Comment Old News (Score 1) 28
There's a hellotamore on the revision3-page - unfortunatly without the illustrator-source-files.
Comment UPDATE: Offical Statement of the Pirate Party (Score 2) 4
Here is the official statement of the German Pirate Party in english (scroll down a few lines)
http://vorstand.piratenpartei.de/2011/05/20/polizei-beschlagnahmt-server-der-piratenpartei-deutschland/
Comment Re:First link is broken - n/t (Score 1) 3
which first link? The original story link works, but is in german only (sorry, did not find an english source then).
Submission + - Louis Vuitton sues over depiction of bag in artwor (mediareport.nl) 1
An anonymous reader writes: A fellow art student of mine (yes there are Artists on Slashdot as well) has been sued by Louis Vuitton for depicting one of their bags in her painting. Her painting is wholly original, however LV is demanding 5000 euros a day because the '..pattern of this bag infringes its design rights..' and and for her to cease displaying her original artwork on her website. It might be preaching to the choir here on slashdot, but these cases need all the attention they can get.
30% More Patents Issued in 2010 77
An anonymous reader writes "The numbers are in, and the US Patent Office granted 219,614 patents last year, which is 31% higher than in 2009 and 27% higher than any year in history. This wasn't just a marginal increase in patents being approved, but a major leap. US Commerce Secretary Gary Locke and USPTO director David Kappos have both stated that one of their goals is to reduce the backlog in patent approvals, and it appears that the way they're doing so is by approving more patents, more quickly with less scrutiny — with a large percentage of them being software patents. This may decrease the backlog at the Patent Office, but seems likely to increase the backlog in the court system as lawsuits are filed over a bunch of these new patents."
Super Mario Bros. 3 Level Design Lessons 95
An anonymous reader writes with this excerpt from Significant Bits about how the early level design in Super Mario Bros. 3 gradually introduced players to the game without needing something as blatant and obtrusive as a tutorial:
"Super Mario Bros. 3 contains many obvious design lessons that are also present in other games, e.g., the gradual layering of complexity that allows players to master a specific mechanic. What surprised me during my playthrough, though, was how some of these lessons were completely optional. The game doesn't have any forced hand-holding, and it isn't afraid of the player simply exploring it at his own pace (even if it means circumventing chunks of the experience)."
Submission + - China views Internet as "controllable" (nytimes.com)
Radcliffe_V writes: "According to a leaked cable via Wikileaks, the Chinese government views the internet as very controllable, despite western views otherwise. The New York Times article also sheds light on how involved the Chinese government is in cyber attacks against US assets and companies such as Google."
Comment Re:Plausible Deniability - TrueCrypt (Score 1) 467
Sure thing, but the "okay, I give you the password, but don't tell my gf about all the porn on there"-story is way more believable than the "some guy put an encrypted 200gb file on my laptop without me noticing".
Comment Plausible Deniability - TrueCrypt (Score 1) 467
what you want is plausible deniability and that is not easy to achieve, as some states have started to have laws allowing to hold you hostage if you do not provide an decryption key to an encrypted container (which, with your method, would be corrupted). Have a look as TrueCrypts technical details behind their plausible deniability feature: http://www.truecrypt.org/docs/?s=plausible-deniability
Comment codelines/h from BMW (Score 1) 532
Already stated, but my 2 cents:
- use a good IDE with fast referencing possibility (e.g. right-click on a function call => "follow")
- use a profiler to see a flowchart or UML for a high level overview
- start commenting the classes and refactor their names if unclear. There are nice tools out there (depending on the language), which create DocBlocks for everything first and then you can use DoxyGen to generate a nice overview over everything.
And about the question of how bad you are: one of my IT lecturers had worked at BMW and they had made a test on the efficiency of their programmers on new code and on code written by other developers.
When the same developer had to extend or change code of other developers, he was a hundred times slower than when he would code on his own himself. That was around 2001, if I'm not mistaken.
Comment please don't mess with what you don't understand (Score 1) 4
Either I don't get your question right or you have no idea about the basic principles of cryptography. One of those is that the security of an algorithm lies in the key alone. Every algorithm needs to be open to the public to be evaluated. Making your own modifications to an (already insecure) algorithm for "security reasons" will most likely result in a *weaker* algorithm than it was before.
If you want to secure this messages, public/private-key cryptography is your way to go. But honestly, I'm very sure that your system will definetly not meet any necessary standards for any election whatsoever.
Submission + - Ginkgo Doesn't Improve Memory or Cognative Skills (cnn.com)
JumperCable writes: CNN reports
Ginkgo biloba has failed — again — to live up to its reputation for boosting memory and brain function. Just over a year after a study showed that the herb doesn't prevent dementia and Alzheimer's disease, a new study from the same team of researchers has found no evidence that ginkgo reduces the normal cognitive decline that comes with aging.
In the new study, the largest of its kind to date, DeKosky and his colleagues followed more than 3,000 people between the ages of 72 and 96 for an average of six years. Half of the participants took two 120-milligram capsules of ginkgo a day during the study period, and the other half took a placebo. The people who took ginkgo showed no differences in attention, memory, and other cognitive measures compared to those who took the placebo, according to the study, which was published in this week's Journal of the American Medical Association.
And of course, the link to the study.
http://jama.ama-assn.org/cgi/content/full/302/24/2663?home
Submission + - The Best Job In the World Takes a Wrong Turn (nytimes.com)
snl2587 writes: You may remember the story of the man who was selected for "the best job in the world" as a blogging island caretaker in Australia for the tidy sum of 150,000 Australian dollars ($120,000). Now it seems that the stunt may have backfired as a tourism boost since the man has been stung by a potentially fatal jellyfish in his last days there. As he said, though, he "really should have been wearing a full stinger suit".
Submission + - German president refuses to sign censorship law
thetinytoon writes: German federal president Horst Köhler has refused to sign the censorship treaty that passed parlament earlier this year, stating that he 'needs more information'. In germany, the federal president has the right to reject a law only by reasons of an unlawful realisation in the legislative process, but not for reasons of being unconstitutional (as long as it's not obviously against the constitution).
Political observers guess, that the political parties would like to get rid of the law without loosing face, but since it already passed the parlament, they can't simply abandon it. Politics — everyone knows what needs to be done, but no one wants to admit he was wrong in the first place.
Source (google translation): http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=de&tl=en&u=http://www.golem.de/0911/71529.html
Original story (german): http://www.golem.de/0911/71529.html
Political observers guess, that the political parties would like to get rid of the law without loosing face, but since it already passed the parlament, they can't simply abandon it. Politics — everyone knows what needs to be done, but no one wants to admit he was wrong in the first place.
Source (google translation): http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=de&tl=en&u=http://www.golem.de/0911/71529.html
Original story (german): http://www.golem.de/0911/71529.html
Journal Journal: Kerry in the oval office if non-US-citizens are asked
During the last few weeks, non-american have been able to give a http://www.globalvote2004.org/symbolic vote to their favorite of the US-election taking place tomorrow. The results are online today and show 77% for Kerry. Let's see who's getting on the chair...
