It's almost certainly someone trolling. If Slashdot's corporate owners were genuinely trying to censor it, either they'd make the message that a post had been censored impossible to fake, or they'd simply delete the posts and hide the fact that there'd been something there, or they'd just give themselves infinite modding ability and mod it down to -1 so hardly anyone saw it. There'd be no point in making the message fakable.
Microsoft owns the font, IIRC, but they've distributed Linux and Mac versions of it in the past, under free-as-in-beer licenses, and it's pretty easy to get a copy of it if you want to as a result, because the licenses don't expire. (It's even in the non-free repositories of several Linux distros; Ubuntu calls it ttf-mscorefonts-installer, for instance. As well as Arial, you get Times New Roman, Courier New, Verdana, Georgia, Trebuchet, Andale Mono, and even Webdings and Comic Sans.)
This sort of thing happens quite a lot in the UK, it's one of the more common outcomes to civil libel cases in my experience. (I heard of something like this happening to someone locally, who made a statement that was found to be libellous, and was forced to take out advertisements to retract it.) The judge actually discussed "publicity orders" in the ruling, and pointed out that the laws in question expressly suggested them as part of the typical punishment when there had been infringement (although not the opposite situation, for when there hadn't been, and the judge spends quite some time talking about that as a result).
Compulsory advertisements are also quite common more generally in the UK (although more usually they aren't forced by a court order, but rather part of seeking permission to do something; it's quite common for people who want to build a new building to advertise the fact beforehand, for instance, as part of seeking planning permission, so that people have a chance to object). It's even reached the points where many major papers have a dedicated section for legal notices, although the court-ordered version has to be rather more prominent.
Oh, and apparently the judge owns an iPad, although he said that it was irrelevant because he was comparing the Galaxy Tab to Apple's design registrations, rather than to the product Apple actually put on sale. So unless he dislikes the way it works or something, I doubt he has a particular hatred of Apple.
I just came here after finishing reading the ruling itself, [2012] EWCA Civ 1339. I find UK legalese rather easier to read than US legalese (not being a lawyer), and it's interestingly informal in some parts. It's also quite informative (the judges pointed out specifically which differences they found to be relevant, such as the iPad's registered design being intentionally symmetrical, and the Galaxy Tab having an obvious intended orientation due to the addition of the word "SAMSUNG").
Unity Dash is what Unity (Ubuntu's default window manager) uses as a start menu substitute/replacement: it's basically a set of specialised search engines (one for applications, one for files, one for videos, etc.). They search within your computer, but also into repositories (so you can search for a program you don't have installed and will be given the option to install it. The individual search engines are referred to as lenses and scopes; there's some sort of technical difference that most people don't care about.
The controversy is about the addition of a new search engine to the Unity Dash that searches Amazon (and, by implication, sends Amazon your search terms). Part of the issue is that the default lens/scope, "Home", just aggregates the results from all the others, so if you're trying to start a program, or open a file with a particular name, Amazon will indirectly learn the fact that you're doing that. Now, they might not care, but presumably they record the data, and the issue is that they might either do something with it themselves, sell it to someone else, or provide it to governments on request.
You can easily work around this simply by uninstalling the Amazon lens/scope; part of the argument is centered around the fact (and the fact that it's installed by default, so this is an opt-out not an opt-in).
It depends on how you do it. The UK banned smoking in most public places and advertising cigarettes, and it hasn't increased the number of smokers at all. (Partly it's because you can get and use cigarettes entirely legally, so it hasn't created a black market.)
Perhaps not, due to the existence of "respawning" in such games (basically, automatically resurrecting a short time after death, typically at a penalty that's significant but not crippling). The virtual pandemic can sustain itself effectively infinitely, as people respawning can catch the corruption again. On the other hand, if everyone is killed instantly as a one-off event, they'll all respawn again some time later; inconvenient but hardly game-ruining. (The problem is more if people do it over and over again.)
Interestingly, one possible cure for a widespread pandemic in an MMO would be the simultaneous death (and subsequent respawn) of everyone involved.
Switzerland is a direct democracy, which may have something to do with it. (Although it has a reasonably normal sort of democratic government, laws can also be passed via a petition followed by a referendum.)
I thought that it was much more common for people to go after uploaders than downloaders (including people uploading as part of a torrent, rather than leaching), because it was much clearer that copyright infringement was happening on uploads. For a download, you have the issue of when the copy was created and who did it.
That post rendered in DejaVu Sans Mono for me too, because I don't have Courier New installed. (I missed the "over1ook", though, because although the 1 and l in DejaVu Sans Mono look very different, the 1 is passable as an l, even if the l isn't passable as a 1.)
The more sensible fix would be to charge Microsoft for a certain minimum amount of energy use regardless of how much was actually used, rather than making them actually burn the energy in order to keep costs down.
Doing the hash on the browser is mostly pointless, because then people can log in merely with the hash, rather than with the actual password. So you aren't making your own site any more secure. (You are making other people's sites more secure indirectly, though, because people using the same password at multiple sites won't be compromised at those sites if your site gets compromised.)
My workplace requires all computers used there to have anti-virus installed, which is why I have antivirus on this machine despite it running Linux. (It even found something, once: a decompression bomb that I was looking at for fun.)
Whenever I have something which naturally has a password prompt, but I want arbitrary people to be able to log in, I set the password equal to the username (especially as the username itself tends to be guessable). That's probably more common than using a default password like 123456.
Something similar to the summary happens to me occasionally (although it isn't obviously linked to suspend or lid closing).
I'm using a (custom-patched) Unity, so I fix the problem with control-alt-f1, log in, DISPLAY=:0 unity &. (The DISPLAY=:0 is required because most window managers don't know how to run in a terminal.) If you're using a different window manager, just swap out its name.)
You don't even lose any work, but all the windows do end up collapsing onto the same virtual desktop.
I'm not sure. I don't normally buy newspapers, but when I do, I often look for ones with an opposite bias to mine; it's more informative because it's easier to mentally allow for an opposite bias than for an agreeing bias.
For anyone interested reading this discussion, I may as well say what the proof actually is, because it's shorter than typical explanations of how easy it is.
Suppose there are only a finite number of prime numbers. That means you can produce a complete List Of All Primes. Multiply them all together, add 1. This number has no prime factors (by definition; none of the primes on our List Of All Primes divide into it), which means it must be prime itself, but it's way bigger than anything on the list so it can't be. This is a contradiction, so the assumption that there are only finitely many primes must be wrong.
(And indeed, this is used as a standard example of proof technique.)
Unlike OpenOffice.org, LibreOffice has been intentionally trying to reduce or remove Java dependencies. (I don't know whether it's because they're worried about Oracle too, or for some other reason, like "why would an office suite need Java anyway?".)
After seeing a demonstration of a successful XSS attack on a plaintext file (IE7 was the offending browser, incidentally), I find it hard to see what sort of validation could possibly help. After all, the offending code was a perfectly valid ASCII plain text file that didn't even look particularly like HTML, but happened to contain a few HTML tags. (Incidentally, for this reason, Wikipedia refuses to serve user-entered content as text/plain; it uses text/css instead, because it happens to render the same on all major browsers and doesn't have bizarre security issues with IE.)
It's just a mistake in genkernel's timeline. 2K is one of the alternating good releases; the bad release between it and XP is Windows ME, which genkernel seems to have edited out from his or her memory entirely. (And it's pretty universally considered to be absolutely awful.)
Meanwhile, Toshiba put the information about the existence of the Microsoft Tax and the fact that they didn't do refunds on the outside of the box, on a bright yellow label that was very visible, rather than hidden in an EULA or in small print. I was pretty impressed by that. (I'm in the UK, by the way, where there's some doubt about whether EULAs are enforceable unless they're shown pre-sale.)
Slashdot Mirror
It's almost certainly someone trolling. If Slashdot's corporate owners were genuinely trying to censor it, either they'd make the message that a post had been censored impossible to fake, or they'd simply delete the posts and hide the fact that there'd been something there, or they'd just give themselves infinite modding ability and mod it down to -1 so hardly anyone saw it. There'd be no point in making the message fakable.
Microsoft owns the font, IIRC, but they've distributed Linux and Mac versions of it in the past, under free-as-in-beer licenses, and it's pretty easy to get a copy of it if you want to as a result, because the licenses don't expire. (It's even in the non-free repositories of several Linux distros; Ubuntu calls it ttf-mscorefonts-installer, for instance. As well as Arial, you get Times New Roman, Courier New, Verdana, Georgia, Trebuchet, Andale Mono, and even Webdings and Comic Sans.)
This sort of thing happens quite a lot in the UK, it's one of the more common outcomes to civil libel cases in my experience. (I heard of something like this happening to someone locally, who made a statement that was found to be libellous, and was forced to take out advertisements to retract it.) The judge actually discussed "publicity orders" in the ruling, and pointed out that the laws in question expressly suggested them as part of the typical punishment when there had been infringement (although not the opposite situation, for when there hadn't been, and the judge spends quite some time talking about that as a result).
Compulsory advertisements are also quite common more generally in the UK (although more usually they aren't forced by a court order, but rather part of seeking permission to do something; it's quite common for people who want to build a new building to advertise the fact beforehand, for instance, as part of seeking planning permission, so that people have a chance to object). It's even reached the points where many major papers have a dedicated section for legal notices, although the court-ordered version has to be rather more prominent.
Oh, and apparently the judge owns an iPad, although he said that it was irrelevant because he was comparing the Galaxy Tab to Apple's design registrations, rather than to the product Apple actually put on sale. So unless he dislikes the way it works or something, I doubt he has a particular hatred of Apple.
I just came here after finishing reading the ruling itself, [2012] EWCA Civ 1339. I find UK legalese rather easier to read than US legalese (not being a lawyer), and it's interestingly informal in some parts. It's also quite informative (the judges pointed out specifically which differences they found to be relevant, such as the iPad's registered design being intentionally symmetrical, and the Galaxy Tab having an obvious intended orientation due to the addition of the word "SAMSUNG").
Unity Dash is what Unity (Ubuntu's default window manager) uses as a start menu substitute/replacement: it's basically a set of specialised search engines (one for applications, one for files, one for videos, etc.). They search within your computer, but also into repositories (so you can search for a program you don't have installed and will be given the option to install it. The individual search engines are referred to as lenses and scopes; there's some sort of technical difference that most people don't care about.
The controversy is about the addition of a new search engine to the Unity Dash that searches Amazon (and, by implication, sends Amazon your search terms). Part of the issue is that the default lens/scope, "Home", just aggregates the results from all the others, so if you're trying to start a program, or open a file with a particular name, Amazon will indirectly learn the fact that you're doing that. Now, they might not care, but presumably they record the data, and the issue is that they might either do something with it themselves, sell it to someone else, or provide it to governments on request.
You can easily work around this simply by uninstalling the Amazon lens/scope; part of the argument is centered around the fact (and the fact that it's installed by default, so this is an opt-out not an opt-in).
It depends on how you do it. The UK banned smoking in most public places and advertising cigarettes, and it hasn't increased the number of smokers at all. (Partly it's because you can get and use cigarettes entirely legally, so it hasn't created a black market.)
Perhaps not, due to the existence of "respawning" in such games (basically, automatically resurrecting a short time after death, typically at a penalty that's significant but not crippling). The virtual pandemic can sustain itself effectively infinitely, as people respawning can catch the corruption again. On the other hand, if everyone is killed instantly as a one-off event, they'll all respawn again some time later; inconvenient but hardly game-ruining. (The problem is more if people do it over and over again.)
Interestingly, one possible cure for a widespread pandemic in an MMO would be the simultaneous death (and subsequent respawn) of everyone involved.
Switzerland is a direct democracy, which may have something to do with it. (Although it has a reasonably normal sort of democratic government, laws can also be passed via a petition followed by a referendum.)
I thought that it was much more common for people to go after uploaders than downloaders (including people uploading as part of a torrent, rather than leaching), because it was much clearer that copyright infringement was happening on uploads. For a download, you have the issue of when the copy was created and who did it.
You probably want to use DejaVu Sans Mono instead. It's basically the same font (and was based on it), but has much better Unicode support.
That post rendered in DejaVu Sans Mono for me too, because I don't have Courier New installed. (I missed the "over1ook", though, because although the 1 and l in DejaVu Sans Mono look very different, the 1 is passable as an l, even if the l isn't passable as a 1.)
Watts are the right unit to measure power.
What we really want to know, though, is how many joules of energy they wasted
The more sensible fix would be to charge Microsoft for a certain minimum amount of energy use regardless of how much was actually used, rather than making them actually burn the energy in order to keep costs down.
Doing the hash on the browser is mostly pointless, because then people can log in merely with the hash, rather than with the actual password. So you aren't making your own site any more secure. (You are making other people's sites more secure indirectly, though, because people using the same password at multiple sites won't be compromised at those sites if your site gets compromised.)
My workplace requires all computers used there to have anti-virus installed, which is why I have antivirus on this machine despite it running Linux. (It even found something, once: a decompression bomb that I was looking at for fun.)
Whenever I have something which naturally has a password prompt, but I want arbitrary people to be able to log in, I set the password equal to the username (especially as the username itself tends to be guessable). That's probably more common than using a default password like 123456.
Something similar to the summary happens to me occasionally (although it isn't obviously linked to suspend or lid closing).
I'm using a (custom-patched) Unity, so I fix the problem with control-alt-f1, log in, DISPLAY=:0 unity &. (The DISPLAY=:0 is required because most window managers don't know how to run in a terminal.) If you're using a different window manager, just swap out its name.)
You don't even lose any work, but all the windows do end up collapsing onto the same virtual desktop.
I'm not sure. I don't normally buy newspapers, but when I do, I often look for ones with an opposite bias to mine; it's more informative because it's easier to mentally allow for an opposite bias than for an agreeing bias.
For anyone interested reading this discussion, I may as well say what the proof actually is, because it's shorter than typical explanations of how easy it is.
Suppose there are only a finite number of prime numbers. That means you can produce a complete List Of All Primes. Multiply them all together, add 1. This number has no prime factors (by definition; none of the primes on our List Of All Primes divide into it), which means it must be prime itself, but it's way bigger than anything on the list so it can't be. This is a contradiction, so the assumption that there are only finitely many primes must be wrong.
(And indeed, this is used as a standard example of proof technique.)
Unlike OpenOffice.org, LibreOffice has been intentionally trying to reduce or remove Java dependencies. (I don't know whether it's because they're worried about Oracle too, or for some other reason, like "why would an office suite need Java anyway?".)
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Main_Page&action=raw&ctype=text/plain
"You have chosen to open index.php which is a: text/x-wiki from: http://en.wikipedia.org/"
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/api.php?format=txt
"You have chosen to open api.php which is a: text/text from: http://en.wikipedia.org/"
It refuses to serve text/plain, even if you ask for it specifically. (Compare http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Main_Page&action=raw&ctype=text/css, which it'll serve quite happily.)
After seeing a demonstration of a successful XSS attack on a plaintext file (IE7 was the offending browser, incidentally), I find it hard to see what sort of validation could possibly help. After all, the offending code was a perfectly valid ASCII plain text file that didn't even look particularly like HTML, but happened to contain a few HTML tags. (Incidentally, for this reason, Wikipedia refuses to serve user-entered content as text/plain; it uses text/css instead, because it happens to render the same on all major browsers and doesn't have bizarre security issues with IE.)
Presumably, just because the sides asked for one.
It's just a mistake in genkernel's timeline. 2K is one of the alternating good releases; the bad release between it and XP is Windows ME, which genkernel seems to have edited out from his or her memory entirely. (And it's pretty universally considered to be absolutely awful.)
Meanwhile, Toshiba put the information about the existence of the Microsoft Tax and the fact that they didn't do refunds on the outside of the box, on a bright yellow label that was very visible, rather than hidden in an EULA or in small print. I was pretty impressed by that. (I'm in the UK, by the way, where there's some doubt about whether EULAs are enforceable unless they're shown pre-sale.)