ogglodyte - Slashdot User

Submission + - Google, AG Blumenthal clash again on Spy-Fi (politico.com)

Submitted by on Monday December 20, 2010 @07:58PM

An anonymous reader writes: Google declined to submit dated collected as part of the Spy-Fi flap, and Blumenthal is now promising further action: "'I certainly will be pressing for continued involvement at the federal level in coordination with the states,” Blumenthal told POLITICO Monday, just days after promising to explore “additional enforcement actions” if Google does not share the data soon. Asked to describe what those federal efforts might include, the outgoing attorney general said, “There’s a ange of potential opportunities for oversight and scrutiny by a member of the U.S. Congress – including letters, meetings hearings, and potentially even legislation.”

Submission + - Memo Details Gawker Security Strategy (threatpost.com)

Submitted by Trailrunner7 on Monday December 20, 2010 @06:57PM

Trailrunner7 writes: After a hack of systems belonging to online publishing giant Gawker Media that yielded more than one million passwords, the online media company's chief technology officer has announced new defense strategies aimed at placating their users and preventing further humiliating data breaches.

Gawker Media CTO, Thomas Plunkett, issued a company-wide memo released on Friday that lays out the new security measures and suggests the company overlooked security concerns in the rush to develop new features. A copy of the memo was posted on the Web Friday, Plunkett confirmed.

Berlin Wall 'Death Strip' Game Sparks Outrage In Germany 193

Posted by Soulskill on Friday October 01, 2010 @11:29PM from the sweet-zombie-reagan dept.

gzipped_tar writes "According to Spiegel Online, 'A new computer game where players assume the roles of border guards and shoot people trying to escape from communist East Germany has unleashed a storm of controversy in Germany. The game's creator says he wanted to teach young people about history, but he has been accused of glorifying violence. ... The name of the multi-player FPS game, 1,378 (kilometers), was inspired by the length of the border between East and West Germany. ... [Players] choose between the roles of the border guards or would-be escapees: the escapee only has one goal — to get over the wall, but the border guard has more options, and can shoot or capture the escapee. He can also swap sides and try to clamber over the border defenses himself.' By choosing to play the border guard and kill the escapee, the player would win an in-game medal from the government of East Germany. But then the guard would time-travel forward to the year 2000, where he would have to stand trial. Jens Stober, 23, designed the game as a media art student at the University of Design, Media and Arts in Karlsruhe. He said that his intention was to teach young people about German history."

PS3 Hacked? 296

Posted by Soulskill on Monday January 25, 2010 @07:35AM from the another-one-bites-the-dust dept.

Several readers have sent word that George Hotz (a.k.a. geohot), the hacker best known for unlocking Apple's iPhone, says he has now hacked the PlayStation 3. From his blog post: "I have read/write access to the entire system memory, and HV level access to the processor. In other words, I have hacked the PS3. The rest is just software. And reversing. I have a lot of reversing ahead of me, as I now have dumps of LV0 and LV1. I've also dumped the NAND without removing it or a modchip. 3 years, 2 months, 11 days...that's a pretty secure system. ... As far as the exploit goes, I'm not revealing it yet. The theory isn't really patchable, but they can make implementations much harder. Also, for obvious reasons I can't post dumps. I'm hoping to find the decryption keys and post them, but they may be embedded in hardware. Hopefully keys are setup like the iPhone's KBAG."

Saboteur Launch Plagued By Problems With ATI Cards 230

Posted by Soulskill on Wednesday December 09, 2009 @01:58AM from the more-or-less-finished dept.

An anonymous reader writes "So far, there are over 35 pages of people posting about why EA released Pandemic Studios' final game, Saboteur, to first the EU on December 4th and then, after knowing full well it did not work properly, to the Americas on December 8th. They have been promising to work on a patch that is apparently now in the QA stage of testing. It is not a small bug; rather, if you have an ATI video card and either Windows 7 or Windows Vista, the majority (90%) of users have the game crash after the title screen. Since the marketshare for ATI is nearly equal to that of Nvidia, and the ATI logo is adorning the front page of the Saboteur website, it seems like quite a large mistake to release the game in its current state."

Zombie Pigs First, Hibernating Soldiers Next 193

Posted by samzenpus on Monday December 07, 2009 @07:06PM from the fattening-up-on-brains dept.

ColdWetDog writes "Wired is running a story on DARPA's effort to stave off battlefield casualties by turning injured soldiers into zombies by injecting them with a cocktail of one chemical or another (details to be announced). From the article, 'Dr. Fossum predicts that each soldier will carry a syringe into combat zones or remote areas, and medic teams will be equipped with several. A single injection will minimize metabolic needs, de-animating injured troops by shutting down brain and heart function. Once treatment can be carried out, they'll be "re-animated" and — hopefully — as good as new.' If it doesn't pan out we can at least get zombie bacon and spam."

The Science of Irrational Decisions 244

Posted by kdawson on Friday October 23, 2009 @11:32AM from the why-you-do-what-you-do dept.

The Rat Race Trap blog has a look at one aspect of the irrational decision-making process humans employ, based on the book Predictably Irrational by Dan Ariely. "Professor Ariely describes some experiments which demonstrated something he calls 'arbitrary coherence.' Basically it means that once you contemplate a decision or actually make a decision, it will heavily influence your subsequent decisions. That's the coherence part. Your brain will try to keep your decisions consistent with previous decisions you have made. I've read about that many times before, but what was surprising in this book was the the 'arbitrary' part. ... [In an experiment] the fact that the students contemplated a decision at a completely arbitrary price, the last two digits of their social security number, very heavily influenced what they were willing to pay for the product. The students denied that the anchor influenced them, but the data shows something totally different. Correlations ranged from 0.33 to 0.52. Those are extremely significant."

Fungivarius Beats $2 Million Stradivarius Violin 210

Posted by samzenpus on Wednesday September 16, 2009 @12:30PM from the dinner-and-a-song dept.

Fluffeh writes "Violins made by the Italian master Antonio Giacomo Stradivarius are regarded as being of unparalleled quality even today, with enthusiasts being prepared to pay millions for a single example. Stradivarius himself knew nothing of fungi which attack wood, but he received inadvertent help from the Little Ice Age which occurred from 1645 to 1715. During this period Central Europe suffered long winters and cool summers which caused trees to grow slowly and uniformly ideal conditions in fact for producing wood with excellent acoustic qualities. Now scientists are turning to fungi to recreate some of these amazing sounding instruments."

Comment Which Iridium? (Score 2, Funny) 755

by ogglodyte on Saturday August 30, 2008 @03:39AM (#24807769) Attached to: Any Suggestions For a Meaningful Geeky Wedding Band?

If you've settled on Iridium, it seems to me that to achieve uber-geekdom you'd go for Ir-192 (perhaps with a lead inner lining?).

You can use it to check the welds in your X-prize entry.
You can use it to zap any nascent cancer found in friends, family, or even strangers.
On cold Winter evenings you can cuddle up together with your HP calculators and debate the probability that it's turning onto Osmium or Platinum (and how much has already decayed)

The possibilities are simply endless.

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