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Government

James Murdoch Criticizes BBC For Providing "Free News" 703

Posted by timothy from the you-don't-trust-the-gov't-to-report-news-fairly? dept.
Hugh Pickens writes "News Corporation's James Murdoch says that a 'dominant' BBC threatens independent journalism in the UK and that free news on the web provided by the BBC made it 'incredibly difficult' for private news organizations to ask people to pay for their news. 'It is essential for the future of independent digital journalism that a fair price can be charged for news to people who value it,' says Murdoch. 'The expansion of state-sponsored journalism is a threat to the plurality and independence of news provision.' In common with the public broadcasting organizations of many other European countries, the BBC is funded by a television license fee charged to all households owning a television capable of receiving broadcasts. Murdoch's News Corporation, one of the world's largest media conglomerates, owns the Times, the Sunday Times and Sun newspapers and pay TV provider BSkyB in the UK and the New York Post, Wall Street Journal, and Fox News TV in the US." Note that James Murdoch is the son of Rupert Murdoch.
Cellphones

Microsoft Tag, Smartphone-Scannable Barcodes 258

Posted by kdawson from the cue-cat-lives dept.
dhavleak writes "Microsoft Research has come up with Microsoft Tag: '...just aim your camera phone at a Tag and instantly access mobile content, videos, music, contact information, maps, social networks, promotions, and more. Nothing to type, no browsers to launch!' Device support is fairly extensive (iPhone, WinMo, BlackBerry and more), and tag scanning appears to work quickly and reliably from different distances and angles. Long Zheng has an overview on his site. The Tag is similar to a barcode, but has obvious visual differences — colored vs. black and white, and triangles vs. squares or lines. The technology looks interesting, but will it get the adoption necessary to be successful? What applications do you see for such technology?"

Comment Complete answers to uniscrew exam (Score 1) 581

by tulare (#26429911) Attached to: Personality Testing For Employment

Fuck it, and fuck them. This sort of thing leads direct to "Idiocracy" becoming reality. So this bit is borrowed from Melbel, who posted it in the hopes that the information gets spread far and wide. If you are looking for a job that uses this exam, I'm sorry for you, but here's at least a glimpse into how the faragin bastidges want you to conform:

SA = Strongly Agree
A = Agree
D = Disagree
SD = Strongly Disagree

You expect to succeed in whatever you do SA
You are good at taking charge of a group A
You keep calm when under stress SA
You are somewhat of a thrill-seeker SD
You like to be alone SD
You are well aware of your inner feelings SA
People are often mean to you SD
You get angry more often than nervous SD
You know when someone is in a bad mood, even if they donâ(TM)t show it SA

You would like a job that is quiet and predictable SD
You work hard at what you do SA
You keep your promises, no matter what SA
You work better with your hands than your mind A
You donâ(TM)t work too hard because it doesnâ(TM)t pay off anyway SD
You love to be with people SA
You love to listen to people talk about themselves SA
You hate to give up if you canâ(TM)t solve a hard problem SA
You prefer to do things alone SD
When under pressure, you think about all that can go wrong SD
It is easy for you to ignore small problems SD
You feel lively and energetic at parties SA
You are a quiet person SD
You donâ(TM)t like to be interrupted when you are doing something SD

When someone is rude to you, you get over it quickly SA
You do not always feel hopeful about your future SD
When you need to, you take it easy at work SD
You attract attention to yourself SD
You believe that you would be very successful at a sales job SA
You finish the work you have to do, even when youâ(TM)re tired or bored SA
You are proud of the work you do at school or on a job SA
You look forward to going to work (or school) SA
You quickly see the solutions to new problems SA
You have no big regrets about your past SA
In school, you were one of the best students SA
It bothers you when something unexpected disrupts your day SD
When someone treats you badly, you ignore it SA
You like people to notice you A

Slow-moving people make you impatient A
You often feel nervous about something SD
You got mostly good grades in high school SA
Many people cannot be trusted D
You rarely act without thinking SA
You have friends, but donâ(TM)t like them to be too close SD
You could describe yourself as âtidyâ(TM) SA
In your free time, you go out more than stay home SA
Your stuff is often kind of messy SD
People have a lot of arguments with you SD
You have a lot of different abilities SA
Your moods are steady from day to day SA
You are lively and talkative SA
There are some people you really canâ(TM)t stand SD
You do not fake being polite SD
You show it when you are in a bad mood SD
When things go wrong, itâ(TM)s hard to control your temper SD

It bothers you when you have to obey a lot of rules SD
You can argue hard but still keep it friendly SA
You would rather not get involved in other peopleâ(TM)s problems D
It is not easy for you to put your ideas in writing SD
When you are annoyed with something, you say so SD
You were absent very few days from high school SA
Youâ(TM)ve had some disappointments that youâ(TM)ll never get over SD
You follow through on everything that you start SA
You feel nervous when there are demands you canâ(TM)t meet A
You think a lot about the worries and stresses you have D
Peopleâ(TM)s feelings are sometimes hurt by what you say SD
You make more sensible choices than careless ones SA
It bothers you a long time when someone is unfair to you SD
You change from feeling happy to sad without any reason SD
You like to try things that are new and different SA
You do some things that upset people SD
When you are done with your work, you look for more to do. SA

You are always learning about new things SA
You are skilled at convincing people SA
You swear when you argue SD
You donâ(TM)t act polite when you donâ(TM)t want to SD
When people make mistakes, you correct them SA
You usually like to be by yourself SD
You talk cheerfully to people you meet SA
You do what you want, no matter what others think SD
You tend to follow others more than lead A
Realistically, some of your projects will never be finished SD
People do a lot of things that make you angry SD
You like to take the lead with others SA
You make new friends all the time SA
You sometimes thought seriously about quitting high school SD
Any trouble you have is your own fault SA
When someone criticizes you, you criticize back SD
You like to plan things before you start to do them SA
You shy away from trying new things SD
You are good at leading people D

You worry about saying the wrong things to people A
You like to take frequent breaks when working on something difficult SD
You have plenty of self-confidence SA
You are not interested in your friendsâ(TM) problems SD
You do not like to meet new people SD
Your friends and family approve of the things you do SA
You bounce back right away from disappointments SA
Itâ(TM)s fun to go out to events with big crowds SA
It is important for you to feel good about your work SA
You feel bad for a long time after youâ(TM)ve made a mistake SD
Youâ(TM)d rather not compete very much SD
You avoid arguments as much as possible SD
You can easily cheer up and forget a problem SA
You like to talk a lot SA
You do things carefully so you donâ(TM)t make mistakes SA
You have to give up on some things that you start SD
You donâ(TM)t believe a lot of what people say SD
You donâ(TM)t care what people think of you SD
You like to have a lot to do SA

You finish your work no matter what SA
You are careful not to offend people SA
You think a lot about things that have bothered you SD
You could not deal with difficult people all day SD
You donâ(TM)t care if you offend people SD
You pay close attention to peopleâ(TM)s feelings SA
You agree with people more than you argue SA
You work best at a slow but steady speed SD
You think of yourself as being very sensible SA
Right now, you care more about having fun than being serious at school or work SD
You act pleasant even when you feel bad SA
You want to be the best at everything you do SA
You donâ(TM)t worry about making a good impression SD
You wait to start your work until you are told to SD

You get mad at yourself when you make mistakes SA
Youâ(TM)d rather blend into a crowd than stand out D
You look back and feel bad about things youâ(TM)ve done SA
In school or on a job, you could be doing better than you are SD
When you go someplace, you are never late SA
You have no big worries SD
You donâ(TM)t work harder than you have to SD
You take the lead in conversations or discussions SA
It is maddening when the court lets guilty criminals go free SA
Other peopleâ(TM)s feelings are their own business D
You always try not to hurt peopleâ(TM)s feelings SA
In groups, someone else usually takes the lead D
You are a good reader.SA
You do not like small talk SD
You do all you can do to win SA
You do not like to take orders SD
You have trouble dealing with sudden changes SD

You try to sense what others are thinking and feeling SA
You try to make everything you do perfect SA
Youâ(TM)ve done your share of trouble making SD
You would rather work on a team than by yourself SA
You are hard to get along with when you are in a bad mood SD
You criticize people when they deserve it SD
You have always had good behavior in school or work SA
People who talk all the time are annoying D
You like to be in the middle of a big crowd SA
You have confidence in yourself SA
You give direct criticism when you need to SA
You ignore people you donâ(TM)t like SD
You donâ(TM)t care if you offend people SD
You chat with people you donâ(TM)t know SA
You have a busy, active schedule SA
Social Networks

Personality Testing For Employment 581

Posted by kdawson from the strongly-disagree dept.
Thelasko writes "While I was in college, I had the opportunity to take an elective course in Industrial Psychology. One section of the course covered hiring practices and the validity of 'personality testing' to screen applicants (Google link for non-subscribers). The Wall Street Journal has a long article discoursing on how such tests are used in today's economy. While personality tests may be designed to uncover underlying personality traits such as honesty, critics claim that the tests instead reward cheaters." The article talks mostly about the tests' use in winnowing candidates for retail positions — deciding whom to interview. Anybody encountered them in an IT or more technical context?
Security

Walmart Photo Keychain Comes Preloaded With Malware 224

Posted by timothy from the caveat-maxima-emptor dept.
Blowit writes "With the Christmas holidays just past and opening up your electronic presents may get you all excited, but not for a selected lot of people who got the Mercury 1.5" Digital Photo Frame from Walmart (or other stores). My father-in-law attached the device to his computer and his Trend Micro Anti-virus screamed that a virus is on the device. I scanned the one I have and AVAST did not find any virus ... So I went to Virscan.org to see which vendors found what, and the results are here and here." Update: 12/29 05:44 GMT by T : The joy is even more widespread; MojoKid points out that some larger digital photo frames have been delivered similarly infected this year, specifically Samsung's SPF-85H 8-inch digital photo frame, sold through Amazon among other vendors, which arrived with "W32.Sality.AE worm on the installation disc for Samsung Frame Manager XP Version 1.08, which is needed for using the SPF-85H as a USB monitor." Though Amazon was honest enough to issue an alert, that alert offers no reason to think that only Amazon's stock was affected.
The Internet

Smart Spam Filtering For Forums and Blogs? 183

Posted by timothy from the world-will-beat-a-path-to-your-door dept.
phorm writes "While filtering for spam on email and other related mediums seems to be fairly productive, there is a growing issue with spam on forums, message-boards, blogs, and other such sites. In many cases, sites use prevention methods such as captchas or question-answer values to try and restrict input to human-only visitors. However, even with such safeguards — and especially with most forms of captcha being cracked fairly often these days — it seems that spammers are becoming an increasing nuisance in this regard. While searching for plugins or extensions to spamassassin etc I have had little luck finding anything not tied into the email framework. Google searches for PHP-based spam filtering tends to come up with mostly commercial and/or more email-related filters. Does anyone know of a good system for filtering spam in general messages? Preferably such a system would be FOSS, and something with a daemon component (accessible by port or socket) to offer quick response-times."
Spam

CAN-SPAM Act Turns 5 Today — What Went Wrong? 301

Posted by kdawson from the calling-mister-hormel dept.
alphadogg writes "Five years ago, the US tech industry, politicians, and Internet users were wringing their hands over the escalating problem of spam. This prompted Congress to pass a landmark anti-spam bill known as the CAN-SPAM Act in December 2003. Fast forward five years. The number of spam messages sent over the Internet every day has grown more than 10-fold, topping 164 billion worldwide in August 2008. Almost 97% of all e-mails are spam, costing US ISPs and corporations an estimated $42 billion a year. What went wrong here?"
Databases

Sun's Mickos Is OK With Monty's MySQL 5.1 Rant 155

Posted by kdawson from the say-what-you-want dept.
narramissic writes "Back on November 29, MySQL developer Michael Widenius trashed Sun's decision to give MySQL 5.1 a 'generally available' designation in a now-infamous blog post. Widenius warned users to be 'very cautious about MySQL 5.1' because 'there are still many known and unknown fatal bugs in the new features that are still not addressed.' And now we get Sun's response. In an interview Monday, Marten Mickos, senior VP of Sun's database group, said, 'I learned over many years about the benefits and the painfulness of absolute transparency in open source. A little bit of debate never hurts. This is part of being an open-source company. ... People are free to blog about what they want.' Doubtless, this will do nothing to end the debate over whether Widenius will follow fellow MySQL co-founder David Axmark's lead and leave Sun."
Education

How To Help Our Public Schools With Technology? 378

Posted by kdawson from the freedom-programmers dept.
armorer writes "I'm a programmer engaged to an inner-city public school teacher. I've been thinking for a long time now about what I can do to help close the technology gap, and I finally did something (very small) about it. I convinced my company to give me a few old computers they were replacing, refurbished them, installed Edubuntu on them, and donated them to her classroom. I also took some vacation time to go in, install everything, and give a lesson on computers to the kids. It was a great experience, but now I know first-hand how little technology these schools have. I only helped one classroom. The school needs more. (Really the whole district needs more!) And while I want to help them, I don't really know how. With Thanksgiving a week away and more holidays approaching, I suspect I'm not the only one thinking about this sort of thing. I know it's a hard problem, so I'm not looking for any silver bullets. What do Slashdot readers do? What should I be doing so that I'm more effective? How do you find resources and time to give back?"
The Internet

Browsing Frugally Without Wasting Bandwidth? 450

Posted by Soulskill from the ix-nay-on-the-orn-pay dept.
forrestm writes "At home, my internet connection is limited to 1GB / month before I have to pay extra. At my university, I'm charged around 2.5c per megabyte. I rarely download anything big, but I often go through a large amount of bandwidth by simply browsing around. For example, when I play a YouTube video, click a link, and then return to the video, the whole video reloads. When I read some websites, such as BoingBoing.net or Cnet.com, my status bar shows a whole lot of data being transferred through other domains. Some pages seem to send/receive data at certain intervals for the duration of my visit. When I begin to enter a search in Firefox's search bar, a list of suggestions is automatically downloaded. In addition to this, Firefox often requests internet access of its own accord, even though I have automatic updating turned off. All this is costing me! How do I stop unsolicited use of my internet connection? How do I go about not wasting bandwidth like this?"

Comment Re:From one consumer's perspective... (Score 1) 1276

by tulare (#25113991) Attached to: Bad Signs For Blu-ray
Exactly! "Less than two hundred bucks" isn't cheap when you can get a reasonably decent DVD player for $30-$40. And who gives a rip about 1080p when all one has to watch on is a 19-inch CRT screen.

When house-sized flat screens start to match (not come close to, but match) the cost of similar CRT or projection sets, and when Blu-Ray players drop below about 80 bucks, then the market will shift. Not before.
Science

Has Superstition Evolved To Help Mankind Survive? 621

Posted by samzenpus from the step-on-a-crack dept.
Pickens writes "The tendency to falsely link cause to effect — a superstition — is occasionally beneficial, says Kevin Foster, an evolutionary biologist at Harvard University. For example, a prehistoric human might associate rustling grass with the approach of a predator and hide. Most of the time, the wind will have caused the sound, but 'if a group of lions is coming there's a huge benefit to not being around.' Foster worked with mathematical language and a simple definition for superstition to determine exactly when such potentially false connections pay off and found as long as the cost of believing a superstition is less than the cost of missing a real association, superstitious beliefs will be favored. In modern times, superstitions turn up as a belief in alternative and homeopathic remedies. 'The chances are that most of them don't do anything, but some of them do,' Foster says. Wolfgang Forstmeier argues that by linking cause and effect — often falsely — science is simply a dogmatic form of superstition. 'You have to find the trade off between being superstitious and being ignorant,' Forstmeier says. By ignoring building evidence that contradicts their long-held ideas, 'quite a lot of scientists tend to be ignorant quite often.'"
Security

Researcher Publishes Industrial Complex Hack 190

Posted by samzenpus from the who-runs-the-power-plant dept.
snydeq writes "Security researcher Kevin Finisterre has published code that could be used to take control of computers used to manage industrial machinery, potentially giving hackers a back door into utility companies, water plants, and even oil and gas refineries. The code exploits a flaw in supervisory control and data acquisition software from Citect. The vendor has released a patch and risk arises only for systems connected directly to the Internet without firewall protection. Finisterre, however, sees the issue as indicative of a 'culture clash' between IT and process control engineers, who are reluctant to bring computers off-line for patching due to the potential havoc wreaked by downtime. 'A lot of the people who run these systems feel that they're not bound by the same rules as traditional IT,' Finisterre said. 'Their industry is not very familiar with hacking and hackers in general.'"
Supercomputing

Journal Journal: Arthur W. Burks, ENIAC computer theorist, dead at 92

Journal by Bushido Hacks
Acoording to the New York Times (via CNet News) Arthur W. Burks passed away May 18 at a nursing home in Ann Arbor, Michigan, after a long battle with Alzheimer's disease. Though he has a PhD in philosophy, Burks was a member of the team that designed the Eniac computer, a frequent collaborator of John von Neumann and a pioneer in computing education. Professor Burks served as

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