Please create an account to participate in the Slashdot moderation system

 



Forgot your password?
typodupeerror

Comment Protected classes (Score 4, Insightful) 681

But how will you know if a firm passed you over because of something you said online? It'd be impossible to enforce.

Unfortunately, that's not true. It seems to make sense that there is no way that one could know why an employer did something. But certain legislators don't think that way.
For a number of classes of people ( genders, ethnic groups, etc ) the mere act of not having the right number of people of a certain class can be construed as proof that there was discrimination.
So, someday, after you have posted a picture of yourself butt-naked sharing a twelve-pack with your buddies outside the local convent, and you remain unemployed, you will be able to sue. All you will have to show is that X percent of the population does such things, and if a particular employer has significantly less than X percent of such people among their employees, they are therefore guilty of discrimination.

Comment Re:Commuters and travelers (Score 1) 355

Nobody's content is that valuable.

Allow me to introduce my new site: googleeverywhere.com. The main server is in Russia someplace. It runs a botnet. The bots, of course, are running on the systems of clueless windows users.
You want google from anywhere in the world? Go to googleeverywhere, it passes the request on to a bot, which queries google, then passes the answer back.
Google can try to shut it down by sending a request to googleeverywhere and seeing where the request comes in, and then cutting of that IP address. But in doing that, google thereby shuts down access for users who have paid for the service through their IP.

Comment Commuters and travelers (Score 4, Insightful) 355

My business requires that I travel. On a slow week I use two different ISPs. In a busy week, a dozen. And we're not even talking about vacations yet.
If your site isn't available everywhere, I'll find something else. Nobody's content is that valuable.

Although, if I'm wrong and this business model does take off, the back side is even uglier: there will be ISPs that offer their services based on what you can't get. It will cater to employers, libraries, schools and other places that don't want people accessing certain sites.

Businesses

The Transistor's 60th Birthday 185

Apple Acolyte sends in a Forbes piece noting the 60th birthday of the transistor on Dec, 16. For the occasion the AP provides the obligatory Moore's-Law-is-ending, no-it-isn't article. From Forbes: "Sixty years ago, on Dec. 16, 1947, three physicists at Bell Laboratories in Murray Hill, N.J., built the world's first transistor. William Shockley, John Bardeen and William Brattain had been looking for a semiconductor amplifier to take the place of the vacuum tubes that made radios and other electronics so impossibly bulky, hot and power hungry."
Communications

Submission + - Why Everyone Should Hate Cellphone Carriers (wired.com) 2

The Byelorrusian Spamtrap writes: "Wired Magazine's made its position clear on the state of play in America's cellular industry, delivering a long, satisfying screed on why all of us should stop complaining and do something about it. Legislation is under consideration in congress to heavily regulate carriers, and it wants you to support it: contact your critter today!"
Security

Submission + - Quantum cryptography speeds slowed by" dead ti (networkworld.com)

coondoggie writes: "Researchers said today that technological and security issues will stall maximum transmission rates at levels comparable to that of a single broadband connection, such as a cable modem, unless researchers reduce "dead times" in the detectors that receive quantum-encrypted messages. Researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and the Joint Quantum Institute (JQI), technological and security issues will stall maximum transmission rates at levels comparable to that of a single broadband connection, such as a cable modem, unless researchers reduce "dead times" in the detectors that receive quantum-encrypted messages. http://www.networkworld.com/community/node/20061"

Slashdot Top Deals

"Today's robots are very primitive, capable of understanding only a few simple instructions such as 'go left', 'go right', and 'build car'." --John Sladek

Working...