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Programming

Submission + - Slashdot not fixed (slashdot.org) 3

Submitted by mustPushCart
mustPushCart writes: Slashdot popular around the world with basement dwellers and secretively anti corporate white collars alike has not yet changed its design after its January 25, 2011 redesign broke hearts and browsers, bringing out its passive aggressive readership into active fist shaking before sending them back into its idle section. The design continues to remain broken on Chrome in addition to being slow, clunky and generally silently hated. Slashdot editors could not be reached for comment at the time of going to press

Submission + - WalMart Stores Skimming On Gift Returns (cbslocal.com)

Submitted by
thehossman
thehossman writes: "After receiving a report of Sacramento Area WalMart store only refunding a fraction of the original purchase price for an item returned using gift receipts (in which the person returning the item doesn't know the price paid) CBS13 In Sacramento, in conjunction with a sister station in Philadelphia, conducted a sting at multiple WalMart locations to see how common this practice was: 'Add up everything we bought, we spent a total of $51.82 with tax, but only received $26.99 back when we returned the items with gift receipts'"
Idle

Submission + - Pigeon transfers data faster than South Africa's T (news.com.au) 2

Submitted by Attila Dimedici
Attila Dimedici writes: I believe that we discussed this when they first proposed it, but now they have gone and done it.
http://www.news.com.au/technology/pigeon-transfers-data-faster-than-south-africas-telkom/story-e6frfro0-1225771449209?from=public_rss

Workers at a South African information technology company this week proved it was faster for them to transmit data with a carrier pigeon than to send it using Telkom, the country's leading ISP.

Comment Factually Incorrect Title: There Is No Retweeting (Score 5, Informative) 137

by thehossman (#35590806) Attached to: NY Times Asks Twitter To Shut Down Retweeting Feed

The twitter account in question isn't retweeting the URLs.

There is no automated bot in play here.

All this guy did was create a "Twitter List" of the ~40 official Twitter Accounts used by the NYTimes (they seem to have one per section of their site) ...

https://twitter.com/#!/FreeNYT/firehose/members

...if you follow that "list" you get access to all of those URLs.

You would get access to the same URLs if you followed each of those ~40 individual twitter accounts directly.

Essentially the NYT is complaining that someone is promoting the existence of their twitter accounts.

Twitter

NY Times Asks Twitter To Shut Down Retweeting Feed 137

Posted by samzenpus from the stop-repeating-me dept.
WesternActor writes "According to PCMag.com, the New York Times has asked Twitter to shut down the FreeNYT Twitter feed that basically retweets all of the Times' articles. Is this really possible? After all, the feed just points to a list of Times Twitter accounts, all of which can also be found on the Times' website. If the Times succeeds in shutting this down, it could have a chilling effect for Twitter and online free speech in general."

Comment Some actual news stories about this (Score 3, Informative) 191

by thehossman (#35510468) Attached to: Teen Cancels Party After 200,000 RSVP On Facebook

If a random blogger is going to submission spam slashdot with all of his two paragraph blogs plagiarizing news articles, the least he could do is actually LINK to some genuinely useful coverage of the story on a reputable sites...

Image

Jeff & Rob Visit Lucasfilm Screenshot-sm 198

Posted by CmdrTaco from the sometimes-you-win dept.
Last fall Hemos started working for Perforce: one of their clients is Lucasfilm. One thing led to another, and last week I got to visit their Presidio facility in San Francisco. Their security policies prevent me from saying anything about the super sweet things I saw inside the building, but I can post this picture of us next to the Yoda statue outside the front door. Thanks to Matt Janulewicz for getting us in the front door and showing us around, Daryll Jacobson for opening a cool door and Tina Mills for pressing click. I can now say that I've been physically closer to Starwars.com than I have to Slashdot.org since the 1998 when it lived under my desk. Finally, the gauntlet has been thrown: if you work somewhere cool (Pixar? Apple? NASA? The White House? Comerica Park?) drop me an email! I am not above using T-Shirts as bribery to see cool places!
Censorship

Internet Kill Switch Back On the US Legislative Agenda 376

Posted by timothy from the reasonable-measures dept.
suraj.sun points out a story at Wired that US lawmakers have revived the idea of a government-controlled "Internet Kill Switch," which reads, in part: "The bill, which has bipartisan support, is being floated by Sen. Susan Collins, the Republican ranking member on the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee. The proposed legislation, which Collins said would not give the president the same power Egypt's Hosni Mubarak is exercising to quell dissent, sailed through the Homeland Security Committee in December but expired with the new Congress weeks later. 'My legislation would provide a mechanism for the government to work with the private sector in the event of a true cyber emergency,' Collins said in an e-mail Friday. 'It would give our nation the best tools available to swiftly respond to a significant threat.'"
Businesses

Submission + - IRS Nails CPA for Copying Steve Jobs, Google Execs 1

Submitted by theodp
theodp writes: Silly rabbit, $1 salaries are for super-wealthy tech execs! The WSJ reports that CPA David Watson incurred the wrath of the IRS by only paying himself $24,000 a year and declaring the rest of his take profit. It's a common tax-cutting maneuver that most computer consultants working through an S Corporation have probably considered. Unlike profit distributions, all salary is subject to a 2.9% Medicare tax and the first $106,800 is subject to a 12.4% Social Security tax (FICA). By reducing his salary, Watson didn't save any income taxes on the $379k in profit distributions he received in 2002 and 2003, but he did save nearly $20,000 in payroll taxes for the two years, the IRS argued, pegging Watson's true pay at $91,044 for each year. Judge Robert W. Pratt agreed that Watson's salary was too low, ruling that the CPA owed the extra tax plus interest and penalties. So why, you ask, don't members of the much-ballyhooed $1 Executive club like Steve Jobs, Larry Ellison, Sergey Brin, Larry Page, and Eric Schmidt get in hot water for their low-ball salaries? After all, how inequitable would it be if billionaires working full-time didn't have to kick in more than 15 cents into the Medicare and Social Security kitty? Sorry kids, the rich are different, and the New Global Elite have much better tax advisors than you!

Submission + - Paypal alternatives? 6

Submitted by dotancohen
dotancohen writes: It seems that everything that I used to do with Paypal is gone, and nobody has found a good alternative yet. This month I tried donating to Anki (but Paypal is no longer serving Japan for donations) and Virtual Identity (which stopped accepting Paypal due to the Wikileaks incident). The authors of both software are looking for alternatives. What can we recommend to them? What reliable and inexpensive money-transfer services exist today? What do you use?
Graphics

Submission + - Facebook Images to Get Expiration Date

Submitted by
Pickens
Pickens writes: "BBC reports that researchers have created software that gives images an expiration date by tagging them with an encrypted key so that once this date has passed the key stops the images being viewed and copied. Professor Michael Backes, who led development of the X-Pire system, says development work began about 18 months ago as potentially risky patterns of activity on social networks, such as Facebook, showed a pressing need for such a system. "More and more people are publishing private data to the internet and it's clear that some things can go wrong if it stays there too long," says Backes. The X-Pire software creates encrypted copies of images and asks those uploading them to give each one an expiration date. Viewing these images requires the free X-Pire browser add-on. When the viewer encounters an encrypted image it sends off a request for a key to unlock it. This key will only be sent, and the image become viewable, if the expiration date has not been passed."

Submission + - Thousands of blackbirds fall from sky dead (reuters.com) 1

Submitted by Dan East
Dan East writes: In a fashion worthy of a King or Hitchcock novel, yesterday blackbirds began to fall from the sky dead. Somewhere between 4,000 and 5,000 birds rained down on the small town of Beeb, Arkansas, with no visible trauma. Officials are making wild guesses as to what happened — lightning strike, high-altitude hail, or perhaps trauma from the sound of New Year's fireworks killed them.

Submission + - Student Arrested for Airport Protest (wtvr.com) 1

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Aaron Tobey, a 21-year-old student, was arrested for disorderly conduct after protesting the TSA screening rules at the Richmond International Airport. While in the screening line, he stripped down to a pair of running shorts and revealed that the text of the 4th Amendment was written on his chest in marker. Aaron has been questioned by the FBI, airport security and U.S. Marshals before being cited with disorderly conduct. His arraignment is on January 10th.

Comment Poorly Worded Summary (Score 1) 170

by thehossman (#34643302) Attached to: A Klingon Christmas Carol

I don't like star trek, i haven't seen most of hte movies, and even i kow that the proper way to have started that summary should have been:

"Have you always wished that you could hear your favorite Christmas classics in the original Klingon?"

Comment It's really, stupidly, simple... (Score 4, Informative) 266

by thehossman (#34520004) Attached to: Oracle Asks Apache To Rethink Java Committee Exit

Bruno Borges said it the most succinctly...

"There is no point helping to write specifications that you aren't allowed to implement"

http://twitter.com/#!/brunoborges/status/13058930657730560

And Brian McCallister explained the full ramifications most clearly...

http://skife.org/java/jcp/2010/12/07/the-tck-trap.html

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Crazee Edeee, his prices are INSANE!!!

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