Submission + - Slashdot jumps shark with idiotic April Fools shenaningans
An anonymous reader writes: You people are a bunch of clowns. How on earth was this garbled shit suppsed to help anyone.
Submission + - Fighting TSA Harassment of Disabled Travelers (saizai.com)
An anonymous reader writes: A man with a neurological disorder is currently pushing the TSA to release a full list of its policies and procedures after a series of incidents in which he was harassed while trying to fly. His condition requires medical liquids and causes episodic muteness, and the TSA makes his encounters very difficult. From January: 'Boston Logan TSA conducted an illegal search of my xray-cleared documents (probably motivated either by my opting out or by my use of sign language to communicate). They refused to give me access to the pen and paper that I needed to communicate. Eventually they gave it to me, but then they took it away in direct retaliation for my using it to quote US v Davis and protest their illegal search (thereby literally depriving me of speech). They illegally detained me for about an hour on spurious, law enforcement motivated grounds (illegal under Davis, Aukai, Fofana, Bierfeldt, etc). ... TSA has refused to comply with the ADA grievance process; they are over a month beyond the statutory mandate for issuing a written determination.'
Comment I'm not surprised (Score 1) 397
I'm not surprised. It can be bad enough when they actually know what they're doing, if they have no clue it can be terrible.
There is an amazing story on Reddit (in 23 short parts!) of an IT manager from hell destroying a workplace. It's frustrating just to read.
Comment Re:Hmm... (Score 2) 70
1451 is really pretty cool. It runs like a dog in Safari (0.5 FPS if lucky), but ran great for me in Chrome (probably closer to 20). It's very impressive.
I agree about the minecart. They did a fantastic job with that one as well.
Submission + - USPS discriminates against "Athiest" merchandise (atheistberlin.com) 3
fish waffle writes: Suspecting that their strongly branded "Athiest" products may be treated differently by more religiously-oriented postal regions, Kickstarter success Athiest Shoes conducted an experiment. They sent 178 envelopes to 89 people in different parts of the US, each person receiving one envelope prominently branded as "Athiest" merchandise, and one not. The results: packages with the athiest label were nearly 10 times more likely to never be received, and took on average 3 days longer to show up when they did. Control experiments were also done in Europe and Germany---it's definitely a USPS problem.
Comment Re:Why mention Linux? (Score 1) 160
The article is from Linux Weekly News (great resource, long time subscriber). It shouldn't be surprising that they would take a Linux bent on the story.
Comment Re:But actually... (Score 2) 197
Um... no. The pentiums were a major leap because that was when they moved to superscalar execution. They were great processors.
I assume you're referring to the name "Pentium" instead of calling it the 586, which was done because Intel lost a lawsuit and courts ruled they couldn't copyright numbers.
Comment Re:Ahh, Pentium. (Score 1) 197
Celeron. I'd forgotten that was how those started. They were just P2s without any external cache (and thus without any actual performance).
Comment Re:Ahh, Pentium. (Score 1) 197
You're right that there were slot based PIIIs using the Katamai core, I owned one. When I wanted to buy a second processor years later I had a terrible time finding a non-coppermine version that I could use in my dual slot motherboard. I don't know if the L2 cache was still off-die at that point or not. I think digitalsolo is right that they didn't go on-die until they went to socket 370.
That was one of the best computers I ever owned.
Comment Re:Ahh, Pentium. (Score 4, Informative) 197
No, Slot 1 was to allow them to put the cache on the same board as the processor so they could speed it up. It quickly became unnecessary as later Pentium IIs and all(?) Pentium IIIs put the cache on die, making the slot unnecessary and expensive.
Submission + - Declassified LBJ Tapes Accuse Richard Nixon of Treason
Hugh Pickens writes writes: "After the Watergate scandal taught Richard Nixon the consequences of recording White House conversations none of his successors has dared to do it. But Nixon wasn't the first. He got the idea from his predecessor Lyndon Johnson, who felt there was an obligation to allow historians to eventually eavesdrop on his presidency. Now David Taylor reports on BBC that the latest set of declassified tapes of President Lyndon Johnson's telephone calls show that by the time of the Presidential election in November 1968, LBJ had evidence the Nixon had sabotaged the Vietnam war peace talks — or, as he put it, that Nixon was guilty of treason and had "blood on his hands". It begins in the summer of 1968. Nixon feared a breakthrough at the Paris Peace talks designed to find a negotiated settlement to the Vietnam war that he knew would derail his campaign. Nixon therefore set up a clandestine back-channel to the South Vietnamese involving Anna Chennault, a senior campaign adviser. In late October 1968 there were major concessions from Hanoi which promised to allow meaningful talks to get underway in Paris. This was exactly what Nixon feared. Chennault was despatched to the South Vietnamese embassy with a clear message: the South Vietnamese government should withdraw from the talks, refuse to deal with Johnson, and if Nixon was elected, they would get a much better deal. Meanwhile the FBI had bugged the ambassador's phone and transcripts of Chennault's calls were sent to the White House. Johnson was told by Defense Secretary Clark Clifford that the interference was illegal and threatened the chance for peace. The president gave Humphrey enough information to sink his opponent but by then, a few days from the election, Humphrey had been told he had closed the gap with Nixon and would win the presidency so Humphrey decided it would be too disruptive to the country to accuse the Republicans of treason, if the Democrats were going to win anyway. In the end Nixon won by less than 1% of the popular vote, escalated the war into Laos and Cambodia with the loss of an additional 22,000 American lives, and finally settled for a peace agreement in 1973 that was within grasp in 1968."
Submission + - Google Fiber expands to Olathe Kansas (forbes.com)
skade88 writes: If you are one of the lucky 125,000 people who live in Olathe, Kansas, the rest of us congratulate you on your new amazing $70.00/month, 1 GB Google fiber service. Google also announced they will be letting us know about further cities that will be wired up with Google Fiber service soon. This shows that Google Fiber is not just a sandbox they are going to keep in Kansas City, Google Fiber is a real business they will keep expanding. In other exciting news, the FCC wants to see at least one community in each state with 1 Gigabit home service by 2015.
Comment Re:Wonder what they told MS (Score 4, Interesting) 255
Can you? One of the reasons the original XBox was pulled off the market as soon as the 360 came out (and no slim was ever made) was because nVidia reportedly refused to do a die shrink or combine dies, etc. So MS was left with a big, hot, expensive chip while Sony was able to shrink theirs and lower their costs dramatically.
MS might still hold a grudge on that one.
Submission + - Apple's Reality Distortion Field Relocates to Wall Street (time.com)
MBCook writes: "Apple is the most profitable company, can’t make enough products to meet demand and is the most admired by its peers. Yet Wall Street and media fanatics are claiming Apple is doomed. The reality distortion field is in full effect. Apple has a lower P/E ratio than Amazon, Facebook, Google, Microsoft and now Dell, to name a few. I find this baffling and I would challenge any analyst to articulate to me how Apple is not healthier and stronger, competitively, in the long-term than many of those companies."
Submission + - Cablevision suing Viacom over cable bundling (latimes.com)
aws910 writes: In an article by LA Times, Cablevision (a huge cable network) is suing Viacom (owner of MTV, nickelodeon, etc), alleging they are violating US federal anti-trust laws by requiring programming packages to be bundled. If they are victorious, it would be a tiny step closer to "a la carte cable", but not much — Cablevision just wants to make their own bundles, and not give the customer the freedom to choose which channels they get. Where can I get my "kill your tv" bumper sticker from?
