Catch up on stories from the past week (and beyond) at the Slashdot story archive

 



Forgot your password?
typodupeerror

Comment It's a still a nice PC. (Score 3, Insightful) 337

For years I hated MS. But of late they are doing really nice work and getting mocked despite doing real innovation. It feels weird to like MS as an underdog, but that's what it's come to. And I will be be getting a Surface 3 - it's the one that finally kills it in terms of compact size and decent computing power. I just gotta save up cuz it's not a cheap machine.

Comment Ventra doesn't hash their passwords (Score 1) 196

A Ventra card is basically a Debit card. So one would expect simple best security practices.

Imagine my surprise when I hit the forgot Name and Password button and after entering in my Debit card number and email, I was sent the original password I used (not a reset). As with Adobe, this is asking for a massive breach.

$454 Mil apparently can't buy programmers/designer familiar with password hashing, salt and slow algorithms. Or a basic security audit.

Comment Re:This is actually a Slashdot sting (Score 1) 391

I generally don't bother to post about my experiences with MS products. The zealots of other platforms don't want to hear anything that doesn't jive with their world view and will brand you a shill for making simple factual statements. The whole idea of arguing about this stuff is silly, especially since most of the people arguing don't have extensive experience in all the major platforms from which to form a real opinion.

Comment If only the labels paid for their infringements (Score 1) 525

What gets me is that many of these record companies will release tracks they don't own on compilations - a major infringement. They are clearly commercially profiting, they clearly know better, but because they have teams of lawyers they release this stuff in violation of copyright laws. Friends of mine have had their recordings essentially bootlegged by major labels in this fashion - and never seen a cent.

When you get into sample clearance it gets even uglier. The little guy gets sued if he sampled, and ripped off if he's being sampled. And his only recourse are legal fees he can hardly pay on a musicians income.

PlayStation (Games)

Submission + - The Dark Side of HDCP, or, Why Is My PS3 Blinking?

FloatsomNJetsom writes: High Definition Content Protection is supposed to make sure you're not playing pirated content, but sometimes your devices screw up the HDCP "handshake" (over an HDMI cable) and nothing works. This happens with some regularity with the PS3, and Popular Mechanics investigated and found a quick and dirty workaround. From the article:
We then checked with Leslie Chard, president of HDMI Licensing, which owns the rights to the standard, who told us that HDCP is one component of HDMI that has been plagued with interoperability issues. HDCP (high-bandwidth digital content protection) is designed to prevent the interception of data — specifically copyrighted Hollywood movies — between an output component and a display. As Steve Balough, the president of Digital Content Protection, the licensing company for HDCP explains, the two pieces of hardware must exchange a "key," a sort of certificate of authenticity unique to each individual device, to verify a secure connection.
The problem isn't limited to the PS3 — many HDTV cable boxes and have the same problem. The fix there? Unplugging the power cable.
Privacy

Submission + - MySpace to offer spyware for parents

mrspin writes: Following continuing pressure from politicians (and parts of the media), MySpace is planning to offer parents the chance to download software which will monitor aspects of their children's activities on the social networking site. From a business point of view, the move appears to be a highly risky one. The young users of social networking sites are notorious for their lack of loyalty — and history suggests that a change like this could tempt many to abandon MySpace for the 'next cool thing'.

Slashdot Top Deals

"Well, social relevance is a schtick, like mysteries, social relevance, science fiction..." -- Art Spiegelman

Working...