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Television

Amazon Debuts Mixed Bag of Original Comedy Pilots 67

Posted by timothy from the if-you-can-watch-them dept.
itwbennett writes "Amazon sent out a press release over the weekend announcing that the pilots for their original shows 'held 8 spots on the list of 10 most streamed Amazon VOD episodes.' So blogger and entertainment junkie Peter Smith decided to spend a couple of hours seeing if they were worth watching. He managed to sit through 4 of the 8 comedy shows and found a mixed bag — one a clear miss, two meh, and one he'd like to see turned into a series. Have you watched any of the pilots? What did you think?" The quality of these the pilots is not the only way they're a mixed bag: for many Linux users, they're simply not watchable. Watch soon for unknown_lamer's screed on the fat lot of good(will) Amazon is generating by making it harder to legally get these shows.

Comment Re:Obligatory FreeNAS comment... (Score 1) 414

by wrathpwn (#39470909) Attached to: Ask Slashdot: How Do You Manage Your Personal Data?
FreeNAS also comes with rsync, making it easy to do regular differential backups from almost any platform. I use rsync on FreeNAS and QtdSync with my Windows 7 machine to do nightly backups. It works automatically (and fast) so I don't have to worry about the safety of my user files in case my main hard drive fails completely.
The Military

Submission + - Iran Tests Naval Cruise Missile During War Games

Submitted by
Hugh Pickens writes
Hugh Pickens writes writes: "The NY Times reports that Iran says that it has successfully test fired a cruise missile during naval exercises near the Strait of Hormuz that have heightened tensions in a diplomatic standoff over Tehran’s nuclear ambitions and that the surface-to-sea missile, known as the Qader, struck its targets with precision and destroyed them. Iran had previously announced that it intended to test a missile during the exercises, raising fears that it might try to close the strategic Strait of Hormuz in retaliation for tougher international sanctions. The Qader missile is said to be capable of striking warships at a range of about 125 miles, a distance that would include some American forces in the Gulf region as Iran is about 140 miles at its nearest point from Bahrain, where the US Fifth Fleet is based. Analysts say Iran's increasingly strident rhetoric, which has pushed oil prices higher, is aimed at sending a message to the West that it should think twice about the economic cost of putting further pressure on Tehran. "No order has been given for the closure of the Strait of Hormuz," Iran's state television quoted navy chief Habibollah Sayyari as saying. "But we are prepared for various scenarios.""
Communications

Submission + - Skype protocol has been reverse engineered 1

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: One researcher has decided he wants to make Skype open source by reverse engineering the protocol the service uses. In fact, he claims to have already achieved that feat on a new skype-open-source blog. The source code has been posted for versions 1.x/3.x/4.x of Skype as well as details of the rc4 layer arithmetic encoding the service uses. While his intention may be to recreate Skype as an open source platform, it is doubtful he will get very far without facing an army of Microsoft lawyers. Skype is not an open platform, and Microsoft will want to keep it that way.
Security

Submission + - Police Chief Teaches Parents to Hack Facebook 3

Submitted by
Hugh Pickens writes
Hugh Pickens writes writes: "LiveScience reports that James Batelli, the police chief of Mahwah, N.J., and his detectives conduct seminars that teach parents how to outfit a computer with keystroke logging software, giving them access to the full spectrum of the kids' online activities. Batelli explains that kids put themselves in potentially dangerous situations online every day, especially on Facebook, where they run the risk of coming into contact with child predators who troll the social networking site. "Read the paper any day of the week and you’ll see an abduction [or] a sexual assault that’s the result of an Internet interaction or a Facebook comment,” says Batelli. "When it comes down to safety and welfare of your child, I don’t think any parent would sacrifice anything to make sure nothing happens to their children." But not everyone agrees with Batelli's recommendations. “It’s a slippery slope to spy on your kids,” says Edi Goodman, chief privacy officer for Identity Theft 911, who has two young children. “Hopefully I can teach my kids the skill sets to be aware about these [online] dangers, because I can’t be with them all the time.”"
Software

Submission + - Feds Pay Millions for Bogus Spy Software (nytimes.com)

Submitted by gosuperninja
gosuperninja writes: The U.S. Government paid tens of millions of dollars to Dennis Montgomery because he said that he had created software that could decode secret Al-Qaeda messages embedded in Al-Jazeera broadcasts. Even though the CIA figured out that his software was fraud in 2003, other defense agencies continued to believe in it. To date, the government has not prosecuted Montgomery most likely to save itself the embarrassment.

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