Toddler?
I bought this right here for my kiddo when he was around 14 months.

It has different sections, based on what you want the kid to do. So for example, you can enter the "Keyboard" activities section, and the adult would drive the mouse and control the activity while the kid would be able to mash the keyboard and make things happen on the screen. To give you a taste of what it's like, imagine hearing the song "Twinkle, twinkle, little star" and each key press causes a star to appear on the screen.

My kid loved it. And it's PC & Mac! (Sorry no Linux, I did spend five minutes trying to get it to work in WINE and gave up.)
Security

Attacking Game Consoles On Corporate Networks 79

Posted by Soulskill from the waggle-the-wiimote-to-lock-it-down dept.
A pair of security researchers speaking at DefCon demonstrated how video game consoles, which are becoming increasingly common break room or team-building toys, can open vulnerabilities in corporate networks. "[They] found that many companies install Nintendo Wii devices in their work places, even though they don’t let you walk into the company with smartphones or laptops. (Factories and other sensitive work locations don’t allow any devices with cameras). By poisoning the Wii, they could spread a virus over the corporate network. People have a false sense of security about the safety of these game devices, but they can log into computer networks like most other computer devices now. In the demos, the researchers showed they could take compromised code and inject it into the main game file that runs on either a DS or a game console. They could take over the network and pretty much spread malware across it and thereby compromise an entire corporation. The researchers said they can do this with just about any embedded device, from iPhones to internet TVs."
Networking

Throttle Shared Users With OS X — Is It Possible? 403

Posted by timothy from the throttle-the-snot-instead dept.
whisper_jeff writes "I work in a design studio where the production director is also the owner's son (translation = he can do no wrong). He is fond of accessing a designer's computer via filesharing and working directly on files off of the designer's computers rather than transferring the files to his computer to work on them there. In so doing, he causes the designer's computer to grind to a near-halt as the harddrive is now tasked with his open/save requests along with whatever the designer is doing. Given that there is no way he's going to change his ways (since he doesn't see anything wrong with it...), I was wondering if there was a way to throttle a user's shared access to a computer (Mac OSX 10.5.8) so that his remote working would have minimal impact on our work. Google searches have revealed nothing helpful (maybe I should Bing it... :) so I was hoping someone with more technical expertise on Slashdot could offer a suggestion."
NASA

Dying Man Shares Unseen Challenger Video 266

Posted by Soulskill from the new-perspective-on-an-old-tragedy dept.
longacre writes "An amateur video of the 1986 Space Shuttle Challenger explosion has been made public for the first time. The Florida man who filmed it from his front yard on his new Betamax camcorder turned the tape over to an educational organization a week before he died this past December. The Space Exploration Archive has since published the video into the public domain in time for the 24th anniversary of the catastrophe. Despite being shot from about 70 miles from Cape Canaveral, the shuttle and the explosion can be seen quite clearly. It is unclear why he never shared the footage with NASA or the media. NASA officials say they were not aware of the video, but are interested in examining it now that it has been made available."
Novell

Novell Bringing .Net Developers To Apple iPad 315

Posted by timothy from the odd-confluence dept.
GMGruman writes "Paul Krill reports that Apple's new iPad could be easier to write apps for, thanks to Novell's MonoTouch development platform, which helps .Net developers create code for the iPad and fully comply with Apple's licensing requirements — without having to use Apple's preferred Objective-C. This news falls on the footsteps of news that Citrix will release an iPad app that lets users run Windows sessions on the iPad. These two developments bolster an argument that the iPad could eventually displace the netbook."

Comment Re:The 'Everyone can see THAT?' era (Score 4, Insightful) 415

by TheNumberSix (#30731030) Attached to: Facebook's Zuckerberg Says Forget Privacy
I have a different experience with Facebook.

I was never on the site, and after years of people asking me “Are you on Facebook?” or “I’ll send you the pictures on Facebook” and other such things, I decided that I should create an account, just to say I have one.

Additionally, I’ve had people try to find me on the site repeatedly. Since I have a complicated name, people usually spell it wrong and try to find me a couple of times.

So I decided that I’d create an account that would just say “Yes, you found me.”

I didn’t want to use any features at all.

So here’s what I wanted to do.

- Create a public page with my real name on it.
- Prevent anyone from adding anything to that page.
- I didn’t want any email updates, status updates, wall pictures or anything else. In fact, don’t email me anything at all. Don’t change my page at all.
- I wanted to automatically reject all “friend” requests. (I’m not going to use the site, remember.)

I found so many settings in so many different places, that I decided that this was not easy to do. (Even if it is possible, which I’m not convinced about. Please feel free to correct me if I’m wrong on this.)

So I decided that it just wasn’t worth the PITA to even try to set this up. So I’m still Facebook free.

In this short experience, it seemed to me that Facebook has such poor privacy settings and UI that it’s doubtful that a novice can even set it the way he or she wants. I think it’s an open question if this is on purpose or by design.
Games

The Murky Origins of Zork's Name 70

Posted by Soulskill from the murky-enough-for-a-grue dept.
mjn writes "Computational media researcher Nick Montfort traces the murky origins of Zork's name. It's well known that the word was used in MIT hacker jargon around that time, but how did it get there? Candidates are the term 'zorch' from late 1950s DIY electronics slang, the use of the term as a placeholder in some early 1970s textbooks, the typo a QWERTY user would get if he typed 'work' on an AZERTY keyboard, and several uses in obscure sci-fi. No solid answers so far, though, as there are problems with many of the possible explanations that would have made MIT hackers unlikely to have run across them at the right time."
Games

Revisiting the "Holy Trinity" of MMORPG Classes 362

Posted by Soulskill from the or-druid-as-the-case-may-be dept.
A feature at Gamasutra examines one of the foundations of many MMORPGs — the idea that class roles within such a game fall into three basic categories: tank, healer, and damage dealer. The article evaluates the pros and cons of such an arrangement and takes a look at some alternatives. "Eliminating specialized roles means that we do away with boxing a class into a single role. Without Tanks, each class would have features that would help them participate in and survive many different encounters like heavy armor, strong avoidance, or some class or magical abilities that allow them to disengage from direct combat. Without specialized DPS, all classes should be able to do damage in order to defeat enemies. Some classes might specialize in damage type, like area of effect (AoE) damage; others might be able to exploit enemy weaknesses, and some might just be good at swinging a sharpened bit of metal in the right direction at a rapid rate. This design isn't just about having each class able to fill any trinity role. MMO combat would feel more dynamic in this system. Every player would have to react to combat events and defend against attacks."
Image

Dad Delivers Baby Using Wiki 249

Posted by samzenpus from the 9cm-edited dept.
sonamchauhan writes "A Londoner helped his wife deliver their baby by Googling 'how to deliver a baby' on his mobile phone. From the article: 'Today proud Mr Smith said: "The midwife had checked Emma earlier in the day but contractions started up again at about 8pm so we called the midwife to come back. But then everything happened so quickly I realized Emma was going to give birth. I wasn't sure what I was going to do so I just looked up the instructions on the internet using my BlackBerry."'"
Games

Review Scores the "Least Important Factor" When Buying Games 169

Posted by Soulskill from the arbitrary-numbers-are-arbitrary dept.
A recent report from a games industry analyst suggests that among a number of factors leading to the purchase of a video game — such as price, graphics and word of mouth — the game's aggregated review score is the least important measure. Analyst Doug Creutz said, "We believe that while Metacritic scores may be correlated to game quality and word of mouth, and thus somewhat predictive of title performance, they are unlikely in and of themselves to drive or undermine the success of a game. We note this, in part, because of persistent rumors that some game developers have been jawboning game reviewers into giving their games higher critical review scores. We believe the publishers are better served by spending their time on the development process than by 'grade-grubbing' after the fact."
PlayStation (Games)

US Air Force Buying Another 2,200 PS3s 144

Posted by Soulskill from the quick-who-knows-a-good-ps3-flight-sim dept.
bleedingpegasus sends word that the US Air Force will be grabbing up 2,200 new PlayStation 3 consoles for research into supercomputing. They already have a cluster made from 336 of the old-style (non-Slim) consoles, which they've used for a variety of purposes, including "processing multiple radar images into higher resolution composite images (known as synthetic aperture radar image formation), high-def video processing, and 'neuromorphic computing.'" According to the Justification Review Document (DOC), "Once the hardware configuration is implemented, software code will be developed in-house for cluster implementation utilizing a Linux-based operating software."

Comment Re:It's about social status... (Score 4, Informative) 836

by TheNumberSix (#30108240) Attached to: Are You a Blue-Collar Or White-Collar Developer?

since the "hurdle" set up by Human Cattle department requires a minimum of four years.

In most large corporations, (and I speak from extensive experience here), these requirements are set by the line managers in the actual departments themselves. The Recruiting people generally look for whatever the line managers ask for.
There are always exceptions, but I've found in the majority of the companies where I've worked, every time I've had to hire, they (Recruitment) ask me (line manager) what I want to see. The job descriptions are also written by line managers in most cases as well.
Music

iTunes DRM-Free Files Contain Personal Info 693

Posted by kdawson from the musical-steganography dept.
r2k writes "Apple's iTunes Plus files are DRM-free, but sharing the files on P2P networks may be an extremely bad idea. A report published by CNet highlights the fact that the account information and email address of the iTunes account holder is hidden inside each and every DRM-free download. I checked, and I found I couldn't access the information using an ID3 tag editor, but using Notepad I found my email address stored inside the audio file itself."
Hardware Hacking

Submission + - Print Messages on your Beer

Submitted by
Migraineman
Migraineman writes: "I stumbled upon a clever hack by Sprite. He reverse engineered the pin functions on an HP inkjet cartridge, and built a simple driver board that converts the cartridge into a hand-held inkjet printer. The driver board is programmed with a fixed message. Moving the "print head" is your responsibility, but it leads to some interesting applications. Printing messages on a whiteboard was the original inspiration, but printing messages on the foam head of a Guinness is just inspired."

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