They're not suing them... yet. More than likely they're trying to win smaller cases against defendants with less legal strength, to set a precedence for when they go after bigger players.
Here's what Nintendo should do. Design their SDK with the specific intent of eventually using it to build cross platform (as in iOS and Android via NDK) applications. Have requirements for the developers for capabilities like dynamically adjusting to any size display, touch-only input, and encourage in-app purchases using Nintendo's API. As an "excuse" for no hardware controls, release a portable gaming system like the DS that can flip around so only the screen is visible. That is the motivation for a touch-only mode of input.
Then, after a couple years, and you've built up a good library of games, you spring the bombshell - you provide the software libraries for iOS and Android needed for all these game publishers to seamlessly and effortlessly build for those platforms without having to modify their sources at all. Of course, Nintendo branding and licensing would apply to use those platform-specific SDKs and they would receive a cut, as it saved the developers a huge amount of money they would have had to have spent to support diverse platforms.
Now if Nintendo really wanted to play hardball, they sneak in a generic provision in the license agreement with the developers, and Nintendo releases all titles to those platforms (iOS and Android) directly on behalf of the developers, and funnels 90% percent of the revenue back to them while keeping a 10% slice.
Why, you ask, would Nintendo do something to promote gaming on other platforms? Because Nintendo knows that is inevitable either way, and this scheme would get them a cut on that action. They provide the premiere cross-platform gaming API that works on iOS, Android, Nintendo's next gen console, and their next-gen DS, and since developers have no other option (which is the way it has always been) to develop for Nintendo anyway, why not leverage their effort on other platforms too and increase profits?
Why is The Department of Homeland Security poking its nose in everywhere? Why are they "gauging potential earthquake dangers" when this would normally be monitored and studied by the USGS?
For the most part, it is physically impossible for a toddler to chamber a round in most guns (unless we're talking about a revolver, but they represent a very small percentage of pistols these days). I, personally, never keep a round chambered in my pistol I carry regularly. I can pull the gun, turn the safety off, operate the action, and be ready to fire in about a second. I am not in high risk situations from day to day, like law enforcement, where the chances of me needing to operate my gun with one hand while fending someone off with the other is very likely. I can guarantee that almost every one of these people whose toddlers fired their pistol are not in high risk situations either.
So my question is why do so many people feel the need to have a round chambered at all times?
Further, I think a part of the problem is guns like Glocks have no actual safety. My conceal carry weapon has a safety which locks the action, prevents the trigger from being pulled, and physically prevents the hammer from striking the firing pin. It also serves as a de-cock mechanism. If I were to carry a round chambered, I would have the gun de-cocked, and since it is also double-action, I can just flip the safety and pull the trigger (which takes a tremendous amount of pressure when not cocked), which is still vastly safer in the hands of a child. Not only do Glocks not have safeties, but you can't de-cock them either. They are weapons designed more for military and police type use, where nothing should come in the way of the fun firing when the trigger is pulled.
So the problem is two-fold: 1) Don't keep a round chambered unless you feel the need to discharge the weapon is imminent. 2) If you have children, select a gun that has actual safety mechanisms (you know, a "safety") that enhances safety and prevents accidental discharges or operation by children.
It seems to me that Adobe Systems is no longer a well-managed company, and hasn't been since Bruce Chizen got tired of managing Adobe, which was well before he resigned in 2007.
"no longer"??? Adobe Reader was one of the biggest attack vectors that has ever existed in the history of the web, going back way before 2007. I kid you not, a new exploit came out month after month after month. It was ridiculous. Adobe Flash is actually slightly better in that regard, if that tells you anything.
Why are you asking us here at Slashdot? There are billions to be made for a nonlethal weapon that works well enough to not jeopardize the lives of officers in cases where the suspect has an actual gun (you know, the whole "don't bring an X to a gun fight" thing). With this much money on the line, people a lot smarter than us in the world of weapons technology have spent untold hours researching and testing this problem.
Post-scarcity huh? Well there's always scarcity - it just depends on what scale of stuff you're talking about. Generally "post-scarcity" is used to refer to things like food, housing, medical care - you know, the basic needs. What if each person wanted their own star ship? It's not like someone pushes a button and they come into existence. What if everyone wants their own planet? Obviously there are limits and there will always be scarcity.
One thing that all the Star Treks make clear is scarce is talent and skill. Not everyone can do what Geordi does. What about people like Deanna Troi who can sense others' feelings and emotions? How many people can do that? So even if everyone had their own star ship, why would anyone else want to be crew members on them to make them functional? The people on the Enterpises are all highly motivated because they're the best of the best on the best starship probing the outermost reaches of the galaxy. Yeah, that sounds fun. What about the people that operate trash frigates? What's their motivation for learning and bettering themselves and climbing the ladder of command?
Really, it all falls apart very quickly when one begins to think about it.
One group was using Putin's left arm length for Russia's official designation of the meter, while another group was using his right arm. Apparently he isn't perfectly symmetrical.
Israel is in an active war zone, this tends to change things a lot.
His point still stands. Many, many people there have continuous access to weapons - and we're not talking consumer grade weapons either. Yet everyone isn't shooting up the place and killing everyone in sight when they have a bad hair day or get in an argument. You try to dismiss a major data point against your argument with a "tends to change things a lot", which doesn't hold water.
This shooting, like the vast majority of similar mass shootings over the last decade, was the result of mental health issues. Whatever our doctors and psychiatrists and counselors are doing today compared to 25+ years ago is failing miserably and resulting in many deaths.
Hiding car emissions was not done by a couple of people. A large number in the people inside these companies were involved in pulling it off.
I've had the same thoughts all along, and it's now really looking that way:
The criteria, outcomes and engineering of cars that missed emissions targets were overseen by managers at Volkswagen’s base in Wolfsburg, according to the people who asked not to be identified because they weren’t authorized to speak publicly. Their accounts show the chain of command and those involved in the deception stretched to Volkswagen headquarters.
And the smoking gun - or, errr, engine:
If any vehicle failed to meet emissions targets, a team of engineers from Volkswagen headquarters or luxury brand Audi’s base in Ingolstadt was flown in, the person said. After the group had tinkered with the vehicle for about a week, the car would then pass the test. VW had no engineers in the U.S. able to create the mechanism that cheated on the test or who could fix emissions problems, according to two other people.
This allowed the engineers to view the diagnostic information from the vehicle that was just tested to find ways of identifying when a test is taking place (oh, they didn't move the steering wheel at all while it was operated at 55 MPH), and also exactly how the vehicle was tested (what speeds it was operated at, etc) and thus they could optimally tweak the cheat to pass the test. It sounds like a pretty stupid method of testing to me.
One of the interesting things in doing it that way is even though those engineers might be breaking US law, since they aren't US citizens and got their butts back to Germany afterwards, it would make it extremely difficult to prosecute or even investigate and interview them.
One thing is for certain. No whistles were blown. Which is pretty impressive considering how long this has been going on and the extent of who all must have been in the know. I don't think this falls into the category of one software developer tweaking some parameters. I mean the engine was designed without a urea injection system in the first place, which is pretty much necessary to make a diesel engine conform to emissions standards that strict. So it sure leans towards the falsification pathway going way, way back.
My understanding is that the car actually does have better emissions in a certain "mode", which is enabled when various parameters hint that testing is being performed (IE the car is on a dynamo). Inputs cited are steering changes (if the steering wheel doesn't budge as you gradually go from 0 to 65 MPH, then it's probably on a dynamo), barometric changes (sensitive to even the slightest changes in elevation or as airspeed increases, which, again, are static when on a dynamo), etc. That is one of the reasons the car gets better MPG in real world than advertised, because it produces more HP and drives better when the emissions controls are turned off.
It's interesting watching so many software products (and OSes, etc) go through the same cycle. A new player comes on the scene and innovates or simply does things better than the competitors, they become popular and get a decent install base, they stagnate and / or bloat, their usefulness and effectiveness drops, and then often times they turn Evil as a last ditch effort is made to monetize what is left of their users.
I really liked AVG at one time. For me it was the free go-to antivirus product, and it really did a better job removing the malware of the day when it was at its peak (oh, around 8-10 years ago).
Perhaps you remember news stories of a town in Texas (Irving, in fact) that had to pass local legislation to prohibit sharia courts that were settling various business and personal disputes of Muslims.
If you take things in context here, there is a political, religious and PR battle waging in this city between the government and Muslims. The Muslims lost round 1, rightly so, by not be allowed to set up their own government systems in parallel to those of the United States or State of Texas. They won round 2 today, with Obama officially taking the side of the youth.
I was modded down in a comment to a previous story, but I will say at least this much again. No one has seen the device. I tried finding pictures, but to my knowledge none have been posted. It was in a small metal briefcase like box (for holding pencils) with a steel cable around it. Since no one here actually knows the physical appearance or context of how it was presented and perceived, none of us can make any kind of informed opinion on whether or not teachers were justified in having any concerns of what he brought to school.
His father has had run ins of various sorts with the local governments regarding Islam. It did not say what those were (if they were related to the Sharia law deal or what).
The real concern here is whether this was done as a social experiment, or some kind of test of equality or racial discrimination, to see what kind of response would occur if something "shady looking" was brought to school. I haven't found any pictures of the actual device, but it was in one of those metal pencil cases that looks like a briefcase with a handle, and it had a steel cable around it. About half way through the video the boy says "I closed it with a cable because I didn't want to lock it to make it seem like a threat so I used a simple cable so it wouldn't look that much suspicious". The very fact that the boy admitted to the fact that he himself had concerns about exactly how suspicious it appeared gives me the impression that he (and / or his parents or whomever) were trying to walk the finest line possible on making this benign from a legal standpoint (it wasn't locked, and wasn't dangerous at the end of the day), but still raise questions and some amount of suspicion as to what all may be inside.
It sounds like that is what the police are considering - was done to "test" the response of schools and police by walking that thin line between innocence and baiting.
A far, far more extreme example would be to have 9th graders of various races point a fake gun at police offices to see which ones get shot. Of course that is taking the example to the extreme, but I'm curious if that was the kind of thing that this "clock" was about. However, since pictures of the exact thing he brought to school are not available, none of us can even form an opinion for ourselves "does this look like something that a reasonable person would be concerned about in this context".
And finally, I want to point out that taking a clock's innards out of its original plastic case, and sticking it in some other enclosure, is not "inventing" or "making". It's cool stuff and educational (I loved taking things like that apart as a kid), but it's not actually making a clock.
Obviously you didn't read the research paper I referenced.
In this paper we argue that a labeled training sample requirement is unnecessary for an attacker. This implies keyboard emanation attacks are more serious than previous work suggests.
We built a prototype that can bootstrap the recognizer from about 10 minutes of English text typing, using about 30 minutes of computation on a desktop computer with a Pentium IV 3.0G CPU and 1GB of memory. After the bootstrap step, it could recognize language-independent keystrokes in real time, including random keystrokes occurring in passwords, with an accuracy rate of about 90%.
Of course sound can be recorded and thus post-processed whenever a large enough corpus has been captured. Thus you could type for small 1 minute periods at a time over the course of days, and once 10 minutes worth of recordings had been captured from that specific keyboard, it could be analyzed, and after that interpreted in real-time if desired.
This is an interesting although convoluted method to determine what is being typed. It has already been demonstrated that the acoustics from typing can be used to identify what is being typed. Most smart watches have microphones. It makes more sense to use the microphone right next to the keyboard to capture very high quality audio so close to the source and then analyze it acoustically to determine what was typed (which captures data from BOTH hands). It will also work if the user takes off their watch and lays it nearby.
Slashdot Mirror
The Chicago Suburb That's Trying To Kill the Car
Just let out the clutch real fast without giving it enough gas.
a 1993 vending machine which dispenses popcorn in one of three flavors—salted, butter or curry.
I've never heard of curry flavored popcorn before.
So it's all physical media? That's so 1999.
What about reviews written tongue in cheek for humor? Amazon seems to actually embrace them:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/featu...
How is the USB cable review different than the ones in the link above?
They're not suing them... yet. More than likely they're trying to win smaller cases against defendants with less legal strength, to set a precedence for when they go after bigger players.
shut up and do the experiment already!
Here's what Nintendo should do. Design their SDK with the specific intent of eventually using it to build cross platform (as in iOS and Android via NDK) applications. Have requirements for the developers for capabilities like dynamically adjusting to any size display, touch-only input, and encourage in-app purchases using Nintendo's API. As an "excuse" for no hardware controls, release a portable gaming system like the DS that can flip around so only the screen is visible. That is the motivation for a touch-only mode of input.
Then, after a couple years, and you've built up a good library of games, you spring the bombshell - you provide the software libraries for iOS and Android needed for all these game publishers to seamlessly and effortlessly build for those platforms without having to modify their sources at all. Of course, Nintendo branding and licensing would apply to use those platform-specific SDKs and they would receive a cut, as it saved the developers a huge amount of money they would have had to have spent to support diverse platforms.
Now if Nintendo really wanted to play hardball, they sneak in a generic provision in the license agreement with the developers, and Nintendo releases all titles to those platforms (iOS and Android) directly on behalf of the developers, and funnels 90% percent of the revenue back to them while keeping a 10% slice.
Why, you ask, would Nintendo do something to promote gaming on other platforms? Because Nintendo knows that is inevitable either way, and this scheme would get them a cut on that action. They provide the premiere cross-platform gaming API that works on iOS, Android, Nintendo's next gen console, and their next-gen DS, and since developers have no other option (which is the way it has always been) to develop for Nintendo anyway, why not leverage their effort on other platforms too and increase profits?
It costs $2,500 to unlock this new software feature.
Why is The Department of Homeland Security poking its nose in everywhere? Why are they "gauging potential earthquake dangers" when this would normally be monitored and studied by the USGS?
For the most part, it is physically impossible for a toddler to chamber a round in most guns (unless we're talking about a revolver, but they represent a very small percentage of pistols these days). I, personally, never keep a round chambered in my pistol I carry regularly. I can pull the gun, turn the safety off, operate the action, and be ready to fire in about a second. I am not in high risk situations from day to day, like law enforcement, where the chances of me needing to operate my gun with one hand while fending someone off with the other is very likely. I can guarantee that almost every one of these people whose toddlers fired their pistol are not in high risk situations either.
So my question is why do so many people feel the need to have a round chambered at all times?
Further, I think a part of the problem is guns like Glocks have no actual safety. My conceal carry weapon has a safety which locks the action, prevents the trigger from being pulled, and physically prevents the hammer from striking the firing pin. It also serves as a de-cock mechanism. If I were to carry a round chambered, I would have the gun de-cocked, and since it is also double-action, I can just flip the safety and pull the trigger (which takes a tremendous amount of pressure when not cocked), which is still vastly safer in the hands of a child. Not only do Glocks not have safeties, but you can't de-cock them either. They are weapons designed more for military and police type use, where nothing should come in the way of the fun firing when the trigger is pulled.
So the problem is two-fold: 1) Don't keep a round chambered unless you feel the need to discharge the weapon is imminent. 2) If you have children, select a gun that has actual safety mechanisms (you know, a "safety") that enhances safety and prevents accidental discharges or operation by children.
It seems to me that Adobe Systems is no longer a well-managed company, and hasn't been since Bruce Chizen got tired of managing Adobe, which was well before he resigned in 2007.
"no longer"??? Adobe Reader was one of the biggest attack vectors that has ever existed in the history of the web, going back way before 2007. I kid you not, a new exploit came out month after month after month. It was ridiculous. Adobe Flash is actually slightly better in that regard, if that tells you anything.
Why are you asking us here at Slashdot? There are billions to be made for a nonlethal weapon that works well enough to not jeopardize the lives of officers in cases where the suspect has an actual gun (you know, the whole "don't bring an X to a gun fight" thing). With this much money on the line, people a lot smarter than us in the world of weapons technology have spent untold hours researching and testing this problem.
It's a lot more likely that everyone has some kind of fixed ration of replicator time/energy
Then you just described their currency.
Post-scarcity huh? Well there's always scarcity - it just depends on what scale of stuff you're talking about. Generally "post-scarcity" is used to refer to things like food, housing, medical care - you know, the basic needs. What if each person wanted their own star ship? It's not like someone pushes a button and they come into existence. What if everyone wants their own planet? Obviously there are limits and there will always be scarcity.
One thing that all the Star Treks make clear is scarce is talent and skill. Not everyone can do what Geordi does. What about people like Deanna Troi who can sense others' feelings and emotions? How many people can do that? So even if everyone had their own star ship, why would anyone else want to be crew members on them to make them functional? The people on the Enterpises are all highly motivated because they're the best of the best on the best starship probing the outermost reaches of the galaxy. Yeah, that sounds fun. What about the people that operate trash frigates? What's their motivation for learning and bettering themselves and climbing the ladder of command?
Really, it all falls apart very quickly when one begins to think about it.
More like:
Apple Dashboard:
Now playing: U2 Songs of Innocence
One group was using Putin's left arm length for Russia's official designation of the meter, while another group was using his right arm. Apparently he isn't perfectly symmetrical.
Israel is in an active war zone, this tends to change things a lot.
His point still stands. Many, many people there have continuous access to weapons - and we're not talking consumer grade weapons either. Yet everyone isn't shooting up the place and killing everyone in sight when they have a bad hair day or get in an argument. You try to dismiss a major data point against your argument with a "tends to change things a lot", which doesn't hold water.
This shooting, like the vast majority of similar mass shootings over the last decade, was the result of mental health issues. Whatever our doctors and psychiatrists and counselors are doing today compared to 25+ years ago is failing miserably and resulting in many deaths.
Hiding car emissions was not done by a couple of people. A large number in the people inside these companies were involved in pulling it off.
I've had the same thoughts all along, and it's now really looking that way:
The criteria, outcomes and engineering of cars that missed emissions targets were overseen by managers at Volkswagen’s base in Wolfsburg, according to the people who asked not to be identified because they weren’t authorized to speak publicly.
Their accounts show the chain of command and those involved in the deception stretched to Volkswagen headquarters.
And the smoking gun - or, errr, engine:
If any vehicle failed to meet emissions targets, a team of engineers from Volkswagen headquarters or luxury brand Audi’s base in Ingolstadt was flown in, the person said. After the group had tinkered with the vehicle for about a week, the car would then pass the test. VW had no engineers in the U.S. able to create the mechanism that cheated on the test or who could fix emissions problems, according to two other people.
This allowed the engineers to view the diagnostic information from the vehicle that was just tested to find ways of identifying when a test is taking place (oh, they didn't move the steering wheel at all while it was operated at 55 MPH), and also exactly how the vehicle was tested (what speeds it was operated at, etc) and thus they could optimally tweak the cheat to pass the test. It sounds like a pretty stupid method of testing to me.
One of the interesting things in doing it that way is even though those engineers might be breaking US law, since they aren't US citizens and got their butts back to Germany afterwards, it would make it extremely difficult to prosecute or even investigate and interview them.
Source: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/...
One thing is for certain. No whistles were blown. Which is pretty impressive considering how long this has been going on and the extent of who all must have been in the know. I don't think this falls into the category of one software developer tweaking some parameters. I mean the engine was designed without a urea injection system in the first place, which is pretty much necessary to make a diesel engine conform to emissions standards that strict. So it sure leans towards the falsification pathway going way, way back.
My understanding is that the car actually does have better emissions in a certain "mode", which is enabled when various parameters hint that testing is being performed (IE the car is on a dynamo). Inputs cited are steering changes (if the steering wheel doesn't budge as you gradually go from 0 to 65 MPH, then it's probably on a dynamo), barometric changes (sensitive to even the slightest changes in elevation or as airspeed increases, which, again, are static when on a dynamo), etc. That is one of the reasons the car gets better MPG in real world than advertised, because it produces more HP and drives better when the emissions controls are turned off.
It's interesting watching so many software products (and OSes, etc) go through the same cycle. A new player comes on the scene and innovates or simply does things better than the competitors, they become popular and get a decent install base, they stagnate and / or bloat, their usefulness and effectiveness drops, and then often times they turn Evil as a last ditch effort is made to monetize what is left of their users.
I really liked AVG at one time. For me it was the free go-to antivirus product, and it really did a better job removing the malware of the day when it was at its peak (oh, around 8-10 years ago).
Perhaps you remember news stories of a town in Texas (Irving, in fact) that had to pass local legislation to prohibit sharia courts that were settling various business and personal disputes of Muslims.
https://www.washingtonpost.com...
If you take things in context here, there is a political, religious and PR battle waging in this city between the government and Muslims. The Muslims lost round 1, rightly so, by not be allowed to set up their own government systems in parallel to those of the United States or State of Texas. They won round 2 today, with Obama officially taking the side of the youth.
I was modded down in a comment to a previous story, but I will say at least this much again. No one has seen the device. I tried finding pictures, but to my knowledge none have been posted. It was in a small metal briefcase like box (for holding pencils) with a steel cable around it. Since no one here actually knows the physical appearance or context of how it was presented and perceived, none of us can make any kind of informed opinion on whether or not teachers were justified in having any concerns of what he brought to school.
His father has had run ins of various sorts with the local governments regarding Islam. It did not say what those were (if they were related to the Sharia law deal or what).
The real concern here is whether this was done as a social experiment, or some kind of test of equality or racial discrimination, to see what kind of response would occur if something "shady looking" was brought to school. I haven't found any pictures of the actual device, but it was in one of those metal pencil cases that looks like a briefcase with a handle, and it had a steel cable around it. About half way through the video the boy says "I closed it with a cable because I didn't want to lock it to make it seem like a threat so I used a simple cable so it wouldn't look that much suspicious". The very fact that the boy admitted to the fact that he himself had concerns about exactly how suspicious it appeared gives me the impression that he (and / or his parents or whomever) were trying to walk the finest line possible on making this benign from a legal standpoint (it wasn't locked, and wasn't dangerous at the end of the day), but still raise questions and some amount of suspicion as to what all may be inside.
It sounds like that is what the police are considering - was done to "test" the response of schools and police by walking that thin line between innocence and baiting.
A far, far more extreme example would be to have 9th graders of various races point a fake gun at police offices to see which ones get shot. Of course that is taking the example to the extreme, but I'm curious if that was the kind of thing that this "clock" was about. However, since pictures of the exact thing he brought to school are not available, none of us can even form an opinion for ourselves "does this look like something that a reasonable person would be concerned about in this context".
And finally, I want to point out that taking a clock's innards out of its original plastic case, and sticking it in some other enclosure, is not "inventing" or "making". It's cool stuff and educational (I loved taking things like that apart as a kid), but it's not actually making a clock.
Obviously you didn't read the research paper I referenced.
In this paper we argue that a labeled training sample requirement is unnecessary
for an attacker. This implies keyboard emanation attacks are more serious than
previous work suggests.
We built a prototype that can bootstrap the recognizer from about 10 minutes of
English text typing, using about 30 minutes of computation on a desktop computer
with a Pentium IV 3.0G CPU and 1GB of memory. After the bootstrap step, it
could recognize language-independent keystrokes in real time, including random
keystrokes occurring in passwords, with an accuracy rate of about 90%.
Of course sound can be recorded and thus post-processed whenever a large enough corpus has been captured. Thus you could type for small 1 minute periods at a time over the course of days, and once 10 minutes worth of recordings had been captured from that specific keyboard, it could be analyzed, and after that interpreted in real-time if desired.
This is an interesting although convoluted method to determine what is being typed. It has already been demonstrated that the acoustics from typing can be used to identify what is being typed. Most smart watches have microphones. It makes more sense to use the microphone right next to the keyboard to capture very high quality audio so close to the source and then analyze it acoustically to determine what was typed (which captures data from BOTH hands). It will also work if the user takes off their watch and lays it nearby.
http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~ty...