Recent Comments

First they complain of drought, now they complain because they'll get too much rain... hey, envirowhacks on the left coast, are you glad you didn't tear down all your flood-control dams yet??

I lived in SoCal during a "bad" El Nino year, back a couple decades. And what became obvious to me is that it's not the heavy rain that's the problem, it's the slapdash planning, and too many "view lots" on the edge of cliffs made of porous material (like sand and clay). Plus a complete lack of understanding of how to channel excess water to minimize destruction (here's a hint: you want to slow it down and spread it out, not make it rush faster so it undercuts even more. Guess which I saw done over and over in SoCal.)

It's the weather, folks. We still suck at predicting it long term.

For those with short memories, this is basically the same story as last year.

#q=2014%20el%20nino" rel="nofollow">https://www.google.com/webhp?#q=2014%20el%20nino

Hmmm. Something seems wrong with the wysiwyg editor...

Could this be the end of Adobe Flash?

Oh come on. Flash is slowly dying. There will be no one event which marks its end.

It certainly is a win, from a security perspective.

While I hope that firefox remains a bastion of experimentation, there is also vivaldi now. Which is carrying the opera torch for crazy UI experiments. And really most of the best browser UI ideas started with opera.

They've got to distract you to capture your eyeball somehow. This isn't a win by any means. :-(

Just looked into the math, and had a flashback to when I was 17. So if you have N choices, your top pick gets (N) points, second pick gets (N-1), third gets (N-2), etc. The total number of points possible is the sum of all consecutive from 1 to N, which is equal to: [N*(N+1)]/2. For a poll with ten options, a total of 55 points are distributed (10*11)/2 = 55.

Not sure how it works if you don't assign a choice to each of the ten options, but the fact that the current total of points, 677, isn't divisible by 55 evenly says to me borda polls must only assign a total number of points equivalent to the sum of N, even if N is less than the total number of options.

Yay, math. My brain hasn't totally atrophied (although it seems well on its way).

My stepfather had a stroke, which basically destroyed him. He flatlined three times on the way to the hospital, and was in such a bad way that we had a Do Not Resuscitate (DNR) order put on him.

One of the doctors managed to dislocate his shoulder, which wasn't caught for about three years meaning he was in horrific pain the whole time and he couldn't speak the words to tell us.

He could say "yes," "no," "get down," and very little else.

My aunt was in a car that was t-boned. She stroked at least twice and had clotting issues. Her personality changed wholescale. We need better medical techniques to address the fragility of human mortal forms.

Consider using Ghostery as part of that base.

HDCP Strippers (for about $15 now) have been around for quite a while:

http://www.amazon.com/HDMI-1x2-3D-splitter/dp/B003UYOEMI/

It's a feature included in HDMI/DVI capture devices, which is about the only way of DVRing highdef cable/satellite broadcasts.

Just like DVDs, the cryptographic security wasn't all that well-designed.

Australia is saying there will be no actual penalty for copyright infringement, so everyone might as well pirate everything

We're only talking about an INVOICE sent to accused copyright infringers, and can also include "damages relating to costs of acquiring the subscriber's information". The ruling doesn't apply if the copyright holder chooses to follow through within the legal system and sue everyone. That would sufficiently deter copyright infringers, but is not nearly as profitable of a business model for the lawyers.

Even if you consider the Australian system a bit too easy on copyright infringers, it's still infinitely more reasonable than the heavy handed US copyright laws that enable copyright-trolls.

The situation is even more lenient in Canada due to their blank-media levy, yet the world hasn't fallen apart.

The peripherals I cannect to ***MY*** computer are authorized by ***ME***. Only me. Not you.

Things started going wrong when they invented HDCP.

Perfectly good monitor with a DVI port? Tough luck, Sony decided you can't use that with a PS3 unless it's able to decrypt HDCP (and old monitors can't).

Oops, I posted my comment as AC. Here it is again (I know many people ignore AC posts completely):

How is this reasonable? If I'm reading the summary correctly, Australia is saying there will be no actual penalty for copyright infringement, so everyone might as well pirate everything, and at worst they'll have to buy what they pirated.

If there's no penalty beyond the price of a legitimate purchase, there's no reason not to pirate everything.

How is this reasonable? If I'm reading the summary correctly, Australia is saying there will be no actual penalty for copyright infringement, so everyone might as well pirate everything, and at worst they'll have to buy what they pirated.

If there's no penalty beyond the price of a legitimate purchase, there's no reason not to pirate everything.

Uhhh...because before Windows 10 this was not true? XP/Vista/7, hell even 8 and 8.1 once you stripped out the crapstore are simply OSes that the user is in full control of, this is NOT true of Windows 10. With Windows 10 what you get is a Chromebook that runs programs natively, that is all, all the words you type, everything you do, is sent back to corporate just like with a Chromebook it only PRETENDS that its a non thinclient when in reality it sends all the data back just like any other thin client.

I have to give MSFT credit for one thing....Windows 10 has actually caused me to recommend Windows 8 because you can pick up a copy of Win 8 for around $60 USD and with the crapstore removed and Classic Shell its merely Win 7 with a worse control panel.

I don't often need a translator by my side. If it works perfectly, its still not enough to entice a purchase of a smart watch.

And I doubt it works perfectly.

You have a point. But my ignorant response would be, "why would you ever need to update the BIOS on a machine when its role is reduced to something so simple?"

All the praise for the great feedreader makes me wonder if adding a connection between feeds and the pipe would be the missing link that gets us more submissions. It was suggested once, earlier this year.

I barely use Firefox or one of its forks without first installing Adblock Plus, NoScript, RequestPolicy, Cookie Monster, and HTTPS Everywhere. The loss of any of these would make me reconsider updating to a version where these were broken. I have also recently been happy with customizing the Firefox UI with Stylish and with the additional features provided by HackTheWeb and Vimperator. While alternatives may exist in the Chrome world, switching away from Firefox to retain already present functionality seems irritating at best.

In addition to the choices in the poll, I like that it works well without Javascript and cross-site requests. Also, that the focus on HTML based functionality makes it easy to browse in lynx.

LMGTFY. http://m.wikihow.com/Reflash-BIOS ... or use a usb stick...

This. Although, I voted Feeds as #1 :-)

Links for this poll:

• The vote page: http://pipedot.org/poll/J8T4/vote
• The (short) link to the results page: http://pipedot.org/J8T4
• The (canonical) results page: http://pipedot.org/poll/J8T4
• The (friendly) results page: http://pipedot.org/poll/2015-08-24/why-i-love-pipedot

Credit goes too, to groups like Intel, who have steadily increased the 'power' and 'utility' of the BIOS to the point where it is now a fun attack vector.

Actually, the only thing that changed to make rootkits in firmware practical, is the size of the EEPROM. Back when your CMOS was 64K, there wasn't a lot of room to hide very advanced malicious code in there. Now that there's multiple megabytes to work with, there's plenty of room to store that code. You'd have these problems whether firmware got more advanced, or not. Even the simplest firmware can be modified to boot other (malicious) code first.

Requiring firmware to be cryptographically signed could solve the problem... as well as a jumper on the board that disables firmware updates. OEMs just need to be encouraged to care enough to do something... Right now, they don't.

One of the nuisances of Firefox has been incompatible extensions across browser versions. Upgrade right away, and you might not find your extensions available for the new version. Stay with an older version (like perhaps the ESR) and you don't get upgraded versions of the extension, which is a problem when sites like YouTube change and break things...

If this move means developers don't need to make changes to their extensions for compatibility with successive versions of Firefox all the time, it could have positive effects on the ecosystem. But of-course that's only after the initial, sudden drop-off this is sure to cause.

Like everyone else, I also hate how Firefox is turning into Chrome, but that's from a UI and performance (on lower-end systems) perspective. They can turn the back-end into Chrome/WebKit for all I care, as long as the performance improves, the old Navigator UI hangs around, and the extensions keep working.

VoIP is usually pretty good. Over a slower internet connection to a 3rd party, the service might not always be great, but VoIP directly from your cable/telco can have higher quality audio than copper phone lines, and with very little latency.

There's work on higher-quality cell calls with "HD Voice" (and VoLTE). You'll still have more latency than any kind of land-line, but the sound quality can be far better than traditional cell calls.

Well, ok, how do you then update the "bios"?

I couldn't live with a browser that didn't have NoScript. The uMatrix extension for Chrome looks promising, but it is quite a bit harder to use than the simple Firefox+NoScript combination.

Agreed, let me see if I can figure out how to do it ... I'm simply linking to the poll's URL.

I'm surprised at the results already. We're at 300~ points and "mobile friendly" is only in 5th or so place! I thought for sure it would be higher. For me it's one of Pipecode's best features. Pipedot is awesome on a small screen, and both Slashdot and Soylent are very hard to manage on my smartphone. That means I participate more at Soylent when at a desktop and on Pipedot more when I'm on a phone. Interesting!

Elsewhere I run a Simple Machines Forum (SMF), and while it was awesome in the days of desktop, the fact that it's hard to use on a mobile really frustrates me (they're working on responsive frameworks, but they're not there yet).

Glad to see the quality of the articles has risen to the top though; I tend to agree! It's the basis of any good site - the content. Kudos to evilviper and others for keeping us going with a steady stream of great stuff to read. I haven't done a great job of submitting things over the past couple of months - life got in the way.

I come here from my rss feed - which means I land on the poll posting. But no poll. I click the poll link in the posting. I get poll results.

I have to click the pipedot header to get to the poll.

No, it's not a big deal.

Yes, I do find it annoying.

I should see the poll in the poll posting - just like I do on the front page. Empty if I have not voted, filled if I have.

The feed function is excellent. Best rss tracker I have used.

I would love to see Firefox forked into an Opera v12 clone. I agree, money corrupts... lots of money..

The more Firefox is the same as all the other browsers the less reason there will be to use Firefox specifically. I use certain plugins that are essential for my browsing requirements and work-flow. Many of these will likely cease to exist:

* Adblock Plus
* DownThemAll!
* Firemacs
* It's All Text!
* NoScript
* ProfileSwitcher
* Session Manager
* Grease Monkey

While it will be nice to have more supported and up-to-date plug-ins, I believe that the cost is too high for the value gained - especially since most plug-ins for the masses that this will facilitate aren't plug-ins that are desirable unless you're one of the sheep.

Hmmm. You are quite courteous. I'd add, bitterly, "you showed us that any open source project, once sufficiently addicted to money, can drive the car right off the cliff." Mozilla was more fun when they were broke and staffed by struggling but passionate advocates for an open web. Once they got drunk on Google money, staffed up on all sorts of overhead, management, and non-technical (parasitic) staff, things started to go down hill.

Putting my hopes on Vivaldi at the moment, as a longtime Opera advocate who only moved to FF reluctantly when Opera's new team screwed the ole pooch sometime after v12. Vivaldi is a return to the roots. The only thing I'll miss as I ditch Firefox is the "it's all text" extension and the Overbite extension that allows me to use gopher.

In my opinion, Firefox has been a pile of fail slowly circling the drain for the last few years - five maybe? Maybe more? But I'm no fan of Chrome, either.

Credit goes too, to groups like Intel, who have steadily increased the 'power' and 'utility' of the BIOS to the point where it is now a fun attack vector. All this 'management code' and such - I can't be specific because I scarecely understand it, myself - is frightening.

BIOS should check the hardware, hand things off to the boot loader, and then "peace out." Make any code complicated enough and begins to become a target; I think that's exactly what we've got here.

It was a good ride. You got us out and away from the hell that was IE6. The war was won. At least, escalated to the next level. Edge hasn't a hope in hell. Chrome is okay but not a worthy successor. Palemoon, your bright daughter, is growing up fast. More browsers will come, inspired by the light of hope you lit. Goodbye. So long. You will be missed. We await the day they turn your life support off. Once our shining hope for the future, we will remember you fondly for all you stood for and achieved. Farewell.

Can we go back to the days when the only way to modify the BIOS was pre-boot?!? Who ever thought that allowing an OS to modify the BIOS was ever a good idea?

This is a somewhat misleading article by Forbes. It's poking holes in Tor, but it seems these vulnerabilities would affect anything at all. It's hard to protect yourself from an attack at the BIOS level, unless you swallow Microsoft's SecureBoot strategy, which a lot of us find distasteful.

I can dig it - there seems to be interest in gadgets around here.

That works too, I think: just assign 1, 2, 3 and leave the rest blank. You don't get points, exactly. I was the first to submit my opinion and my first choice immediately rocketed forward with 55 points or something large like that. Wikipedia has a decent article on Borda polls. It's essentially just rank order. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Borda_count

i still don't get this voting system; you get how many points? is it even-distribution? is it by-order? i'm sure its simple, and im just being stupid, but i'm missing something, and there are no tips.

Personally, i'd prefer, 'pick 3 you find most important', or simliar - less effort required to get in on the vote.

We use the phone a lot for business and it's usually obvious when someone calls us on a cell/mobile phone -- the quality is obviously worse with clipped words and whole phrases often missing. VOIP is often similar. On the other hand, calls from other landlines are almost always good quality audio.

Sometimes we have to call out from our suburban location on a cell. We must be between towers or something, the quality is always terrible.

Why not just call a spade a spade? By buying a WindowsPC you are essentially acquiring a rental, in which you bear all the costs as well as all the legal exposure, while Microsoft allows you to do what they would like you to do (pay monthly for subscriptions to their different cloud offerings) and not much more.

You might like to think it's your computer. And in some ways it is. But in an increasingly list of ways, it is not.

unauthorised hardware peripheral devices

Microsoft: fuck you. With a stick of dynamite. The peripherals I cannect to ***MY*** computer are authorized by ***ME***. Only me. Not you. Go peddle this shit to Adolf Hitler and Josef Stalin and Mao Tse-Tung.

http://news.softpedia.com/news/microsoft-wants-to-block-pirated-content-pirate-sites-ban-windows-10-instead-489827.shtml This would be so funny if it was not true.

Avoid Windows 10.

"LECs and CMRS providers should maintain emergency backup power for a minimum of 24 hours for assets inside central offices and eight hours for cell sites, remote switches and digital loop carrier system remote terminals that are normally powered from local AC commercial power."

That may not sound like much, but that's just the legally required minimum. Many have generators which can keep them running indefinitely:

http://www.king5.com/story/money/2015/08/17/secret-verizon-bunker-keeps-phones---crisis/31882671/

The FCC keeps threatening to require generator backup with days of fuel for all cell towers, but hasn't followed-through on it.

i'm not sure how to vote on this; on one hand, its pretty cool, and will likely help alter the future of wearable UX. But on the other hand, the articles come off more as a product advertisement