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Comment Re:Couple of things.. (Score 1) 280

by baboonlogic (#29362637) Attached to: Why Anonymized Data Isn't

A quote like:

"Data can either be useful or perfectly anonymous but never both."

needs a bit of background about the qualification of the person making that claim. Why? Simply because it sounds like a rather technical remark. If some computer science researcher made this claim, I would tend to take it more on the face value, otherwise I would take it with a grain of salt.

Paul Ohm has degrees in CS and EE. Quoting his rather impressive CV[pdf]:

Yale University, B.S., Computer Science, B.A., Electrical Engineering, 1994

Paul is also a hobbyist Perl hacker. IMHO, this paper is a great example of people in the law community understanding what is going on. We need more people in law who understand tech.

Comment Wtf BBC? Seriously? (Score 4, Interesting) 186

by baboonlogic (#29249061) Attached to: Communication Lost With Indian Moon Satellite

Some critics regard the space programme as a waste of resources in a country where millions still lack basic services.

Seriously BBC... wtf is up with that? India is a trillion dollar economy and this was 75 million usd project. Can I say chump change? For some context, India recently announced a really stupid 30 billion usd national id scheme. While reporting that, you did not care to mention India's millions that lack basic services. Why do you hate India and real scientific progress so much?

Comment Re:Presidential Ban Button (Score 1) 853

by ArcherB (#29234617) Attached to: Emergency Government Control of the Internet?

A big issue with anything like this is that it could be used against our infrastructure almost as easily as it could be used to protect our infrastructure. Think about what would happen if a foreign power or other malicous agent gained control of this "ban" button - they could then cripple banking and other critical infrastructure in a pseudo-DOS attack; instead of disabling by pounding on a site, they could just disconnect it.

Simple! Take the BAN button off line. (Duh)

Or maybe install a big red Fix It button right next to it. Hell, we could just ask the Russians to push that Reset button we gave them.
Linux

Slackware 13.0 Released 252

Posted by kdawson from the fresh-bits dept.
willy everlearn and several other readers let us know that Slackware 13.0 is out. "Wed Aug 26 10:00:38 CDT 2009: Slackware 13.0 x86_64 is released as stable! Thanks to everyone who helped make this release possible — see the RELEASE_NOTES for the credits. The ISOs are off to the replicator. This time it will be a 6 CD-ROM 32-bit set and a dual-sided 32-bit/64-bit x86/x86_64 DVD. We're taking pre-orders now at store.slackware.com. Please consider picking up a copy to help support the project. Once again, thanks to the entire Slackware community for all the help testing and fixing things and offering suggestions during this development cycle. As always, have fun and enjoy!"

Comment Very Interesting Privacy Policy (Score 5, Interesting) 649

by baboonlogic (#24366255) Attached to: New Search Engine Cuil Takes Aim At Google

Privacy Policy:

Privacy is a hot topic these days, and we want you to feel totally comfortable using our service, so our privacy policy is very simple: when you search with Cuil, we do not collect any personally identifiable information, period. We have no idea who sends queries: not by name, not by IP address, and not by cookies (more on this later). Your search history is your business, not ours.

Way to go!
Education

Submission + - Graduate with bad grades or repeat an year? 16

Submitted by
An anonymous reader writes: I'm a CS Student within one year of graduation.
Because of financial reasons I've been working on a full time basis for the past 2 years + worked on an open source project.
This has brought me from B+ & A in my first two years of college to somewhere in the mists of C and lower.
I now have enough money to sustain myself for two years of schooling.
I've got two choices:
  • a) repeat one year, repair all my bad grades and graduate with better grades but with a mark that I repeated one school year
  • b) graduate with lower grades but with no repeated year.
I'd like to know the opinion of recruiters out there: if you had two candidates which ranked similarly during the interviews but one is of type a) the other of type b), which would you favour?
United States

Submission + - Matt Boyd Deemed a Terrorist Threat

Submitted by CaptainCarrot
CaptainCarrot writes: Writer/IT contractor Matt Boyd, formerly the man who made up the words for webcomic Mac Hall and who now does the same for his and Ian McConville's new comic Three Panel Soul, was recently fired from his government job. His conversation with a co-worker about a gun he intended to buy for target shooting was overheard by someone in a nearby cubicle. As it was unfortunately the day of the Virginia Tech shootings, the eavesdropper panicked and reported him to management.

That was bad enough. But when he used the comic to document the meeting where the reason for his firing was explained, he was visited by representatives of local law enforcement investigating him on suspicion of making a "terroristic threat" using the Internet. No charges have been filed. Yet.

Matt's interview at FLEEN about the incident is online.
Music

Submission + - Harvard Law Prof Urges University to Fight RIAA

Submitted by
NewYorkCountryLawyer
NewYorkCountryLawyer writes: "Distinguished Harvard University Law School Professor Charles Nesson has called upon Harvard University to fight back against the RIAA and stand up for its students: "Students and faculty use the Internet to gather and share knowledge now more than ever....Yet "new deterrence and education initiatives" from the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) threaten access to this vibrant resource. The RIAA has already requested that universities serve as conduits for more than 1,200 "pre-litigation letters." Seeking to outsource its enforcement costs, the RIAA asks universities to point fingers at their students, to filter their Internet access, and to pass along notices of claimed copyright infringement. But these responses distort the University's educational mission....... One can easily understand why the RIAA wants help from universities in facilitating its enforcement actions against students who download copyrighted music without paying for it. It is easier to litigate against change than to change with it. If the RIAA saw a better way to protect its existing business, it would not be threatening our students, forcing our librarians and administrators to be copyright police, and flooding our courts with lawsuits against relatively defenseless families without lawyers or ready means to pay. We can even understand the attraction of using lawsuits to shore up an aging business model rather than engaging with disruptive technologies and the risks that new business models entail...... But mere understanding is no reason for a university to voluntarily assist the RIAA with its threatening and abusive tactics. Instead, we should be assisting our students both by explaining the law and by resisting the subpoenas that the RIAA serves upon us. We should be deploying our clinical legal student training programs to defend our targeted students......""
Bug

Crashing an In-Flight Entertainment System 322

Posted by kdawson from the stress-testing dept.
rabblerouzer writes "Hugh Thompson, who was interviewed by Slashdot on the dangers of e-voting, now has a cool blog entry on how he was able to bring down the gaming/movie console on an airplane. He calls it one of the most interesting examples of a software 'abuse case' he has ever seen." Fortunately the IFE system is totally disjoint from the avionics.

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