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Networking

Utah Bill Would Prevent Regional Fiber Networks From Growing 111

Posted by Soulskill from the stop-obstructing-my-internet dept.
symbolset writes "On the heels of the smackdown received by cable lobbyists in Kansas, Ars reports out of Utah that the cable companies aren't giving up hopes of preventing competition through legislation. The bill, called Interlocal Entity Service Prohibition, would prevent a regional fiber consortium from building infrastructure outside the boundaries of its member cities and towns — a direct attack on Google's work in Provo and the UTOPIA network. Utah is the third state to be involved in the Google Fiber rollout of gigabit fiber to the home."
Biotech

Amputee Has Prosthetic Hand Wired To Nerves 72

Posted by Soulskill from the thumbs-up dept.
New submitter kalman5 writes "Dennis Aabo Sørensen is the first amputee in the world to feel sensory rich information — in real-time — with a prosthetic hand wired to nerves in his upper arm. Sørensen could grasp objects intuitively and identify what he was touching while blindfolded. The surgical team 'attached electrodes from a robotic hand to a 36-year-old volunteer's median and ulnar nerves. Those nerves carry sensations that correspond with the volunteer's index finger and thumb, and with his pinky finger and the edge of his hand, respectively. The volunteer controlled the prosthetic with small muscle movements detected by sEMG, a method that dates to the 1970s and measures electrical signals through the skin—unlike the electrodes attached to his nerves, sEMG is not invasive.' The results? 'The volunteer was able to complete the requested tasks with his prosthetic thumb and index finger 67 percent of the time the first day and 93 percent of the time by the seventh day of the experiment, Micera and colleagues report. He found the pinky finger harder to control: he was only able to accomplish the requested grip 83 percent of the time by the end of the experiment.'"
OS X

North Korea's Home-Grown Operating System Mimics OS X 252

Posted by Soulskill from the north-korea-suddenly-very-hip dept.
CambodiaSam sends the latest on "Red Star OS," North Korea's attempt at a home-grown operating system. Previously, it had closely resembled Microsoft Windows, but a new update now strongly mimics Apple's OS X. "Despite living in a country very much shut off from the outside world, many people in North Korea do have access to technology - including mobile phones. However, devices are heavily restricted. Internet access, for instance, is locked down, with most users able to visit only a handful of sites mostly serving up state-sponsored news. The Red Star OS is peppered with North Korean propaganda, and its calendar tells users it is not 2014, but 103 — the number of years since the birth of former North Korean leader Kim Il-sung. An earlier version of Red Star OS was made available worldwide in 2010 after a Russian student posted it online. The latest version is believed to have been released some time in 2013."
Cloud

Fire Destroys Iron Mountain Data Warehouse, Argentina's Bank Records Lost 463

Posted by Soulskill from the offsite-backups-are-for-wimps dept.
cagraham writes "A fire at Iron Mountain's data warehouse in Buenos Aires left the facility 'ruined' and killed nine first-responders, according to the Washington Post. The origin of the fire is unknown. The facility was supposedly equipped with sprinkler systems, fire control systems, and had a private emergency team on standby. Among the records destroyed are Argentina's bank archives, the loss of which could have some surprisingly far-reaching implications."
Transportation

Judge Says You Can Warn Others About Speed Traps 457

Posted by Soulskill from the another-thing-to-tweet-about-while-driving dept.
cartechboy writes "Speeding is against the law, and yes, even going 5 mph over the speed limit is breaking the law. But everyone does it, right? What about when you see a cop? Some cops are ticketing people for notifying fellow motorists about speed traps. In Florida, Ryan Kintner simply flashed his high-beams to warning oncoming cars that there was a cop ahead. He was given a ticket for doing so. He went to court to fight the ticket, and a judge ruled that flashing lights are the equivalent of free speech, thus he had every right to flash his lights to warn oncoming cars."
Verizon

Is Verizon Already Slowing Netflix Down? 298

Posted by Soulskill from the didn't-take-long dept.
hondo77 points out a blog post by Dave Raphael, who noticed some odd discrepancies between two different Verizon broadband connections he has access to. His personal residential plan and his company's business plan both went through the same Verizon routers, but his residential plan is getting unusably slow speeds to places like AWS. He suggests that Verizon is already waging a war on high-bandwidth services like Netflix after the recent court decision against net neutrality. His discussion with a Verizon service representative seems to confirm this, though it's uncertain whether such an employee would have access to that information.
Medicine

Video Former Red Hat COO Helps Health Care Providers Work Together (Video) 74

Posted by Roblimo from the better-communication-can-lead-to-better-medical-care dept.
Do you remember the worries about getting different health care software systems to work with each other as health care providers starting moving away from paper? It's still a problem, but Joanne Rohde's company, Axial Exchange, is working to cure that problem not only as an entrepreneur but also because she has personal reasons to see health care providers communicate better with each other. In a 2012 interview for Huffington Post, she said, "While I was working for Red Hat, I got very sick... I ultimately had to go to 10 doctors to be diagnosed. Going from doctor to doctor, I could not believe I had to start over each time. No one actually talks to each other I became convinced that if I had had all the information, I probably would have been able to figure it out faster." In fact, Joanne got so sick that she quit her job as Red Hat COO after four years with the company. Once she started getting decent treatment for her Fybromyalgia and started getting better, she decided to apply open source principles to health care IT -- and to start a new company to do it. Opensource.com talked with Joanne in September 2013, and in January 2014 she talked with Health Care Finance News for an article titled Patients key to reducing readmissions. A phrase Joanne seems to be using a lot lately is "patient engagement," which has become a major part of Axial Exchange's work to improve communications not only between different health care providers but also between those providers and their patients. Update: 02/05 20:16 GMT by T : If you're seeing this post on beta.slashdot.org, note that we're still ironing out the details of video display here. You can view the video on tv.slashdot.org, instead. Please pardon our dust.

Comment Re:Peak "platform" (Score 2, Insightful) 505

by SunTzuWarmaster (#46129185) Attached to: The JavaScript Juggernaut Rolls On

Words have meaning and purpose. What words would you use to express the following concepts?

  - a collection of tools which allow you to build a new component through their leverage, while not contributing significantly to the overall effectiveness of the tools (or won't particularly be used in operation)

  - a collection of functional components which you will use as part of the operation of a new component

Currently, the words are "platform" and "system". I'm happy to switch to other words if they express the concept better.

Comment Re: It might be an unpopular opinion... (Score 1) 822

by SunTzuWarmaster (#46085647) Attached to: Ask Slashdot: What Does Edward Snowden Deserve?

The premise of this post is factually inaccurate. You can be pardoned prior to being brought to trial. As a famous example, famously, President Ford pardoned Nixon. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W...

Additionally, you don't have to be pardoned for crimes. As an example, please read the text of the pardon (proclamation 4311).

Now, Therefore, I, Gerald R. Ford, President of the United States, pursuant to the pardon power conferred upon me by Article II, Section 2, of the Constitution, have granted and by these presents do grant a full, free, and absolute pardon unto Richard Nixon for all offenses against the United States which he, Richard Nixon, has committed or may have committed or taken part in during the period from January 20, 1969 through August 9, 1974.

The above is quite clearly a pardon for crimes which he "may have committed" during that time. He could have killed a million people with his bare hands, the pardon would still stand.

Comment Re:No. 404 is important! (Score 4, Interesting) 79

by SunTzuWarmaster (#46062021) Attached to: Fixing Broken Links With the Internet Archive

So let's say that my company has three lines of products on three different webpages. We decide to discontinue two of the lines of products for being unprofitable, and remove the pages. Google search results still show the pages, and archive.org still shows them to users. These products are still shown to my potential customers, who experience frustration when they attempt to get them.

Alternately, I create a temporary webpage for displaying some demo content to a potential client. It is a demo page, and ridden with bugs, holes, and other areas that need improvement. Archive.org still shows this page as part of search results? What will potential clients think of my company, given that it put up a buggy/terrible page?

Alternately, let's just say that I rename a longstanding webpage (technology.slashdot.org to tech.slashdot.org) and delete the old URL. Should archive.org redirect to false content?

Or, let's say that my restaurant decides to take down its 2013menu.html page, and doesn't wish customers to be able to compare its new and old menu side by side to see where prices inflated.

Error messages have purpose. While the most common case is that the page/server went offline, there are many times where a page URL changes as a result of regular website updates, where you don't want users to obtain old content.

Sometimes things are deleted for a reason.

Comment Re:Just wow. (Score 1) 44

by SunTzuWarmaster (#45907127) Attached to: The True Color of Ancient Sea Creatures

Consider this situation:
Kid: What color was the ichthyosaur?
Parent: "We don't know, but it was probably dark-colored because it lived deep in the ocean. However, it may have been brightly colored to attract a mate, may have glowed in the dark to attract prey, or may have had tiger-like patterning to hide in native vegetation. We may never know."
...
Scientist: "We have found out! It was dark grey. You should cheer because we have answered a fundamental question about the ichthyosaur. We can use this method to discover what color the other dinosaurs were, if you would want to know."
Power

Japan To Create a Nuclear Meltdown 222

Posted by Unknown Lamer from the suddenly-godzilla dept.
Taco Cowboy writes "Japanese researchers are planning an experiment to better understand what transpires during a nuclear meltdown by attempting to create a controlled nuclear meltdown. Using a scaled down version of a nuclear reactor — essentially a meter long stainless steel container — the experiment will involve the insertion of a foot long (30 cm) nuclear fuel rod, starting the fission process, and then draining the coolant. The experiment is scheduled to take place later this year."

Comment Re:Bigger than Jesus? (Score 1) 691

by SunTzuWarmaster (#45735957) Attached to: Why Charles Stross Wants Bitcoin To Die In a Fire

I'd just like to say that the Beatles haven't been bigger than Jesus since 2004, when Google started recording search results...
http://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=%2Fm%2F07c0j%2C%20Jesus&cmpt=q

Also, that they weren't bigger than Jesus, in text, at any time:
https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=the+Beatles%2CJesus&year_start=1800&year_end=2000&corpus=15&smoothing=3&share=&direct_url=t1%3B%2Cthe%20Beatles%3B%2Cc0%3B.t1%3B%2CJesus%3B%2Cc0

Jesus is still bigger than bitcoin... for now...
http://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=bitcoin%2C%20jesus&cmpt=q

Comment Re:Still becomes a brick. (Score 3, Informative) 135

by SunTzuWarmaster (#45561643) Attached to: Google Is Building a Way To Launch Chrome Apps Without Installation

It mostly works the way that you have represented. The majority of your post in on the back-end propagation of updates, which works well, and obviously doesn't work when offline. Generally apps work offline by default (like a saved webpage), unless your app needs to reach to an online site.

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