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

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
×

Comment LOL Surface... (Score 1) 328

by bornagainpenguin (#48708901) Attached to: Is the Tablet Market In Outright Collapse? Data Suggests Yes

The Surface will never be a useful device so long as Microsoft insists on blocking installs of other systems via Secure Boot. If I buy the product I should have the right to install anything I want on it; if I'm merely renting I demand much better terms for the lease. They don't get to have it both ways.

Otherwise I was very much intrigued by the Surface as I've been impressed with Microsoft's hardware in the past but not at the expense of having to run their operating system to use the device.

Comment ..but ossified spending habits... (Score 1) 206

by bornagainpenguin (#48340857) Attached to: Zuckerberg: Most of Facebook Will Be Video Within Five Years

If I'm Facebook, trying to put ads in front of buyers, college kids are a waste of my time. I want baby boomers.

 
Yes, and once those Baby Boomers with their cemented and ossified spending habits and preferences die off and the young college kids are making more money but have already had their buying habits shaped and controlled by the competition who spent their dollars planning for the long term, what then?
 
Not saying that this is right or that you're wrong but there's a little more involved than straight dollars to dollars here...

Submission + - XBMC4Xbox 3.5 is released for the original Xbox (xbmc4xbox.org.uk) 1

Submitted by ExoBuZz
ExoBuZz writes: After more than a year’s work since v3.3, XBMC4Xbox version v3.5 has been released. A large number of new features and improvements have been made since v3.3, including the integration of Python 2.7, improved video playback, updates to the skinning engine, scraper fixes, and plenty of bug fixes.

Time to dust off your old Xbox? :)
The Internet

Major ISPs Threaten To Throttle Innovation and Slow Network Upgrades 286

Posted by Soulskill from the doubling-down-on-being-jerks dept.
An anonymous reader writes "In a letter released on Tuesday and addressed to the FCC chairman, a group of the U.S.'s top ISPs have warned that if the FCC re-classifies the internet as telecommunications, then innovation would slow or halt and network upgrades would be unaffordable. 'Under Title II, new service offerings, options, and features would be delayed or altogether foregone. Consumers would face less choice, and a less adaptive and responsive Internet. An era of differentiation, innovation, and experimentation would be replaced with a series of 'Government may I?' requests from American entrepreneurs.' They add, 'even the potential threat of Title II had an investment-chilling effect by erasing approximately 10% of some ISPs' market cap.' Ars Technica highlights earlier doomsday predictions by AT&T. The FCC is scheduled to vote May 15 on the chairman's recent proposal encompassing this reclassification option that the ISPs vehemently oppose." Reader Bob9113 adds that a protest is planned for the same day by those who oppose the FCC's plans.

Comment Re:Popcorn (Score 1) 688

by bornagainpenguin (#46875311) Attached to: Firefox 29: Redesign
First, since you seem to be the big apologist for the travesty that Gnome has become, allow me to say 'Fuck you.'

Secondly...

Everbody bitches about what's gone, but not what we've added or improved.

Maybe this is because what's been added isn't an improvement? Maybe what was there before needed not to be removed or rewritten, but to have the bugs fixed? Oh that's right I forgot, you guys think chasing the new shiney is more important than fixing bugs or servicing an existing userbase. I guess that brings me back to point one....
United States

HealthCare.gov Can't Handle Appeals of Errors 208

Posted by samzenpus from the that's-some-good-work-there-lou dept.
PapayaSF writes "The Washington Post reports that roughly 22,000 people have claimed they were charged too much, steered into the wrong insurance program, or denied coverage, but the HealthCare.gov website cannot handle appeals. They've filled out seven-page forms and mailed them to a federal contractor's office in Kentucky, where they were scanned and entered, but workers at CMS cannot read them because that part of the system has not been built. Other missing aspects are said to have higher priorities: completing the electronic payment system for insurers, the connections with state Medicaid programs, and the ability to adjust coverage to accommodate major changes such as new babies. People with complaints about mistakes have been told to 'return to the Web site and start over.'"
Social Networks

Startup Out of MIT Promises Digital Afterlife — Just Hand Over Your Data 241

Posted by timothy from the ashes-to-ashes-dust-to-nsa dept.
v3rgEz writes "A new startup out of MIT offers early adopters a chance at the afterlife, of sorts: It promises to build an AI representation of the dearly departed based on chat logs, email, Facebook, and other digital exhaust generated over the years. "Eterni.me generates a virtual YOU, an avatar that emulates your personality and can interact with, and offer information and advice to your family and friends after you pass away," the team promises. But can a chat bot plus big data really produce anything beyond a creepy, awkward facsimile?"
Media

Is Amazon Making a Sub-$300 Console To Play Mobile Games? 76

Posted by samzenpus from the play-time dept.
itwbennett writes "Yesterday, a story suggesting that Amazon was planning to launch a sub-$300 Android game console made the rounds. A $300 box to play mobile games on your TV? ITworld's Peter Smith doesn't buy it. 'If Amazon is working on some kind of set-top box, it's going to be about streaming,' says Smith. 'Music, video, and games. Remember back in November when Amazon announced G2, a new AWS instance type designed for streaming GPU intensive tasks like games? Combine Amazon's G2 cloud servers and an Amazon set top box for console-like game streaming, plus supporting Android and/or iOS games (possibly the latter would also be streamed), and of course support for Amazon Video and MP3, and we're getting closer to something that may be worth $300.'"
EU

France Broadens Surveillance Powers; Wider Scope Than NSA 169

Posted by timothy from the touch-of-the-old-industrial-espionage dept.
krakman writes "With the NSA disclosures, French media was 'outraged'. Yet they appear to be worse than the NSA, with a new law that codifies standard practice and provides for no judicial oversight while allowing electronic surveillance for a broad range of purposes, including 'national security,' the protection of France's 'scientific and economic potential' and prevention of ;terrorism' or 'criminality.' The government argues that the law, passed last week with little debate as part of a routine military spending bill, which takes effect in 2015, does not expand intelligence powers. Rather, officials say, those powers have been in place for years, and the law creates rules where there had been none, notably with regard to real-time location tracking. French intelligence agencies have little experience publicly justifying their practices. Parliamentary oversight did not begin until 2007."
Businesses

Female Software Engineers May Be Even Scarcer Than We Thought 445

Posted by Soulskill from the somewhere-between-too-few-and-not-enough dept.
itwbennett writes "According to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, in 2012 about 22% of computer programmers, software and web developers in the United States were female. That number comes from the Current Population Survey, which is based on interviews with 60,000 households. But Tracy Chou, an engineer at Pinterest, thinks the number is actually much lower than that. And last month she created a GitHub project to collect data on how many females are employed full-time writing or architecting software. Even at this early point, the data is striking: Based on data reported for 107 companies, 438 of 3,594 engineers (12%) are female. Here's how some well-known companies stack up."
Medicine

DHHS Preparing 'Tech Surge' To Fix Remaining Healthcare.gov Issues 429

Posted by Unknown Lamer from the operation-aca-freedom-eagle dept.
itwbennett writes "It's no secret that the healthcare.gov website has been plagued by problems since its launch 3 weeks ago. On Sunday, the Department of Health and Human Services said that it's now bringing in the big guns: 'Our team is bringing in some of the best and brightest from both inside and outside government to scrub in with the [HHS] team and help improve HealthCare.gov,' the blog post reads. 'We're also putting in place tools and processes to aggressively monitor and identify parts of HealthCare.gov where individuals are encountering errors or having difficulty using the site, so we can prioritize and fix them.' Other emergency measures being taken as part of what HHS calls a 'tech surge' include defining new test processes to prevent new problems and regularly patching bugs during off-peak hours. Still unclear is how long it will take to fix the site. As recently reported on Slashdot, that could be anywhere from 2 weeks to 2 months."

Slashdot Top Deals

Two can Live as Cheaply as One for Half as Long. -- Howard Kandel

Close