Want to read Slashdot from your mobile device? Point it at m.slashdot.org and keep reading!

 



Forgot your password?
typodupeerror
×

Comment Re:Sounds like a lawsuit waiting to happen (Score 5, Insightful) 448

"I have forgotten the last 4 digits of my credit card number, can you give them to me".

"Hi, Paypal phone service person, I recently switched banks, and I think I might need to update my card info. I forget if I did this earlier --- can you tell me which card you've already got on file for me? Just the last four digits would be enough, thanks."

In an ideal universe: "Sir, if you tell me the last four digits of the card number, I can tell you if you updated it."

Submission + - Kiling germs using UV lasers. (humansinvent.com)

An anonymous reader writes: One way to kill bacteria is by using a form of UV light that, in nature, never makes it to earth. Because of this bacteria hasn't evolved to protect itself against it. These lasers can be used to purify drinking water which could have a significant impact in developing countries where untreated water can spread disease.

Submission + - It's Becoming Too Expensive for the Military to Go Into Space (defenseone.com)

An anonymous reader writes: "Launching military assets into space – a “core element of national security” – is becoming too expensive and bureaucratic and could render the Pentagon’s space program “ineffective,” warns the director of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.

"I think we're in the middle of a self-inflicted surprise in some senses in space today, it’s a very different kind of surprise but it’s one that is rendering us ineffective and putting us in a place where we simply cannot afford to be," DARPA Director Arati Prabhakar said Monday at the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics SciTech 2014 conference."

Comment Likes on articles (Score 1) 170

Most of the discussion so far seems to centre around if Facebook should be allowed to scan your messages. To me the more serious question is that according to the allegations, that Facebook will follow any links in your "private message" and if there is a Facebook like button, it will press it for you. Pages 14 and 15 of the complaint show an experiment where a private page (i.e. a page with no links into it) with a Facebook like button was created and a link was sent, and the like button was generated by the private message.

So lets say you send an message to a friend with a link to an article that you seriously disagree with, with a message along the lines of "look at what these morons think", Facebook has just clicked "like" on that article on your behalf. That is far more of a problem than the scanning of the messages for advertising.

Comment Re: Duh (Score 1) 462

I got the measles as a kid 2 years before the vacine was available. I lost 1/2 hearing as a result, mostly at high frequencies. 95 db loss at 3200 hz. I can stand right under a fire alarm and not hear it. In English, vowels are low freq, consonants high. This means I constantly confuse words like 'weather' and 'feather' unless I can lip read. Growing up hard of hearing is not something I would wish on anyone. And you are am idiot to suggest it is just a matter of 'balls'

Comment Re:kind of ruins the point....... (Score 5, Informative) 308

I very much think you will find it is these days.

RCUK have thankfully acred to reverse this. To compete in university rankings in the UK you submit at most 4 papers from the past 5 years. No others count.

I don't think you have that right. In Canada when we submit grant proposals to NSERC we can only include at most 4 papers from the past 5 years as well, but that is the copies for the referees to read. Your CV that you submit lists all of your publications in the last 6 years, and the referees certainly look at those. From discussions with my colleagues in the UK, it is the same over there. You submit a few best papers for the referee to read, but your CV better have listed all of the papers in the review period or you are sunk.

Slashdot Top Deals

What is research but a blind date with knowledge? -- Will Harvey

Working...