An anonymous reader writes "With the 'six-strikes' anti-piracy plan set to begin in the U.S. soon, TorrentFreak has gotten its hands on a document showing how Verizon in particular will be dealing with copyright-infringing users. For your first and second strike, Verizon will email you and leave you a voicemail informing you that your account is involved in copyright infringement. For your third and fourth strikes, the ISP will automatically redirect your browser to a page that requires you to acknowledge receiving the alerts. They'll also play a video about the dangers of infringement. For your fifth and sixth strikes, they give you three options: massively throttle your connection for a few days, wait two weeks and then throttle your connection, or file an appeal with an arbitration service for $35. TorrentFreak points out that the MPAA and RIAA can obtain the connection information of repeat infringers, with which they can then take legal action."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader writes "After news broke on Thursday that a new Java 0-day vulnerability had been discovered, and was already being included in multiple popular exploit kits, two new important tidbits have come in on Friday. Firstly, this whole fiasco could have been avoided if Oracle had properly patched a previous vulnerability. Furthermore, not only is the vulnerability being exploited in the wild, but it is being used to push ransomware." Meanwhile, writes reader Beeftopia, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security is getting in on the action, and "has warned users to disable or uninstall Java software on their computers, amid continuing fears and an escalation in warnings from security experts that hundreds of millions of business and consumer users are vulnerable to a serious flaw."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The incident was reported about 10 p.m., at 1310 State Street, when a man walked in and demanded money, Salem police said. The man allegedly fired a handgun and then left the restaurant. No one was injured.

Andrew Lee Bassett is accused of stealing $2,001 from Sterling Savings Bank in Gresham. He allegedly spent $300 at Alexander's Deli and Pub before Gresham police officers Tased and arrested him in the business.

Spokane police say they have locked down the building and set up a perimeter around the building, which is near Sacred Heart Medical Center.

Meet Tim Riot & Matthew Bice, the Experience Designers on point for PS. They talk about the gig itself, some goals & challenges for CS6, and what they hope the future holds.

If that sounds like work you’d like to do, remember that the team is looking to hire a Senior Experience Designer.

Reporter 1: “I went to college thinking I could live on inspiration on fighting the man alone. I was wrong.”

Reporter 2: “I went to college to become the man.”

Reporter 3: “I went to college to drink.”

Gene's Chinese Flatbread, hidden down a lonesome road in Chelmsford, is one of the very few purveyors of X'ian cuisine in the New England area (if only we had a Xian Famous Foods!). There you'll find savory noodle soups, flatbread, and his hallmark: ribbony hand-stretched noodles, which usually sell out every weekend. The affable Gene himself shows off his noodle-pulling skills next week as part of the Lowell Folk Life Series.

Learn how Gene works his magic (his hand-stretched noodles are available on weekends only, so this is a prime weekday peek), and maybe even taste some of his handiwork. Admission on January 28 is free; read all about it here. And, if you can't make it, definitely check out his tiny little restaurant at 257 Littleton Rd. in Chelmsford.

Read more posts by Kara Baskin

Filed Under: foodievents, gene wu, noodles, xian

BikePortland.org says that cars must stop if a bicyclist edges a tire into a crosswalk.

maijc writes "Computer activist Aaron Swartz committed suicide yesterday in New York City. He was 26 years old. Swartz was 'indicted in July 2011 by a federal grand jury for allegedly mass downloading documents from the JSTOR online journal archive with the intent to distribute them.' He is best known for co-authoring the widely-used RSS 1.0 specification when he was 14, and as one of the early co-owners of Reddit."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

This circa 1970 trompe l’oeil gown by Italian designer Roberta Di Camerino was printed to look like a green pant suit. It’s available to purchase at 1stdibs by Tatiana Designer Resale.

photos by Tatiana Designer Resale

Thanks Liz Baca!

A demonstrator wearing one headset and holding another demo unit.

The potential uses of a pair of smart glasses are easy to fixate on: simply glance to one side at the tiny screen and check your e-mail, make sure you’re walking in the right direction according to your maps app, see what the weather will be like later in the afternoon. But some realities about the glasses have yet to be addressed—for one, what we all might look like using these things.

We know generally what a human wearing these glasses (or at least the first generation of them) will look like thanks to Google and other emerging smart glasses companies. We know what the glasses can do. But we've neglected to consider how different we might look to people around us while we’re watching those little screens, seeing them do what they do.

During the week of CES, I visited the booth of Vuzix, a company that plans to release smart glasses that interface with your smartphone to let you view the display via a tiny screen clipped to your head. Eventually, the company hopes to run Android apps directly from the headset itself.

Read 10 remaining paragraphs | Comments

Aurich Lawson / Thinkstock

Back in 2010, a memo leaked from Fox News in which its managing editor informed his staff that they couldn't even report on basic temperature measurements without noting they were subject to controversy in some quarters, even if those quarters are out past the fringes of the scientific community. That directive is apparently still in force. Just days after NOAA released its reading of last year's US temperatures, Fox responded with a report in which it questions whether NOAA is producing accurate temperature readings.

The report is a classic example of what's been termed "false balance." It presents experts with relevant experience and the official word from NOAA, but it simultaneously surrounds them with quotes from several people who aren't scientists—as well as one scientist who is a notable contrarian about other fields of science. In many ways, the self-labelled skeptics contradict each other in their haste to condemn NOAA. But the Fox article doesn't point any of this out, and it actually ends with a veiled hint that we might consider throwing NOAA scientists in jail for their "manipulations of data."

At issue are the historic US temperature records. These are generated from stations maintained by the US government. Over the course of 100-plus years, many of these stations have been moved to new locations or had their equipment replaced. These events create a break in the record. To generate its historical analysis, NOAA has to identify the breaks and perform an analysis that matches up the two end-points, creating a single, continuous record.

Read 8 remaining paragraphs | Comments

jfruh writes "When Android was first introduced, it got much of its buzz in the open source community, and despite it being a mobile juggernaut backed by huge companies, it remains an open source project that anyone can submit code to. Thus, when a community patch that claimed to reduce the lag that still plagues the platform was created, it rocketed around various community code sites and was widely praised. The only problem: it didn't actually speed Android up."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

I was watching Wargames tonight, as one does, and a quick thought occurred to me.

(more…)

It’s 20 or 30 years ago. You’re working on a videogame. You don’t get any credit for your work, blogs don’t exist, there’s no internet and no fanboys. It’s just you, a crusty old terminal, and got a few spare bytes left in the ROM. What now?

> Type Secret Message

OK. You’ve hidden a secret message in the ROM, to be uncovered many, many years later, and posted on the incredible website, The Cutting Room Floor.

Here are some of my favorites. Click any game’s title to read more.

Donkey Kong (Arcade)

CONGRATULATION ! IF YOU ANALYSE DIFFICULT THIS PROGRAM,WE WOULD TEACH YOU. ***** TEL.TOKYO-JAPAN 044(244)2151 EXTENTION 304 SYSTEM DESIGN IKEGAMI CO. LIM.

I had no idea Nintendo didn’t program Donkey Kong. Ikegami Co Limited didn’t stop there — they also worked on Popeye, Radar Scope, Sky Skipper, Zaxxon, and more.

For fun, my friend Noby tried to call this number. Sadly, they can no longer teach you:

Disconnected.

Alien Breed (Amiga)

DIVINE PROTECTION BY =THE MIGHTY GOD= WRITE TO ME: boberg@lysator.liu.se FINALLY YOU HAVE THE OPPORTUNITY TO SPEAK TO A REAL COMPUTER ===== GOD! =====

Stefan Boberg is now the technical director at EA DICE, working on the Frostbite engine, so I think he fully qualifies as a godgineer.

Stefan catches us up: “LOL, 18 year old me… I was trying on bullying, didn’t honestly think it was unbreakable. Although my first version was uncopyable — as in, uncopyable by the duplication plant!” Ah, the dangers of aggressive disk protection tricks. He didn’t remember anyone e-mailing him: “I didn’t expect more than one or two people to read it to be honest, and it’s written accordingly. It’s a message from a parallel universe or something. Things are so different today!” Of course, I know this parallel universe well — one where we would meet up at pizza parlors, bring our big old computers and monitors, set them up, and copy games, like Alien Breed, between stale bites of pepperoni — so Stefan’s message makes perfect sense, and feels like another lifetime entirely, all at once.

Blood Money

I’ll warn you now that this game has a LOT of protection, so it will be a few late nights for you lot. It’s a mugs game anyway, you should be writing games and making loads of money like me (you too could afford a 16V Astra GTE). […] In the meantime I’ll be thinking of you when I’m in Florida, spending some of my dosh.

Developers often resorted to psychologically shaming crackers, often using the “I have money and you don’t!” angle.  I think probably it missed the point of a cracker’s motivation and likely only made the crack more fulfilling.

For the record, a 16V Astra GTE cost £9499 on launch, and looked so awesome:

And Dave Jones did OK: he went on to make Lemmings and Grand Theft Auto.

Digger (Arcade)

WRITTEN BY DAVID L. EVANS, 4535 TAFT AVENUE, LA MESA, CALIF. 92041 AND BEAT OUT ON THE KEYBOARD OF A NOVAL 765!

In 2012, I can immediately see this house on Google Earth. I bet David Evans couldn’t have imagined this. The house sold in 1988.

And a Noval 765 was a computer built into a desk. Yes please.

Erika to Satoru no Yume Bouken

Next, Tatsuya Ōhashi. Yes, you, you bastard. Don’t give me your flippant sh*t — coming in late on the day we ship the ROM like nothing’s amiss. You can give me all the porn you want; I’m not forgetting that one. All that f***ing weight you put on. No wonder you paid out 18,000 yen and still got nothing but a kiss out of it.

My god. Make sure to read the whole thing. Co-worker gossip aired in what’s certainly one of the funniest of presentations — one page of virtual dirt at a time.

Modem Wars

AS FOR GETTING RICH, IT JUST AINT TRUE IN MY CASE. (GOING BROKE MAY BE MORE LIKE IT!) OF THE PRODUCTS I’VE DONE IN THE PAST (M.U.L.E., SEVEN CITIES OF GOLD, HEART OF AFRICA AND ROBOT RASCALS) ONLY SEVEN CITIES MADE ANY MONEY AND HEART OF AFRICA JUST BARELY BROKE EVEN. WHAT THIS SAYS TO MY PUBLISHER IS THE MARKET DOESN’T WANT MULTI-PLAYER STRATEGY GAMES! BUT I DON’T BELIEVE IT.

Danielle Bunten was a prolific developer and M.U.L.E. is largely considered one of the most influential strategy games ever written. I’m very surprised to see it revealed in this message that it didn’t make any money. I want to know more, but quite sadly, Danielle died in 1998 due to lung cancer.

Moto Roader

****************
Thank you very much for purchasing this game.
Did you enjoy it?
But who are you, to be able to read this message?
If you don’t mind, please give me a call.
NCS 03-486-6588 (Ask for Suzuki)
Or, I also use a computer connection, so you can contact me there, too.
NCS NET 03-499-5996 7:00pm to 8:00am
****************

I just like that you could’ve either phoned Suzuki-san, or called his BBS, which has classic “Mom, don’t pick up the phone!” house hours.

Pachi Com

You RETARDS say one thing, then something else later all the time. You’re a sound company; quit ignoring pachinko sounds and trying to put these weird sounds in instead! Do you WANT it to be this hard to hear the balls?! I’ve left the PREVIOUS sounds, so edit this if you want to hear it. Set hex address AFFC to 1FAF and AFC4 to E0EE to get decent sounds.

Wow. So management decided to tinker with the sounds in the game, forcing the programmer to play an annoying high-pitched wavering tone almost constantly during gameplay. The programmer didn’t like this and, in protest, provides instructions to ROM hackers on how to revert the sound.

So I busted out my HEX editor. Here’s management’s version:

And here’s the programmers version:

The alarm-like sound is lower and more Pac-Man like, but, well, still pretty annoying.

Spiker! Super Pro Volleyball

ANNOUNCING –
Jessica Louise
Ettinger
July 19, 1988
3:25 a.m.
Welcome To The
Fun And Games!
Way To Go, Linda!

Pixar movies, by tradition, have a section of credits for “Production Babies” — babies born during the making of a film. This got me wondering: what’s the earliest “Production Baby” credit in a video game? Is this it?

I asked Jessica about this message. She wrote back:

“I found out about this probably after I started college. Up until then I didn’t know what my exact time of birth was since my mom couldn’t remember and I was too lazy to find my birth certificate I guess. I at least know my birth was noted to the galaxy in some small way!”

And then, some words from Steve himself!

“Yes, I put messages to my kids (and wife) in all of my Intellivision games. This one was obviously from the birth of my daughter – her two older brothers are featured in hidden messages in each of the games that preceded her birth.

I put messages into each of these games: Hover Force (1986), Slam Dunk (1987), Chip Shot (1987), Body Slam (1988), Spiker! (1989), Deep Pockets (1989). My typical ‘cheat code’ was to hold down 23 on the left [Intellivision] controller while simultaneously holding down 26 on the right controller and then pressing reset while holding them down. Admittedly a bit of a contortion act, and not easily replicated on an emulator as it turns out.

I kept the source code for many years for all of these (and more) games, but sadly with a hard drive crash and a neglected back-up I lost them, so I can’t retrieve the code and have to try to remember how to trigger these messages from memory…”

Hey, ROM hackers: sounds like Steve could use your help! Exciting to know there are more hidden personal messages yet to be discovered…

The New Tetris

This game sucks. The music is great but the game itself is not how we wanted it unfortunately. I mean, it is a good game, but some things could be polished, as well as sped up. Could use another month to finish this thing off AFTER all the bugs are fixed. oh well, woh is me.

David Pridie died in 2001. According to a memorial site, due to his now-infamous Tetris Rant, “he got himself and H2O in quite a bit of hot water with Nintendo. He figured it was his small piece of immortality and that no one would find it for years, if at all. It took the hardcore gamers about 3 days to find it and post it on the internet.”

Elmo in Grouchland

See if you can retrieve them from this ROM. If you do, you win the prize. Please.. call (609) 466-2092 (in New Jersey, USA) if you have been able to view the two .GIF pictures, located in the rest of the upper 6 Megs of this ROM. We will have a nice reward..
for you…….Good Luck!….Roger W. Amidon..

Call this number today, and you’ll get… Roger Amidon!

“Good grief! It was over 12 years ago, but yes, that’s me. I have no idea what I was thinking about at the time for a prize!”

The tiny hidden image in the ROM is of Roger and his two sons:

Warpman

THIS PROGRAM WAS
THE POSTHUMOUS
WORK OF SHOICHI
FUKATANI. HE
WAS ONE OF THE
BEST PRO

You finally get credit for your work, after you die, and the thoughtful message gets truncated in the final ROM.

Classic.

(Fortunately, his memory remains in Japan’s Wikipedia.)

exoskeletoncabaret posted a photo:

Black tintype of a ram skull. This image was lit with a single 105 watt, 5000K CFL in an antique photographic lamp. The color temperature of the bulb allowed us to use only one light (hence the glorious drop shadow) and also lower our exposure time to 35 seconds.

Originally photographed with Henrietta, the 1908 Seneca Black Beauty 4x5, and then meta-photographed with my iPhone 4s. No filter, no Photoshop. The original plate is quite sharp.

Tintype taken by Libby Bulloff and Stephen Robinson. Exoskeleton Cabaret, '57 Biscayne, Seattle, WA.
January 2013.

UPDATE: Visconti has Tweeted a clarification to his interview with NME; he says that he was talking about touring for the present album.

Earlier this week, David Bowie made the massive announcement that his new album, The Next Day, will be released in March. Shortly thereafter, his producer, Tony Visconti, told the BBC that the record is a mix of "classic and innovative" Bowie. And now Visconti has shared some more details with NME, albeit less exciting ones: Bowie will by no means tour or perform live in support of this record, or perhaps ever again.

In next week's NME, Visconti said, "He's fairly adamant he's never gonna perform live again... One of the guys would say, 'Boy, how are we gonna do all this live?' and David said, 'We're not'. He made a point of saying that all the time."

Check out the video for Bowie's "Where Are We Now?", and head here to check out five classic Bowie clips in honor of the new record.

While Casio's G-Shock GB6900 was among the company's main focuses at CES 2013, there was yet another watch to be seen inside the company's booth. Interestingly enough, though, the Japanese firm wasn't exactly showcasing its novel G-Shock GB5600A -- instead, we found it hiding comfortably underneath a representative's long-sleeve shirt. Thankfully, the Casio agent was kind enough to let us give it a quick whirl. As you can likely tell by the picture above, the GB5600A is very reminiscent of those old-school watches sporting Illuminator tech, but the new revision has obviously adapted itself to the more current era. For starters, the novel G-Shock boasts Bluetooth 4.0, allowing it to pair nicely alongside iOS devices and display plenty of notifications on its itty-bitty screen -- including phone calls, text messages and emails. In addition, there's also a Time Adjustment setting for, well, automatically modifying the clock depending on where you are, as well as a Phone Finder that easily locates your iPhone, iPod or iPad with the simple touch of a button.

The sleek G-Shock GB5600A is currently only available in the Land of the Rising Sun, but the company has said it's planning to bring it to the US later this summer, priced somewhere around $200. We'll let you know as soon as we hear more concrete details; in the meantime, there's a packed gallery for your viewing pleasure right after the break.

Gallery: Casio G-Shock GB5600A hands-on

Filed under: Misc, Peripherals

Comments

Source: Casio

Oregon's respite from the high influenza rates hitting the rest of the country is over, public health authorities say. Meanwhile, norovirus cases continue to spike.

Yesterday, Charli XCX released a video for her new single "You (Ha Ha Ha)", which prominently featured a lot of girls in bright rave gear... in a gun factory, toting huge firearms. Charli's probably gotten a fair amount of flack from fans for the gun imagery, so today, she Tweeted a hand-written note in which she acknowledges the concern.

She sort of apologizes, but it's more of an explanation and an "I'm sorry if you misunderstood me" type of thing. She writes:

Thanks to everyone who's heard the song + watched my new video for "You (Ha Ha Ha)", which samples the amazing Gold Panda. Myself, my friends + the director Ryan Andrew shot the video in October, so I've been waiting for a while to put it out, + now it's out there. I'm so happy + excited + I'm glad you guys are loving it. The video pays homage to the grindhouse genre as well as some of my favourite movie characters. I wanted to create a kick ass girl power setting for my own grindhouse pop video, with cats, colour + lipstick. The idea is to make lipstick, not war, but I'd like to say sorry if anyone has mistaken this video for advocating violence. I'm swapping bullets for lipstick + firing out shots of love with my kick ass girl gang from outerspace! Remember u can pre order the song now + download a copy on Feb 10th. XCX

Watch the video:

Photographer to an editor about how long he’ll stay at an event: “I go until I’m satisfied. It could be 10 minutes, it could be 10 hours.”

Reporter to another reporter: “Don’t worry, you’re only a good reporter if you’re a bad person.”

The critical Java vulnerability that is currently under attack was made possible by an incomplete patch Oracle developers issued last year to fix an earlier security bug, a researcher said.

The revelation, made Friday by Adam Gowdiak of Poland-based Security Explorations, is the latest black eye for Oracle's Java software framework which is installed on more than 1 billion PCs, smartphones, and other devices. Last year saw a steady stream of attacks that exploited Java vulnerabilities, allowing miscreants to surreptitiously install keyloggers and other malicious software when unwitting people browsed compromised websites. The abuse has already continued into 2013, when on Thursday researchers reported yet another critical bug that is being "massively exploited in the wild".

According to Gowdiak, the latest vulnerability is a holdover from a bug (referred to here as Issue 32) that Security Explorations researchers reported to Oracle in late August. Oracle released a patch for the issue in October but it was incomplete, he said in an e-mail to Ars that was later published to the Bugtraq mailing list.

Read 6 remaining paragraphs | Comments

hypnosec writes "Following news that a Java 0-day has been rolled into exploit kits, without any patch to fix the vulnerability, Mozilla and Apple have blocked the latest versions of Java on Firefox and Mac OS X respectively. Mozilla has taken steps to protect its user base from the yet-unpatched vulnerability. Mozilla has added to its Firefox add-on block-list: Java 7 Update 10, Java 7 Update 9, Java 6 Update 38 and Java 6 Update 37. Similar steps have also been taken by Apple; it has updated its anti-malware system to only allow version 1.7.10.19 or higher, thereby automatically blocking the vulnerable version, 1.7.10.18." Here are some ways to disable Java, if you're not sure how.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

 After Chip Kelly done run off to the big city for the weekend—and then, very unexpectedly, returned home last night to Phil Knight's farm—speculation has run rampant in the sports biosphere about why the Oregon Ducks coach would spurn the National Football League's glamour and cash.

We're as puzzled as anybody. But it's worth remembering that Kelly is hardly coming back to a cardboard box and some soda crackers.

John Locanthi's WW cover story last month on Kelly examined the perks that come with the coach's $3.5 million annual salary: two cars, an Autzen Stadium skybox suite for his guests, and a bonus of at least $200,000 for that elusive unbeaten season.

Read the story for the full list of swag.

WW also reported that Kelly has a frosty relationship with many University of Oregon boosters. What's fascinating about this weekend's reversal is that reports say one booster helped change Kelly's mind.

Yep, it's Knight. NFL reporters say the Nike founder and #1 Duck fan made a "push" to keep Kelly here.

If those reports are true, they amount to a spectacular coup for Knight: He has, in a single month, managed to make the nation's most coveted football coach and the Oregon Legislature dance to his tune.

fuckyeahillustrativeart:

Rafael Alvarez