Its a standard practice here in Australia. Landlords have rent inspections every couple of months to make sure you haven't trashed the place (and to look for things that need fixing and stuff)
I tried removing Flash from my SeaMonkey install and that lasted all of 5 minutes before I found a forum post with an embedded YouTube clip that I couldn't play (and wanted to play). So I can't ditch Flash yet (at least not until YouTube comes up with a way to embed YouTube clips into forum posts, blog posts etc etc without needing Flash installed)
I was sort of interested in going to see the new Star Trek film in theaters but wasn't 100% committed to it. Seeing this news, I think I will forget Star Trek and spend my money going to see the other films comming out that I really want to see instead like Independence Day 2, The BFG and Ghostbusters.
Never heard of Columbia Pictures suing anyone for making Ghostbusters fan content...
Microsoft have said they are working on a clang/llvm port that supports this so that should cover everything LLVM supports including ARM, MIPS, PPC, SPARC, x86, x86-64 and more. And with the spec being open, it should be possible to build a GCC frontend for this that can take advantage of all the many back-ends GCC has.
This stuff is right there in Visual C++ 2015 Update 2 which is most definitely NOT a preview product. There are some comments regarding telemetry_main_invoke_trigger and telemetry_main_return_trigger in vcruntime_internal.h in the CRT source code. These reference a telemetry.cpp and a telemetrydefault.cpp (neither of which are included in the CRT source)
I can confirm however that the notelemetry.obj file (the source code for that IS included in the CRT source) does exactly what it says on the tin and will disable the telemetry.
I have also disassembled telemetry.obj (compiled form of telemetry.cpp) in IDA and it makes calls to GetLastError, GetModuleFileNameW, __vcrt_EventRegister, __vcrt_EventSetInformation, __vcrt_EventUnregister, and __vcrt_EventWriteTransfer. Source code for the __vcrt functions can be found in winapi_downlevel.cpp (they are functions designed to wrap the real windows API calls with those names so workarounds can be provided on operating systems that dont support them)
So whatever this "telemetry" actually does, it uses EventRegister, EventSetInformation, EventUnregister and EventWriteTransfer to do it (part of the "event tracing for windows" APIs)
If Microsoft wants to silence critics on this they should publish telemetry.cpp and let people see for themselves what it really does and why it doesn't do anything untoward.
The EU has recently mandated that new cars need wireless technology so they can automatically dial emergency services in an accident. So now even more cars with have vulnerable wireless links to the outside world that could potentially be exploited by hackers.
Its only the IDE that is 32 bit. Visual Studio 2015 ships with a 32-bit compiler that generates 32-bit binaries, a 32-bit compiler that generates 64-bit binaries, a 64-bit compiler that generates 32-bit binaries and a 64-bit compiler that generates 64-bit binaries. (plus both 32-bit and 64-bit compilers that will spit out ARM binaries)
I dont know how the speed of a fully-optimized Visual C++ program compares to the speed of the same program if compiled with clang or GCC (since I dont have any code-bases/software that compile with both VS and with clang or GCC to compare with) but I have been using Visual C++ since Visual Studio 6 and the Visual C++ compiler is far superior now than the one included with Visual C++.
Optimized output is far better (when you turn all the optimizations on) than Visual Studio 6 and Microsoft has been putting a lot of developer time into improving the quality of the compiler and runtime libraries (including support for a very large chunk of the newest C++ standards with the intent to support more going forward).
Given the number of viruses out there that use Microsoft Office documents as a transmission vector, why hasn't Microsoft locked down VBA and macros so that macros in an Office document file cant do anything dangerous.
Web browsers sandbox JavaScript code these days to prevent exploits and improve security, why not do the same for Office documents?
That way, rogue macros can't download and install further malware or access data files all over the disk or mess with Windows system folders/files/data.
There are a number of proposals out there that would allow you to distribute public keys for web sites in a way that removes the reliance on CAs for security.
Storing things in DNS and securing that with DNSSEC being one. The EFF has a proposal out there (cant remember what it's called) for this as well.
And there is a proposal that replaced CAs with a system where the certificate can be signed by multiple entities and then the client decides whether to trust the certificate based on whether it trusts the entities that have signed the certificate.
Why is it that the browser vendors and others haven't shown any interest in these alternatives to the CA system? Pressure from the CAs not to shut down their revenue? Are these alternative ideas not as good (or as secure) as their proponents claim?
When I studied computer programming in high school (this was a private school here in Australia and it would have been mid 90s) they were using Pascal (Turbo Pascal 6) and then later Visual Basic.
If I was going to teach kids who knew nothing about programming how to program, Scratch would be a good place to start IMO. Its drag and drop and fun and you can do cool stuff with it but the programming underlying it teaches concepts like loops and if statements and variables and boolean operators and mathematical functions and things.
So you can do all the simple stuff (a gaming TV show aimed at kids/tweens/etc ran a series of tutorials on how to make a game using Scratch) but you can expand it and do some complex things.
If I was going to go further and teach serious programming beyond what a few lessons of Scratch will get you (i.e. people who actually want to get into programming as a hobby or career), I would either start with FreePascal for teaching procedural programming (since its FOSS and produces binaries for so many targets whilst being just as easy to learn as Turbo Pascal and the other Pascal implementations people like me and others here learned with) or C# for object oriented programming (the Microsoft IDE is one of the best IDEs I have ever used, the Community Edition is free for personal use and for use in education and unlike Java, you dont need to learn "advanced" concepts like exception handling to do simple things like file I/O)
Why not go for a.ag domain name. Antigua and Barbuda has thumbed its nose at the US in regards to protection of copyrighted works (in response to the US refusing to remove its ban on online gambling sites in Antigua and Barbuda) and I dont see them being the sort of country that would be willing to seize a domain name just because the US (or big US media companies) wanted them to.
Everyone keeps talking about Microsoft stealing code yet to the best of my knowledge there has never been any actual instances of Microsoft intentionally stealing code and using it contrary to the terms of the license.
And I doubt anyone will ever find any since Microsoft is not stupid enough to do something like that.
Yeah that's the other problem for Microsoft in open sourcing VB. Even if its not using 3rd party code that Microsoft cant legally open source, its using all sorts of code shared with other components that Microsoft doesn't want to open source. The IDE and tools likely share a bunch of code with other things in Visual Studio. The compiler engine for VB (the native-code compiler specifically) is using the same C2 compiler back-end as Visual C++. Code in VB may also be shared with code in its office products (including VBA stuff). Not to mention all the database integration stuff is heavily tied into the Access JET database engine and related components which would need to be open sourced as well.
I did a brief stint doing software development for Motorola back when the original RAZR was considered "state of the art" and without revealing any company secrets, I can tell you the software stack that ran on those things was garbage and a pain in the ass to work with.
Lets hope any new RAZR runs on a sane software stack.
The real problem is the way that the YouTube Content ID system works whereby content providers give YouTube copies of content and the Content ID system automatically removes any content that matches (and that isn't otherwise flagged as "approved" e.g. official accounts) without a human (either from YouTube or from the content provider) even knowing about it until its happened.
Someone should go back and look for any examples where Sun or Oracle have copied APIs but didn't have any specific license to use the code behind those APIs.
There must be some example somewhere of Sun or Oracle doing exactly what they are now claiming Google has done...
I dont know about having cameras outside individual apartments. But many newer apartment buildings (higher-class ones especially) have cameras outside the apartment buildings covering entrances and lobbies and things to keep track of who comes and goes. Makes insurance (both body corporate insurance and individual insurance for apartment owners/occupiers) cheaper and gives the cops footage they can study if someone tries to break in.
Usually its the apartment building that owns and runs the cameras (i.e. the body corporate/owners corporation/whoever). Not sure you would connect such cameras to the Internet though...
Anyone who cares about the spying (both government and corporate) should go read "Data and Goliath" by Bruce Schneier. And if you have friends or family who believe that the spying is a good thing, give them a copy and get them to read it.
It explains (in plain English anyone can understand) exactly why the government and corporate spying is bad, why it wont do what "the man" says it will, why it is the exact opposite of what you want to do if you want to catch terrorists and why Snowden did a good thing (regardless of what the US government may have to say about it)
I still use my Nokia N900 as my primary phone and if I could afford one I would have pre-ordered a Neo900 by now. Not only is the keyboard the best I have used on any mobile device but the N900 shares the same legendary Nokia indestructibility as their candy-bar dumbphones. I have done things to my N900 that would have totally ruined an iPhone and other than a fault with the USB port that has been fixed (a known failure mode on these devices that is dead simple to fix if you get to it in time) and some minor cosmetic damage nothing really is wrong with it.
All the N900 needs is a more modern software stack in a few places (e.g. a newer browser engine that supports the latest TLS standards and can work with modern websites that the current ancient browser engine can) and it will be able to function for a long time to come (unless my carrier does something that makes it no longer compatible that is).
The community has already fixed many bugs and other things via the unofficial software update and there are even people working to bring a modern kernel to the N900.
In all my time working as a software developer here in Australia I have never once been asked to do anything even resembling a drug test (or asked any questions about drugs). And that includes a stint working for a big US-based software company (that had offices in Australia at the time) and a stint working for a state government department.
I personally think that unless someone is working in an industry where drug testing is required or where drug taking can harm their ability to do their job properly, there is no reason to either test people or ask them about their drug habits.
I do wonder why the HR departments in these companies insist on the drug testing... Are they worried about legal liability? Concerned about people doing things that could get the company in trouble? Concerned about people showing up to work under the influence? Some piece of legislation that the legal department has told them means they need to do the drug tests to cover their asses in case something happens?
There were mods for earlier games (a few for Wolfenstein 3D for example) but Doom was the first game that really saw an explosion in modding. The release of the source code in 1997 only caused the community to grow even bigger.
Doom was also one of the first games (if not the first game) out there where the developers officially endorsed modding through the release of the source code for the original Node Builder (and various other bits of technical info like the format of the music files). They also had an official feature to load add-on wad files and were otherwise quite friendly to Doom modding.
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Its a standard practice here in Australia. Landlords have rent inspections every couple of months to make sure you haven't trashed the place (and to look for things that need fixing and stuff)
If someone can make a robot that can clean my apartment good enough for my landlord not to get mad at rent inspections, I will be first in line...
I tried removing Flash from my SeaMonkey install and that lasted all of 5 minutes before I found a forum post with an embedded YouTube clip that I couldn't play (and wanted to play). So I can't ditch Flash yet (at least not until YouTube comes up with a way to embed YouTube clips into forum posts, blog posts etc etc without needing Flash installed)
I was sort of interested in going to see the new Star Trek film in theaters but wasn't 100% committed to it. Seeing this news, I think I will forget Star Trek and spend my money going to see the other films comming out that I really want to see instead like Independence Day 2, The BFG and Ghostbusters.
Never heard of Columbia Pictures suing anyone for making Ghostbusters fan content...
Microsoft have said they are working on a clang/llvm port that supports this so that should cover everything LLVM supports including ARM, MIPS, PPC, SPARC, x86, x86-64 and more. And with the spec being open, it should be possible to build a GCC frontend for this that can take advantage of all the many back-ends GCC has.
This stuff is right there in Visual C++ 2015 Update 2 which is most definitely NOT a preview product.
There are some comments regarding telemetry_main_invoke_trigger and telemetry_main_return_trigger in vcruntime_internal.h in the CRT source code.
These reference a telemetry.cpp and a telemetrydefault.cpp (neither of which are included in the CRT source)
I can confirm however that the notelemetry.obj file (the source code for that IS included in the CRT source) does exactly what it says on the tin and will disable the telemetry.
I have also disassembled telemetry.obj (compiled form of telemetry.cpp) in IDA and it makes calls to GetLastError, GetModuleFileNameW, __vcrt_EventRegister, __vcrt_EventSetInformation, __vcrt_EventUnregister, and __vcrt_EventWriteTransfer. Source code for the __vcrt functions can be found in winapi_downlevel.cpp (they are functions designed to wrap the real windows API calls with those names so workarounds can be provided on operating systems that dont support them)
So whatever this "telemetry" actually does, it uses EventRegister, EventSetInformation, EventUnregister and EventWriteTransfer to do it (part of the "event tracing for windows" APIs)
If Microsoft wants to silence critics on this they should publish telemetry.cpp and let people see for themselves what it really does and why it doesn't do anything untoward.
The EU has recently mandated that new cars need wireless technology so they can automatically dial emergency services in an accident. So now even more cars with have vulnerable wireless links to the outside world that could potentially be exploited by hackers.
Its only the IDE that is 32 bit.
Visual Studio 2015 ships with a 32-bit compiler that generates 32-bit binaries, a 32-bit compiler that generates 64-bit binaries, a 64-bit compiler that generates 32-bit binaries and a 64-bit compiler that generates 64-bit binaries. (plus both 32-bit and 64-bit compilers that will spit out ARM binaries)
I dont know how the speed of a fully-optimized Visual C++ program compares to the speed of the same program if compiled with clang or GCC (since I dont have any code-bases/software that compile with both VS and with clang or GCC to compare with) but I have been using Visual C++ since Visual Studio 6 and the Visual C++ compiler is far superior now than the one included with Visual C++.
Optimized output is far better (when you turn all the optimizations on) than Visual Studio 6 and Microsoft has been putting a lot of developer time into improving the quality of the compiler and runtime libraries (including support for a very large chunk of the newest C++ standards with the intent to support more going forward).
A read of https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.c... clearly shows that Microsoft no longer considers C++ a second-class citizen.
Given the number of viruses out there that use Microsoft Office documents as a transmission vector, why hasn't Microsoft locked down VBA and macros so that macros in an Office document file cant do anything dangerous.
Web browsers sandbox JavaScript code these days to prevent exploits and improve security, why not do the same for Office documents?
That way, rogue macros can't download and install further malware or access data files all over the disk or mess with Windows system folders/files/data.
There are a number of proposals out there that would allow you to distribute public keys for web sites in a way that removes the reliance on CAs for security.
Storing things in DNS and securing that with DNSSEC being one. The EFF has a proposal out there (cant remember what it's called) for this as well.
And there is a proposal that replaced CAs with a system where the certificate can be signed by multiple entities and then the client decides whether to trust the certificate based on whether it trusts the entities that have signed the certificate.
Why is it that the browser vendors and others haven't shown any interest in these alternatives to the CA system? Pressure from the CAs not to shut down their revenue? Are these alternative ideas not as good (or as secure) as their proponents claim?
When I studied computer programming in high school (this was a private school here in Australia and it would have been mid 90s) they were using Pascal (Turbo Pascal 6) and then later Visual Basic.
If I was going to teach kids who knew nothing about programming how to program, Scratch would be a good place to start IMO. Its drag and drop and fun and you can do cool stuff with it but the programming underlying it teaches concepts like loops and if statements and variables and boolean operators and mathematical functions and things.
So you can do all the simple stuff (a gaming TV show aimed at kids/tweens/etc ran a series of tutorials on how to make a game using Scratch) but you can expand it and do some complex things.
If I was going to go further and teach serious programming beyond what a few lessons of Scratch will get you (i.e. people who actually want to get into programming as a hobby or career), I would either start with FreePascal for teaching procedural programming (since its FOSS and produces binaries for so many targets whilst being just as easy to learn as Turbo Pascal and the other Pascal implementations people like me and others here learned with) or C# for object oriented programming (the Microsoft IDE is one of the best IDEs I have ever used, the Community Edition is free for personal use and for use in education and unlike Java, you dont need to learn "advanced" concepts like exception handling to do simple things like file I/O)
What about people running TOR nodes on computers that cant use one of these cards for whatever reason?
Why not go for a .ag domain name. Antigua and Barbuda has thumbed its nose at the US in regards to protection of copyrighted works (in response to the US refusing to remove its ban on online gambling sites in Antigua and Barbuda) and I dont see them being the sort of country that would be willing to seize a domain name just because the US (or big US media companies) wanted them to.
Everyone keeps talking about Microsoft stealing code yet to the best of my knowledge there has never been any actual instances of Microsoft intentionally stealing code and using it contrary to the terms of the license.
And I doubt anyone will ever find any since Microsoft is not stupid enough to do something like that.
Yeah that's the other problem for Microsoft in open sourcing VB. Even if its not using 3rd party code that Microsoft cant legally open source, its using all sorts of code shared with other components that Microsoft doesn't want to open source. The IDE and tools likely share a bunch of code with other things in Visual Studio. The compiler engine for VB (the native-code compiler specifically) is using the same C2 compiler back-end as Visual C++. Code in VB may also be shared with code in its office products (including VBA stuff). Not to mention all the database integration stuff is heavily tied into the Access JET database engine and related components which would need to be open sourced as well.
Its entirely possible classic VB contains code that Microsoft licensed from 3rd parties and is unable to open source.
I did a brief stint doing software development for Motorola back when the original RAZR was considered "state of the art" and without revealing any company secrets, I can tell you the software stack that ran on those things was garbage and a pain in the ass to work with.
Lets hope any new RAZR runs on a sane software stack.
The real problem is the way that the YouTube Content ID system works whereby content providers give YouTube copies of content and the Content ID system automatically removes any content that matches (and that isn't otherwise flagged as "approved" e.g. official accounts) without a human (either from YouTube or from the content provider) even knowing about it until its happened.
Someone should go back and look for any examples where Sun or Oracle have copied APIs but didn't have any specific license to use the code behind those APIs.
There must be some example somewhere of Sun or Oracle doing exactly what they are now claiming Google has done...
I dont know about having cameras outside individual apartments. But many newer apartment buildings (higher-class ones especially) have cameras outside the apartment buildings covering entrances and lobbies and things to keep track of who comes and goes. Makes insurance (both body corporate insurance and individual insurance for apartment owners/occupiers) cheaper and gives the cops footage they can study if someone tries to break in.
Usually its the apartment building that owns and runs the cameras (i.e. the body corporate/owners corporation/whoever). Not sure you would connect such cameras to the Internet though...
Anyone who cares about the spying (both government and corporate) should go read "Data and Goliath" by Bruce Schneier. And if you have friends or family who believe that the spying is a good thing, give them a copy and get them to read it.
It explains (in plain English anyone can understand) exactly why the government and corporate spying is bad, why it wont do what "the man" says it will, why it is the exact opposite of what you want to do if you want to catch terrorists and why Snowden did a good thing (regardless of what the US government may have to say about it)
I still use my Nokia N900 as my primary phone and if I could afford one I would have pre-ordered a Neo900 by now. Not only is the keyboard the best I have used on any mobile device but the N900 shares the same legendary Nokia indestructibility as their candy-bar dumbphones. I have done things to my N900 that would have totally ruined an iPhone and other than a fault with the USB port that has been fixed (a known failure mode on these devices that is dead simple to fix if you get to it in time) and some minor cosmetic damage nothing really is wrong with it.
All the N900 needs is a more modern software stack in a few places (e.g. a newer browser engine that supports the latest TLS standards and can work with modern websites that the current ancient browser engine can) and it will be able to function for a long time to come (unless my carrier does something that makes it no longer compatible that is).
The community has already fixed many bugs and other things via the unofficial software update and there are even people working to bring a modern kernel to the N900.
In all my time working as a software developer here in Australia I have never once been asked to do anything even resembling a drug test (or asked any questions about drugs). And that includes a stint working for a big US-based software company (that had offices in Australia at the time) and a stint working for a state government department.
I personally think that unless someone is working in an industry where drug testing is required or where drug taking can harm their ability to do their job properly, there is no reason to either test people or ask them about their drug habits.
I do wonder why the HR departments in these companies insist on the drug testing... Are they worried about legal liability? Concerned about people doing things that could get the company in trouble? Concerned about people showing up to work under the influence? Some piece of legislation that the legal department has told them means they need to do the drug tests to cover their asses in case something happens?
There were mods for earlier games (a few for Wolfenstein 3D for example) but Doom was the first game that really saw an explosion in modding. The release of the source code in 1997 only caused the community to grow even bigger.
Doom was also one of the first games (if not the first game) out there where the developers officially endorsed modding through the release of the source code for the original Node Builder (and various other bits of technical info like the format of the music files). They also had an official feature to load add-on wad files and were otherwise quite friendly to Doom modding.