Authored by: Ian Al on Friday, February 15 2013 @ 11:38 AM EST |
.
---
Regards
Ian Al
Software Patents: It's the disclosed functions in the patent, stupid![ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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Authored by: mcinsand on Friday, February 15 2013 @ 11:52 AM EST |
The strangest thing (thing1 or thing2) to me is that I seem know more PERL, but
I seem to be able do more with Python.[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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Authored by: Anonymous on Friday, February 15 2013 @ 12:04 PM EST |
En Banc Argument
at Federal Circuit Shows
Continuing Split on Computer Claim
Eligibility
Perceptive and detailed report and commentary on the
February 8 oral argument before the en banc Federal
Circuit Court of
Appeals in the case of CLS Bank v. Alice
Corp., on the patent
eligibility of computer-related
claims.
Paul E. "Marbux" Merrell,
J.D. [ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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Authored by: Anonymous on Friday, February 15 2013 @ 03:16 PM EST |
CNN reports on the meteor at Chelyabinsk, which if you read
the proper technical sources had nothing to do with Asteroid 2012 DA14. That hasn't stopped many Russians from
confusing the two.br>
[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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Authored by: Anonymous on Friday, February 15 2013 @ 06:28 PM EST |
Help Desk!
RAS[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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Authored by: squib on Friday, February 15 2013 @ 06:44 PM EST |
Feb 14, 2013. “Valve, creators of best-selling game franchises (such as
Counter-Strike and Team Fortress) and leading technologies (such as Steam and
Source), today announced the release of its Steam for Linux client. In
celebration of the release, over 50 Linux titles are now 50-75% off until
Thursday, February 21st at 10 AM PST.
[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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- pic - Authored by: Anonymous on Saturday, February 16 2013 @ 09:23 AM EST
- Steam for Linux Now Available - Authored by: Anonymous on Sunday, February 17 2013 @ 05:16 AM EST
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Authored by: Anonymous on Friday, February 15 2013 @ 07:47 PM EST |
Modern smartphones are equipped with a plethora of sensors that
enable a wide range of interactions,
but some of these sensors can be employed
as a side channel to surreptitiously learn about user in- put. In this
paper,
we show that the accelerometer sensor can also be employed as a high-bandwidth
side channel; particularly,
we demonstrate how to use the accelerometer sensor
to learn user tap- and gesture-based input as required to
unlock smartphones
using a PIN/password or Android’s graphical password pattern.
Practicality of Accelerometer Side Channels on
Smartphones PDF
[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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Authored by: Ribbit on Saturday, February 16 2013 @ 05:05 AM EST |
Farmer’s Supreme Court Challenge
Puts Monsanto
Patents at Risk
Looks interesting... [ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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Authored by: Anonymous on Saturday, February 16 2013 @ 07:13 AM EST |
A nice, encouraging introduction for anyone wanting
to
join the
(re)new(ed) maker movement (first half of the show
- if you can access BBC
programmes) using mainly Open Source
hardware/software.
BBC
iPlayer - Click: 16/02/2013[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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Authored by: Anonymous on Saturday, February 16 2013 @ 08:43 AM EST |
Clicky for
HB 2485 bill
The legislation would create a special "privilege" for
health and safety reports and audits that companies do of their own products and
practices. That means these reports could be kept confidential not only from
people who file suit, but also from government regulators.
Proponents of HB
2485 contend the measure actually will result in safer products because it will
encourage companies to take a closer look at what they make and how they make it
without fear that what they discover will end up being used against them in
court. [ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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- Support. - Authored by: Anonymous on Sunday, February 17 2013 @ 04:07 AM EST
- Support. - Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, February 19 2013 @ 09:30 AM EST
- So protect profits but risk people? - Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, February 19 2013 @ 10:13 AM EST
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Authored by: Anonymous on Saturday, February 16 2013 @ 10:46 AM EST |
A fresh trove of FBI files on cell tracking, some marked “secret,”
was published this week by the Electronic Privacy Information Center.
They
shed light on how, far from being a “new” tool used by the authorities to track
down targets, Stingray-style technology has been in the hands of the feds since
about 1995 (at least). During that time, local and state law enforcement
agencies have also been able to borrow the spy equipment in “exceptional
circumstances,” thanks to an order approved by former FBI Director Louis
Freeh.
EPIC, a civil liberties group, obtained the documents through ongoing
Freedom of Information Act litigation that it is pursuing in order to get the
feds to hand over some 25,000 pages of documents that relate to Stingray tools,
about 6,000 of which are classified.
Ryan Gallagher,
Slate[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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Authored by: Anonymous on Saturday, February 16 2013 @ 07:35 PM EST |
How HSBC hooked up with drug traffickers and terrorists. And got away with
it - Matt Taibbi, Rolling Stone
5 Outrageous
Revelations from Matt Taibbi's Takedown on HSBC's Drug Money Laundering
1.
By HSBC’s December settlement, the bank had already received two
cease-and-desist letters.
2. HSBC covered its tracks when helping oppressive
regimes avoid sanctions
3. HSBC ran offshore branches designed specifically
for money laundering
4. HSBC did direct business with “the worst trafficking
organizations imaginable.”
5. An entire HSBC department was tasked with
quickly clearing suspicious behavior
Steven Hsieh,
AlterNet [ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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Authored by: SilverWave on Sunday, February 17 2013 @ 09:08 AM EST |
But many people
still believe Samsung succeeded by
aping Apple. In a country
like India where Apple’s share in smartphone market
is less
than 5%? Think again --- RMS: The 4 Freedoms
0 run the program for any purpose
1 study the source code and change it
2 make copies and distribute them
3 publish modified versions
[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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Authored by: SilverWave on Sunday, February 17 2013 @ 09:19 AM EST |
Stupid,
Stupid xBox!! --- RMS: The 4 Freedoms
0 run the program for any purpose
1 study the source code and change it
2 make copies and distribute them
3 publish modified versions
[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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Authored by: SilverWave on Sunday, February 17 2013 @ 09:52 AM EST |
Microsoft is killing
itself
The interesting bit
here is that if you bought a decent
computer in 2004 or 2005, it will probably
handle Windows 8
just fine. Over the years, the hardware has become
incredibly
powerful. But Microsoft has not moved to take
advantage of this hardware. When
you set the hardware
threshold too low, it is difficult to add features that
can
make a consumer go wow and nudge him to upgrade to a new
computer.
Instead, Microsoft has relied on faux user
interface changes like Aero to push
consumers to update.
I call it failure of imagination.
People have
stopped buying or upgrading personal computers
because they don’t see any value
in it. They have stopped
upgrading the OS because it is essentially same. The
core
software stinks because it brings nothing new to the table.
Story is same
with Windows 8, which may have some cosmetic
changes but doesn’t bring anything
spectacular to the game.
No wonder, people are barely noticing
it. --- RMS: The 4 Freedoms
0 run the program for any purpose
1 study the source code and change it
2 make copies and distribute them
3 publish modified versions
[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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Authored by: SilverWave on Sunday, February 17 2013 @ 10:16 AM EST |
Has Apple already outsourced
too much?
So, what’s Apple
got to do? In so much as it is able to
trust its suppliers of key components
not to become
competitors, it can continue to use them. But where it
can’t, or
where those suppliers have already become
competitors, it has only one sensible
choice — replace them.
It has two choices here: the first (and obvious one) is
with
another supplier. But that risks the same thing happening
all over again
— Apple nursing another supplier into a
competitor. The second choice: for
components and services
that are critical to maintaining competitive advantage
in
the markets which Apple plays, Apple needs to build the
components
themselves. --- RMS: The 4 Freedoms
0 run the program for any purpose
1 study the source code and change it
2 make copies and distribute them
3 publish modified versions
[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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Authored by: Anonymous on Sunday, February 17 2013 @ 12:51 PM EST |
"We’re told those given pink slips include Beth Jacobs, General Manager of
Mobile, and Ken Dodelin, Director of Mobile Products. Sources say the entire
Mobile Product Management and IT Project Management staffs have been
eliminated." link [ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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Authored by: Anonymous on Sunday, February 17 2013 @ 03:35 PM EST |
A series of stories about how we’ve tackled the huge challenges of
updating an old code-base and giving it a bright future and the impact of
large-scale code-change in that process on quality and features in
4.0.
Come and hear how we’ve built an international team of developers
to tackle the problems of resurrecting a poorly-understood, gigantic code-base
extensively commented in German, with no unit tests, a tangled build
infrastructure, and twenty-five years of un-paid technical debt.
Hear
some stories of where we’ve come from - some comedy architectural disasters, and
where we want to move to. Find out how you can get involved in that process. See
the bug metrics, how we track our progress, regression counts, and the tooling
we use to encourage participation and adapt the code. Does paying technical debt
by significant, risky re-factoring pay? come and see the bug
metrics.
See how we’ve innovated on top of this base with new features,
new platforms and hear about some of the goodness in LibreOffice
4.0.
https://fosdem.org/2013/schedule/event/challenges_libreoffice/[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, February 18 2013 @ 12:23 AM EST |
Bizarre story not yet on mainstream security blogs.
The two principals are
known for their incompetence,
and reluctance to tell the truth.
What's
going
on here?
[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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- Just Yahoo - Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, February 19 2013 @ 12:33 PM EST
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Authored by: IMANAL_TOO on Monday, February 18 2013 @ 12:53 AM EST |
www.phoro
nix.com/scan.php%3f
page=news_item&px=MTMwMzg
"Microsoft'
s Linux kernel contributions continue... This
time around they have
published a synthetic frame-buffer
driver. [...] This Microsoft Synthetic
Video Driver is
currently under a "request for comments" state but it's
possible if the review goes well it could be potentially
merged for the
forthcoming Linux 3.9 kernel development
cycle otherwise Linux
3.10."
The Pope, the Chebarkul meteorite, and now
this.
--- ______
IMANAL
. [ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, February 18 2013 @ 08:45 AM EST |
XKCD
Waynehttp://madhatter.ca<
/br> [ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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- I like the idea... - Authored by: jesse on Monday, February 18 2013 @ 09:09 AM EST
- links - Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, February 18 2013 @ 10:34 AM EST
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Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, February 18 2013 @ 09:43 AM EST |
A civil action was filed today in the United States District Court
for the Northern District of Illinois against the Arthur Conan Doyle Estate by
Sherlock Holmes scholar Leslie S. Klinger.
Klinger seeks to have the Court
determine that the characters of Sherlock Holmes and Dr. John H. Watson are no
longer protected by federal copyright laws and that writers, filmmakers, and
others are free to create new stories about Holmes, Watson, and others of their
circle without paying license fees to the current owners of the remaining
copyrights.
Klinger says that the litigation came about because he and
Laurie R. King, best-selling author of the “Mary Russell” series of mysteries
that also feature Sherlock Holmes, were co-editing a new book called “In the
Company of Sherlock Holmes.” This collection of stories by major
mystery/sci-fi/fantasy authors inspired by the Holmes tales, is to be published
by Pegasus Books.
“The Conan Doyle Estate contacted our publisher,” says
Klinger, “and implied that if the Estate wasn’t paid a license fee, they’d
convince the major distributors not to sell the book. Our publisher was,
understandably, concerned, and told us that the book couldn’t come out unless
this was resolved.
Free
Sherlock!
h/t
Cory Doctorow, Boing Boing
&
Scott Monty, The Baker Street Blog [ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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Authored by: designerfx on Monday, February 18 2013 @ 11:00 AM EST |
On windows 2012 server installs if you load IE it encourages
you to "Try the Bing Challenge" at the top - as in, use bing
instead of google.
Yep, they're that desperate.[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, February 18 2013 @ 02:52 PM EST |
The suit claims that major parts of Dodd-Frank violate the
Constitution’s separation of powers, including the new Consumer Finance
Protection Bureau; a new council with the discretion to determine which non-bank
financial firms are “too big to fail” and subject to additional regulation; and
the government’s new “Orderly Liquidation Authority” to force failing financial
companies to dissolve “with little or no advance warning,” according to the
lawsuit.
Alabama, Georgia, Kansas, Montana, Nebraska, Ohio, Texas, and West
Virginia have now joined Oklahoma, South Carolina, and Michigan in the
lawsuit.
Their attorneys general argue that the OLA, in particular, violates
states’ property rights because of the investments that states have made in
financial firms that could be dissolved by the federal
government.
Suzy Khimm, The Washington Post[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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Authored by: MDT on Monday, February 18 2013 @ 04:26 PM EST |
Ok, the fact that major news sites are starting to tout
Samsung over Apple just
tells all sorts of tales about where
Apple's corporate head is right
now.
CNN
Article
--- MDT [ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, February 18 2013 @ 08:16 PM EST |
Obama's
Secret Legal Technology for
Drones [cartoon on boing boing].
[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, February 19 2013 @ 02:59 AM EST |
http://www.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/series/docarchive
The Silent Epidemic 12
Feb 13, Duration: 24 mins
Drowning is the cause of a quarter of a
million child fatalities every year.
Mark Whitaker reports from Bangladesh and
Vietnam.
We've had a lot of work to do in terms of
convincing the international
public health community that drowning is an issue.
The medical system is geared towards
what happens in hospitals... [audio at
18.41] ... We would have liked to ask the
Gates Foundation why it has
been such a struggle. They are the biggest private donor in
global health, and
the one that others tend to follow. However they declined our
invitation to
take part in this program. [audio at 21.19]
I guess the profit in
teaching kids to swim is too little, too slow.
[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, February 19 2013 @ 09:14 AM EST |
Summary
Creates the Internet Posting Removal Act. Provides
that a web site administrator shall, upon request, remove any posted comments
posted by an anonymous poster unless the anonymous poster agrees to attach his
or her name to the post and confirms that his or her IP address, legal name, and
home address are accurate.
Effective 90 days after becoming
law.
http://legiscan.com/IL/bill/SB1614[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, February 19 2013 @ 09:55 AM EST |
The Feds don’t know what to make of Audi’s new LED
headlamps
Audi built a better automotive lighting system, known as the
matrix beam LED headlamps. Matrix LEDs promise better, more precise lighting for
the driver, less blinding light to dazzle oncoming cars, and a kind of mid-beams
for roads with only a little traffic. The Matrix lighting technology is ready to
go on the 2013 Audi A8 big luxury sedan, but don’t hold your breath if you live
in the US — when Audi asked the National Highway Transportation Administration
for a ruling, the NHTSA demurred, unsure how to fit the square peg of a
variable-output, matrix headlamp array into the round hole they call low and
high beams.
Bill Howard, ExtremeTech[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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Authored by: JamesK on Tuesday, February 19 2013 @ 11:40 AM EST |
Dump Microsoft Office, with its new licensing restrictions, and
get LibreOffice instead. --- The following program contains immature
subject matter.
Viewer discretion is advised. [ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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Authored by: JamesK on Tuesday, February 19 2013 @ 12:12 PM EST |
Another one bytes the dust
as Microsoft (and its ugly licensing practices) pushes a long-time fan away.
Jack Wallen looks at what’s in store for Microsoft. --- The following
program contains immature subject matter.
Viewer discretion is advised. [ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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Authored by: JamesK on Tuesday, February 19 2013 @ 12:15 PM EST |
The Apache Software Foundation (ASF) announced that
Apache OpenOffice has a value of $21 million a day. --- The
following program contains immature subject matter.
Viewer discretion is advised. [ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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- Huh? - Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, February 19 2013 @ 05:34 PM EST
- Huh? - Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, February 19 2013 @ 06:53 PM EST
- Apache OpenOffice Valued at $21M Per Day - Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, February 19 2013 @ 10:28 PM EST
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