Catch up on stories from the past week (and beyond) at the Slashdot story archive

 



Forgot your password?
typodupeerror
×

Comment Coca-Cola sponsored lane (Score 1) 246

Not a big fan of this commercial, but only because I don't see an issue with paying for a bigger pipe. I think it's fair that I pay more for higher raw throughput for multiple streaming devices than my neighbour that only streams through one TV.

But add a "Fast Lane, sponsored by Coca-Cola" to the mix, where Burger King can push you to buy Coca-Cola instead of Pepsi, because Coca-Cola bid higher than Pepsi for prioritization privileges, and the real problem with repealing NN becomes apparent.

Security

DEFCON Conference To Target Voting Machines (politico.com) 105

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Politico: Hackers will target American voting machines -- as a public service, to prove how vulnerable they are. When over 25,000 of them descend on Caesar's Palace in Las Vegas at the end of July for DEFCON, the world's largest hacking conference, organizers are planning to have waiting what they call "a village" of different opportunities to test how easily voting machines can be manipulated. Some will let people go after the network software remotely, some will be broken apart to let people dig into the hardware, and some will be set up to see how a prepared hacker could fiddle with individual machines on site in a polling place through a combination of physical and virtual attacks. With all the attention on Russia's apparent attempts to meddle in American elections -- former President Barack Obama and aides have made many accusations toward Moscow, but insisted that there's no evidence of actual vote tampering -- voting machines were an obvious next target, said DEFCON founder Jeff Moss.

Submission + - Alexa, do you swear to tell the truth, the whole truth...

rmdingler writes: Arkansas authorities have issued a warrant for the audio records of an Amazon Echo that was present at a suspicious death.
A report today from The Information details how police in Bentonville, Arkansas, have issued a warrant for the audio records of the Amazon Echo speaker belonging to James Bates, a suspect in an ongoing murder investigation. Amazon has handed over Bates’ purchase history and account information to law enforcement, but it has declined to release his speaker’s records.
In February, police arrested Bates, age 31, and charged him with the murder of Victor Collins, age 47, according to local news. According to a medical examiner, Collins was strangled in a hot tub. Bates pleaded not guilty in April and made bail shortly after, but the case will go to trial in early 2017. Both men worked for Walmart, which is headquartered in Bentonville.

Comment Re:A SIM only plan? (Score 1) 246

Sure there is. They're called Pay-by-the-Minute plans.

Rogers: 40c/min anytime, monthly fee 0.75c for 911, $10/mo declining balance
Bell: 30c/min anytime, monthly fee 0.75c, $10/mo declining balance
Fido: 30c/min anytime, monthly fee 0.75c
Telus: 30c/min anytime, monthly fee 0.75c

$10/mo is 25-30 minutes of voice service prepaid in Canada. Not all that many, but more than enough for data-users.

For reference, I pay $13.75+tax for 100MB data and 30 outbound texts, +$3 for voice calls a month. Good luck finding any post-paid plan that comes anywhere close to that. Bell retentions started quoting at $27, not including any data or text messages, and not including call display.

Comment Computer Science as a Problem Solving method (Score 2) 315

Twenty minutes to demonstrate binary sort by tearing apart (literally!) phone books to find a person listed there, is how CS50 opens its classes. Take a look at the opencourseware site cs50.tv. It's practical, it's interactive, and it really shows the computational aspects that we take for granted. Twenty minutes to demonstrate selection sort and merge sort might be a bit tight though.

I think a discussion of the more "non-computer" parts of computer science would keep an audience more interested than a discussion about programming languages, which could easily lose people in the first five minutes.

Comment Re:They didn't need good lawyers (Score 1) 258

The major restriction is on the redistribution part. I can modify all I want and not redistribute, and that's fine too. This "modify and not redistribute" might be called "using" the software.

Under copyright law, you never had any license of redistribution in the first place. The GNU GPL is a license which stipulates you must also redistribute your changes if you redistribute at all. That is, you're allowed to download and install and use Linux whether or not you accept the GPL. But you can't distribute Linux (the kernel) without also opening the source and modifications.

Comment A question borne of helplessness... (Score -1, Troll) 358

You're actually asking readers to "construct you a curriculum," without even starting to discuss what you've found so far. That reeks of laziness and apathy. More important than actually going through the material is the motivation to get through it. You seem to be of the mind that you'll "get around to it." That's not motivation.

Still, that's not a very helpful reply, so I'll give you a hint: MIT OpenCourseWare. Or go to any university website, look through their "Physics" program, check the degree prerequisites, and start grabbing the textbooks for those courses. That'll be a comprehensive curriculum on its own.

Comment Re:Oh look... (Score 0) 170

I don't think the restricted share units is the problem, it's the sheer number of them. Sure, he "participates with the shareholders" but I don't think he'll be particularly hurt if those shares lose 75% of their value. I can't honestly see anybody caring about losing $300 million if they still get to keep $100 million afterwards.

$100 million is probably 30 times what you'll make in a lifetime.

Slashdot Top Deals

Crazee Edeee, his prices are INSANE!!!

Working...