Markku.lempinen

Malware means software designed to function in ways that mistreat or harm the user. (This does not include accidental errors.) This page explains how Microsoft software is malware. Malware and nonfree software are two different issues. The difference between free software and nonfree software is in whether the users have control of the program or vice versa. It's not directly a question of what the program does when it runs. However, in practice nonfree software is often malware, because the developer's awareness that the users would be powerless to fix any malicious functionalities tempts the developer to impose some. Discuss.

For some time now LEGO artist Chris McVeigh has been bringing us palm-sized chunks of hi-tech nostalgia heaven, such as his Atari 2600 and Apple Macintosh kits. But now Chris jumps into the unfashionable-yet-practical camp of “IBM compatibles” with this picture-perfect 80’s era DOS computer. This certainly brings memories of my first tech job flooding back – twin floppies, Hammer pants, and all.

The kit is currently available for pre-order from Chris’ store. Or if you prefer, as of today you can now download the instructions and build one from your own collection of bricks. But here’s all the narly stuff you’ll get if you order the full kit:

I know what I’m putting at the top of my list of stocking stuffers this Christmas! Hmmm, but I guess the important question is: Have I been naughty or nice?

John Lydon, tai tuttavallisemmin Johnny Rotten, entinen Sex Pistolsin laulaja on julkaissut uuden kirjan Raivoa ja voimaa!. Minä tunnustaudun faniksi vaikka se on sana, jota itseni suhteen yleensä välttelenkin. Pistolsilla oli kuitenkin minulle niin suuri vaikutus kasvaessani, että kaitpa se sana on nyt oikeutettu. Tämän vuoksi tunsin myös suurta vetoa Lydonin kirjaa kohtaan.



Kirja käsittelee koko Lydonin elämää lapsesta asti ja sitä voi kutsua ihan puhdasverikseksi elämäkerraksi. Lapsuuden muistot Lontoon hämärillä kujilla olivatkin mielenkiintoisia. Ei vain koska kyseessä oli Johnny Rotten, vaan koska se antoi mahtavan kuvan normaalin työväenluokkaisen perheen elämästä vaikeina aikoina.

Lydon joutui koulussa laulamaan tahalleen nuotin vierestä, ettei olisi joutunut kuoroon. Kaikki tiesivät katolisessa koulussa mitä papit kuoropojille tekisivät ja kirjassa Lydon syytti kirkkoa hyväksikäytösten salailusta. Väkivalta oli myös koulun ulkopuolella läsnä ja tämän tekstistä sai kuvan kuin jokainen kävelyreissu iltaisin olisi ollut oman hengen uhmaamista.

Toisaalta ihan kaikkea Lydonin kirjoittamaa en täysin purematta niellyt. Osa tarinoista vaikutti hieman liioitelluilta ja osassa taas tuntui olevan mukana aimo annos henkilökohtaisia kaunoja. Etenkin vanhat bändikaverit, suunnittelija Vivienne Westwood ja tietysti Pistolsin manageri Malcolm McLaren saivat osakseen paljon negatiivista pyörittelyä kirjassa.

Johnny Rotten

Mutta minä tosiaan olen fani. En tiedä olisinko muuten jaksanut kiinnostua tämän jaarittelevan, vanhan punkkarin baaritarinoista. Kaikki negatiivinen tuntuu olevan Lydonin elämässä joidenkin muiden syytä. Pistols ei toiminut vaikka Lydonilla olikin lahjakkuutta ja muut julkkikset eivät kestä tämän seuraa vaikka Lydon on mitä parhain seuramies. Tämän omien sanojen mukaan. Huvitti erästä kuvituskuvaa katsellessa, jossa bändi istui keskellä järveä veneessä, miten Lydon kirjoitti tämän olleen silloinkin se ainoa pätevät tyyppi,  joka olisi osannut soutaa, mutta ei viitsinyt. Röyhkeä pikku perkele.

"Haloo? Eikö minulla ole enää väliä? Muistatteko vielä minut? Minä kirjoitin biisit! No ainakin tein sanoitukset, ja suoraan sanoen, jos olen täysin rehellinen itselleni ja kaikille muille, en usko että kukaan osti Sex Pistolsin levyä kitarasoolon tai rumpu- tai bassosoundin takia."

Kirja alkoi maistumaan, kun ymmärsin ettei minun tarvitse olla kaikesta samaa mieltä nuoruuden idolini kanssa. Kirja toi Lydonin oikeastaan vain maan pinnalle, näytti, että tämä on vain samanlainen huono ihminen kuin me kaikki muutkin. Ja näytti tämä itsestään hyviä puoliakin. Lydon tuntuu olevan ihminen, joka aidosti välittää läheisistään vaikka valikoikin nämä melko satunnaisen prosessin kautta. Yksi kirjan hienoimpia seurattavia onkin esimerkiksi Lydonin suhde tämän isään, joka tuntui koko ajan lämpenevän näiden vanhetessa.




Sex Pistols oli se osio mikä kirjassa kuitenkin kiinnosti. Lydon ei ehkä halua elää menneessä, mutta minä haluan ja onneksi tämä vuodatti kirjaansa kuitenkin suuren annoksen tunteita vanhaa bändiään kohtaan. Pistolsin musiikki iski minuun kun olin alle kouluikäinen. Näin televisiossa Anarchy in the U.K:n musavideon ja olin myyty. Se energia ja Rottenin tapa artikuloida vetosi syvästi. Kesti kuitenkin kauan ennen kuin ensimmäiset biisini onnistuin C-kasetille radiosta nauhoittamaan saati sitten CD:n hankkimaan (kts. "C-kasetti", "nauhoittaminen" ja "CD" googlesta tai kysy vanhemmiltasi jos olet nuorempi lukija). Sittemmin bändi kuului kuitenkin mixtape, valikoimaani pysyvästi.

Erityisesti hajoamisen jälkeiset tapahtumat tulivat tässä kirjassa hienosti esille. Lydonin myöhempi bändi, PiL, ei ole ikinä jaksanut minua pahemmin kiinnostaa, mutta senkin synnystä ja nykypäivästä on kirjassa runsaasti tietoa kiinnostuneille.

Pistols palasi lavoille 90-luvun puolivälissä. Kiertueen ensimmäinen keikka järjestettiin täällä Suomessa ja siellä olin minäkin nuorena punkkarina paikalla heilumassa. Se on edelleen yksi huikeimmista keikkamuistoistani ikinä ja oli mahtavaa palata nyt parinkymmenen vuoden jälkeen siihen iltaan Lydonin kirjan kautta. Muistan kuinka bändi tuli lavalle ja se ei oikeastaan näyttänyt Pistolsilta. Vanhentunut, riikinkukkomainen Rotten näytti enemmän halvalta sutenööriltä kuin punkbändin keulakuvalta. Ensimmäinen biisi oli Bodies, enkä ikinä unohda miten bändi kuitenkin todella kuulosti Pistolsilta.

Lydon kirjoittaa miten kiertuetta varjostivat bändin erimielisyydet ja myös ajoittainen lehdistön epärehellisyys. Muistankin lukeneeni keikan jälkeen suomalaisesta lehdestä miten Pistols olisi suuttunut yleisöön ja jättänyt keikan kesken. Seikka, jota koskaan ei tapahtunut. Surullista oli lukea kiertueen päätöksestä. Muu bändi lähti lentokoneella takaisin kotiin ja Lydon jätettiin yksin hotelliin ilman hyvästejä. Tämä ei koskaan tuntunut lunastavan paikkaansa tasaväkisenä bändin jäsenenä (omien sanojensa mukaan).

Oli Lydonista mitä mieltä tahansa, on tämä monumentaalinen osa punkin historiaa ja tämä kirja auttaa avaamaan sitä persoonaa, josta myös Johnny Rotten syntyy. Minulle Rotten on se tyyppi, jonka kuvan piirsin seinälleni teininä ja tyyppi, joka on osaltaan vastuussa Nevermind The Bollocks-levystä, jonka merkitys kieroutuneeseen kehitykseeni on ollut valtava. Tämä kirja rikkoi tuota idolin kuvaa, mutta samalla teki siitä aidomman.

Under the UK's new Snoopers Charter (AKA the Investigatory Powers Bill), the Secretary of State will be able to order companies to introduce security vulnerabilities into their software ("backdoors") and then bind those companies over to perpetual secrecy on the matter, with punishments of up to a year in prison for speaking out, even in court. (more…)

Ian Martin shows off his very impressive homemade Star Wars Dejarik table and runs through its functions and game play.

Read more on MAKE

The post Project Update: Working Star Wars Dejarik Table Finally Here! appeared first on Make: DIY Projects, How-Tos, Electronics, Crafts and Ideas for Makers.

Every year the United States Trade Representative (USTR) inventorizes what problems local industries face when doing business abroad.

The major Hollywood studios, represented by the MPAA, just submitted their latest overview listing trade barriers across the globe.

The MPAA points out that many countries don’t do enough to deter piracy. This is also a common theme in Europe, where privacy laws and regulations make it harder for copyright holders to go after online pirates.

“Privacy has always been a major issue in the European Union. EU Member States have implemented a number of privacy directives to protect individuals’ personal data,” MPAA writes.

According to the MPAA, European privacy rules are extremely complex and difficult. As a result they are often used against efforts that could help to prevent copyright infringement.

For example, IP-addresses are protected as private personal information in several countries including Italy, where they can only be used in criminal cases.

“All EU Member States have detailed data protection laws. These rules, often very strict, are subject to the interpretation of the national data protection authorities,” MPAA notes (pdf).

“Most of them consider IP addresses as personal data and believe that the privacy rules apply to their use,” they add.

The MPAA points out that privacy rights of citizens often trump the rights of copyright holders, which they believe is a “very problematic” development.

As a result, Internet providers often refuse to cooperate with copyright holders claiming that this violates the privacy of their users. This makes it hard for the content industries to cooperate with these companies in various anti-piracy efforts.

“Telecommunications operators and ISPs constantly invoke data protection rules to avoid any meaningful cooperation with the content sector,” MPAA writes.

“Such restrictive interpretations preclude meaningful cooperation with Internet intermediaries, such as telecommunications operators and ISPs, in particular cooperation to combat IP theft.”

In addition, the MPAA is not happy with the EU Court of Justice decision to no longer make data retention mandatory. As a result, many ISPs no longer keep extensive IP-address logs.

The movie studios believe that data retention is an important law enforcement tool, suggesting that it’s harder to track down online pirates without logs.

“Data retention remains a very valuable tool for law enforcement. Rights holders have always claimed the need for reasonable rules and legal certainty. This decision has created even more legal uncertainty in this field.

“Member States have started to respond to the consequences of this decision with legislation and some have invalidated their rules,” MPAA adds.

The data retention argument is not new, but it’s worth noting that the U.S. itself has no mandatory data retention laws. This makes it hard for the U.S. Government to demand that other countries adopt them.

It’s clear though, that the MPAA is not happy with the increased interest in online privacy. With or without help from the U.S. government, they will continue to try and minimize the impact it has on their enforcement efforts.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and ANONYMOUS VPN services.

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Deus Ex’s appeal is often boiled down to ‘lots of options’, but obviously that doesn’t quite cover it. Right now I’m looking to redesign the ‘sneaking inside spaceships’ part of Heat Signature, so I need more than a vague line about what’s cool about Deus Ex – I need a practical understanding of specifically why it works, and why similar games don’t. So I’m replaying Deus Ex 1 and 3, to figure out what it is I want to steal. And I think it is options, but it’s not just number. They have to fill a certain set of requirements, and this is my attempt to nail down what those are.

I’ve been mostly playing Human Revolution so far, but I’ll also use some examples for DX1 since there’s so much overlap.

The basic ingredients

The protein flapjack is not technically a Method.

We’re talking about ‘ways to achieve your objective’. The objective itself is not optional, or different depending on your play style. Heat Signature does have an element of that, but it’s not what’s interesting about Deus Ex – most of the time, especially in 1 and 3, you have no say in what your objective is. The interesting part is in how you get to it. That generally breaks down into:

Routes: the various paths you can take. Some are easily visible, some might be hidden.

Obstacles: any elements that need to be overcome or avoided on a route – enemies, high walls, locked doors, toxic gas.

Methods: anything that lets you get past an obstacle, including basic skills like sneaking, conventional means like guns, environmental things like a switch, and specialised tools like a hacking upgrade.

Routes require different Methods

This is not interesting:

Multiple routes, but who cares? They’re all the same.

This is more interesting but still pretty trivial:

Multiple routes, but one is clearly more trouble than the others, so the choice isn’t interesting.

This is getting Deus Exy:

Multiple routes, obstacles on all, and each requires a different Method. Do you have a Method for clearing debris? Do you have a Method for dealing with enemies? Do you have a Method for dealing with locked doors? Which brings us to:

The player chooses which Methods to invest in

I am doing excellent Deus Ex.

This is one area DXHR massively improved over DX1. In Deus Ex 1 a single cheap hacking upgrade got you into every computer in the game, and the aug options were binary choices: A or B, where B is often useless. DXHR makes everything Augs, and both unlocking and upgrading them take the same, painfully rare currency. That gives you enormous power to specialise, and also puts enormous weight on those early decisions. The first few Methods you unlock with this system will be all you have, for a time.

I used to think the virtue of lots of routes was that the player always has a big decision to make as they approach each objective. But replaying the Deus Ex games and really examining the situations I find myself in, that’s not it. Most of the time the choice is already made for me by a previous decision about either the playstyle I want to use or the upgrades I’ve picked. If I’ve got the strength upgrade and I’m playing stealthy, when I see a vent blocked by a drinks machine, I’m moving the drinks machine and getting in the vent. I don’t even need to see the other options.

And that’s OK! The actual deciding process is not the sole pleasure of playing a game. A lot of the fun comes in living out your decision, and seeing it rewarded by Routes that it lets you exploit. You got the strength upgrade? Good choice! Now you get to move this heavy thing and access this special route, which is gonna get you close to your objective with minimal resistance. That makes your playthrough feel personal, it makes your choices feel relevant, and it makes you feel clever.

Methods have different Costs

I may have committed a playstyle cost.

If every obstacle was solved for free by some particular Method, and impassable otherwise, that would probably be OK for a while. But pretty soon your choices would either feel irrelevant (if every Method unlocked a Route) or unfair (if your chosen Methods left you with no Route).

Methods need to have different costs, otherwise unlocking new ones wouldn’t be appealing. Basic sneaking is a Method, but it gets harder and more time consuming to use alone as the game progresses. The kinds of costs Methods can have are things like:

• Resources: blowing up this weak wall uses up a grenade, whereas punching through it with an Aug only takes one rechargable power cell.
• Risk/Skill: you can use this pistol to take out these three guards, but it’s going to be tricky and you’ll die if it fails. If you have a gas grenade, it’s easy and safe.
• Time: if you want to get up to that vent, you’re going to need to scrounge around to find another box you can stack on this one. If you had the jump Aug, it’d be quick.
• Playstyle conflict: yeah, you can probably solve this by just throwing a frag grenade in there. But that’s not who you want to be this time, it’s not how you want to play. You want to do it silently and nonlethally with a tazer and a fridge.

Combat requires a combination of Methods

Hey guys! Who are we angrily hunting to the ends of the Earth?

Combat is special. While it’s technically an avoidable obstacle like the others, almost every playstyle and route involves it at some point, and as players we expect it to be ten times richer and more interesting than any other type. We’re a lot less forgiving of a game that only has one type of weapon than a game that only has one type of lockpick.

This is true for me as much as anyone – every one of my favourite Deus Ex anecdotes involves violence either by or against me. In fact, the first moment that sold me on Deus Ex was getting stuck on a bit with two guards – I couldn’t take them both out before one killed me. Then I realised I could round the corner, spray a fire extinguisher at them both, and shoot them while they choke. It felt like I was fighting against unfair odds, improvising a desperate and clever way to overcome them.

In DXHR it’s less about improvisation, but my favourite thing to do is very similar. Lots of situations involve three guards – I like to stand near two of them, shoot the third in the head with the silenced pistol, then immediately hit the takedown key to use my upgraded close combat move on both the others. It feels like a spectacular explosion of violence, too sudden for anyone to stop and yet almost perfectly silent.

So combat needs:

• The odds stacked against you
• Multiple Methods
• Each Method insufficient alone
• Methods with different strengths

The fire extinguisher can’t hurt anyone, but it can immobilise two people very suddenly without much skill. The pistol can kill in one shot, but only if it’s to the head, and it’s hard to hit a moving head.

If combat tools each have different strengths – range, damage, stun, area, delay – you’re encouraged to come up with some way to combine them to solve the situation at hand, which feels inventive, improvisational and clever.

 

That’s what I have so far. As with any analysis, it’s not the only way to break it down, and it doesn’t cover everything. I have one more element I want to write up, but I think FTL may be a better example of it, so it feels like a separate post. And if replaying DX1 throws up anything big that this doesn’t cover, that’ll be its own post too.

Courtesy of governments around the world, from the White House to New Zealand's Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

With 30 chapters and more than 2000 pages, it'll be a long weekend read.

Quick highlights dug out by first responders on Twitter and Reddit: Copyright is lifetime plus 75 years; Internet service providers must give your name if requested by copyright holders; ISPs must remove material upon receipt of a copyright claim; and you can't sue if the claim was bogus.

The Hill on what comes next:

The release of the text will probably be followed by an “intent to sign” message to Congress from President Obama, meaning there will be 90 days before he can sign the deal, a rule that is part of the trade promotion authority (TPA) or “fast-track” legislation signed into law this summer.

After that, the White House will send implementing language to Capitol Hill, starting the clock for the Senate Finance and House Ways and Means committees to begin their process of moving the TPP through their panels and to their respective floors for a final up-and-down vote.

TSA screeners' ability to detect weapons in luggage is "pitiful," according to classified reports on the security administration's ongoing story of failure and fear.

We know about them because lawmakers are tiring of the charade and the complacency that comes with it. Ars Technica reports:

"In looking at the number of times people got through with guns or bombs in these covert testing exercises it really was pathetic. When I say that I mean pitiful," said Rep. Stephen Lynch (D-Mass.), speaking Tuesday during a House Oversight hearing concerning classified reports from federal watchdogs. "Just thinking about the breaches there, it's horrific," he added.

Auditors from the Inspector General's Office, posing as travelers, discovered enormous loopholes in the TSA's screening process. A leaked classified report this summer found that as much as 95 percent of contraband, like weapons and explosives, got through during clandestine testings. Lynch's comments were in response to the classified report's findings.

What will the future bring? We all love puppies, don't we?

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Soo…if you read this blog a lot you may remember that positech is funding a school being built in Cameroon. I’ve just got an update on progress that I thought I’d share. I love hearing about this, I am so proud of it.

Anyway…originally we had one site for the school, but for various reasons that then shifted to a different site called Salle. To give you an idea of where this is, lets look at it in google earth:

So..yeah, not exactly urban. This is a great place to do something like this, because they just are not going to make an economic case for a country with Cameroons GDP to pay for a decent school there. Anyway…zooming out a bit…

So…it’s there. Progress on the school actually seems pretty darned good, although progress in camera phone quality in Cameroon seems to be less good :D Here are the pics:

So we have walls! Proper ones, made of brick, rather than wood, and built properly by proper builders, meaning this school is going to be a LOT better than the small wooden construction they had before. The timeline shows that plastering and flooring should be done this week painting by the end of the month, and the handover to the community by early November.

When its all finished the school will provide:

• Construction of 3 classrooms and an office
• Construction of a 3 compartment toilet block with hand washing facilities
• Provision of 27 benches and
• Provision 3 tables and 3 chairs

The previous school enrollment dropped from 72 to 52 children over a year, almost certainly due to the condition of the building, so this should fix that, and I suspect boost overall enrollment a lot, plus there should be a big boost to the children’s health from the improvement in the facilities.

I should get much better pics in a few months, as a representative from the charity is going there to take a look.

For anyone wondering, doing this costs roughly £18,000.

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A couple of weeks ago Adam Savage made a screaming rubber bird bomb. Now he has made an even bigger, more awesome, screaming rubber bird bomb.

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Tom Kucy dug into the incredible motherlode of NASA's Project Apollo Archive of photos released last week to create this beautiful short film "Ground Control." (more…)

Oct 31 2005: Security researcher Mark Russinovich blows the whistle on Sony-BMG, whose latest "audio CDs" were actually multi-session data-discs, deliberately designed to covertly infect Windows computers when inserted into their optical drives. (more…)

https://youtu.be/EvPvQjDU7_c

This is an incredibly cool edit of the trippiest episodes of Spongebob Squarepants cut to accompany "Warpigs" by Black Sabbath.

(Thanks, Matthew!)

Tim Harford, the Financial Times's Undercover Economist, writes about the Happy Birthday to You court case, which finally settled the question of whether the familiar birthday song was still in copyright (it isn't) and uses that as a springboard to ask the question: how long should copyright last? (more…)

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Found on Imgur. Click to see the source.

Space fans, rejoice: today, just about every image captured by Apollo astronauts on lunar missions is now on the Project Apollo Archive Flickr account. There are some 8,400 photographs in all at a resolution of 1800 dpi, and they're sorted by the roll of film they were on. (more…)

With this year's "ag-gag" law, Wyoming has made it a crime to gather evidence of agricultural wrongdoing, from illegal pollution to animal cruelty, even from public land -- and also prohibits regulators from acting on information gathered in violation of the law. (more…)

Where is your Cool Pope now, America? His PR game is undoubtedly on fleek, but he's still beholden to the same homophobic crap we know and love from the Catholic Church, the world's most powerful supporter of impunity for priestly pedophiles.

(more…)

So… As I’ve talked about in the past, I came to the conclusion that I should release a new patch to beef-up the quality of Democracy 3, fix some long standing issues, improve and re-balance some features, and so on. (Right now this is for Windows…other formats coming in a few days…). Here is a run-down of everything thats changed in video form:

And here it is in non-video form for people who prefer screenshots :D

First big change is new achievements. We added 12. We also put an achievements link button on the main menu for a change, so you can now get to it from there as well as the in-game button:

We then revamped that page that tells you about security threats to your government. Rather than leaving you to ‘guess’ about how that ‘security effectiveness:poor’ value is calculated, we now show icons that link to all the contributing policies, and show how strongly they are implemented:

The voter group screen got some reformatting, so it extends vertically if needed, plus it also now has an extra window, when needed showing which pressure groups and terrorist groups are being fed into by anger among the selected voter group. This should make the link between angry voters and security threats a lot more obvious and clear.

The finance screen now shows information at the bottom that illustrates how effectively your government money is being raised and spent, which is directly tied to the minister in charge of each department. This was always the case, but we make it clearer how much of an effect this has now…

…And we also have added a bunch of new events… not going to tell you what they are…but here are the images :D

The screen that shows the popularity of policies is now totally re-coded to the calculations make a ton more sense…

And we have also done a fair bit of tweaking the GUI here and there, and made a small number of minor balance changes. Hopefully this has made the game better in small but noticeable ways./ I hope you like the patch :D If for some CRAZY reason you don’t already own a copy of the game, you can grab it from BmtMicro, GoG, the humble store or steam:

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