Catch up on stories from the past week (and beyond) at the Slashdot story archive

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
×

Comment Re:This is the final nail in the coffin (Score 1) 415

Verizon, like all public corporations, is required by law to list it's corporate officers in their yearly reports. That is a minimum, and most companies have a lot more personnel info available via the tubez. Pick one to start with that has "sales" or "customer" in their title, and write a clear, short and personal letter. It is truly astonishing what you will accomplish, and on the very rare occasion that you get no (or a negative) response, a physical letter to the CEO including your dissatisfaction is the equivalent to a loud screechy alarm clock to these types.
Graphics

Submission + - What Makes a Photograph Memorable?

Submitted by
Hugh Pickens writes
Hugh Pickens writes writes: "Anne Trafton writes in MIT News that next time you go on vacation, you may want to think twice before shooting hundreds of photos of that scenic mountain or lake because researchers have developed a computer algorithm that can rank images based on memorability and found that in general, images with people in them are the most memorable, followed by images of human-scale space — such as the produce aisle of a grocery store — and close-ups of objects. Least memorable are natural landscapes. Researchers built a collection of about 10,000 images of all kinds for the study — interior-design photos, nature scenes, streetscapes and others and human subjects who participated through Amazon’s Mechanical Turk program were told to indicate, by pressing a key on their keyboard, when an image appeared that they had already seen. The researchers then used machine-learning techniques to create a computational model that analyzed the images and their memorability as rated by humans by analyzing various statistics — such as color, or the distribution of edges — and correlated them with the image’s memorability. “There has been a lot of work in trying to understand what makes an image interesting, or appealing, or what makes people like a particular image," says Alexei Efros at Carnegie Mellon University. “What [the MIT researchers] did was basically approach the problem from a very scientific point of view and say that one thing we can measure is memorability.” Researchers believe the algorithm may be useful to graphic designers, photo editors, or anyone trying to decide which of their vacation photos to post on Facebook (PDF)."
KDE

Submission + - Mageia: Is It A Kind Of Magic? (darkduck.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Few months ago I promised to dump Mandriva Linux. I was not happy with it and did not want to return to it. But later I came back to it, because I had an opportunity to try another flavour, new release. This time I almost broke my promise again. Today's specie is Mageia..
Science

Submission + - New Superbug Found in Cows and People (sciencemag.org)

Submitted by sciencehabit
sciencehabit writes: A novel form of deadly drug-resistant bacteria that hides from a standard test has turned up in Europe. Researchers found the so-called MRSA strain in both dairy cows and humans in the United Kingdom, suggesting that it might be passed from dairies to the general population. But before you toss your milk, don't panic: The superbug isn't a concern in pasteurized dairy products.
Technology

Submission + - World's largest OLED globe from Mitsubishi (gizmag.com)

Submitted by cylonlover
cylonlover writes: Mitsubishi Electric will unveil a huge, 19.7 foot (6 m) wide OLED globe at Tokyo's National Museum of Emerging Science and Innovation on June 11. Billed as the world's first large-scale spherical OLED screen, "Geo-Cosmos" is made up of an aluminum frame covered with 10,362 tiny OLED panels, each measuring 3.7 x 3.7 inches. The sphere will display images of clouds and other views of the Earth coming from a meteorological satellite as it hangs almost 60 feet (18 m) above the museum floor.
Power

Submission + - Solar Impulse took off for its first intl. flight (timeslive.co.za)

Submitted by piripiri
piripiri writes: The prototype plane Solar Impulse, which draws its power from the sun, has took off today at 06:40 GMT from Payerne, Switzerland and is expected to pass over Luxembourg and land at Brussels airport at approximately 9pm (GMT+2). Once again, the plane will be piloted by André Borschberg, who achieved the world's first manned 26 hour solar flight in 2010. The event can be tracked via the official iOS and Android smart phone applications or online via the Solar Impulse website or follow the project on twitter or YouTube.

Submission + - KPN Admits To Using Deep Packet Inspection (wsj.com)

Submitted by stiller
stiller writes: In order to make up for the loss of income on its mobile network due to services such as whatsapp and skype, KPN — the largest fixed-line and mobile operator in the Netherlands — has taken severe measures: deep packet inspection of all mobile traffic in order to bill various services at different rates.

Comment Re:Big difference (Score 1) 1486

by vm146j2 (#35747772) Attached to: Is Science Just a Matter of Faith?

I don't think you would find many people who disagree with the existence of gravity as a point of religion.

You have no idea how wrong you are. And I don't just mean the flat earth society (yes, there still is one). For many, many of the faithful, the basic laws of physics, biology, geology, and yes, mathematics, exist only at the mercy of their favorite omnipotent invisible buddy. Ask an "educated" bible believer how the impossibilities of a seven day creation, halting the sun in the sky, or changing water into wine are possible, and they don't say that gravity (momentum, conservation of energy, etc.) don't exist, just that they were temporarily suspended for the particular instance, and then put right back in place if necessary. And the less well educated have more faith in the miracle than willingness to disturb their comfortable worldview with the facts. Even in countries with a strong public education system, given the choice between some miracle and gravity, evolution, conservation of mass/energy etc. I think, to the contrary, science gets thrown out by a BIG majority.

Slashdot Top Deals

The earth is like a tiny grain of sand, only much, much heavier.

Close