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Comment Re:No thanks (Score 1) 450

by megabarf (#34088982) Attached to: Fighting Ad Blockers With Captcha Ads
This could only work for annoyance and not for security purposes. The servers cannot practically reencode video on the fly for each client, causing the limited captcha randomness you suggested. Sending down a smaller overlay for the client to render would make it easy to actually find a frame where the important letters in the captcha are clearly distinguishable.

A plugin with database looks like it would be the way to go to combat this. From the samples on the nucaptcha website, the message is bright red moving text embedded in the mp4 encoded video. They may just have a hard-coded demonstration, but since it wasn't actually overlayed, it should be easy to look up the ID (or URL) of the video file, or even a hash of some small amount of the video sequence itself.

The samples I saw were each over 1.5 megabytes. I would be glad to to fight this waste of bandwidth.

Here's a sample video (warning: large) link
Education

New Grads Shun IT Jobs As "Boring" 752

Posted by timothy from the work-from-home-chicks-dig-it dept.
whencanistop writes "Despite good job prospects, graduates think that a job in IT would be boring. Is this because of the fact that Bill Gates has made the whole industry look nerdy? Surely with so many (especially young) people being 'web first' with not just their buying habits, but now in terms of what they do in their spare time, we'd expect more of them to want to get a career in it?"
Microsoft

Microsoft Ties $235m IT Aid To Use of Windows 214

Posted by Zonk from the developing-countries-just-the-way-you-want-them dept.
E5Rebel writes "Microsoft will spend $235m in schools worldwide over the next five years, part of a plan to triple the number of students and teachers trained in its software programs to up to 270 million by 2013. 'Microsoft's investment shows how important it views developing markets to its future business. Last year, Microsoft introduced the Student Innovation Suite, which includes the XP Starter Edition plus educational applications, for $3 for qualifying countries. Microsoft faces heated competition from companies supporting the open-source OS Linux and associated software in developing countries. "I think as a company we welcome choice," [Orlando Ayala] said. "Frankly, we welcome the competition." The company's educational funding comes with a hitch: "Of course, that includes the fact they [the schools] use Windows," Ayala said.' If you don't use Windows you don't get the cash." Microsoft has long been interested in the education of children.
The Courts

Lawyer Trademarks "Cyberlaw" 81

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the race-to-the-trademark-office dept.
BigTimOBrien writes to mention the EFF is reporting that self-proclaimed cyberlawyer, Eric Menhart, has decided to trademark use of the term "cyberlaw" and is threatening other lawyers with legal action over the term. "I wish I could say I was surprised by this one, but such overreaching invocations of IP rights are all too common -- even where, as in this case, there are no actual "rights" to speak of. But an IP lawyer should know that courts (and trademark examiners, and many tech companies that might be potential clients) don't look kindly on efforts to abuse trademark law to control everyday language. Here's hoping Menhart figures that out fast."

Comment Re:very funny (Score 1) 205

by megabarf (#22082442) Attached to: Microsoft Releases Specs for Binary Formats

positive for Microsoft, negative for those who want to own the rights to view the contents of their data.
I am a MS hater as much as the next guy, but this is complete nonsense.

Yes, this is a PR stunt. Yes, it is intended to influence people by making them believe that MS has changed and is more open when it is not likely to happen. No, providing information about an older format that a user may still be using can not in any way be taken as a way to strip people of their rights to view the contents of their data.

That said, the article made me feel a little ill. I'll paraphrase it in much shorter terms:
  • The data was already available by sending off a request by email, MS is just making it easier to get.
  • There are many implementations of OOXML out there. [The provided list is questionable as far as completeness of implementation. I suspect most of the implementations are provided for document type detection or simple text conversion and not much else.]
  • MS claims to be going above and beyond their duties to open a sourceforge document translator project.

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