galaxy - Slashdot User

Comment Fraudbait (Score 4, Insightful) 433

by galaxy on Monday November 23, 2020 @01:59AM (#60755828) Attached to: Ask Slashdot: Why Haven't We Implemented Public Key Infrastructure Voting?

Because a robust PKI-verified vote is a prerequisite for verifiable vote buying. The problem case is almost completely unlike e.g. online banking, which anyone "well-versed in PKI technology" should realize by themselves.

The City Of Munich Now Wants To Abandon Linux And Switch Back to Windows (techrepublic.com) 557

Posted by EditorDavid on Saturday February 11, 2017 @03:34PM from the German-politics dept.

"The prestigious FOSS project replacing the entire city's administration IT with FOSS based systems, is about to be cancelled and decommissioned," writes long-time Slashdot reader Qbertino. TechRepublic reports: Politicians at open-source champion Munich will next week vote on whether to abandon Linux and return to Windows by 2021. The city authority, which made headlines for ditching Windows, will discuss proposals to replace the Linux-based OS used across the council with a Windows 10-based client. If the city leaders back the proposition it would be a notable U-turn by the council, which spent years migrating about 15,000 staff from Windows to LiMux, a custom version of the Ubuntu desktop OS, and only completed the move in 2013...

The use of the open-source Thunderbird email client and LibreOffice suite across the council would also be phased out, in favor of using "market standard products" that offer the "highest possible compatibility" with external and internal software... The full council will vote on whether to back the plan next Wednesday. If all SPD and CSU councillors back the proposal put forward by their party officials, then this new proposal will pass, because the two parties hold the majority.
The leader of the Munich Green Party says the city will lose "many millions of euros" if the change is implemented. The article also reports that Microsoft moved its German headquarters to Munich last year.

Systemd Absorbs "su" Command Functionality 747

Posted by timothy on Saturday August 29, 2015 @11:29AM from the big-and-professional-like-gnu dept.

jones_supa writes: With a pull request systemd now supports a su command functional and can create privileged sessions that are fully isolated from the original session. The su command is seen as bad because what it is supposed to do is ambiguous. On one hand it's supposed to open a new session and change a number of execution context parameters, and on the other it's supposed to inherit a lot concepts from the originating session. Lennart Poettering's long story short: "`su` is really a broken concept. It will given you kind of a shell, and it's fine to use it for that, but it's not a full login, and shouldn't be mistaken for one." The replacement command provided by systemd is machinectl shell.

New Tool Allows Scientists To Annotate Media Coverage of Climate Change 185

Posted by Soulskill on Wednesday August 19, 2015 @05:24AM from the because-we-need-more-places-to-argue-about-it dept.

Layzej writes: Have you ever been skeptical of a climate change story presented by a major media outlet? A new tool holds journalists to account for the veracity of their stories. "Using the Climate Feedback tool, scientists have started to diligently add detailed annotations to online content and have those notes appear alongside the story as it originally appeared. If you're the writer, then it's a bit like getting your homework handed back to you with the margins littered with corrections and red pen. Or smiley faces and gold stars if you've been good." The project has already prompted The Telegraph to publish major corrections to their story that suggested the Earth is headed for a "'mini ice age' within 15 years." The article has been modified in such a way that there is no more statement supporting the original message of an "imminent mini ice age."

Peru Indignant After Greenpeace Damages Ancient Nazca Site 465

Posted by timothy on Saturday December 13, 2014 @10:30AM from the vanity-project dept.

HughPickens.com writes The NYT reports that Peruvian authorities say Greenpeace activists have damaged the fragile, and restricted, landscape near the Nazca lines, ancient man-made designs etched in the Peruvian desert when they placed a large sign that promoted renewable energy near a set of lines that form the shape of a giant hummingbird. The sign was meant to draw the attention of world leaders, reporters and others who were in Lima, the Peruvian capital, for a United Nations summit meeting aimed at reaching an agreement to address climate change. Greenpeace issued a statement apologizing for the stunt at the archaeological site and its international executive director, Kumi Naidoo, flew to Lima to apologize for scarring one of Peru's most treasured national symbols. "We are not ready to accept apologies from anybody," says Luis Jaime Castillo, the vice minister for cultural heritage. "Let them apologize after they repair the damage."

Debian Forked Over Systemd 647

Posted by Soulskill on Friday November 28, 2014 @04:18PM from the a-house-divided dept.

jaromil writes: The so called "Veteran Unix Admin" collective has announced that the fork of Debian will proceed as a result of the recent systemd controversy. The reasons put forward are not just technical; included is a letter of endorsement by Debian Developer Roger Leigh mentioning that "people rely on Debian for their jobs and businesses, their research and their hobbies. It's not a playground for such radical experimentation." The fork is called "Devuan," pronounced "DevOne." The official website has more information.

Why Letting Your Insurance Company Monitor How You Drive Can Be a Good Thing 567

Posted by Soulskill on Friday November 15, 2013 @03:30PM from the everybody's-an-above-average-driver dept.

Hugh Pickens DOT Com writes "Kim Gittleson reports at BBC that car insurance firms like Progressive are trying to convince consumers that letting them monitor their driving behavior is actually a good thing. They say that the future of car insurance is not just being able to monitor individual drivers to give them lower prices, but also to make them better drivers. 'Now that we can observe directly how people drive, we think this will change the way insurance works,' says Dave Pratt, who says that Progressive has more than a trillion seconds of driving data from 1.6 million customers. '18-year-old guys pay a lot for insurance, but some 18-year-olds are really safe drivers and they deserve a better deal.' Better big data technologies, like the telematic driving data collected by car companies (PDF) or even information gathered from social media profiles, can help augment that risk profile. 'If I'm a driver that doesn't drive that frequently, and I have a pattern that would indicate that I drive more carefully than an average person with my profile, then I may be able to save 30-40% on my car insurance, and that's pretty significant,' says Joe Reifel. For now, using big data analytics for insurers is still in the early stages. Only 2% of the U.S. car insurance market offers an insurance product based on monitoring driving, but that proportion is projected to grow to around 10-15% of the market by 2017. And other countries, like Italy and the U.K., are already using the data to analyze not just risk profiles but also to determine who is at fault in car accidents. The future, most analysts agree is create a continuous feedback loop between insurers and consumers, so that consumers will react to the big data analyses that insurers perform and change their behavior accordingly. 'Bad drivers will at some point need to improve their driving or accept [having] to pay for the real risk they represent,' says Jacques Amselem."

Pop Artists Support Megaupload; Universal Censors 255

Posted by Soulskill on Saturday December 10, 2011 @10:12AM from the conflict-of-interest dept.

New submitter TheSHAD0W writes "Several well-known artists, including P. Diddy, Will.I.Am, Snoop Dogg and Kanye West produced a song in support of the site Megaupload, recently targeted by law enforcement as a 'rogue site.' The music video was gaining popularity — until YouTube received a takedown notice from Universal Media Group, claiming it violated their copyrights."

Comment Re:From what I understand (Score 1) 227

by galaxy on Saturday November 06, 2010 @05:01PM (#34149074) Attached to: Evaluating Or Testing Utility SCADA Security?

Hear hear.

Any security engineer / technical security auditor worth his salt will a) point that out to you in a meeting b) prove it to you through pentesting if needed.

SCADA systems in general are on the more .. interesting side from a security testing point of view, as one has to be _pretty_ careful about any side-effects caused by the testing. Been there, done that, haven't (yet) caused any major disasters.. ;)

E-Reserves Under Fire From Publishers 208

Posted by Soulskill on Monday June 14, 2010 @03:36PM from the not-killing-enough-trees dept.

RackinFrackin writes "Publishers Weekly has a story about a copyright lawsuit lodged against several faculty members and a librarian at Georgia State University. The case, Cambridge University Press, et al. v. Patton et al., involves e-reserves, a practice of making electronic copies of articles available to students. From the article: 'Rather than make multiple physical copies, faculty now scan or download chapters or articles, create a single copy, and place that copy on a server where students can access it (and in some cases print, download, or share). Since the practice relies on fair use (creating a single digital copy, usually from a resource already paid for, for educational purposes), permission generally isn't sought, and thus permission fees aren't paid, making the price right for students strapped by the high cost of tuition and textbooks, as well as for libraries with budgets stretched thinner every year.'"

Steve Jobs Publishes Some "Thoughts On Flash" 944

Posted by CmdrTaco on Thursday April 29, 2010 @10:54AM from the what's-under-that-turtleneck dept.

teh31337one writes "Steve Jobs just posted an open letter of sorts explaining Apple's position on Flash, going back to his company's long history with Adobe and expounding upon six main points of why he thinks Flash is wrong for mobile devices. HTML5 naturally comes up, along with a few reasons you might not expect. He concludes in saying that 'Flash was created during the PC era — for PCs and mice.'" Tacky that his first point is that Flash is proprietary, when Apple restricts the apps that can be installed on the phone. Pot, meet kettle.

Apple To Buy ARM? 695

Posted by CmdrTaco on Thursday April 22, 2010 @09:18AM from the rumor-mill-working-overtime dept.

gyrogeerloose writes "An article in the London Evening Standard claims that Apple has made an $8 billion offer to acquire ARM Holdings. For those few Slashdotters who don't already know, ARM makes the processor chips that power Apple's iPad, iPhone, and iPod Touch. However, ARM processors are also used by other manufacturers, including Palm and, perhaps most significantly, companies building Android phones. This explains why Apple might be willing to spend so much on the deal — almost 20% of its cash reserves. Being able to control who gets to use the processors (and, more importantly, who doesn't) would give Apple a huge advantage over its competitors."

Adobe Stops Development For iPhone 497

Posted by timothy on Wednesday April 21, 2010 @04:02PM from the flash-in-the-pad dept.

adeelarshad82 writes "Adobe's principal product manager Mike Chambers announced that Adobe is no longer investing in iPhone-based Flash development. The move comes after Apple put out a new draft of its iPhone developer program license, which banned private APIs and required apps to be written in Objective-C, C, C++, or JavaScript as executed by the iPhone OS WebKit engine. According to Chambers, Adobe will still provide the ability to target the iPhone and iPad in Flash CS5, but the company is not currently planning any additional investments in that feature." Daring Fireball points out approvingly Apple's rebuttal to the claim that Flash is an open format, however convenient it might be for iPad owners. Related: The new app policy seems to be inconsistently enforced. Reader wilsonthecat writes "Novell have released a new press release in response to Apple's announcement that none-C/C++/Objective-C based iPhone application development breaks their SDK terms. The press release names several apps that have made it past app review process since the new Apple SDK agreement."

History Repeats Itself — Mac & the iPad 514

Posted by CmdrTaco on Tuesday April 20, 2010 @09:35AM from the it's-all-just-a-matter-of-history-repeating dept.

Keith found an interesting story telling a bit about how Steve Jobs operates. It involves small teams of young engineers willing to work 90-hour weeks in total secrecy, and a complete willingness to throw away bad ideas without flowery language. The iPad is surprisingly similar to the Mac."

Apple Loses Aussie Trademark Complaint Over "i" Name 177

Posted by timothy on Saturday March 13, 2010 @01:50AM from the but-maybe-only-at-the-end dept.

CuteSteveJobs writes "Apple has been dealt a severe blow having been told that it no longer has a monopoly on the letter 'i' for product naming. IP Australia, the government body that oversees trademark applications, rejected Apple's complaint against a company selling 'DOPi' laptop bags. Last year Australian computer company Macpro Computers claimed that after 26 years of flying its own Macpro brand that Apple was 'trying to burn us out' with legal fees. This was after Apple released its own Macpro line 3½ years ago. Apple lost that complaint, but is appealing. Last year Apple went after supermarket Woolworths complaining their new logo which featured a 'W' fashioned into the shape of an apple. (Woolworths sells real apples.)"

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