bstempi - Slashdot User

Comment Re:yeah. its much better to be p0wned (Score 1) 552

by bstempi on Friday February 26, 2010 @02:55AM (#31282188) Attached to: Independent Programmers' No-Win Scenario

"I mean, really...anyone remember when insurance used to be called 'hospitalization'? Insurance should only be for catastrophic emergencies.

For some of us, a doctor's visit becomes a catastrophic event. I only go to the doctor when something is wrong, which means that I almost always end up walking out of there with either a prescription for medication or further medical testing. Do you have any idea how much a CT costs? I got self-billed once...it was for >$10k. There was no emergency...health care just costs that much.

Comment Re:And this... (Score 1) 665

by bstempi on Friday October 26, 2007 @10:39AM (#21128447) Attached to: Valve Locking Out Gamers Who Buy Orange Box Internationally

In short, closed source does not fucking mean that you're going to get bent over by every company that makes a program, stop pretending it does.

It does when the vendor is able to remotely affect/disable you product.

C-SPAN Adopts Creative Commons-Style License 86

Posted by kdawson on Thursday March 08, 2007 @02:09PM from the about-time dept.

Trillian_1138 writes "C-SPAN, a network in the US dedicated to airing governmental proceedings, has adopted a Creative Commons-style license for all its content. This follows the network claiming Speaker of the House Pelosi's use of C-Span videos on her site violated their copyright. Specifically, 'C-SPAN is introducing a liberalized copyright policy for current, future, and past coverage of any official events sponsored by Congress and any federal agency — about half of all programming offered on the C-SPAN television networks — which will allow non-commercial copying, sharing, and posting of C-SPAN video on the Internet, with attribution.' Here is the press release. The question remains whether videos of governmental proceedings should be public domain by default or whether the attribution requirement is reasonable in the face of easy video copying and distribution."

Submission + - Beer Tossing Fridge

Submitted by

cmacdona101

on Thursday March 08, 2007 @01:58PM

cmacdona101 writes: "CNN is reporting on a recent Duke grad that's engineered a remote controlled Fridge that tosses him a beer at the touch of a button. The fridge can launch the beer up to 20 feet, far enough to get to his couch. The video shows the fridge using a "beer magazine clip" and a remote firing system that let you determine angles and ballistics to get the beer to your friends anywhere in the room."

Submission + - All Microsoft updates phone home

Submitted by

juct

on Thursday March 08, 2007 @01:17PM

juct writes: "In the wake of heise Security's report on the garrulous WGA Notification, Microsoft has now supplied additional details on the data sent and has revealed developers that apparently all updates relay information to the company in Redmond."

(Almost) All You Need To Know About IPv6 359

Posted by kdawson on Thursday March 08, 2007 @12:50PM from the billions-and-billions dept.

Butterspoon tips us to an article in Ars Technica titled "Everything you need to know about IPv6." Perhaps not quite "everything"; the article doesn't try to explain the reasons behind IPv6's meager adoption since its introduction 12 years ago. But it should be regarded as essential reading for anyone overly comfortable with their IPv4 addresses. Quoting: "As of January 1, 2007, 2.4 billion of those [IPv4 addresses] were in (some kind of) use. 1.3 billion were still available and about 170 million new addresses are given out each year. So at this rate, 7.5 years from now, we'll be clean out of IP addresses; faster if the number of addresses used per year goes up. Are you ready for IPv6?"

Submission + - LinuxBIOS with X11 server, completely in Flash ROM

Submitted by LWATCDR on Thursday March 08, 2007 @12:15PM

LWATCDR writes: http://www.hermann-uwe.de/blog/linuxbios-with-x11- server-completely-in-flash-rom Has a great write up on putting combining LinuxBios + a Linux kernel, busybox, X, a window manager, and rxvt into a two meg flash chip. So what does get you? A six second boot time for one. All sorts of uses come to mind. Terminals to use with the Linux Terminal server. A very fast booting embedded system like a Car computer. With every one pushing for multi-core cpus, mega gigabyte drives and many gigabytes of ram it is interesting to see how small you can go.

Samsung Ships Hybrid Hard Drives 118

Posted by kdawson on Thursday March 08, 2007 @12:07PM from the not-for-you-yet-binky dept.

writertype writes "ExtremeTech reports that Samsung has become the first company to begin shipping hybrid hard drives as discussed last fall on Slashdot. (Some photos here.) Unfortunately, there's no word yet (beyond 'soon') on when retail shipments will begin, or when (or if) 3.5-inch models will be available. Note that these hybrid drives are different than the ReadyBoost USB flash drives optimized for Vista; hybrid drives contain a smaller amount of flash, and work as a write cache for your notebook drive, extending battery life."

Helping Dell To Help Open Source 177

Posted by kdawson on Tuesday March 06, 2007 @05:34PM from the skunkworks dept.

Glyn Moody writes "Dell's IdeaStorm is turning into a fiasco — for Dell, and for open source as well. Instead of just shouting at the company to sell pre-installed GNU/Linux systems, how about helping them find a way to do it? Here's a suggestion that I've posted on the IdeaStorm site: that Dell set up an independent business unit for GNU/Linux systems, just like The Innovator's Dilemma tells us to do when faced with a disruptive technology."

Submission + - Jeff Hawkins' Cortex Simulation Platform Available

Submitted by

UnreasonableMan

on Tuesday March 06, 2007 @05:28PM

UnreasonableMan writes: "Jeff Hawkins is best known for founding Palm Computing and Handspring, but for the last eighteen months he's been working on his third company, Numenta. In his 2005 book, On Intelligence, Hawkins laid out a theoretical framework describing how the neocortex processes sensory inputs and provides outputs back to the body. Numenta's goal is to build a software model of the human brain capable of face recognition, object identification, driving, and other tasks currently better suited to humans.

For an overview see Hawkins' 2005 presentation at UC Berkeley. It includes a demonstration of an early version of the software that can recognize handwritten letters and distinguish between stick figure dogs and cats. Whitepapers are available at Numenta's website.

Numenta wisely decided to build a community of developers rather than try to make everything proprietary. Yesterday they released the first version of their free development platform and the source code for their algorithms to anyone who wants to download it."

Major Broadcasters Hit With $12M Payola Fine 222

Posted by kdawson on Tuesday March 06, 2007 @04:19PM from the pay-for-play-no-no dept.

Gr8Apes writes with a just-breaking AP story reporting that the FCC is wrapping up a settlement in which four major broadcast companies would pay the government $12.5 million and provide 8,400 half-hour segments of free airtime for independent record labels and local artists. The finish line is near after a 3-year investigation. An indie promoter is quoted: "It's absolutely the most historic agreement that the independent community has had with radio. Without a doubt, nothing else comes close."

Submission + - RFID Passports Cloned Without Opening the Package

Submitted by

Jeremy

on Tuesday March 06, 2007 @04:01PM

Jeremy writes: "Using some simple deduction, a security consultant discovered how to clone a passport as it's being mailed to its recipient, without ever opening the package. These are the kinds of things that people need to understand are possible now that our governments are trying to use wireless technology (inherantly insecure) for security."

A Network Sniffer On Steroids 129

Posted by kdawson on Tuesday March 06, 2007 @03:40PM from the data-seepage dept.

QuantumCrypto writes "Errata has developed a new network sniffer, dubbed 'Ferret,' that looks for traffic using 25 protocols, including those for the popular instant message clients as well as DHCP, SNMP, DNS and HTTP. This means the sniffer will capture requests for network addresses, network management tools, Web sites queries, Web traffic and more. 'You don't realize how much you're making public, so I wrote a tool that tells you,' said Robert Graham, Errata's chief executive. Errata has released the source code to this version 1.0, 'feature-poor and buggy' tool on its site. Anyone with a wireless card will be able to run it, Graham said."

Red Hat Readies RHEL 5 for March 14 Launch 129

Posted by Hemos on Tuesday March 06, 2007 @10:20AM from the coming-out dept.

Rob writes "The wait is almost over. It may have taken two weeks longer than Red Hat would have liked, but Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5, the updated version of the company's commercial Linux platform, will be launched along with a bevy of new products and services on March 14. The delivery of RHEL 5, the fourth major commercial server release for Red Hat, will better position its Linux against Novell's SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 10 as well as Windows, Unix, and proprietary platforms. RHEL 5 has been cooking for more than two years and includes changes to the Linux kernel. In addition to the support for the Xen hypervisor, RHEL 5 also has an integrated version of Red Hat Cluster Suite, the company's high availability clustering software, as well as support for iSCSI disk arrays, InfiniBand with Remote Direct Memory Access (RDMA), and the SystemTap kernel probing tool."

Linux Systems and the New DST 304

Posted by kdawson on Tuesday March 06, 2007 @08:58AM from the spring-forward-fall-flat dept.

An anonymous reader writes "The recent changes in the Daylight Saving Time will affect virtually all computer systems in the US one week from now. Microsoft has been busy preparing Windows users for 'Y2DST,' and all the major Linux distributions have also issued patches. How can you be sure your Linux systems are ready, and what can you do to get them ready if they're not? This how-to article at Linux-Watch answers both questions in simple language and with easy-to-follow instructions."

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