cheezitmike - Slashdot User

Submission + - Disney pulls a reverse Santa, takes back Christmas shows from Amazon customers

Submitted by Sockatume on Monday December 16, 2013 @11:47AM

Sockatume writes: Since 2011, Amazon Instant Video has sold a series of Christmas shorts from Disney called "Prep and Landing". Unfortunately this holiday season, Disney has had a change of heart and has decided to make the shorts exclusive to its own channels. Showing an abundance of Christmas cheer, the Mickey Mouse company went so far as to retroactively withdrawn the shows from Amazon, so that customers who have already paid for them no longer have access. Apparently this reverse-Santa facility is a feature Amazon provides all publishers, and customers have little recourse but to go cap-in-hand to a Disney outlet and pay for the shows again.

Submission + - Instagram Loses Half Its Daily Users In A Month (ibtimes.com)

Submitted by

redletterdave

on Monday January 14, 2013 @03:08PM

redletterdave writes: "Instagram scared off a lot of users back in December when it decided to update its original Terms of Service for 2013. But even though the company reneged on its new terms after a week of solid backlash, Instagram users are still fleeing the photo-sharing app in troves. According to new app traffic data, Instagram has lost roughly half of all its active users in the month since proposing to change its original Privacy Policy and Terms of Service. In mid-December, Instagram boasted about 16.3 million daily active users; as of Jan. 14, Instagram only has about 7.6 million daily users."

Submission + - Classroom Clashes over Science Education (aaas.org)

Submitted by cheezitmike on Tuesday June 05, 2012 @12:46PM

cheezitmike writes: In a two-part series, the American Academy for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) examines two hot-button topics that create clashes in the classroom between science teachers and conservative-leaning students, parents, school boards, and state legislatures. Part 1 looks at the struggle of teachers to cover evolution in the face of religious push-back from students and legislatures. Part 2 deals with teaching climate change, and how teachers increasingly have to deal with political pressure from those who insist that there must be two sides to the discussion.

Comment mHealth (Score 3, Insightful) 111

by cheezitmike on Thursday February 23, 2012 @04:15PM (#39140669) Attached to: Are Smartphones Starting a Boom In DIY Medicine?

Using mobile technologies for healthcare is not just for self-diagnosis or as an alternative to expensive medical care. Many doctors and hospitals are adopting the technology and encouraging their patients to adopt it. There are lots of things you can do smaller and cheaper where telehealth systems or healthcare websites are currently being used. Preventive medicine mobile applications have been successful for improving health outcomes for patients with chronic conditions, in particular. Read the article before casually dismissing the field as a bunch of hypochondriacs trying to self-medicate.

If you're a developer interested in the mobile health field, the mHealth Summit is currently the best annual conference.focused specifically on mobile health out there: http://www.mhealthsummit.org/ Eric Topol, the subject of the NY Times article in the summary above, was one of the keynote speakers at the 2011 conference, along with HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, Surgeon General Regina Benjamin, and FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski.

Comment Getting sued by Hasbro (Score 1) 168

by cheezitmike on Wednesday January 04, 2012 @01:48PM (#38587434) Attached to: Transformer Prime To Get ICS On January 12, Boot Unlocker Coming

ASUS is also facing a lawsuit from Hasbro, who feels that the name "Transformer Prime" might just be infringing on one of its trademarks... http://techcrunch.com/2011/12/21/it-had-to-happen-eventually-hasbro-sues-asus-over-transformer-name/ Hasbro's asking for an injunction to halt sales until the case is resolved...

Comment ICS for Samsung Exhibit II? (Score 1) 192

by cheezitmike on Thursday December 29, 2011 @11:41AM (#38527224) Attached to: Samsung Reconsidering Android 4.0 On the Galaxy S

I can't find any information about whether or not the Samsung Exhibit II (which just came out in October) for T-Mobile will get Ice Cream Sandwich. Anyone else heard any rumors?

Submission + - Mercury Turns Out to be a Weird Little World (jhuapl.edu) 1

Submitted by

sighted

on Thursday September 29, 2011 @12:59PM

sighted writes: "The robotic spacecraft MESSENGER, now orbiting the first planet, has found odd features on its surface, including unexplained, blueish 'hollows' that may be actively forming today. The new findings will be published this week in Science. One scientist said, 'The conventional wisdom was that Mercury is just like the Moon. But from its vantage point in orbit, MESSENGER is showing us that Mercury is radically different from the Moon in just about every way we can measure.'"

Submission + - Chrome Set To Take No. 2 Spot From Firefox (computerworld.com)

Submitted by

CWmike

on Thursday September 29, 2011 @11:40AM

CWmike writes: "Google's Chrome is on the brink of replacing Firefox as the second-most-popular browser, says the Web statistics firm StatCounter, which shows that Chrome will pass Firefox to take the No. 2 spot behind Microsoft's IE no later than December. As of Wednesday, Chrome's global average user share for September was 23.6%, while Firefox's stood at 26.8%. IE, meanwhile, was at 41.7%. The climb of Chrome during 2011 has been astonishing: It has gained eight percentage point since January 2011, representing a 50% increase. During that same period, Firefox has dropped almost four percentage points, a decline of about 13%, while IE has also fallen four points, a 9% dip. That means Chrome is essentially reaping all the defections from Firefox and IE."

Submission + - Algo trading rapidly replacing need for humans (computerworlduk.com)

Submitted by DMandPenfold on Friday September 09, 2011 @09:28AM

DMandPenfold writes: Algorithmic trading, also known as high frequency trading (HFT), is rapidly replacing human decision making, according to a government panel which warned that the right regulations need to be introduced to protect stock markets.

Around one third of share trading in the UK is conducted by computers fulfilling commands based on complex algorithms, said the Foresight panel in a working paper published yesterday.

Nevertheless, this proportion is significantly lower than in the US, where three-quarters of equity dealing is computer generated.

The Foresight panel, led by Dame Clara Furse, the former chief executive of the London Stock Exchange, argued that there are both benefits and severe risks to algorithmic trading.

There was "no direct evidence" that the computer trading in itself increased volatility, it said, but in specific circumstances it was possible for a series of events with "undesired interactions and outcomes" to occur and cause massive damage.

Submission + - DoT Grants $15M to Test Car-to-Car Communication (itworld.com)

Submitted by

itwbennett

on Friday September 09, 2011 @08:15AM

itwbennett writes: "Car-to-car communications is about to get its first large-scale, real-world test in Ann Arbor, Mich., where the University of Michigan's Transportation Research Institute will be putting as many as 3,000 cars equipped with short-range radio on the roads, thanks to a $14.9 million grant it just got from the U.S. Dept. of Transportation. DoT reports predict that up to 82 percent of serious accidents among unimpaired drivers can be eliminated or reduced by a little car-to-car negotiation, or early warning that a sedan three cars ahead just hit the brakes even though you can't see it through the giant SUV directly in front of you."

Comment Need Sharks (Score 2, Informative) 404

by cheezitmike on Tuesday September 06, 2011 @12:55PM (#37318212) Attached to: Wicked Lasers Introduces Handheld One-Watt Green Laser

Nice friggin' lasers. Now we just need some friggin' sharks to go with them.

Submission + - Chinese want to capture an asteroid (dvice.com)

Submitted by

geekmansworld

on Wednesday August 31, 2011 @10:56AM

geekmansworld writes: "Dvice reports that the Chinese want to capture an asteroid into earth's orbit and mine it. From the article: "At first glance, nudging an asteroid closer to Earth seems like one of those "what could possible go wrong" scenarios that we generally try and avoid, and for good reason: large asteroid impacts are bad times. The Chinese, though, seem fairly optimistic that they could tweak the orbit of a near-Earth asteroid by just enough (a change in velocity of only about 1,300 feet-per-second or so) to get it to temporarily enter Earth orbit at about twice the distance as the Moon.""

Submission + - Justice Department blocks AT&T-T-Mobile merger (forbes.com) 1

Submitted by AngryDeuce on Wednesday August 31, 2011 @10:25AM

AngryDeuce writes: The Justice Department is blocking AT&T's $39 billion deal to buy T-Mobile USA, saying the acquisition of the No. 4 wireless carrier in the country by No. 2 AT&T would reduce competition and raise prices.

The deal has faced tough opposition from consumer groups and No. 3 carrier Sprint since it was announced in March.

Submission + - Car Makers Explore EEG Headrests (technologyreview.com) 1

Submitted by mrtr on Thursday August 18, 2011 @09:29AM

mrtr writes: A number of car makers are looking at whether EEG devices built into headrests could prevent accidents by sensing when a driver is in danger of drifting off. The technology comes from Neurosky, which already makes commercial EEG units for use in gaming and market research. Other approaches, such as using cameras to spot drooping eyelids have proven too unreliable so far. From the story: "Fatigue causes more than 100,000 crashes and 40,000 injuries, and around 1,550 deaths, per year in the United States, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. Some studies suggest drowsiness is involved in 20 to 25 percent of all crashes on monotonous stretches of road."

Submission + - C++ And The Return Of Native Code (infoworld.com)

Submitted by

snydeq

on Thursday August 18, 2011 @09:24AM

snydeq writes: "Fatal Exception's Neil McAllister suggests that the new version of C++ signals renewed interest in old-fashioned native binaries. 'Modern programmers have increasingly turned away from native compilation in favor of managed-code environments such as Java and .Net, which shield them from some of the drudgery of memory management and input validation. Others are willing to sacrifice some performance for the syntactic comforts of dynamic languages such as Python, Ruby, and JavaScript. But C++11 arrives at an interesting time. There's a growing sentiment that the pendulum may have swung too far away from native code, and it might be time for it to swing back in the other direction. Thus, C++ may have found itself some unlikely allies.'"

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