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Slashback: Pie, Election, Alarm

Posted by timothy on from the irs-is-a-nest-of-worms dept.

Slashback this evening with another batch of updates and responses to previous Slashdot posts, including: how Firefox users can avoid post-cookie Web tracking (for now), more on open-source graphics drivers, and an alarm clock that sounds perfect for annoying a spouse. Read on for the details.

Does he feel like Reese Witherspoon? Joe 'Zonker' Brockmeier writes "After many years of trying, Branden Robinson has finally won the Debian Project Leader election. Linux Magazine has an in-depth interview with Robinson about his plans as DPL, the problems that face Debian, and what it's like to finally win the election."

(We mentioned Robinson's election a few days ago.)

In lieu of perfection, fixability is a good start. gyardley writes "After discovering that a company called United Virtualities was making use of Flash's Local Shared Objects to silently restore my deleted cookies, I decided to combat this marketer behavior with a Firefox extension.

Objection 0.1 adds a 'Local Shared Objects' line to Firefox's Options > Privacy panel, allowing you to delete them as easily as you'd delete cookies. It's still pretty rudimentary - all or nothing deletion, working on Windows only - but Slashdotters are more than welcome to improve it. Since Local Shared Objects have the same functionality as cookies, we need the same amount of control over them as we do over cookies - and built into the browser, not tucked away in some obscure Macromedia page."

Sure, come on in, there's still some punch and snacks left, I think. orv writes "The Unichrome project has issued a response to VIA's recent open source announcement covered on Slashdot.

The response (and further comment) clarifies the current Unichrome driver situation and whilst welcoming VIA's move suggests that VIA should become more involved in existing open source projects rather than simply issuing repeated grand sounding press releases. The Unichrome project has provided and supported a full open source driver, including MPEG support, for the Unichrome and Unichrome Pro chipsets for the past two years."

But this implies that 'perky' is the desired state. dhalsim2 writes "Yahoo reports of a Smart Alarm Clock Set for Perky Wakeups. On the heels of Clocky comes this new alarm clock that will monitor a sleeper's brain waves to determine the best time to wake him up. The device uses a microprocessor within a headband that wirelessly transmits brainwaves to the clock. When the person is in a light sleep and is likely to wake up 'perky,' the alarm will go off. Brain wave monitoring? Sounds a lot like Plankton's Plan Z."

7 of 158 comments (clear)

  1. Now we just need ATi... by dhasenan · · Score: 2, Insightful

    If only ATi would release drivers for its cards supporting 3d acceleration on Linux. Never buying from them again.

    1. Re:Now we just need ATi... by cfalcon · · Score: 2, Insightful

      I like their script that overwrites your xorg.conf file. That thing is great. It breaks my keyboard, my mouse, assigns arbitrary and wrong refresh rates for my monitor, and a couple other things I'm too tired to think of right now. Last time it didn't even work.

      I'll give the Free software thing a try soon, but it hasn't been a high priority for me, as I don't use my hardware acceleration near as much as I thought I would (I thought my nice job would give me money to play games: it did, but took away my time!).

  2. Firefox and cookies by ad0gg · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Firefox needs to disable third party cookies by default. There's no reason why images/iframes from other(3rd party) domains should be allowed to set cookies. I don't see any reason why 3rd party cookies should be allowed, they are frequently abused and used as web bugs that track your web browsing from site to site.

    --

    Have you ever been to a turkish prison?

  3. I don't want "perky." by Shag · · Score: 2, Insightful

    I just want a clock that'll make my wife wake up non-grouchy. I'm sure there's a huge market for this device.

    --
    Village idiot in some extremely smart villages.
  4. Hear^2! by interactive_civilian · · Score: 2, Insightful
    I completely agree. Or, even as a compromise, for those of us who want to be notified of cookies and choose to allow, deny, or allow for session, it would be REALLY nice if the default button was "deny" rather than "allow".

    it is really annoying to have to mouse over to the button that I choose the most often.

    btw, if there is anyway to change this behavior short of recompiling, I would love to know how. :D

    --
    "Empathise with stupidity, and you're halfway to thinking like an idiot." - Iain M. Banks
  5. Re:Cookie Madness by mabinogi · · Score: 2, Insightful

    actually, I dislike cookies as session identifiers, as it limits you to one session per browser.
    A session key in the url allows you to log in multiple times, and possibly as multiple users.

    It's not something that you need to do every day - but when you're trying to set up something like a CMS with varying levels of access control, it becomes a pain in the neck to either have to keep logging in and out to verify the way it looks to different users, or have IE, Opera, Mozilla and Firefox all open at once.

    --
    Advanced users are users too!
  6. Kind of like iron . . . by SEE · · Score: 2, Insightful

    To see anybody associated with Debian quoting "release early and often".