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Comment Re:What is a troll? (Score 1) 382

by VoiceOfDoom (#47698113) Attached to: Ask Slashdot: Would You Pay For Websites Without Trolls?

"'Perfect' is the enemy of 'good'"

(Read that here once, can't remember who posted it)

Filtering out comments which are impolite is a good start. No-one needs to call someone a mindless jizzgargling fucknugget to get their point across. A site which allows free discourse provided that rules of courtesy are observed sounds like a good start to me.

Submission + - eVisits to the Doctor to Top 75 Million in the U.S., Canada This Year (computerworld.com)

Submitted by Lucas123
Lucas123 writes: Telehealth medicine, or communicating remotely with patients through electronic means, will be used by nearly one in six North Americans this year, according to Deloitte. With an aging Baby Boomer population and a growing shortage of primary care physicians, electronic visits (eVisits) reduce both time and cost in treating common ailments. The overall cost of in-person primary physician visits worldwide is $175 billion. Globally, the number of eVisits will climb to 100 million this year, potentially saving over $5 billion when compared to the cost of in-person doctor visits. Last November, The University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UPMC) revamped its patient portal, renaming it MyUPMC, and rolling out AnywhereCare, offering patients throughout Pennsylvania eVisits with doctors 24 hoirs a day, seven days a week either over the phone or through video conferencing. The service offers a 30-minute or less wait time and saves the hospital system more than $86 per patient over a traditional visit.

Submission + - Skype Reverses Decision To Drop OS X 10.5 Support, Retires Windows Phone 7 App

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard users recently found that Skype no longer works on their system: despite upgrading to the latest version they still can’t sign in. We got in touch with the Microsoft-owned company and after two days, we got confirmation that a solution was in the works. "We have a Skype version for Mac OS X 10.5 users which will soon be available for download," a Skype spokesperson told TNW.

Unfortunately, the same can't be said for Windows Phone 7. In a support page titled "Is Skype for Windows Phone 7 being discontinued?," the Microsoft-owned company answers the question with a “yes” and elaborates that it is “permanently retiring all Skype apps for Windows Phone 7.” Again, this isn’t just old versions going away, or support being removed, but the apps themselves have disappeared.

Submission + - Wikipedia threatened with legal action over monkey 'selfie' (theguardian.com)

Submitted by james_gnz
james_gnz writes: The Huffington Post and The Telegraph among others report that Wikimedia has been threatened with legal action over publishing a 'selfie' taken by a monkey.

Apparently, while photographer David Slater was attempting to photograph monkeys in Indonesia in 2011, one of his intended subjects appropriated his camera and proceded to photograph itself. Some of these photographs turned out rather well, and made headlines, and income, for Slater. Now the photos are making headlines and income for Slater again, as he threatens to sue Wikimedia for not recognising his copyright over them on the grounds that he didn't take them.

Submission + - Ninety-nine percent of the ocean's plastic is missing 3

Submitted by sciencehabit
sciencehabit writes: Millions of tons. That’s how much plastic should be floating in the world’s oceans, given our ubiquitous use of the stuff. But a new study finds that 99% of this plastic is missing. One disturbing possibility: Fish are eating it. If that’s the case, “there is potential for this plastic to enter the global ocean food web,” says Carlos Duarte, an oceanographer at the University of Western Australia, Crawley. “And we are part of this food web.”

Submission + - Ramadan has started; what does that mean for MERS? (thebulletin.org)

Submitted by Lasrick
Lasrick writes: Maurizio Barbeschi leads the World Health Organization's Preparedness, Mass Gatherings and Deliberate Events Group, which provides strategic guidance on dealing with high-visibility and high-consequence events like Ramadan and the World Cup. In this interview he talks about disease outbreaks that have occurred at these types of mass gatherings, and the strategies Saudi Arabia is using this month to prevent a MERS outbreak during Ramadan.

Submission + - Grandmother buys old building in Japan, finds 55 classic arcade cabinets (geek.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: A grandmother agreed to purchase an old building in Chiba, which is just outside of Tokyo. When her family arrived to check out the contents of the building it was discovered that the first two floors used to be a game center in the 1980s. Whoever ran it left all the cabinets behind when it closed, and it is full of classic and now highly desirable games.

In total there are 55 arcade cabinets, most of which are the upright Aero Cities cabinets, but it’s the game boards that they contain that’s the most exciting discovery.

Submission + - Energy Firms in Europe, US Hit by Cyberattack (securityweek.com)

Submitted by wiredmikey
wiredmikey writes: Symantec said on Monday that it has identified malware targeting industrial control systems which could sabotage electric grids, power generators and pipelines. Known as the "Dragonfly group" or 'Energetic Bear', the attackers are believed to have been in operation since at least 2011. Initially, its targets were in the defense and aviation industry in the United States and Canada. In early 2013, it shifted its focus to energy firms in the U.S. and Europe.

The attacks on the energy sector began with malware sent via phishing emails to targeted personnel. Symantec observed the spear phishing attempts hitting organizations in the form of PDF attachments between February 2013 and June 2013, mostly targeting the US and UK. They emails were disguised as messages about administration issues such as delivery problems or issues with an account.

Later on, the group added watering hole attacks into its repertoire by compromising websites likely to be visited by people working in the industry and redirecting them to sites hosting an exploit kit known as Lightsout. The Lightsout kit has been upgraded over time, and eventually became known as the Hello exploit kit.

The third phase of the campaign involved the Trojanizing of legitimate software bundles belonging to three different industrial control system (ICS) equipment manufacturers using malware detected as Backdoor.Oldrea (Havex), according to Symantec's report (PDF). "The Dragonfly group is technically adept and able to think strategically," the researchers noted. "Given the size of some of its targets, the group found a “soft underbelly” by compromising their suppliers, which are invariably smaller, less protected companies."

Comment Re:hmmm (Score 1) 104

by VoiceOfDoom (#46435245) Attached to: BPAS Appeals £200,000 Fine Over Hacked Website

That clause only applies to criminal offences under the Data Protection Act. This was a Civil Monetary Penalty which the ICO has levied for a breach of the 7th Principle.

Breaching the Principles is not in itself a crime (hence "Civil" Monetary Penalty). There are crimes under DPA, for example unlawfully obtaining personal data.

The charity *should* have contracts in place with the website provider that allow them to recover the cost of the fine on the basis that the contractor didn't do the job properly......bet they don't though.

Submission + - Making the Mobile Web Faster (acm.org)

Submitted by ChelleChelle2
ChelleChelle2 writes: We’re living in a world where mobile clients are increasingly on the rise. As a result, it’s becoming ever more important to take into consideration the customer experience on a mobile device. In this article, Kate Matsudaira suggests that if you are having mobile performance issues you “fix the back end, not just the client.” Matsudaira provides a concise and helpful reference for API developers to ensure that mobile clients are remotely served data and application resources reliably and efficiently.

Submission + - Solving the Mystery of Supercharged Lightning (sciencemag.org)

Submitted by sciencehabit
sciencehabit writes: The serendipitous flybys of two satellites near a tropical thunderstorm have given researchers an unprecedented look at terrestrial gamma-ray flashes—a mysterious, high-energy phenomenon that scientists first observed in 1991. First thought to be generated at high altitudes, researchers have recently pinned down the origin of the fleeting lightning-linked bursts—one of the most energetic surges of natural electromagnetic radiation on Earth—to altitudes below 20 kilometers, in the layer of the atmosphere where most weather happens. Now, analyses of data gathered in 2006 by two satellites—one carrying a down-gazing camera and the other a gamma ray detector—as well as a ground-based lightning detector in North Carolina, reveal that these flashes start out, as does most lightning, as a small channel of charged particles within the storm cloud. Besides shedding new light on how terrestrial gamma-ray bursts unfold, the new analysis suggests that the phenomena are about twice as common as previously suspected, the researchers say.
Idle

Study Finds Most Would Become Supervillians If Given Powers 419

Posted by samzenpus from the super-power-corrupts dept.
It probably comes as no surprise, but researchers have found that most of us would gladly put on a mask and fight do-gooders if given super powers. From the article: "But power also acts like strong cologne that affects both the wearer and those within smelling distance, Galinsky noted. The person gains an enhanced sense of their importance, and other people may regard them with greater respect as well as extend leniency toward their actions. That combination makes for an easy slide into corruption."
Music

Astronaut Sues Dido For Album Cover 264

Posted by samzenpus from the get-me-off-that-thing dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Astronaut Bruce McCandless is suing Dido for her album cover that uses a famous NASA photograph of a tiny, tiny, tiny McCandless floating in space. McCandless doesn't own the copyright on the photo, so he's claiming it's a violation of his publicity rights ... except that he's so tiny in the photo, it's not like anyone's going to recognize him."

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