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Comment Actually... (Score 5, Insightful) 223

by mschaffer (#45170645) Attached to: Are Cable Subscribers Subsidizing Internet-Only TV Viewers?

Cable subscribers are subsidizing sports.
Comcast owns sports teams. The teams ask ridiculous amounts of money for broadcast rights. Comcast passes the cost on to their customers.
And then their's ESPN....
I often wonder what cable would cost if I didn't have to subsidize the sports franchises.
The same goes for my local taxes.
Imagine if the sports teams had to pay for their own stadiums?

Submission + - Phosphor Watches founder bilks customers out of $314k with Kickstarter project (kickstarter.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Phosphor Watches founder, Donald Brewer, received over $314,000 from over 2,200 Kickstarter pledges for a watch that was supposed to be delivered in Nov. of 2012. Well, its Oct. 2013 and the watches still haven't been delivered. In fact, there hasn't even been an update from Mr. Brewer since August.

If a Kickstarter project with the backing of a company like Phosphor Watches, Stefan Andren as Creative Director (Design Director for Nike+), a "working prototype" and software development from Softeq, cannot pull a project together, what are we to believe happened?

I have tried contacting Kickstarter and Donald Brewer to no avail. All Kickstarter feels obligated to do is send a message to Mr. Brewer "with a reminder of [their] Terms of Use", and a "reminder of [their] expectations regarding posting consistent updates".

It is apparent that Donald Brewer has abandoned the project and bilked 2,278 backers.

I want to bring failed Kickstarter project to the attention of the Slashdot community as a cautionary tale to potential Kickstarter supporters, and look for suggestions on how to the defrauded backers should proceed.

Interestingly, Phosphor Watches still has the item on their website (Items TT001 through TT008), and the watches are now for sale on AliExpress.com (product ID: 1332039375).

Submission + - Lessons from the Healthcare.gov Fiasco (slashdot.org)

Submitted by Nerval's Lobster
Nerval's Lobster writes: In theory, the federal government’s Health Insurance Marketplace was supposed to make things easy for anyone in the market for health insurance. But fourteen days after the Website made its debut, the online initiative—an integral part of the Obama administration’s Affordable Care Act—has metastasized into a disaster. Despite costing $400 million (so far) and employing an army of experienced IT contractors (such as Booz Allen Hamilton and CGI Group), the Website is prone to glitches and frequent crashes, frustrating many of those seeking to sign up for a health-insurance policy. Unless you’re the head of a major federal agency or a huge company launching an online initiative targeted at millions of users, it’s unlikely you’ll be the one responsible for a project (and problems) on the scale of the Health Insurance Marketplace. Nonetheless, the debacle offers some handy lessons in project management for Websites and portals of any size: know your IT specifications (federal contractors reportedly didn't receive theirs until a few months ago), choose management capable of recognizing the problems that arise (management of Healthcare.gov was entrusted to the Medicare and Medicaid agency, which didn't have the technical chops), roll out small if possible, and test, test, test. The Health Insurance Marketplace fiasco speaks to an unfortunate truth about Web development: even when an entity (whether public or private, corporation or federal government) has keen minds and millions of dollars at its disposal, forgetting or mishandling the basics of successful Web construction can lead to embarrassing problems.

Submission + - Space Film "Gravity": Can Science-Fiction Ever Get The Science Right? (bbc.co.uk) 1

Submitted by dryriver
dryriver writes: The BBC reports: "The relationship between science and science fiction has always been tempestuous. Gravity focuses on two astronauts stranded in space after the destruction of their space shuttle. Since Gravity's US release (it comes to the UK in November) many critics have praised the film for its scientific accuracy. But noted astrophysicist Dr Neil deGrasse Tyson, director of the Hayden Planetarium at the American Museum of Natural History in New York, had several issues with the accuracy of Gravity's portrayal of space. Through a series of posts on Twitter, Tyson — who later emphasised that he "enjoyed the film very much" — highlighted various errors. He noted the Hubble space telescope (orbiting at 350 miles above sea level), the International Space Station (at 250 miles), and a Chinese space station could never be in line of sight of one another. On top of that, most satellites orbit west to east, yet in the film the satellite debris was seen drifting east to west. Tyson also noted how Sandra Bullock's hair did not float freely as it would in zero-gravity. This is arguably not so much an error in physics, but a reflection of the limitations of cinematic technology to accurately portray actors in zero-gravity. That is, of course, without sending them into space for the duration of the film. The Michael Bay film Armageddon is known for its woeful number of inaccuracies, from the space shuttles separating their rocket boosters and fuel tanks in close proximity to each other (risking a collision) and to objects falling on to the asteroid under a gravitational pull seemingly as strong as the Earth's. More than one interested observer tried to work out how big the bomb would have to be to blow up an asteroid in the way demanded in the movie. Answer: Very big indeed. Nasa is reported to have even used Armageddon as part of a test within their training programme, asking candidates to identify all the scientific impossibilities within the film.

Comment Seriously? (Score 1) 257

by mschaffer (#45114041) Attached to: A Peek At Apple's Planned $5B HQ

The Pentagon was completed in 1943 when the Government Communications Headquarters was still crammed into Bletchley Park.
Sure, the Pentagon is not a circle, but it is a multi-ringed structure designed to optimize some of the same things that Apple has claimed to have solved with their design.

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