Want to read Slashdot from your mobile device? Point it at m.slashdot.org and keep reading!

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
×

Submission + - AT&T To Match Google Fiber in Kansas City, Charge More If You Want Privacy (kansascity.com) 1

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: When Google Fiber started bringing gigabit internet to cities around the U.S., we wondered how the incumbent carriers would respond. Now we know: AT&T has announced they will match Google Fiber's gigabit offerings in Kansas City. Of course, there are some caveats. First, AT&T's rollout may stop as it fights the Obama administration over net neutrality. Not that it would be a nationwide rollout anyway: "AT&T does not plan to offer the ultra-fast Internet lines to every home in the market. Rather, he said the company would calculate where demand is strongest and the investment in stringing new cables promised a decent return."

There are also some interesting pricing concerns. The company plans to charge $70/month for gigabit service, but that's a subsidized price. Subsidized by what, you ask? Your privacy. AT&T says if you want to opt out of letting them track your browsing history, you'll have to pay $29 more per month. They say your information is used to serve targeted advertising, and includes any links you follow and search terms you enter.

Submission + - Petition Calls for Media to Use the Term Climate Change 'Denier' Not 'Skeptic' 1

Submitted by HughPickens.com
HughPickens.com writes: Justin Gillis reports at the NYT that the battle over climate change has taken a new turn with a public appeal over what people who reject the findings of climate science should be called. The petition, which has so far garnered 22,000 signatures including Bill Nye, of “Science Guy" fame, and Lawrence M. Krauss, the physicist and best-selling author, asks the news media to abandon the frequently used term “skeptic,” and call them “climate deniers” instead. The petition began with Mark B. Boslough, a physicist in New Mexico who grew increasingly annoyed by the term over several years. The phrase is wrong, says Boslough, because “these people do not embrace the scientific method.” Last year, Boslough wrote a public letter on the issue, "Deniers are not Skeptics." and dozens of scientists and science advocates associated with the committee quickly signed it. According to Boslough real skepticism is summed up by a quote popularized by Carl Sagan, “Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.” "[Senator] Inhofe’s belief that global warming is “the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people” is an extraordinary claim indeed," says Boslough. "He has never been able to provide evidence for this vast alleged conspiracy. That alone should disqualify him from using the title skeptic."

But some say 'denier' is a code-word for evil and have been up in arms by comparisons of climate change denial to holocaust denial. "Climate change denialism is rightly criticized for being denialist," writes Mark Hoofnagle, "but moral comparisons of these denialists to the anti-Semitic deniers of the Holocaust is a distraction, and will not help sway anyone to the side of science."

Submission + - How "omnipotent" hackers tied to NSA hid for 14 years and were found at last (arstechnica.com) 2

Submitted by Advocatus Diaboli
Advocatus Diaboli writes: The money and time required to develop the Equation Group malware, the technological breakthroughs the operation accomplished, and the interdictions performed against targets leave little doubt that the operation was sponsored by a nation-state with nearly unlimited resources to dedicate to the project. The countries that were and weren't targeted, the ties to Stuxnet and Flame, and the Grok artifact found inside the Equation Group keylogger strongly support the theory the NSA or a related US agency is the responsible party, but so far Kaspersky has declined to name a culrit. NSA officials didn't respond to an e-mail seeking comment for this story. What is safe to say is that the unearthing of the Equation Group is a seminal finding in the fields of computer and national security, as important, or possibly more so, than the revelations about Stuxnet.

Submission + - Brain-altering devices have hit the mainstream (dailydot.com)

Submitted by erier2003
erier2003 writes: Products like Thync and Zeb Vibez represent a drop in the bucket in the larger context of the mind-altering industry. More and more technology startups are joining this market, ready to capitalize on our obsession with self-quantifying and take us to the natural next step: self-changing.

Submission + - Drones and satellites spot lost civilizations in unlikely places (sciencemag.org) 1

Submitted by sciencehabit
sciencehabit writes: What do the Sahara desert and the Amazon rainforest have in common? Until recently, archaeologists would have told you they were both inhospitable environments devoid of large-scale human settlements. But they were wrong. Here today at the annual meeting of the AAAS, two researchers explained how remote sensing technology, including satellite imaging and drone flights, is revealing the traces of past civilizations that have been hiding in plain sight.

Submission + - US Military Soon Able to Copy & 3D Print Exact Replicas of Bones & Limbs (3dprint.com)

Submitted by ErnieKey
ErnieKey writes: The US military is working with technology that will allow them to create exact virtual replicas of their soldiers. Then in case of an injury, these replicas, which are created using x-rays, MRI and Ultrasound technology, will be able to be restored for surgeons to 3D print both exact medical models for rebuilding the injured patient's body and even 3D print exact replica implants. Could we all one day soon have virtual backups of ourselves that we can access and have new body parts 3D printed on demand? It appears as though we are getting closer.

Submission + - Energy Returned on Energy Invested (forbes.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: EROI is the ratio of energy returned to energy invested in that energy source, along its entire life-cycle. That includes raw material acquisition, construction, fuel, O&M, etc. When the number is large, energy from that source is relatively easy to get and less expensive. However, when the number is small, the energy from that source is more difficult to get and more expensive.

The attached article shows the EROI of various energy sources. Before taking a look, make a guess as to which sources you think have the highest and lowest EROIs. Were you on target?

Submission + - Samsung: WHAT is my SmartTV reporting? To whom? 14

Submitted by NetAlien
NetAlien writes: Being curious about the recent Samsung SmartTV stories, I connected my SmartTV through an old-fashioned HUB (copies all traffic to every port; unlike a switch) to my router. This allowed me to capture all traffic to/from my TV through my laptop's ethernet port. A wireshark capture shows that remote sites are trying to access my TV until I turn it on, then after nearly 7400 packets, it settles down. Then changing channels over ~4.5 minutes results in ~10,000 more packets. The TV continues sending data for several more seconds after the set appears to be off. Multiple servers were contacted in these domains: amazonaws.com, akamaitechnologies.com, cloudfront.net, twitvid.com, pcloud.com, yahoo.com, aclwireless25.com and some by IP address. WHAT are you sharing Samsung???

Submission + - SpaceX Signs Lease Agreement with Air Force for Landing Pad (spacenews.com)

Submitted by PaisteUser
PaisteUser writes: Space News reports that SpaceX signs a historic agreement to allow construction of a landing pad for Falcon 9 booster stages.

From the article: "The U.S. Air Force announced Feb. 10 that SpaceX has signed a five-year lease for Cape Canaveral’s Launch Complex 13, which was used to launch Atlas rockets and missiles between 1956 and 1978. In its new role, it will serve as a landing pad for Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy booster cores launched from Florida, the Air Force said. Financial terms of the lease were not disclosed."

Patrick Air Force Base also provides the documentation used for the environmental impact study which details out how the landing pad will be constructed:
http://www.patrick.af.mil/shar...

Submission + - The Mathematical Case for Buying a Powerball Ticket 4

Submitted by HughPickens.com
HughPickens.com writes: Neil Irwin writes at the NYT that financially literate people like to complain that buying lottery tickets is among the silliest decisions a person could make but there are a couple of dimensions that these tut-tutted warnings miss, perhaps fueled by a class divide between those who commonly buy lottery tickets and those who choose to throw away money on other things like expensive wine or mansions. According to Irwin, as long as you think about the purchase of lottery tickets the right way — purely a consumption good, not an investment — it can be a completely rational decision. "Fantasizing about what you would do if you suddenly encountered great wealth is fun, and it is more fun if there some chance, however minuscule, that it could happen," says Irwin. "The $2 price for a ticket is a relatively small one to pay for the enjoyment of thinking through how you might organize your life differently if you had all those millions."

Right now the Multi-State Lottery Association estimates the chances of winning the grand prize at about 1 in 175 million, and the cash value of the prize at $337.8 million. The simplest math points to that $2 ticket having an expected value of about $1.93 so while you are still throwing away money when buying a lottery ticket, you are throwing away less in strictly economic terms when you buy into an unusually large Powerball jackpot. "I am the type of financial decision-maker who tracks bond and currency markets and builds elaborate spreadsheets to simulate outcomes of various retirement savings strategies," says Irwin. "I can easily afford to spend a few dollars on a Powerball ticket. Time to head to the convenience store and do just that."

Submission + - Inside the Internet's hidden science factory (pbs.org)

Submitted by tcd004
tcd004 writes: Sarah Marshall has completed roughly 20,000 academic surveys. Clay Hamilton has finished about 40,000. Marshall and Hamilton are part of a small but highly-active community of paid online study participants who generate data at break-neck speed to fuel modern scientific research. But can a person who's completed thousands of surveys still provide good data? Here's a look at the humans feeding science from inside the machine.

Submission + - Are there quality but affordable large HD/UHD/4K "stupid" screens? 1

Submitted by LOGINS SUC
LOGINS SUC writes: Truly in the first-world problems category, I've been looking for large format (>55") HD/UHD screens for home entertainment. In light of the recent Samsung big-brother monitoring and advertisement injection concerns, does any reputable manufacturer still make "stupid" TVs? I don't want to pay for all the WiFi, apps, cameras, or microphones. I don't need it to have speakers. And at this point, I don't even care if it has the TV receiver functionality. All this stuff leads to vendor lock-in or is well on the path to obsolescence by the time I purchase the device. I prefer all of this non-visual functionality be handled by devices better suited to the purpose and I don't want to pay for screens including these widgets I have no intention of ever using, at all.

I've searched all the normal retail outlets. If I find anything, they are wildly expensive. "Computer monitors" fit the bill but are almost all 55") LCDs in the sub-$3,000 range anymore? Are projectors the last bastion of visual purity for home entertainment?

Comment Re:Yes (Score 1) 716

by leftover (#49029217) Attached to: Is Modern Linux Becoming Too Complex?

By any metric Yes! "Choice" was the old mantra, with the unspoken assumption that any of the alternatives actually worked. Now we have too many alternatives to track adequately, each one requiring too much fiddling and compromise to function at all.
IMHO the underlying cause is there was too much karma for having your own fork of a project and not nearly enough karma for making the base project more elegant = simpler, cleaner, more robust, better documented. Just look at several key aspects of nearly any distribution: boot, audio, display, toolkits. They are all ridiculous.
And the distributions themselves - have you looked at the chart on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L... ? Again, ridiculous. That is not "choice", it is a quagmire.

Slashdot Top Deals

Do you suffer painful elimination? -- Don Knuth, "Structured Programming with Gotos"

Close