Slashdot is powered by your submissions, so send in your scoop

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
×

Comment Re:One time... (Score 1) 1208

by TheSeventh (#39634419) Attached to: Internet Responds To Racist Article, Gets Author Fired
A (white) friend of mine was a high school teacher at a charter school in Detroit. The worst insult one of the kids could call each other was "whitey".

Someone higher up in the comments mentioned that people are more comfortable with those that "look like them", but I don't think that's true. Color doesn't really matter to me at all, but I am most comfortable with people who are similar to me in any of a number of ways. Socioeconomic status (Middle middle-class), political views, intelligence level, likes and dislikes, sense of humor, etc. And also, people that are generally described as being "nice", polite, considerate, etc.

Comment Re:Isn't that just nitpicking??? (Score 1) 181

by TheSeventh (#39586545) Attached to: Spaceman-Turned-Politician Can Call Himself 'Astronaut' On Ballot
Well, it's not like anything would think he's running for office from space, so I doubt "former" is needed. Whichever idiot California Republican came up with the idea to sue should be booted out of the party and the state.

Should he also be allowed to call himself 'Scientist' and 'Engineer', or 'College Grad'?

Someone should tell the Republicans about the Streisand Effect. On second thought, no, nobody should tell them. It's better if they don't know.
Your Rights Online

Arizona Attempts To Make Trolling Illegal 474

Posted by Unknown Lamer from the entire-slashdot-readerbase-sent-to-gitmo dept.
LordofEntropy writes "Though unlikely to pass any First Amendment test. Arizona's Gov. Jan Brewer has a bill on her desk that would in essence make 'trolling' illegal. The law states 'It is unlawful for any person, with intent to terrify, intimidate, threaten, harass, annoy or offend, to use any electronic or digital device and use any obscene, lewd or profane language or suggest any lewd or lascivious act, or threaten to inflict physical harm to the person or property of any person.'" This did indeed manage to pass through both houses of legislature and only needs a signature to become law.
Medicine

Woman Wants To Replace Her Non-functioning Hand With a Bionic Prosthesis 171

Posted by Unknown Lamer from the just-inject-techno-organic-virus-instead dept.
erice writes about the case of Nicola Wilding: "Injured in crash which damaged the nerves in her arm, she has reached the limits that can what be accomplished with nerve transplants. She can move her arm but doctors have given up hope of restoring use of her hand. So she wants doctors to amputate the hand and replace it with a bionic version that does work." The doctor, Oskar C. Aszmann, first performed a similar operation last year.
Government

Pay the TSA $100 and Bypass Airport Security 527

Posted by samzenpus from the front-of-the-line dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Catching a flight in the U.S. isn't a great experience anymore due to the security checks involved. You have to remove your shoes, your belt, get your laptop out, be scanned and subjected to radiation in the process. Hundreds of other people are doing the same thing, meaning it takes 40 minutes instead of four. Now, the TSA has come up with a clever, money-making alternative. Instead of scaling back security or speeding it up, you can instead pay $100 and bypass it completely!"
Math

Pi Day Is Coming — But Tau Day Is Better 241

Posted by Soulskill from the circular-logic dept.
PerlJedi writes "A few months ago, a Tweet from Randal Schwartz pointed me to a YouTube video about 'Triangle Parties' made by Vi Hart. My nerdiness and my love of math made it my new favorite thing on YouTube. Now, with Pi Day coming up later this week, I thought it would be an appropriate time to point people to another of her YouTube videos: Pi is Wrong. The website she mentions at the end, Tauday, has a full explanation of the benefits of using Tau rather than Pi. Quoting: 'The Tau Manifesto is dedicated to one of the most important numbers in mathematics, perhaps the most important: the circle constant relating the circumference of a circle to its linear dimension. For millennia, the circle has been considered the most perfect of shapes, and the circle constant captures the geometry of the circle in a single number. Of course, the traditional choice for the circle constant is pi — but, as mathematician Bob Palais notes in his delightful article "Pi Is Wrong!", pi is wrong. It's time to set things right.'"
Politics

Scientists Say People Aren't Smart Enough For Democracy To Flourish 1276

Posted by samzenpus from the you-voted-for-who? dept.
cold fjord writes "The inability of the incompetent to recognize their own limitations is a story that has been covered before on Slashdot. But, what happens when you apply that finding to politics? From the article: 'The democratic process relies on the assumption that citizens can recognize the best political candidate, or best policy idea. But a growing body of research has revealed an unfortunate aspect of the human psyche that would seem to disprove this notion, and imply instead that democratic elections produce mediocre leadership and policies. The research shows that incompetent people are inherently unable to judge the competence of other people, or the quality of those people's ideas. If people lack expertise on tax reform, it is very difficult for them to identify the candidates who are actual experts. They simply lack the mental tools needed to make meaningful judgments...democracies rarely or never elect the best leaders. Their advantage over dictatorships or other forms of government is merely that they "effectively prevent lower-than-average candidates from becoming leaders."'"
Privacy

Startup Wants To Peek Through Your Home's Wired Cameras 186

Posted by Soulskill from the nope-nope-nope dept.
alphadogg writes "The little cameras in your home are multiplying. There are the ones you bought, perhaps your SLR or digital camera, but also those that just kind of show up in your current phone, your old phone, your laptop, your game console, and soon your TV and set-top box. Varun Arora, founder of startup GotoCamera in Singapore, wants you to turn them all on and let his company's algorithms analyze what they show, then sell the results as marketing data, in a sort of visual version of what Google and other firms do with search results and free email services."
Math

Is Poor Numeracy Ruining Lives? 489

Posted by Soulskill from the mainly-restaurant-servers-lives dept.
Hugh Pickens writes "The BBC reports on how millions of people struggle to understand a payslip or a train timetable, or pay a household bill. Government figures show that almost half the working population of England have only primary school math skills, and research suggests that weak math skills are linked with an array of poor life outcomes such as prison, unemployment, exclusion from school, poverty and long-term illness. 'We are paying for this in our science, technology and engineering industries but also in people's own ability to earn funds and manage their lives,' says Chris Humphries. He is the chairman of National Numeracy, an organization seeking to emulate the success of the National Literacy Trust, which has helped improve reading and writing standards since it was set up nearly 20 years ago. The Department for Education wants the vast majority of young people to study math up to 18 within a decade to meet the growing demand for employees with high level and intermediate math skills. 'It is simply inexcusable for anyone to say "I can't do maths,"' adds Humphries. "
Open Source

Big Data's Invisible Open Source Community 49

Posted by samzenpus from the always-the-bridesmaid dept.
itwbennett writes "Hadoop, Hive, Lucene, and Solr are all open source projects, but if you were expecting the floors of the Strata Conference to be packed with intense, boostrapping hackers you'd be sorely disappointed. Instead, says Brian Proffitt, 'community' where Big Data is concerned is 'acknowledged as a corporate resource', something companies need to contribute back to. 'There is no sense of the grass-roots, hacker-dominated communities that were so much a part of the Linux community's DNA,' says Proffitt."

Comment Re:Slashdot just "jumped the shark". (Score 1) 248

Ann Arbor property taxes are currently about 2.2876% of property value per year. This includes lots of money for Garbage Collection, State ED Tax, the Public Library, Mass Transit, and the Community College. Currently I'm already paying about $950 a year for the Ann Arbor public schools, and that doesn't include the State ED Tax.

Comment Re:Misleading headline... (Score 1) 248

The first article is about Ann Arbor Community High School, and they are the ones with the eMacs. I doubt Pioneer, Huron, or Skyline are still using ancient computers which were pieces of crap when they were new. So, while AACHS might get some new computers, upgrades could be made for some of the other high schools.

Also, new servers would be needed, and on top of the actual hardware cost, you have to pay someone to set up all of the machines, install the software (or at least create the master image and set it for automatic distribution), etc. You can't just go out and buy inexpensive Dell machines for $600 a piece and be done with it. Hardware cost is probably the least expensive part of the equation. Software licenses, set up, installation, etc would easily be more than that.

Comment Re:Slashdot just "jumped the shark". (Score 1) 248

Well, I for one, know that you will be missed. Although I'm not sure what Wisconsin has to do with Ann Arbor, which is in a different state, I know that a lot of people will agree that only people in Wisconsin should have any say on what happens in AA.

IIRC, didn't I read something about Ann Arbor and Slashdot having some sort of relationship? Friends, FWB, Exes, or something like that?

Slashdot Top Deals

"It's the best thing since professional golfers on 'ludes." -- Rick Obidiah

Close