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Comment Slashdot could be considered a social networks... (Score 2, Interesting) 396

by bodland (#39474121) Attached to: Senators Ask Feds To Probe Facebook Log-in Requests
Expect a bill to be introduced by Republicans that allows employers full access to employee's personal account info if at anyway related to the employment.

Also companies are increasingly utilising social networks for marketing and PR and will use employees as a "PR" echo chamber to evangelise the employer and or it's products.

Expect this to be made legal....and the justification is the old terrorism mantra...."If you have nothing to hide, then what's the problem...?"
Government

White House CIO Describes His 'Worst Day' Ever 333

Posted by Soulskill from the need-a-bipartisan-effort-to-swap-out-a-machine dept.
dcblogs writes "In the first 40 days of President Barack Obama's administration, the White House email system was down 23% of time, according to White House CIO Brook Colangelo, the person who also delivered the 'first presidential Blackberry.' The White House IT systems inherited by the new administration were in bad shape. Over 82% of the White House's technology had reached its end of life. Desktops, for instance, still had floppy disk drives, including the one Colangelo delivered to Rahm Emanuel, Obama's then chief of staff and now Mayor of Chicago. There were no redundant email servers."
Communications

Have Online Comment Sections Become Specious? 429

Posted by samzenpus from the if-you-don't-have-anything-nice-to-say dept.
christoofar writes "Gawker founder Nick Denton says online comments have proven themselves to be not worth the trouble, a waste of resources, and contribute nothing to online conversation or even capture the intelligence of readers. From the article: 'In the early days of the Internet, there was hope that the unprecedented tool for global communication would lead to thoughtful sharing and discussion on its most popular sites. A decade and a half later, the very idea is laughable, says [Denton]. "It didn't happen," said Denton, whose properties include the blogs Gawker, Jezebel, Gizmodo, io9 and Lifehacker. "It's a promise that has so not happened that people don't even have that ambition anymore. The idea of capturing the intelligence of the readership — that's a joke."'"
IT

Ask Slashdot: Best Practices For Leaving an IT Admin Position? 290

Posted by Soulskill from the many-bosses-are-panicking-while-reading-this dept.
An anonymous reader writes "I've been the server admin at a university for the past five years. Recently, I was given the chance to move from servers to networking, and I jumped at it. I now find myself typing up all my open-ended projects, removing certain scripts and stopping others. What would the community recommend as best practices for passing on administration of some servers? I am trying to avoid a phone call that results in me having to remote in, explain something, jog to the other side of campus to access the machine, etc. Essentially, I'm trying to cover all my bases so any excuse my replacement has to call me is seen as nothing but laziness or incompetence. I am required to give him a day of training to show him where everything is on the servers (web and database), and during that day I'm going to have him change all the passwords. But aside from locking myself out and knowing what is where, what else should I be doing?"
Science

Biologists Debunk the "Rotting Y Chromosome" Theory 248

Posted by samzenpus from the men-of-the-future dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Biologists have previously predicted that that the male sex-determining Y chromosome, which once carried around 800 genes, like the X, has lost hundreds of them over the past 300 million years, will mutate itself out of existence, leading to the eventual extinction of men. However, researchers of a study published in the latest issue of Nature found evidence to suggest that the Y chromosome will not shed any more of the 19 ancestral genes that it is left with."
Google

Is Santorum's "Google Problem" a Google Problem? 775

Posted by samzenpus from the google-juice-nobody-wants dept.
theodp writes "Fortune contributor Dan Mitchell argues that GOP presidential candidate Rick Santorum's 'Google problem' isn't Google's problem at all. 'The fact that searching for 'santorum' puts the profane, anti-Rick Santorum site SpreadingSantorum.com (NSFW) at the top of Google's search results,' insists Mitchell, 'is not an example of a "Google bomb," despite the widespread use of that term to describe the result.' In the same camp is Search Engine Land's Danny Sullivan, who also says that Santorum has a search engine problem, not a Google problem. 'It's just that everyone fixates on Google,' Sullivan adds. Which is perhaps to be expected, since Google is the King of Search and also has ties to SpreadingSantorum creator Dan Savage, having featured the sex-advice columnist in Google's The-web-is-what-you-make-of-it Chrome ad campaign (for Savage's admirable It Gets Better Project, not SpreadingSantorum). So, considering Google's vaunted search quality guidelines, is some kind of change in order? Sullivan, while making it clear he opposes Santorum's views, nonetheless suggests Google is long overdue to implement a disclaimer for the 'Santorum' search results. 'They are going to confuse some people,' he explains, 'who will assume Google's trying to advance a political agenda with its search results.'"
The Military

U.S. Navy Receives First Industry Built Railgun Prototype 277

Posted by Unknown Lamer from the killing-pirates-with-magnets dept.
Zothecula writes "Two years after BAE Systems was awarded a US$21 million contract from the Office of Naval Research (ONR) to develop an advanced Electromagnetic Railgun for the U.S. Navy, the company has delivered the first industry-built prototype demonstrator to the Naval Surface Warfare Center (NSWC) Dahlgren. The prototype launcher is now being prepared for testing which is scheduled to take place in the coming weeks."
Biotech

Building the Bionic Man 129

Posted by samzenpus from the we-can-make-him-better dept.
nk497 writes "Will we soon be upgrading body parts like the components inside our PCs? 'Human enhancement' technologies are quickly evolving, making it easier to treat health conditions — and make us more powerful. Neural implants are already being used to restore vision, but in the future it could be used to give us better than 20/20 eyesight. Bionic arms will extend beyond prostheses, and be used to help boost our strength — handy for working in a warehouse and for soldiers. 'We use tools all the time to enhance our natural functions, and physical interaction is increasingly usurped by the virtual connections afforded by computers, smartphones and the internet,' said one researcher. 'So connecting these tools directly from the brain is perhaps not so far-fetched.'"

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