cybermats - Slashdot User

Comment Re:Fooled? (Score 1) 257

by cybermats on Sunday October 24, 2010 @04:06PM (#34006004) Attached to: Chatbot Suzette Wins 20th Annual Loebner Prize, Fools One Judge

That's actually a good point. What was the pretext for the conversions? Was it to respond to all the judge's questions properly, or to do some small talk? If it's just small talk, I think I would give up on the "#" thing quite quickly as well.

Submission + - Tynt Insight is watching you cut and paste (mattbusse.com) 1

Submitted by jerryasher on Thursday January 14, 2010 @02:19AM

jerryasher writes: In recent weeks I've noticed that when I copy and paste text from Wired and other websites, the pasted text has had the url of the original website appended to it. Cool, and utterly annoying, and how do I make that stop? Tynt Insight is a piece of Javascript that sends what you copy to Tynt's webservers and adds the backlinks. Tynt calls that a service for the site owner, many people call that a privacy invasion..

Worse, there are some reports that it sends not just what you copy, but everything you select..

And Tynt provides no opt outs. Not cookie based, not IP based, but stop it you creeps angry phone call based.

It ain't a pure useful service, and it ain't a pure privacy invasion. But I sure wish they'd go away and have had the decency to never start up in the first place. I block it on Firefox with Ghostery.

Submission + - Does your PC really need a SysRq button anymore? (pcauthority.com.au) 2

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 14, 2010 @01:35AM

An anonymous reader writes: Ever wondered what the SysRq key on your keyboard does? Lenovo has decided it's so rarely used that it has started removing the key from some new Thinkpad Edge laptops. We already know that Lenovo are something of the fastidious scientists when it comes to keyboard design. Last time they fiddled with the age-old key layout, it was after painstaking research to count exactly how many times users press the Delete and Escape keys. Now it seems another relic of computer keyboards is starting to disappear.

Study Confirms That Cars Have Personalities 213

Posted by kdawson on Tuesday December 02, 2008 @01:54AM from the disney-is-unsurprised dept.

Ponca City, We love you writes "A study has confirmed that many people see human facial features in the front ends of automobiles and ascribe various personality traits to cars. Forty study participants assessed cars based on a system known as geometric morphometrics by viewing high-resolution, 3D computer reconstructions and printed images of 38 actual 2004-06 car models and rating each model on 19 traits such as dominance, maturity, gender, and friendliness, and if they liked the car. Study participants liked best the cars scoring high in the so-called power traits — the most mature, masculine, arrogant, and angry-looking ones. Researchers theorized that over evolutionary time, humans have developed a selective sensitivity to features in the human face that convey information on sex, age, emotions, and intentions. The lead researcher explained, 'Seeing too many faces, even in mountains or toast, has little or no penalty, but missing or misinterpreting the face of a predator or attacker could be fatal.'"

UK Court Rejects Encryption Key Disclosure Defense 708

Posted by samzenpus on Thursday October 16, 2008 @03:59AM from the do-not-pass-go dept.

truthsearch writes "Defendants can't deny police an encryption key because of fears the data it unlocks will incriminate them, a British appeals court has ruled. The case marked an interesting challenge to the UK's Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (RIPA), which in part compels someone served under the act to divulge an encryption key used to scramble data on a PC's hard drive. The appeals court heard a case in which two suspects refused to give up encryption keys, arguing that disclosure was incompatible with the privilege against self incrimination. In its ruling, the appeals court said an encryption key is no different than a physical key and exists separately from a person's will."

The Best Gaming Laptop Money Can Buy 161

Posted by CmdrTaco on Monday September 15, 2008 @11:00AM from the money-to-burn dept.

Parz writes "Gameplayer has gone live with their winners for the best gaming laptops money can buy as of Q3 2008. The analysis is broken into three sections to cater for three different budget requirements. There is a detailed explanation of why each laptop was selected, going into each hardware component individually. Regular Slashdot users will remember the site's article from a few weeks ago, which analysed the Best Gaming PCs that Money can Buy. Prices may vary depending on where you live."

SQL Injection Turns BusinessWeek Into Viral Replicator 116

Posted by CmdrTaco on Monday September 15, 2008 @09:33AM from the glad-it's-not-us dept.

martins writes "The website of popular magazine BusinessWeek has been attacked via SQL injection in an attempt to infect its readership with malware. Hundreds of pages in a section of BusinessWeek's website which offers information about where MBA students might find future employers have been affected."

Indian Woman Convicted of Murder By Brain Scan 453

Posted by CmdrTaco on Monday September 15, 2008 @08:57AM from the 1984-came-a-few-years-late dept.

Kaseijin writes "Neuroscientist Champadi Raman Mukundan claims his Brain Electrical Oscillations Signature test is so accurate, it can tell whether a person committed or only witnessed an act. In June, an Indian judge agreed, using BEOS to find a woman guilty of killing her former fiancé. Scientific experts are calling the decision 'ridiculous' and 'unconscionable,' protesting that Mukundan's work has not even been peer reviewed. How reliable should a test have to be, when eyewitnesses are notoriously fallible? Does a person have a right to privacy over their own memories, or should society's interest in holding criminals accountable come first?"

Firefox 3 Already Rules the Roost 591

Posted by kdawson on Friday June 27, 2008 @12:15PM from the good-press-will-do-that-for-you dept.

Barence writes in with a data point on Firefox 3 adoption: it's been available for 10 days, and already one site is seeing 55% of its Firefox-using visitors on version 3. "Microsoft still has three out of ten people running an old version of its browser more than 18 months after Internet Explorer 7 launched, while Firefox has converted more than half of its users to the latest version in just over a week. That should set a few alarm bells ringing in Redmond."

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