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

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
×

Submission + - A Laser Message from Space (nasa.gov)

Submitted by dsinc
dsinc writes: Anyone who remembers dialup internet can sympathize with the plight of NASA mission controllers. Waiting for images to arrive from deep space, slowly downloading line by line, can be a little like the World Wide Web of the 1990s. Patience is required.

A laser on the International Space Station (ISS) could change all that. On June 5th, 2014, the ISS passed over the Table Mountain Observatory in Wrightwood, California, and beamed an HD video to researchers waiting below. Unlike normal data transmissions, which are encoded in radio waves, this one came to Earth on a beam of light.

Submission + - Mt. Gox CEO Returns to Twitter, Enrages Burned Investors

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Mark Karpeles doesn't seem to understand how much anger and trouble the $400 million Mt. Gox fiasco caused his customers. According to Wired: "After a long absence, the Mt Gox CEO has returned to Twitter with a bizarre string of tone-deaf tweets that were either written by a Turing test chat bot, or by a man completely oblivious to the economic chaos he has wrought. His first message after losing hundreds of millions of dollars worth of bitcoins? 'What would we do without busybox?'—a reference to a slimmed-down Linux operating system used on devices such as routers. He’s also Tweeted about a noodle dish called yakisoba and Japanese transportation systems." Andreas Antonopoulos, the CSO with Blockchain says, "He continues to be oblivious about his own failure and the pain he has caused others. He is confirming that he is a self-absorbed narcissist with an inflated sense of self-confidence who has no remorse.”

Submission + - German Intel Agency Helps NSA Tap Fiber Optic Cables in Germany 2

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Der Spiegel has written a piece on the extent of collaboration between Germany's intelligence agency, Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND), and the U.S.'s National Security Agency (NSA). The sources cited in the piece do reveal BND's enthusiastic collusion in enabling the NSA to tap fiber optic cables in Germany, but they seem inconclusive as to how much information from the NSA's collection activity in the country is actually shared between the NSA and BND. Of note is evidence that the NSA's collection methods do not automatically exclude German companies and organizations from their data sweep; intelligence personnel have to rectro-actively do so on an individual basis when they realize that they are surveilling German targets. Germany's constitution protects against un-warranted surveillance of correspondence, either by post or telecommunications, of German citizens in Germany or abroad and foreigners on German soil.

Submission + - Quantum or not, controversial computer runs no faster than a normal one (sciencemag.org)

Submitted by sciencehabit
sciencehabit writes: The D-Wave computer, marketed as a groundbreaking quantum machine that runs circles around conventional computers, solves problems no faster than an ordinary rival, a new test shows. Some researchers call the test of the controversial device, described online today in Science, the fairest comparison yet. But D-Wave argues that the computations used in the study were too easy to show what its novel chips can do.

Submission + - Ask Slashdot: What's the best rapid development language to learn today? 2

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Many years ago, I was a coder—but I went through my computer science major when they were being taught in Lisp and C. These days I work in other areas, but often need to code up quick data processing solutions or interstitial applications. Doing this in C now feels archaic and overly difficult and text-based. Most of the time I now end up doing things in either Unix shell scripting (bash and grep/sed/awk/bc/etc.) or PHP. But these are showing significant age as well.

I'm no longer the young hotshot that I once was—I don't think that I could pick up an entire language in a couple of hours with just a cursory reference work—yet I see lots of languages out there now that are much more popular and claim to offer various and sundry benefits.

I'm not looking to start a new career as a programmer—I already have a career—but I'd like to update my applied coding skills to take advantage of the best that software development now has to offer.

Ideally, I'd like to learn a language that has web relevance, mobile relevance, GUI desktop applications relevance, and also that can be integrated into command-line workflows for data processing—a language that is interpreted rather than compiled, or at least that enables rapid, quick-and-dirty development, since I'm not developing codebases for clients or for the general software marketplace, but rather as one-off tools to solve a wide variety of problems, from processing large CSV dumps from databases in various ways to creating mobile applications to support field workers in one-off projects (i.e. not long-term applications that will be used for operations indefinitely, but quick solutions to a particular one-time field data collection need).

I'm tired of doing these things in bash or as web apps using PHP and responsive CSS, because I know they can be done better using more current best-of-breed technologies. Unfortunately, I'm also severely strapped for time—I'm not officially a coder or anything near it; I just need to code to get my real stuff done and can't afford to spend much time researching/studying multiple alternatives. I need the time that I invest in this learning to count.

Others have recommended Python, Lua, Javascript+Node, and Ruby, but I thought I'd ask the Slashdot crowd: If you had to recommend just one language for rapid tool development (not for the development of software products as such—a language/platform to produce means, not ends) with the best balance of convenience, performance, and platform coverage (Windows, Mac, Unix, Web, Mobile, etc.) what would you recommend, and why?

Submission + - Supreme Court of Canada strengthens user privacy (michaelgeist.ca)

Submitted by midol
midol writes: Supreme Court Delivers Huge Victory for Internet Privacy & Blows Away Gov't Plans for Reform
Friday June 13, 2014
For the past several months, many Canadians have been debating privacy reform, with the government moving forward on two bills: lawful access (C-13) and PIPEDA reform (S-4). One of the most troubling aspects of those bills has been the government's effort to expand the scope of warrantless, voluntary disclosure of personal information.

Bill C-13 proposes to expand warrantless disclosure of subscriber information to law enforcement by including an immunity provision from any criminal or civil liability (including class action lawsuits) for companies that preserve personal information or disclose it without a warrant. Meanwhile, Bill S-4, proposes extending the ability to disclose subscriber information without a warrant from law enforcement to private sector organizations. The bill includes a provision that allows organizations to disclose personal information without consent (and without a court order) to any organization that is investigating a contractual breach or possible violation of any law. I appeared before both committees in recent weeks (C-13, S-4), but Conservative MPs and Senators were dismissive of the concerns associated with voluntary disclosures.

This morning another voice entered the discussion and completely changed the debate. The Supreme Court of Canada issued its long-awaited R. v. Spencer decision, which examined the legality of voluntary warrantless disclosure of basic subscriber information to law enforcement. In a unanimous decision written by (Harper appointee) Justice Thomas Cromwell, the court issued a strong endorsement of Internet privacy, emphasizing the privacy importance of subscriber information, the right to anonymity, and the need for police to obtain a warrant for subscriber information except in exigent circumstances or under a reasonable law.

more at the site...

Submission + - Planes disappearing from radar in Europe !? (deredactie.be)

Submitted by thygate
thygate writes: Early this month, on several occasions, several planes disappeared from radar for several seconds to 25 minutes. Incidents have been reported in Czech Republic, Slovakia, Switzerland and Germany. Authorities report that at no time were there any problems with the planes and radio communication was available at all times during these radar blackouts.
Eurocontrol and the EASA have started an investigation, there is a global concern about safety since the MH370 disappearance.
There are speculations about NATO military exercises involving radio equipment tests, but the alliance has refused to comment. The Hungarian ministry of defense refuses this explanation, stating the technology used is not powerful enough to cause these blackouts.
According to an Australian newspaper it could of even been hackers, but it is unclear if this is even possible.

Submission + - Deforestation Depletes Fish Stocks

Submitted by Rambo Tribble
Rambo Tribble writes: Adding to the well-known fish-killing effects deforestation has in increasing turbidity and temperature in streams, a study published in Nature Communications, (abstract, PDF access), demonstrates deforestation causes a depletion of nutrients in associated lake aquatic ecosystems and, as a consequence, impacted fish stocks. Lead author Andrew Tanentzap is quoted as saying, 'We found fish that had almost 70% of their biomass made from carbon that came from trees and leaves instead of aquatic food chain sources.' This has troubling implications as, 'It's estimated that freshwater fishes make up more than 6% of the world's annual animal protein supplies for humans ...' Additionally, this may have significance in regard to anadromous species, such as salmon, which help power ocean ecosystems. The BBC offers more approachable coverage.

Submission + - Online shoppers across Europe now have new rights

Submitted by mrspoonsi
mrspoonsi writes: Previously, anyone who bought a product online was allowed seven business days during which they were able to change their mind and return the product for a full refund. This ‘cooling-off period’, during which a refund can be requested without being required to give a reason for the cancellation, has now been extended to fourteen calendar days from the date on which the goods are received. Online retailers and providers are now also banned from 'pre-ticking' optional extras on order forms, such as those adding insurance to the cost of a purchase. For the first time, laws have also been introduced to offer a cooling-off period for digital content, including music, films and books, as BBC News reports. Consumers may now cancel an order for digital content within fourteen days, but only if they have not downloaded it.

Comment Re:Wow (Score 1) 224

by Bruce Perens (#47232659) Attached to: Interviews: Bruce Perens Answers Your Questions
It actually is a bit different for the Republicans, in that they are caught in an internal party schism of a scale we've not seen on either side since desegregation, if even then. It's difficult for the less right to look good to the more right, undirected pushing against the Democrats is one of the few ways they have to do it.

Comment Re:Wow (Score 1) 224

by Bruce Perens (#47232465) Attached to: Interviews: Bruce Perens Answers Your Questions

Do not forget that ObamaCare was rammed through without a single Republican vote in the House or Senate.

It's the unfortunate case that Republicans don't generally support Democratic bills. Witness the recent student loan bill. There is not much question that a better educated populance means a better economy and a stronger nation. It's a truism that we could just pay for college education in a number of fields and reap economic benefits of many times the spending. Indeed, we used to do more of that and the country was stronger when we did.

Comment Re:I really dig the Obamacare comments Bruce made (Score 1) 224

by Bruce Perens (#47231747) Attached to: Interviews: Bruce Perens Answers Your Questions

You meant "you wouldn't approve" rather than "you wouldn't understand".

Positioned correctly, it isn't all that socially reprehensible to state the sentiment that you don't believe you should pay for people who drive their motorcycle without helmets, people who self-administer addictive and destructive drugs, people who engage in unprotected sex with prostitutes or unprotected casual sex with strangers, and people who go climbing without using all of the safety equipment they could.

You don't really even need to get into whether you hold human life sacred, etc., to get that argument across. It's mostly just an economic argument, you believe yourself to be sensible and don't want to pay for people who aren't.

The ironic thing about this is that it translates to "I don't want to pay for the self-inflicted downfall of the people who exercise the libertarian rights I deeply believe they should have."

OK, not a bad position as far as it goes. Now, tell me how we should judge each case, once these people present themselves for medical care, and what we should do if they don't meet the standard.

Comment Re:citation needed (Score 1) 224

by Bruce Perens (#47227663) Attached to: Interviews: Bruce Perens Answers Your Questions

Citation needed.

I just looked for a minute and found This NIMH study. If you look at the percentages per year they are astonishingly high. 9% of people in any particular year just for mood disorders, and that's just the first on the list. Then they go down the list of other disorders. The implication is that everyone suffers some incident of mental illness in their lives. And given the number of psychiatrists, psychologists, and lay practitioners in practice, it seems like much of the population try to get help at times, if only from their priest or school guidance counselor.

You are not a rock. Can you honestly tell me that you haven't ever suffeed a moment of irrationality?

Slashdot Top Deals

Honesty is for the most part less profitable than dishonesty. -- Plato

Close