Want to read Slashdot from your mobile device? Point it at m.slashdot.org and keep reading!

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
×

Comment Re:Gates was on the right track.. (Score 1) 304

That $2bn/yr is coming from lots of different sources, or is at least being funded by many different players in the Android market in some form or fashion. Besides, Samsung is make 95% of the profits on Android, not Google: http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-05-16/google-makes-android-but-samsung-makes-all-the-money

Submission + - Protesters Dodge the Sudanese Internet Shutdown with a Phone-Powered Crowdmap (vice.com)

Submitted by Daniel_Stuckey
Daniel_Stuckey writes: Called the Abena crowd map, the map is the product of Mohammed Hashim Saleh and Abeer Khairy, engineers both, and Ahmed Hassan, the co-founder of Khartoum Geeks. In the short amount of time the internet was on yesterday, they deployed the map, which follows events on the ground in Sudan with direct reports.

SMS messages are connected automatically with the Ushahidi-based crowdmapping platform, Saleh told me. Activists, some in-country (who work when possible) and the rest outside, login and check the messages. They are then doubled checked with news sources and social media before being finally confirmed and mapped. The crew has also been manually updating the platform.

Submission + - Ford's Mulally emerging as frontrunner for Microsoft CEO job (networkworld.com)

Submitted by colinneagle
colinneagle writes: Speculation is growing that Ford CEO Alan Mulally is not just in the running for the CEO position at Microsoft, but has become the frontrunner among all candidates, both internal and external. One reason, which I did note in my recent blog post on him, is that Mulally was a top executive at Boeing for years and has connections to the Seattle area. Earlier this month, Reuters reported earlier this month that the Ford board had given Mulally the option to step down earlier from his position than is specified in his contract (there was speculation that he might take a position in the Obama administration). Nokia CEO and former Microsoft executive Stephen Elop has remained a top candidate, but interest has shifted toward Mulally because of his experience turning around a faltering company. No one can say Elop turned around Nokia.

Submission + - Indian Supreme Court gives voters right to reject all candidates (indiatimes.com)

Submitted by btb1
btb1 writes: In a landmark judgement on Friday, the (Indian) Supreme Court for the first time allowed voters to cast negative vote by pressing a button saying none of the candidates is worthy of his vote. (Highlights)

The SC asked the Election Commission to provide None Of The Above (NOTA) button on EVMs and ballot papers.

The apex court said the right to vote and the right to say NOTA are both part of basic right of voters.

"When a large number of voters will press NOTA button, it will force political parties to choose better candidates. Negative voting would lead to systemic change in polls," the apex bench observed.

Submission + - NSA Trying to Shift Surveillance Narrative

Submitted by Trailrunner7
Trailrunner7 writes: When things go badly in Washington, D.C., when a scandal breaks or damaging leaks begin to surface, there is an established and well-worn playbook that politicians and executives can turn to for solace. There’s a page for every conceivable situation, and it’s that playbook that the National Security Agency and its director, Gen. Keith Alexander, are relying on now as they struggle to win back a bit of the public and political support they’ve lost and keep their tenuous grasp on the collection tools they’ve been employing for more than a decade.

“What we were blamed for as an intelligence community is not connecting the dots. So we came up with a couple of programs. FISA is the key to connecting the dots,” Alexander said.

By shifting the focus away from the NSA’s potential abuses of the surveillance programs the question of whether the bulk collection of phone and Internet data is even necessary, Alexander is employing the time-honored strategy of answering the question he wanted to be asked rather than the one that was posed. He is changing the narrative.

No one disputes that the NSA, CIA, FBI and other agencies are working hard to defend the country and disrupt terrorism. That’s their job, and they’re good at it. Those agencies need tools to do the job, but the thing about tools is that each one is designed for a specific purpose. Start using one for a different job, and it’s not as effective, or worse, someone gets hurt. The old saying is that when all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. That bit of wisdom isn’t limited to hand tools.
Medicine

Aging Is a Disease; Treat It Like One 625

Posted by Soulskill from the can-i-take-sick-days-for-aging,-then? dept.
theodp writes "In a letter to Sergey Brin, Maria Konovalenko urges the Google founder to pursue his interest in the topics of aging and longevity. 'Defeating or simply slowing down aging,' writes Konovalenko, 'is the most useful thing that can be done for all the people on the planet.' Calling for research into longevity gene therapy, extending lifespan pharmacologically, and studying close species that differ significantly in lifespan, Konovalenko says 'it is crucial to make numerous medical organizations recognize aging as a disease. If medical organizations were to recognize aging as a disease, it could significantly accelerate progress in studying its underlying mechanisms and the development of interventions to slow its progress and to reduce age-related pathologies. The prevailing regard for aging as a "natural process" rather than a disease or disease-predisposing condition is a major obstacle to development and testing of legitimate anti-aging treatments. This is the largest market in the world, since 100% of the population in every country suffers from aging.'"
United States

Number of Federal Wiretaps Rose 71 Percent In 2012 84

Posted by timothy from the transparent-is-the-right-word dept.
cold fjord writes "Looks like last year was pretty busy. I wonder how many were leaks and media? From the Washington Post: 'The number of wiretaps secured in federal criminal investigations jumped 71 percent in 2012 over the previous year, according to newly released figures. Federal courts authorized 1,354 interception orders for wire, oral and electronic communications, up from 792 the previous year, ... There was a 5 percent increase in state and local use of wiretaps in the same period. ... There is no explanation of why the federal figures increased so much, and it is generally out of line with the number of wiretaps between 1997 and 2009, which averaged about 550 annually. There was also a large number of wiretaps in 2010, when 1,207 were secured. A single wiretap can sweep up thousands of communications. One 30-day local wiretap in California, for instance, generated 185,268 cellular telephone interceptions, of which 12 percent were incriminating, according to the report. The vast majority of the wiretaps in both federal and state cases were obtained as part of drug investigations, and they overwhelmingly were directed at cellphones ... Only 14 court orders were for personal residences. Most jurisdictions limit the period of surveillance to 30 days, but extensions can be obtained.'"

Comment Write code! (Score 3, Informative) 472

by Effugas (#44107671) Attached to: Ask Slashdot: Getting Hired As a Self-Taught Old Guy?
Seriously. Write some code, publish it on Github. Spin up a single serving web page, does one interesting thing as soon as you arrive. Remember, everyone else with resumes could be pretending, you're actually doing stuff.

For work experience, sign up on freelancing sites like odesk. Take jobs just to do them. Nobody knows how old you are, there. Even if all you can do is sysadmin -- well, admin some cloud services!
The Courts

Irish Judge Orders 'The Internet' To Delete Video 243

Posted by Unknown Lamer from the when-idiots-and-networks-collide dept.
New submitter edanto writes "A young Irish man wrongly accused of jumping from a taxi without paying the fare has secured a judgement from an Irish court ordering the video removed from the entire Internet. Experts from Google, Youtube, Facebook, and others must tell the court in two weeks if this is technically possible. The thing is, the video is accurate, it is only a comment that wrongly identified Eoin McKeogh as the fare-jumper in the video that is inaccurate. It's not clear if the judge has made any orders about the comment."
Science

Why All the Higgs Hate? It's a 'Vanilla' Boson 205

Posted by Unknown Lamer from the not-a-special-snowflake dept.
astroengine writes "Decades of searching and a 7.5 billion Euro particle accelerator later, why is everyone so down on one of the biggest discoveries of the century? Well, as the evidence strengthens for a bona fide signal of a 'Standard Model' Higgs boson with a mass of 125 GeV, many scientists are disappointed that the discovery of an 'ordinary' — or 'vanilla' according to Caltech cosmologist Sean Carroll — Higgs removes any doubt for more exotic physics beyond the Standard Model. It's a strange juxtaposition; a profound discovery that's also an anticlimax. But to confirm the identity of the Higgs candidate, LHC physicists still need to measure the particle's spin. 'Until we can confidently tie down the particle's spin,' said CERN Research Director Sergio Bertolucci at this week's Rencontres de Moriond conference in Italy, 'the particle will remain Higgs-like. Only when we know that is has spin-zero will we be able to call it a Higgs.'"
Science

The Science of Hugo Chavez's Long Term Embalming 215

Posted by Unknown Lamer from the beyond-the-grave dept.
Hugh Pickens writes writes "Discover Magazine reports that Hugo Chavez will apparently get an embalming job designed to keep him looking alive for decades similar to that of Russia's Vladimir Lenin, whose body still lies in a mausoleum in Moscow's Red Square, nearly 90 years after his death. So how do you preserve a human body for decades without it turning into a pile of melted tissue? First, get to work quickly. Upon death, the human body starts decomposing immediately. The way to stop it is with formaldehyde, a preservative used for the past century, which inhibits the enzyme decomposition as well as killing bacteria. 'You pump the chemical in, and as the formaldehyde hits the cells of the body, it firms up the protein of the cell, or fixates it,' says Vernie Fountain, head of the Fountain National Academy of Professional Embalming Skills in Springfield, Mo. 'That's what makes them stiff.' With a body that will have to be on display for years, it's likely to require a top-shelf, super-strong solution. 'If I were doing Hugo Chavez, I would strengthen the solution and use more preservative product,' says Fountain. Next, get a good moisturizer. Formaldehyde preserves, but it also dries out the body. Vaseline or other moisturizers can preserve the look of skin, according to Melissa Johnson Williams, executive director of the American Society of Embalmers. Finally keep cool. Heat decomposes a body so for long term preservation, the body has to be kept at the temperature of a standard kitchen refrigerator, somewhere in the mid-40s. Lastly, if Venezuelans really want to keep Hugo Chavez around forever, like many other world figures, there's only one solution that works, according to Fountain. 'The best form of preservation is mummification.'"
Cloud

Datagram Recovers From 'Apocalyptic' Flooding During Sandy 114

Posted by Unknown Lamer from the mother-nature-wants-you-to-die dept.
1sockchuck writes "During SuperStorm Sandy, few data centers faced a bigger challenge than the Datagram facility in lower Manhattan. The storm surge from Sandy flooded its basement, disabling critical pumps. 'It was apocalyptic,' said CEO Alex Reppen. 'It was like a tidal wave over lower Manhattan.' While companies like CoreSite dealt primarily with the loss of ConEd power, the Datagram team sought to recover operations in an active flood zone. Why was mission-critical equipment in the basement? Because city officials restrict placing fuel tanks on rooftops and upper floors, citing concerns about diesel emerging from the 9-11 attacks."

Slashdot Top Deals

Beware of all enterprises that require new clothes, and not rather a new wearer of clothes. -- Henry David Thoreau

Close