Comment Re: GNAA GAY NIGGERS FOR AMERICA UNITE. GAY! NIGGE (Score 0, Offtopic) 110
When will they make an AI to stop this?
Comment Re: What is net neutrality? (Score 1) 215
We have this in Australia. ISPs host data for large companies like Netflix. They zero rate it because it is no longer over the Internet. Customers get zero rated Netflix, Netflix and ISPs save on internet bandwidth costs. Everyone wins.
I thought Net Neutrality was about slowing down services that didn't pay up. THAT would be bad.
Comment Re: Don't give him ideas (Score 1) 555
He's got you by the pussy too, huh?
Study Shows Direct Brain Interface Between Humans 110
vinces99 writes University of Washington researchers have successfully replicated a direct brain-to-brain connection between pairs of people as part of a scientific study following the team's initial demonstration a year ago. In the newly published study, which involved six people, researchers were able to transmit the signals from one person's brain over the Internet and use these signals to control the hand motions of another person within a split second of sending that signal.
Ask Slashdot: How Would You Secure Your Parents' PC? 408
New submitter StirlingArcher writes "I've always built/maintained my parents' PC's, but as Mum has got older her PC seems to develop problems more readily. I would love to switch her to Linux, but she struggles with change and wants to stay with Vista and MS Office. I've done the usual remove Admin rights, use a credible Internet Security package. Is there anything more dramatic that I could do, without changing the way she uses her PC or enforcing a new OS on her again? One idea was to use a Linux OS and then run Vista in a VM, which auto-boots and creates a backup image every so often. Thanks for any help!"
Submission + - Plastic Waste Threatens Marine Diversity (bbc.co.uk)
Rambo Tribble writes: An article in Current Biology (abstract) details the finding that minute particles of plastic waste are affecting marine worms, potentially having grave impacts on marine biodiversity and leading to the accumulation of toxins in marine animals. Unfortunately, policymakers have routinely treated such wastes as benign. The BBC provides more approachable coverage of the findings.
Comment Nanolathing (Score 1) 27
Anyone else reminded of Total Annihilation when they read this?
Building New Materials With Light 27
ckwu writes "Since the 1970s, physicists have used laser beams to trap and study small objects, from cells down to individual atoms. Now, electrical engineers at the University of Southern California have developed a simple optical system that assembles hundreds of nanoparticles into two-dimensional structures using a single laser beam and a silicon photonic crystal. This compact optical trap fits on a small chip and could eventually help researchers make materials for new types of sensors, optical devices, and chemical filters."
Researchers Create Short-term Memories In Rat Brains 114
An anonymous reader writes "Researchers say they've found a way to store artificial short-term memories in isolated brain tissue. 'This is the first time anyone has found a way to store information over seconds about both temporal sequences and stimulus patterns directly in brain tissue,' says the study's lead. 'This paves the way for future research to identify the specific brain circuits that allow us to form short-term memories.' The peer-reviewed study can be found here (paywalled)."
Comment Re:Wait, what now? (Score 1) 462
How many people are unable to fully switch to Linux (but would like to) because some software they must use is Windows-only?
Actually I don't think this is much of a reason anymore; if you really wanted to switch to Linux, VM software (like Virtual Box) is now good enough that you can run most Windows software through it, and using "headless" modes you can even mostly hide the fact that you are using a VM from the user. I think actually it comes down to people not seeing a reason to change; then you may need to retrain staff, etc. and it's easier to just stick with what you know.
Comment Re:Urban Legend becomes reality (Score 1) 141
And now this kid has gone one better than the tall tale, actually living inside the corporate complex of a major tech company.
I guess it's the "major tech company" part that makes this shocking, right?
Yes, I can't remember the last time I remember anyone referring to AOL as a "major tech company" - maybe it was when they bought Netscape?
The Shortage of Women In IT 697
CIStud writes "The IT industry is hurting for women. Currently only 11% of IT companies are owned by women. The Women-Owned Small Business (WOSB) Federal Contract program requires 5% of all IT jobs to go to female-owned integration companies, but there must be at least 2 female bidders. There are so few female bidders that women-owned IT firms are ineligible for the contracts. From the article: 'Wendy Frank, founder of Accell Security Inc. in Birdsboro, Pa., wishes she had more competitors.
It's not often you hear any integrator say that, but in Frank's case, she has good reason.
The current Women-Owned Small Business (WOSB) Federal Contract program authorizes five percent of Federal prime and subcontracts to be set aside for WOSBs. While that might sound fair on the surface, in order to invoke the money set aside for this program, the contracting officer at an agency has to have a reasonable expectation that two or more WOSBs will submit offers for the job.
“We could not participate in the government’s Women-Owned Small Business program unless there was another female competitor,” says Frank. “Procurement officers required that at least two women-owned small businesses compete for the contracts, even in the IT field, where women-owned businesses are underrepresented.”'"
The Gamification of Hiring 203
First time accepted submitter funge writes "The Economist has an article on Work and play: The gamification of hiring about a start-up that lets you play games to show off your talents to prospective employers. From the article: 'The rules of Happy Hour are deceptively simple. You are a bartender. Your challenge is to tell what sort of drink each of a swelling mob of customers wants by the expressions on their faces. Then you must make and serve each drink and wash each used glass, all within a short period of time. Play this video game well and you might win a tantalizing prize: a job in the real world.'"
Employee "Disciplined" For Installing Bitcoin Software On Federal Webservers 86
Fluffeh writes "Around a year ago, a person working for the ABC in Australia with the highest levels of access to systems got caught with his fingers on the CPU cycles. The staffer had installed Bitcoin mining software on the systems used by the Australian broadcaster. While the story made a bit of a splash at the time, it was finally announced today that the staffer hadn't been sacked, but was merely being disciplined by his manager and having his access to systems restricted. All the stories seem a little vague as to what he actually installed, however — on one side he installed the software on a public facing webserver, and the ABC itself admits, 'As this software was for a short time embedded within pages on the ABC website, visitors to these pages may have been exposed to the Bitcoin software,' and 'the Coalition (current Opposition Parties) was planning on quizzing the ABC further about the issue, including filing a request for the code that would have been downloaded to users' machines,' but on the other side there is no mention of the staffer trying to seed a Bitcoin mining botnet through the site, just that mining software had been installed."
Comment Re:Try to think sometimes (Score 1) 577
I'm not a Facebook user myself, but my understanding is that if you've uploaded your photo to Facebook you've agreed to their conditions which are that they can basically do what they want with your photos (including selling) anyway, right?
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"Sometimes insanity is the only alternative" -- button at a Science Fiction convention.
