dedmorris - Slashdot User

Submission + - XKCD Webcomic Reaches 1000 Milestone

Submitted by jcreus on Saturday January 07, 2012 @09:59AM

jcreus writes: With the last comic, xkcd has reached the kilocomic milestone. Still, as the webcomic says, some comics left for the first kibicomic! xkcd is probably the best-known geek webcomic, referenced so many times on Slashdot.

Comment Ken Welcomes New Overlords (Score 1) 3

by dedmorris on Wednesday February 16, 2011 @08:48PM (#35227120) Attached to: Watson Wins

Hat tip to Ken, for welcoming our new Computer Overlords in his final jeopardy answer.

Submission + - Watson Wins (bloomberg.com) 3

Submitted by NicknamesAreStupid on Wednesday February 16, 2011 @07:42PM

NicknamesAreStupid writes: The word is in, Watson beats the two best Jeopardy players. Sure, it cost IBM four years and millions of dollars and requires a room full of hardware. In thirty years it will all fit in your pocket and cost $19.99. Resistance is futile; you will be trivialized.

Submission + - US Gov't Mistakenly Shuts Down 84,000 Sites (torrentfreak.com) 1

Submitted by Chaonici on Wednesday February 16, 2011 @06:20PM

Chaonici writes: Last Friday, the United States Department of Homeland Security (DHS) seized ten websites accused of selling counterfeit goods or trafficking in child pornography. However, in the process, about 84,000 unrelated websites were taken offline when the government mistakenly seized the domain of a large DNS provider, FreeDNS. By now, the mistake has been corrected and most of the websites' domains again point to the sites themselves, rather than an intimidating domain seizure image. In a press release, the DHS praised themselves for taking down those ten websites, but completely failed to acknowledge their massive blunder.

Submission + - American Students Were Never Really That Smart (theatlanticwire.com)

Submitted by morphage on Sunday February 13, 2011 @01:10PM

morphage writes: A report states that 'the US performance on PISA has been flat to slightly upward since the test's inception and it has improved on the Third International Mathematics and Science Study, another major series of tests, since 1995'.

Submission + - Sony Hints to Pull Out Music, Games from iTunes (theage.com.au)

Submitted by suraj.sun on Saturday February 12, 2011 @10:24PM

suraj.sun writes: SONY has signalled it may withdraw its artists from Apple's iTunes store and withhold its games from the iPhone in a sign the two companies are on the brink of all-out war.

Sony plans to open a competitor to iTunes, a music streaming service called Music Unlimited, in Australia soon.

Another service launching later this year will enable mobile phone users to pay and play first generation PlayStation games on their handsets. The new Sony music service, which opened in Europe last year, will have a library of 6 million tracks and users will be able to stream songs to Sony TVs, PlayStation3 consoles, PSP portable game players and Blu-Ray players.

Two weeks ago Apple blocked Sony's electronic book application from the iPhone because it would have bypassed Apple's system for buying content.

The Age: http://www.theage.com.au/digital-life/mp3s/war-looms-as-sony-hints-that-it-will-abandon-itunes-20110210-1aonn.html

Submission + - Robot Jet Fighter Takes First Flight (singularityhub.com)

Submitted by lysdexia on Tuesday February 08, 2011 @01:49PM

lysdexia writes: The X-47B is a Tailless Flying Robotic Overlord, which requires neither puny human pilot, nor extraneous remote control. First flight was 29 minutes, climbing to a height of 5000 ft. Next step: landing on aircraft carrier.

Submission + - FBI whistleblower: Feds spy too much on us

Submitted by coondoggie on Tuesday February 08, 2011 @01:26PM

coondoggie writes: The U.S. federal government conducts way too much domestic spying on citizens, by too many federal agencies and targeting people based on their religion and political activity Famous FBI-whistleblower-turned-ACLU-attorney, Mike German, says. “We've documented intelligence activities targeting or obstructing First Amendment-protected activity in 33 states and DC,” he says. He says that citizens need to be aware of the enormous cost of all of this surveillance and realize that “ there's no evidence any of it actually make us safer. We've sacrificed our privacy for no security benefit.” In fact, citizens can’t get a full handle on how much money is being spent on domestic survellience, as budget information has been labeled classified for one of the big programs, the National Intelligence Program

Submission + - Ballmer Turns To Geeks For Salvation (itworld.com)

Submitted by jfruhlinger on Tuesday February 08, 2011 @01:17PM

jfruhlinger writes: One of the critiques of Steve Ballmer as Microsoft CEO is that, as someone who came up through sales, he doesn't really get what running an innovative tech company is about. With the company board starting to question his performance — he didn't get his bonus last year because of the Kin debacle, for instance — it appears that Ballmer planning to install engineers in high places to turn the company around.

Submission + - Egypt's cyber crack-down aided by US company (youtube.com)

Submitted by pinkushun on Sunday February 06, 2011 @04:37AM

pinkushun writes: Aljazeera.net news reports that a US company, Narus, provided Telecom Egypt deep packet inspection tools, to track and target content from users of the Internet and mobile phones, as it passes through routers on the information superhighway.

The Huffingtonpost tells us who else is using this technology, and that when commercial network operators use DPI, the privacy of Internet users is compromised. But in government hands it can crush dissent and lead to human rights violations.

Submission + - Australian Aborigines the first 'astronomers'? (news.com.au)

Submitted by brindafella on Sunday February 06, 2011 @02:25AM

brindafella writes: Look out, Stonehenge, here come the Wurdi Youang rocks in the Australian state of Victoria. A semi-circle of stones as been checked by an astrophysicist from Australia's premier research group, the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO), who says this arrangement of rocks is a carefully aligned solar observatory that may be 10,000 years old. It would have been created by local Aborigines, the Wathaurong people, who have occupied the area for some 25,000 years.

Submission + - Julian Assange wins peace prize! (news.com.au)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 01, 2011 @11:27PM

An anonymous reader writes: The honour, previously given only to the Dalai Lama, Nelson Mandela and Japanese lay Buddhist leader Daisaku Ikeda in the foundation's 14-year history, has been bestowed for Mr Assange's "exceptional courage and initiative in pursuit of human rights".

Foundation director Stuart Rees said today the Australian's work had challenged the old order of power in politics and journalism.

Shouldn't Mr. Assange be given Obama's Nobel Peace Prize also? Obama has done nothing to promote peace, still hasn't closed the torture center at Guantanimo Prison as he promised to do and is still fighting a war in Afghanistan. Sure, that deserves a peace prize.

Submission + - Apple Moves to Tighten Control of App Store (nytimes.com)

Submitted by Strudelkugel on Tuesday February 01, 2011 @10:02PM

Strudelkugel writes: Apple is further tightening its control of the App Store.

Some application developers, including Sony, say Apple has told them they can no longer sell e-books within their apps unless the transactions go through Apple’s system. Apple rejected Sony’s iPhone application, which would have let people buy and read e-books from the Sony Reader Store.

Apple said on Tuesday that it was still allowing customers to read e-books they bought elsewhere within apps. For example, a Sony app could still access books the customer bought earlier from Sony’s store.

But Steve Haber, president of Sony’s digital reading division, said on Monday that Apple had told his company that from now on, all in-app purchases would have to go through Apple.

“It’s the opposite of what we wanted to bring to the market,” Mr. Haber said. “We always wanted to bring the content to as many devices as possible, not one device to one store.”

Submission + - EFF Makes Lawyer Drop the P2P Porn Lawsuit (arstechnica.com)

Submitted by suraj.sun on Tuesday February 01, 2011 @09:02PM

suraj.sun writes: An angry Texas lawyer Evan Stone has dismissed a file-sharing lawsuit on behalf of a pornographic German film called Der Gute Onkel, all thanks to the EFF and Public Citizen.

When file-sharing attorneys file lawsuits against anonymous defendants, they initially face no opposition—their targets are unknown, so no lawyers speak up for their interests until after the subpoenas have been filed and their names are revealed. The EFF and Public Citizen are out to change that, as they did in the Gute Onkel case. The two groups asked the judge to appoint them as attorneys ad litem to speak up for the 670 unknown defendants—and the court agreed.

A few weeks later, Stone asked the court to dismiss the case.

ARSTechnica: http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2011/02/lawyers-cant-handle-opposition-give-up-on-p2p-porn-lawsuit.ars

Submission + - New TSA Scans Won't Create Naked Images (latimes.com)

Submitted by Hugh Pickens writes on Tuesday February 01, 2011 @08:35PM

Hugh Pickens writes writes: The LA Times reports that the Transportation Security Administration is testing software that would allow airport scanners to show objects hidden under the clothes of passengers without creating what appears to be a naked digital image of the passengers instead creating an outline of a generic person on a screen showing any anomalies that would indicate hidden weapons or contraband. The software would be installed on the scanners that are already installed at airports and no new equipment would be needed. The idea is not new. TSA Administrator John Pistole said last year that the agency had long been testing the software but that it had created too many false alarms during early trials. A TSA spokesman says that some of the false-alarm problems have now been resolved in government labs.

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