Comment Re:drone (Score 1) 90
How would these drones work in inclement weather, or worse in a gale or wind storm. A driver is adaptable to the worst of situations, I’m not so sure about lightweight, drones.
Comment Can someone point me to (Score 1) 61
the law that congress passed that allows the executive branch to do this?
Comment Re:Legal? (Score 0) 208
What legal basis is there for the Treasury getting a cut?
Taxes on capital gains?
Submission + - Android Devices That Contain Foxconn Firmware May Have a Secret Backdoor (softpedia.com)
An anonymous reader writes: Some Android devices that contain firmware created by Foxconn may be vulnerable via a debugging feature left inside the bootloader, which acts as a backdoor and bypasses authentication procedures for any intruder with USB access to a vulnerable phone. By sending the "reboot-ftm" command to Android devices that contain Foxconn firmware, an attacker would authenticate via USB, and boot the device, running as root with SELinux disabled.
There isn't a list of affected devices available yet, but Jon Sawyer, the researchers that discovered this hidden command provides instructions on how to detect if a phone is affected.
"Due to the ability to get a root shell on a password protected or encrypted device, Pork Explosion would be of value for forensic data extraction, brute forcing encryption keys, or unlocking the boot loader of a device without resetting user data. Phone vendors were unaware this backdoor has been placed into their products," Sawyer says.
There isn't a list of affected devices available yet, but Jon Sawyer, the researchers that discovered this hidden command provides instructions on how to detect if a phone is affected.
"Due to the ability to get a root shell on a password protected or encrypted device, Pork Explosion would be of value for forensic data extraction, brute forcing encryption keys, or unlocking the boot loader of a device without resetting user data. Phone vendors were unaware this backdoor has been placed into their products," Sawyer says.
Submission + - FBI: It Will Take 2 Years To Respond To FOIA Request About Its Sheep Video Game
blottsie writes: Earlier this year, the FBI released a free, online video game featuring sheep in its attempts to fight terrorism recruitment efforts. The game is called The Slippery Slope of Violent Extremism, and it is a real thing that exists. You can play it here.
After journalists filed a FOIA request to find out more about the game, the FBI said it would take two years to respond—a staggeringly long wait that helps expose how the Bureau actively avoids responding to open-records requests.
Comment Re:Priced to reduce piracy. (Score 1) 330
Alternative shells for Windows have been around since at least win95.
see bb4win (http://www.bb4win.org/) for example.
Comment Re:"Undeniable" (Score 1) 1657
Your post reminds me of the old bumper sticker: "Think Globally, Act Locally". You are anything but apathetic if you continuously act to minimize consumption, reduce waste, buy organic, etc.
Music By Natural Selection 164
maccallr writes "The DarwinTunes experiment needs you! Using an evolutionary algorithm and the ears of you the general public, we've been evolving a four bar loop that started out as pretty dismal primordial auditory soup and now after >27k ratings and 200 generations is sounding pretty good. Given that the only ingredients are sine waves, we're impressed. We got some coverage in the New Scientist CultureLab blog but now things have gone quiet and we'd really appreciate some Slashdotter idle time. We recently upped the maximum 'genome size' and we think that the music is already benefiting from the change."
Comment Re:Can't see why this would matter. (Score 3, Funny) 736
>There is a reason why we don't refer to screwdrivers, circular saws and sanding machines all as "hammers".
All tools are hammers, except screwdrivers and they're chisels.
Comment Re:Depends on the parents (Score 1) 1345
Yes, success in unschooling very much depends on the parents.
Unschooling, properly done, is much more difficult for the parents than typical homeschooling. Most homeschoolers depend on cirricula written by others. For unschoolers, its all done on the fly.
Is your kid interested about
- Ancient Egypt? Learn about mining limestone, or the chemistry of mummification.
- Robotics? Lego Mindstorms.
- Justice? Attend actual trials, discuss the issues that come up.
Most of the comments here are confusing "un-schooling" with "no-schooling", or "non-schooling". The meanings of the two terms couldn't be further apart.
Comment Re:logic? (Score 1) 267
Maybe the (Belgian) logic was something along these lines:
Yahoo email accounts were used by Belgian citizens to commit some sort of crime. If Yahoo allows Belgian citizens to open an use Yahoo email accounts from computers located in Belgium, then Yahoo is "doing business" in Belgium, and thus is subject to Belgian laws, at least as far as these "Belgian" email accounts.
Comment Re:Break By Design (Score 2, Interesting) 554
>1. Design specifications intentionally limit durability
>2. Business decision to make the device fail. If I can't sell any more widgets, then how will I stay in business?
>3. No consumers want something to last for decades.
Aren't the first two of these points business decisions that got American auto manufacturers in trouble. Ever since the Japanese started taking the lead in quality, the market share has been going in their direction.
And doesn't this go against point 3 ? For many products consumers do want reliability.
Our cordless phone's "1" stopped working after two years, conveniently past the 1 year warranty period - I'd be happy if it lasted decades. Personally, I've never seen an AT&T rotary phone fail, nor even an older touchtone phone.
>2. Business decision to make the device fail. If I can't sell any more widgets, then how will I stay in business?
>3. No consumers want something to last for decades.
Aren't the first two of these points business decisions that got American auto manufacturers in trouble. Ever since the Japanese started taking the lead in quality, the market share has been going in their direction.
And doesn't this go against point 3 ? For many products consumers do want reliability.
Our cordless phone's "1" stopped working after two years, conveniently past the 1 year warranty period - I'd be happy if it lasted decades. Personally, I've never seen an AT&T rotary phone fail, nor even an older touchtone phone.
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