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Censorship

Behind Google's Recent Decision About China 155

Posted by CmdrTaco from the wish-i-had-that-clout dept.
yuhong writes "This article by The Independent takes a look at what is behind the recent decisions made by Google regarding China, particularly regarding Sergey Brin, born in the USSR, [and whose origins] played a big part in this decision. From the article: 'He's always had an emotional tug within him, saying "we shouldn't be making compromises," says Ken Auletta, the author of Googled: The End of the World As We Know It.'"
Games

How APB's Persistent World Will Work 33

Posted by Soulskill from the very-carefully-and-with-guns dept.
Edge Magazine recently sat down with David Jones, creative director for Realtime Worlds, the studio behind upcoming action MMO APB. He spends some time talking about their thinking behind the game, and he also gets into how their persistent online worlds will work. Quoting: "... you absolutely want 'moments' in the game. Even if it's just for thirty minutes, you want people to become celebrities — OJ Simpson on TV with the police chasing after him: you want those kind of moments in the game. We can't create them, so it's about what mission can ultimately lead to those kinds of experiences. We have what we call heat mechanics in the game, so if a criminal has just been on a complete rampage, recklessly blowing stuff up and killing people, heat builds up until eventually we unlock him to every single enforcer on the server. It's not part of their missions, it's just that this guy has become number one wanted and everyone has the authority to take him down. That's a fun mechanic from both sides; everybody who's a criminal is going to want to reach that and if you're on a mission for the enforcers you'll see that guy and wonder whether you should break away to get him. You get a lot of compound stuff which we never planned for, because it's a hundred real players interacting in ways we don't expect."

Comment Stupidity (Score 3, Insightful) 100

by pkretek (#29043907) Attached to: WordPress Exploit Allows Admin Password Reset

I wonder why somebody would code that part the way they did it. As far as I understand it, they are trying to validate code by blacklisting instead of whitelisting:

(from http://core.trac.wordpress.org/changeset/11798)
$key = preg_replace('/[^a-z0-9]/i', '', $key);
if ( empty( $key ) )
    die();

If you expect a hash you generated yourself, why don't you test if it preg_matches the spec you used to generate it in the first place? (/^[a-zA-Z0-9]{20}$/ in this case)

Well that and being naive enough to expect $_GET["key"] to always return a string....
The Almighty Buck

Will Your Credit Report Disqualify You For a Job? 513

Posted by kdawson from the permission-to-google-you-sir dept.
coondoggie writes "Two companies that fired workers and rejected job applicants based on background checks, without informing those people of their rights, have settled with the FTC for $77,000 in civil penalties. Most experts we talked to think this case is just the tip of the iceberg. The companies — Quality Terminal Services and Rail Terminal Services — were charged with violating provisions of the Fair Credit Reporting Act, which requires employers to get permission to look at individual credit reports. If you don't get a job because of information in your report, the employer must show you the report and tell you how to get a copy from the consumer reporting company. There is no charge for the report if you request it within 60 days of getting notice that you did not get a job."
Communications

Navigating a Geek Marriage? 1146

Posted by kdawson from the waiting-for-taco-to-weigh-in dept.
JoeLinux writes "I am soon to marry my true love (a girl! yes! they do exist!). She is a literary geek, whereas I am a gaming/Linux geek. Being the RTFM-style geeks that we are, we have been reading up on marriage, making things work, etc. Unfortunately, all of the references seem to be based around an alpha-male jock and a submissive cheerleader-style wife. A lot of the references to incompatibility in the books don't apply to us (neglect due to interest in sports, etc.). What are some of the pitfalls and successes learned in the course of a more geek-oriented marriage?"

Comment Why? Re:No (Score 2, Insightful) 480

by pkretek (#28952919) Attached to: Can We Abandon Confidentiality For Google Apps?

I don't understand that anti-google "hype", which probably was started by Ballmer :-)

There are many hosted mail solutions, every ISP has their own mail service, blackberry does have one too. There's a load of hosted Exchange solutions. Etc, etc, and businesses USE it. If a google employee can read email, why an ISP employee can't? Because it's in their terms of service? ha!

Rolling your own solution is damn expensive and you need a guy who actually knows something about it, that's why most companies are more than happy to outsource it.

Comment Re:Depressing, but not uncommon (Score 1) 1251

by pkretek (#28938667) Attached to: Student Sues University Because She's Unemployable

Don't know in which country you live, but in "socialist" Germany the highest unemployment rate is among the uneducated. I have yet to meet a long-term unemployed academic who is willing to work and has difficulties to find a job.

Besides that, nobody is going to hire an academic for a car technician position, simply because they would horribly suck at it and were too expensive.
GNU is Not Unix

Microsoft Makes Second GPLv2 Release 218

Posted by Soulskill from the baby-steps dept.
angry tapir writes "Microsoft has made its second release under the General Public License in two days with software for Moodle, an 'open-source course management system that teachers use to create online learning Web sites for their classes[, which] has about 30 million users in 207 countries.' It comes on the heels of Redmond contributing drivers to the Linux community. No reports as yet on dropping temperatures in hell."
Spam

Has Google Broken JavaScript Spam Munging? 288

Posted by kdawson from the step-too-far dept.
Baxil writes "For years now, Javascript munging has been a useful tool to share email addresses on the Web without exposing them to spammers. However, Google is now apparently evaluating Javascript when assembling summary text for web pages' listings, and publishing the un-munged email addresses to the world; and spammers have started to take advantage of this kind service." Anyone else seen this affecting their carefully protected email addresses?
Businesses

China Aims To Move Up the Food Chain 257

Posted by kdawson from the empty-the-cage-and-remove-the-bird dept.
krou notes reporting in the Christian Science Monitor that the current economic crisis is helping China's push into higher-end manufacturing by shaking out low-profit companies. The hope is that, instead of just assembling iPods, Chinese companies will be able to invent the next big thing instead. In this move China is following the well-worn path taken by Japan and the Asian tigers before it. "Last month, the National Development and Reform Commission announced revised plans to transform Guangdong and neighboring Hong Kong and Macau into a 'significant innovation center' by 2020. One hundred R&D labs will be set up over the next three years. By 2012, per-capita output in the region should jump 50 percent from 2007, to 80,000 yuan ($11,700). And by 2020, the study predicts, 30 percent of all industrial output should come from high-tech manufacturing."

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