Soulskill - Slashdot User

Submission + - The End of College? Not So Fast - Commentary - The Chronicle of Higher Education (chronicle.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 31, 2015 @03:07PM

An anonymous reader writes: The advent of MOOCs, Khan Academy, and the hundreds of other learning sites that have popped up have many people predicting the decline of expensive, four-year universities. But Donald Heller writes in the Chronicle of Higher Education that most of the people making these claims don't have a good understanding of how actual students are interacting with online classes. He points out that it's a lot easier for a 40-year-old who's in a stable life position, and who has already experienced college-level education to to find great value in an MOOC. But things change when you're asking 18-20-year-olds to give up the structure and built-in motivation of a physical university to instead sit at their computer for hours at a time. (The extremely low pass rate for free online courses provides some evidence for this.) Heller also warns that prematurely hailing MOOCs as a replacement of colleges will only encourage governments and organizations to stop investing in institutions of higher learning, which could have dire consequences for overall education level.

Submission + - NSA Worried About Recruitment, Post-Snowden (npr.org) 1

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 31, 2015 @02:38PM

An anonymous reader writes: The NSA employs tens of thousands of people, and they're constantly recruiting more. They're looking for 1,600 new workers this year alone. Now that their reputation has taken a major hit with the revelations of whistleblower Edward Snowden, they aren't sure they'll be able to meet that goal. Not only that, but the NSA has to compete with other companies, and they Snowden leaks made many of them more competitive: "Ever since the Snowden leaks, cybersecurity has been hot in Silicon Valley. In part that's because the industry no longer trusts the government as much as it once did. Companies want to develop their own security, and they're willing to pay top dollar to get the same people the NSA is trying to recruit." If academia's relationship with the NSA continues to cool, the agency could find itself struggling within a few years.

Submission + - Why More 'Star Wars' Actors Don't Become Stars

Submitted by HughPickens.com on Tuesday March 31, 2015 @02:33PM

HughPickens.com writes: When you become an actor, landing a role in a movie as big as Star Wars may seem like a dream come true. But Tatiana Siegel and Borys Kit report at The Hollywood Reporter that six movies in, the Star Wars franchise has only spawned one megastar: Harrison Ford, unusual for a series of this magnitude. Neither Ewan McGregor nor Liam Neeson was helped by the franchise and the list of acting careers that never took off is even longer, from original stars Mark Hamill and Carrie Fisher to Jake Lloyd (young Anakin Skywalker) and most notably Hayden Christensen, whose star was on the rise when he nabbed 2002's Attack of the Clones. Even Natalie Portman who already had a hot career before Episodes I-III, admitted she struggled after the exposure. "Everyone thought I was a horrible actress," says Portman. "I was in the biggest-grossing movie of the decade, and no director wanted to work with me."

So what is the problem? "When you sign up for this, you're signing your life away, and you're keeping yourself from any other franchises out there," says an agent whose client is one of the stars of Episode VII. "They will not let you be in another franchise. They're going to be cranking out a new movie every year. These actors never get to read the script before signing on. They don't even know which [subsequent] one they are in. And then they become known for that role, and it's hard to see them in [another] kind of movie." Still, agents keep pursuing roles in the upcoming films even though newcomers can only command a meagar $65,000 to $125,000 for Episode VII. "It secures all involved a place in film history," says agent Sarah Fargo, "and guarantees a huge global audience, enhancing an actor's marketability."

Submission + - Microsoft Announces Surface 3 Tablet (surface.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 31, 2015 @02:33PM

An anonymous reader writes: Today Microsoft announced the latest device in their line of Windows tablets: the Surface 3. The tablet runs a full version of Windows (the troublesome "RT" line has been deprecated), and aims to compete with Apple's iPad. The Surface 3 has a 10.8" screen running at 1920x1280 (note the 3:2 ratio). It's 8.7mm thick and weighs 622 grams (1.27 lbs). They're somewhat vague about the battery life, but they say it will last up to 10 hours "based on video playback." They've also made it possible to charge the device with a standard micro-USB charger. The base device with 64GB storage, 2GB RAM, and Wi-Fi only will cost $500, and it'll scale up with more storage, more ram, and 4G LTE connectivity. The keyboard is still a separate $130 accessory as well.

Submission + - World's Largest Aircraft Seeks Investors To Begin Operation (theguardian.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 31, 2015 @02:32PM

An anonymous reader writes: The Airlander 10 is the world's biggest aircraft. It's an airship that incorporates elements of blimps, planes, and hovercraft. Buoyed by a vast volume of helium, it's capable of cruising at a speed of 80 knots. It was built as a military venture, intended to be used for surveillance tasks. But as the war in Afghanistan wound down, government officials found they had no use for the airship. They ended up selling it back to the company who made it for $300,000 — after paying them $90 million to build it. Now, a small group of investors are trying to get it operational, in part to show people how safe the technology can be, and to hopefully spur construction of more airships. They say the Airlander 10 is capable of surviving a missile strike, but visions of the Hindenberg still loom large in our cultural memory.

Submission + - Dark Energy Tested on a Tabletop (quantamagazine.org)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 31, 2015 @02:27PM

An anonymous reader writes: Dark energy has topped cosmologists’ “most wanted” list since 1998, when astronomers noticed that the expansion of the universe is speeding up rather than slowing down. The entity responsible — whatever it is — must be incredibly powerful, constituting nearly 70 percent of the universe. Figuring out the identity of this dark energy is “arguably the most important problem in physics,” said Clare Burrage of the University of Nottingham in the United Kingdom.

Now a team of physicists has directly tested one option for dark energy using not powerful telescopes or satellites, but a vacuum chamber fashioned on a tabletop.

Submission + - UK IP Chief Wants ISPs to Police Piracy Proactively (torrentfreak.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 31, 2015 @02:21PM

An anonymous reader writes: The UK's top IP advisor has published recommendations on how Internet service providers should deal with online piracy. Among other things, it's suggested that Internet services should search for and filter infringing content proactively. According to the report ISPs have a moral obligation to do more against online piracy.

Mike Weatherley, a Conservative MP and Intellectual Property Adviser to UK Prime Minister David Cameron, has pushed various copyright related topics onto the political agenda since early last year.

Previously Weatherley suggested that search engines should blacklist pirate sites, kids should be educated on copyright ethics, and that persistent file-sharers should be thrown in jail.

Submission + - Developer of 'Banished' Develops His Own Shading Language (shiningrocksoftware.com)

Submitted by jones_supa on Tuesday March 31, 2015 @11:19AM

jones_supa writes: Luke Hodorowicz, the hard-working developer behind the townbuilding strategy computer game Banished, has designed a novel GPU shading language and written a compiler for it. The language has been christened "Shining Rock Shading Language" (SRSL) and it outputs the program in several other shading languages. The first goal for the language was to treat the vertex, fragment and geometry shader as a single program. The language sees the graphics pipeline as a stream of data, followed by some code, which outputs a stream of data, and then more code runs, and another stream of data is output. Body text of the shaders is very C-like and should be understood easily coming from other shading languages. SRSL has all the intrinsic functions you would expect from HLSL or GLSL. All types are HLSL-style. Loops and conditionals are available, but switch statements and global variables are seen redundant and not implemented. Luke's blog post tells more about the details of the language, complemented with examples.

Submission + - SCOTUS: GPS Trackers Are a Form of Search and Seizure (theatlantic.com)

Submitted by schwit1 on Tuesday March 31, 2015 @10:38AM

schwit1 writes: If the government puts a GPS tracker on you, your car, or any of your personal effects, it counts as a search—and is therefore protected by the Fourth Amendment.

The Supreme Court clarified and affirmed that law on Monday, when it ruled on Torrey Dale Grady v. North Carolina, before sending the case back to that state’s high court. The Court’s short but unanimous opinions helps make sense of how the Fourth Amendment, which protects against unreasonable search and seizure, interacts with the expanding technological powers of the U.S. government.
The only theory we discern [...] is that the State’s system of nonconsensual satellite-based monitoring does not entail a search within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment. That theory is inconsistent with this Court’s precedents.

Submission + - New technology for high resolution high speed brain imaging

Submitted by Jeba Qpt on Tuesday March 31, 2015 @02:32AM

Jeba Qpt writes: Compared to earlier researches, scientists at Washington University in St. Louis found a high tech PAM to view functions inside a living mouse brain at high speed then ever.

Submission + - 1,000 year old eye salve recipe kills golden staph (newscientist.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 31, 2015 @02:08AM

An anonymous reader writes: Scientist at the Univeristy of Nottingham use a recipe from an ancient medical text to successfully kill the golden staph bacteria. Bald's Leechbook calls for leeks, garlic, brass, wine and other ingredients to create an eye salve for curing an infected eyelash. The salve has been found to be effective in killing the superbug staphylococcus aureusat at least as well any modern remedy.

Submission + - User resignation from an IT perspective 1

Submitted by recaptcha on Tuesday March 31, 2015 @01:08AM

recaptcha writes: Today one of my fellow workers has announced he has found another job and will be leaving our company in two weeks' time. This is all above board and there is no disgruntled employee scenario here; he is simply working through his notice period and finishing up some jobs. I have already set some fileserver folders to Read-Only for him and taken a backup of his mailbox in case he empties it on the last day. Which best practices do you follow that will prevent a resigning user from causing any damage (deliberately or not) in these last days of employment before his account is disabled?

Submission + - X-37B to fly again

Submitted by schwit1 on Monday March 30, 2015 @11:43PM

schwit1 writes: The May 6 Atlas 5 launch will carry one of the Air Force’s two X-37B mini-shuttles on a new mission in space.
The Air Force won’t yet confirm which of the Boeing-built spaceplanes will be making the voyage. The first craft returned in October from a 675-day mission in space following a 224 day trek in 2010. OTV No. 2 spent 469 days in space in 2011-2012 on its only mission so far. “The program selects the Orbital Test Vehicle for each activity based upon the experiment objectives,” said Capt. Chris Hoyler, an Air Force spokesperson. “Each OTV mission builds upon previous on-orbit demonstrations and expands the test envelope of the vehicle. The test mission furthers the development of the concept of operations for reusable space vehicles.”

There are indications that the Air Force wants to attempt landing the shuttle at Kennedy this time.

Submission + - Ask Slashdot: Who's Going To Win the Malware Arms Race? (wikipedia.org)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 30, 2015 @06:43PM

An anonymous reader writes: We've been in a malware arms race since the 1990s. Malicious hackers keep building new viruses, worms, and trojan horses, while security vendors keep building better new detection and removal algorithms to stop them. Botnets are becoming more powerful, and phishing techniques are always improving — but so are the mitigation strategies. There's been some back and forth, but it seems like the arms race has been pretty balanced, so far. My question: will the balance continue, or is one side likely to take the upper hand over the next decade or two? Which side is going to win? Do you imagine an internet, 20 years from now, where we don't have to worry about what links we click or what attachments we open? Or is it the other way around, with threats so hard to block and DDoS attacks so rampant that the internet of the future is not as useful as it is now?

Submission + - Control anything with gestures: Myo Bluetooth Protocol released (myo.com)

Submitted by Legendary Teeth on Monday March 30, 2015 @02:10PM

Legendary Teeth writes: The makers of the Myo Gesture Control Armband (Thalmic Labs) have just released the specs for the Bluetooth protocol it uses. While there are already official SDKs for Windows, Mac, iOS and Android, this means that now anyone can roll their own support for other platforms like Linux or Arduino without needing to use one of the official platforms as a bridge. Anything you can write code for that that can act as a Bluetooth GATT client would now be possible, really.

If you aren't familiar with the Myo armband, it's a Bluetooth Low Energy device with 8 EMG pods and an IMU that you wear on your arm. It can read your muscle activity to detect gestures you make with you hands, which you can then use to do things like fly drones, play games, or control music.

Slashdot Top Deals