By timothy from
Slashdot's veil-spass-beim-kuli department:
DeviceGuru writes with a snippet from LinuxGizmos:
"A Linux-based digital pen from German startup Lernstift will go live on Kickstarter on July 10 for about 115 Euros, or $148. The Lernstift pen incorporates an ARM Cortex processor, a WiFi module, and a motion sensor, and is designed to correct penmanship, spelling, and grammar errors as you write. A set of 3D motion sensors, including a gyroscope, accelerometer, and magnetometer help the smartpen's embedded Linux computer calculate the pen's 3D movements and generate 2D vectors. Kickstarter supporters pledging 99 Pounds (about 115 Euros, or $148 U.S.) will receive the first shipment of pens later this year, and standard pricing is expected to start at 130-150 Euros when production devices ship in early 2014."Read Replies (0)
By Unknown Lamer from
Slashdot's nowhere-to-hide department:
The EFF has been attempting to sue the government over illegal surveillance since
the Bush administration, and, despite
repeated attempts to have the case
dismissed because of State Secrets, a federal judge has now
ruled that the case must go forward in public court, throwing out the government's State Secrets argument. From the
order:
Having thoroughly considered the parties' papers, Defendants' public and classified
declarations, the relevant legal authority and the parties' arguments, the Court GRANTS the
Jewel Plaintiffs' motion for partial summary adjudication by rejecting the state secrets defense
as having been displaced by the statutory procedure prescribed in 50 U.S.C. 1806(f) of FISA. In both related cases, the Court GRANTS Defendants' motions to dismiss Plaintiffs' statutory
claims on the basis of sovereign immunity. The Court further finds that the parties have not
addressed the viability of the only potentially remaining claims, the Jewel Plaintiffs'
constitutional claims under the Fourth and First Amendments and the claim for violation of
separation of powers and the Shubert Plaintiffs' fourth cause of action for violation of the
Fourth Amendment. Accordingly, the Court RESERVES ruling on Defendants' motion for<
article continued at Slashdot >
Read Replies (0)
By Unknown Lamer from
Slashdot's lord-of-the-flies department:
DavidGilbert99 writes
"Jeri Ellsworth has opened up about her time at games developer Valve and has hit out strongly at the so-called flatpack management structure. She says that despite Valve's claims of a democratic structure, there is a layer of powerful management in place and when she was fired she felt like she had been stabbed in the back. 'If I sound bitter, it's because I am. I am really, really bitter. They promised me the world and then stabbed me in the back.'"Develop Online has a
good transcript. In the end, Gabe Newell at least let her team keep the rights to their
augmented reality hardware. She also notes that she still loves Valve, but the management and bonus structure resulted in communication breakdowns at Valve's size. It does seem that a flat structure
can work: Andy Wingo has been
weblogging about working at Igalia and seems pretty positive about the experience.
Read Replies (0)
By Unknown Lamer from
Slashdot's blind-faith-meets-awful-shell-scripts department:
chicksdaddy writes with news of a Proof-of-Concept exploit for the recent Android APK signature vulnerability. From the article:
"Pau Oliva Fora, a security researcher for the firm Via Forensics, published a small, proof of concept module on GitHub that exploits the flaw in the way Android verifies the authenticity of signed mobile applications. The flaw was first disclosed last week by Jeff Forristal, the Chief Technology Officer at Bluebox Security, ahead of a presentation at the Black Hat Briefings in August. ... The simple program leverages APKTool, an open source tool for reverse engineering Android applications — decompiling and then recompiling their contents. His script allows a user to select and then decompile a legitimate Android application and then recompile it, creating an altered, 'malicious' APK that will have the same, cryptographic signature as the original file. In an e-mail statement, Google said that a patch for Forristal's vulnerability was provided to Google's OEM and carrier partners in March, and that some (Samsung) have already shipping a patched version of Android to customers. However, that response hasn't been universal — a reflection of Android's fragmented install base."Read Replies (0)
By samzenpus from
Slashdot's read-all-about-it department:
Michael Ross writes
"As a hugely popular scripting language with an 18-year history, PHP has been the topic of countless computer language books. One of the most comprehensive offerings has been Programming PHP, published by O'Reilly Media. The first edition appeared in March 2002, and was written by Rasmus Lerdorf (the original developer of PHP) and Kevin Tatroe. A second edition was released in May 2006, and saw the addition of another co-author, Peter MacIntyre. With the many changes to the language during the past seven years, the book has again been updated, to cover all of the major new features made available in version 5 of PHP." Keep reading for the rest of Michael's review. Programming PHP, 3rd Edition
author Kevin Tatroe, Peter MacIntyre and Rasmus Lerdorf
pages 540
publisher O'Reilly Media
rating 8/10
reviewer Michael Ross
ISBN 978-1449392772
summary An extensive tutorial of the PHP web programming language.
Read Replies (0)