justinjstark - Slashdot User

A Million Kids Misdiagnosed with ADHD? 711

Posted by CmdrTaco on Wednesday August 18, 2010 @08:46AM from the i-wasn't-one-of-them dept.

Jamie was one of several people who submitted links to a story proclaiming that as many as a million kids were misdiagnosed with ADHD simply for being the youngest and therefore least mature in their classes. Worse still, I wonder how many of those kids are permanently put on drugs.

ISPs Lie About Broadband "Up To" Speeds 547

Posted by samzenpus on Tuesday August 17, 2010 @09:47PM from the lies-and-damned-lies dept.

Haffner writes "Ars Technica has an article detailing the difference between ISP advertised 'up to x Mbps' speeds and the actual speeds, in addition to some possible solutions. They find that on average, the advertised speeds were 'up to 6.7 Mbps' while the real median was 3 Mbps and the mean was 4 Mbps. This implies that ISPs were falsely advertising by at least 50%."

Feds Won't File Charges In School Laptop-Spy Case 398

Posted by samzenpus on Tuesday August 17, 2010 @08:17PM from the noa-culpa dept.

jamie writes "Federal prosecutors have decided not to file charges against a Philadelphia school district or its employees over the use of software to remotely monitor students. From the article: 'US Attorney Zane David Memeger says investigators have found no evidence of criminal intent by Lower Merion School District employees who activated tracking software that took thousands of webcam and screenshot images on school-provided laptops.'"

From Slaying Dragons To Dictators 233

Posted by CmdrTaco on Tuesday August 17, 2010 @05:22PM from the thats-a-lotta-xp dept.

tcd004 writes "In a weekend, programmer Austin Heap transformed from an apathetic MMO player to a world class regime-slayer. When word for Iran's rigged election broke over Twitter, Heap decided to dedicate himself to building a better proxy system for people behind Iran's firewall. Heap's creation, Haystack, conceals someone's real online destinations inside a stream of innocuous traffic. You may be browsing an opposition Web site, but to the censors it will appear you are visiting, say, weather.com. Heap tends to hide users in content that is popular in Tehran, sometimes the regime's own government mouthpieces."

Wikileaks Now Hosted By the Swedish Pirate Party 438

Posted by CmdrTaco on Tuesday August 17, 2010 @04:30PM from the i-voted-for-the-other-guy dept.

oskii writes "During his visit to the the Swedish capital Stockholm, Wikileaks spokesman Julian Assange has struck a deal with the local Pirate Party. The party, which participates in the national elections next month, will host several new Wikileaks servers to protect freedom of press and help the whistleblower site to carry out its operation."

Linux Wall Warts Small On Size, Big On Possibilities 316

Posted by CmdrTaco on Tuesday August 17, 2010 @03:47PM from the yes-have-some dept.

davidmwilliams writes "Every geek and technology lover will undoubtedly have stumbled across online adverts for tiny headless Linux-powered devices that are barely larger than the power point they plug into. What can you actually do with them? Plenty, it seems!"

Wikileaks To Publish Remaining Afghan Documents 711

Posted by timothy on Thursday August 12, 2010 @03:26PM from the post-processing dept.

Albanach writes "WikiLeaks spokesman Julian Assange has been quoted by the Associated Press as stating 'the organization is preparing to release the remaining secret Afghan war documents.' According to Assange, they are halfway through processing the remaining 15,000 files as they 'comb through' the files to ensure lives are not placed at risk."

Video Quality Matters Less If You Enjoy the Show 366

Posted by timothy on Thursday August 12, 2010 @02:35PM from the captain-obvious-is-in-uniform dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Rice University researchers say new studies show that if you like what you're watching, you're less likely to notice the difference in video quality of the TV show, Internet video or mobile movie clip, putting a lie to some of the more extravagant marketing claims of electronics manufacturers. 'If you're at home watching and enjoying a movie, we found that you're probably not going to notice or even concern yourself with how many pixels the video is or if the data is being compressed,' said the lead researcher. 'This strong relationship holds across a wide range of encoding levels and movie content when that content is viewed under longer and more naturalistic viewing conditions.'"

ISP Owner Who Fought FBI Spying Freed From Gag Order 404

Posted by timothy on Thursday August 12, 2010 @01:47PM from the free-to-move-about-the-prison dept.

Tootech writes "So you wonder what happens when an ISP recieves a a so-called 'national security letter' from the FBI? Well, read this about an ISP owner's fight to not have to turn over everything and the sink to the FBI: 'The owner of an internet service provider who mounted a high-profile court challenge to a secret FBI records demand has finally been partially released from a 6-year-old gag order that forced him to keep his role in the case a secret from even his closest friends and family. He can now identify himself and discuss the case, although he still can't reveal what information the FBI sought. Nicholas Merrill, 37, was president of New York-based Calyx Internet Access when he received a so-called "national security letter" from the FBI in February 2004 demanding records of one of his customers and filed a lawsuit to challenge it.'"

Textured Tactile Touchscreens 99

Posted by CmdrTaco on Thursday August 12, 2010 @11:32AM from the tremendous-triumph dept.

HizookRobotics writes "A new covering developed by Senseg and Toshiba Information Systems gives touchpads, LCDs, and other curved surfaces (eg. cellphones) programmable texture using a high-resolution electrotactile array — a grid of electrodes that excite nerves in the skin with small pulses of current to trick the body into perceiving texture, pressure, or pin-pricks depending on the current amplitude and electrode resolution. The new covering has many potential applications: interactive gaming, touchscreens with texture, robot interfaces, etc."

EFF Reviews the Verizon-Google Net Neutrality Deal 162

Posted by CmdrTaco on Thursday August 12, 2010 @09:48AM from the yeah-that's-still-happening dept.

I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property writes "The EFF has written an analysis of the Net Neutrality deal brokered between Verizon and Google. While the EFF agrees with substantial portions of it, such as giving the FCC only enough authority to investigate complaints, rather than giving them a blank check to create regulations, there are a number of troubling issues with the agreement. In particular, they're concerned that what constitutes 'reasonable' network management is in the eye of the beholder and they don't like giving a free pass to anyone who claims they're attempting to block unlawful content, even when doing so in such a way that they interfere with lawful activities. On balance, while there are some good ideas about how to get Net Neutrality with minimal government involvement, there are serious flaws in the agreement that would allow ISPs to interfere with any service they wanted to because there is no algorithm that can correctly determine which numbers are currently illegal."

Tool Use By Humans Pushed Back By 800,000 Years 189

Posted by samzenpus on Thursday August 12, 2010 @05:21AM from the oldest-spoon dept.

gpronger writes "The journal Nature reports that newly discovered tool marks on bones indicates that we were using tools at minimum 800,000 years earlier than previously thought. This places the start of tool use at 3.4 million years ago or earlier. The most likely ancestor in this time frame would be Australopithecus afarensis. The researchers, led by palaeoanthropologist Zeresenay Alemseged of the California Academy of Science, San Francisco,and Shannon McPherron, (an archaeologist at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany) state that cut marks on the bones of an impala-sized creature and another closer in size to a buffalo, indicate butchering of the animals by our distant ancestors. However, they do not believe that they were in fact hunters, more likely scavenging the remains left behind by large predators."

Music Festival Producer Pre-Sues Bootleggers 422

Posted by samzenpus on Wednesday August 11, 2010 @05:03PM from the nipped-in-the-bud dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Apparently, if you even have been *thinking* about bootlegging the Mile High Music Festival this coming weekend in Denver you've already been sued. No joke. Event producer AEG has already filed trademark infringement claims against 100 John Does and 100 Jane Does in anticipation that they're going to bootleg the event. Since none of the sued parties have actually done anything yet, no one's showing up in court to protest the lawsuit either, so it moves forward... meaning that AEG can use it to get all sorts of law enforcement officials (US Marshals, local and state police and even off-duty officers) to go seize bootleg material."

Obama Wants Allies To Go After WikiLeaks 1088

Posted by CmdrTaco on Wednesday August 11, 2010 @12:04PM from the they're-gonna-need-a-blimp dept.

krou writes "Coming on the back of human rights groups criticizing WikiLeaks, American officials are saying that the Obama administration is pressuring allies such as Australia, Britain, and Germany to open criminal investigations against WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, and to try limit his ability to travel. 'It's not just our troops that are put in jeopardy by this leaking. It's UK troops, it's German troops, it's Australian troops — all of the NATO troops and foreign forces working together in Afghanistan,' said one American diplomatic official, who added that other governments should 'review whether the actions of WikiLeaks could constitute crimes under their own national-security laws.'"

FBI Prioritizes Copyright Over Missing Persons 372

Posted by CmdrTaco on Tuesday August 10, 2010 @07:56PM from the well-that-makes...-something dept.

An anonymous reader writes "The FBI has limited resources, so it needs to prioritize what it works on. However, it's difficult to see why dealing with copyright infringement seems to get more attention than identity theft or missing persons. In the past year, the FBI has announced a special new task force to fight intellectual property infringement, but recent reports have shown that both identity theft and missing persons have been downgraded as priorities by the FBI, to the point that there are a backlog of such cases."

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