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Comment Congress hates us (Score 5, Informative) 564

by StanramonFlash (#42846915) Attached to: On the end of USPS 1st Class Saturday delivery:
Congress is trying to break the Postal union. They're actually quite solvent right now and in the black. The problem it would seem is that Congress is insisting the USPS have enough money on hand? to pay for 15 years worth of pensions. I couldn't find supporting evidence of this but this opinion piece in Reuters seems to support this conclusion. http://blogs.reuters.com/felix-salmon/2012/07/20/how-congress-is-killing-the-post-office/

Submission + - Factincept | Corruption and its categories | Right to Information India (factincept.com)

Submitted by
ajitkumar08
ajitkumar08 writes: "Welcome to Factincept.
Where you are not indulging in creating a cipher, here you and we as a team generate pluralistic thoughts defying the orthodox skepticism and ethical squalid values.Here we excel all those octogenarians who try to uphold the logical and mature exuberance of youth.
The moment you open the home page of website the classically designed frantic banner of the website itself displays the character we possess.
Editor’s column is by no means a jaded and cliché description of thoughts which you can squint. In-fact it’s a flare of ideas to produce ripples in your mind.
Moments will confiscate the time and embrace you by nudging to appease its graciousness.
Analyze is a perfect platform to make yourself a rationalist.
True-inspirationstell you by kicking your brain nerves to do something in your stark life which hangs on a very thin line of energy. It also helps to flash oblivions facing demise.
Isn’t happening to you questions you and make you aware of the trap in a web made by someone who may be invisible you but still invading you.
Corruption-simply doesn’t leave it as soon you read it. Just click it and you will know how different and interesting it is this time. We philosophically reinvented it.
Everyone talks about the ongoing political and social corruption by citizens, but who is talking about Religious corruption, which has gone draconian and so big from its beginning that whoever raises its voice against it, gets knocked down and most importantly the knocking down method doesn’t fall in the category of legality. But we will not let it go; we with help of you will rise and attain a level where the religion word itself will flunk its meaning.
The nine questions will be the testaments of the future enlightening the humanity from its core and the thoughts expressed in camera will define a new era which defies all other perplexed ideas, thoughts imposition, religious illusions and puny concepts.
Write N Win: There is a writer inside everyone of us and we want to express ourselves wherever we can. But the increasing trend of writing on social websites has declined the art of writing in a grievous manner. Most websites focus and target youth’s dark side which made writing skills impish, rowdy and pathetic. Therefore, we have paved a path to enhance your writing skill where you can also prize your talent by taking part in weekly online writing competition without any illogical conditions.
Report Card- The most fun part where you not only rate your favorite personalities, but you also decide on what they should be rated. You decide those four magical words on which they are renowned in this world. Rate yourself and ask users to rate them.
Click and go on our Video page where a new ideological world is emerging from the minds of unstoppable.
Our credo, our impeachments,our connotations, our grittiness, our skepticism, our efficacy will be in front of the world by our work.
Thank You"
Privacy

Submission + - Health care provider uses insecure password management for online records

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: My health care provider uses a third-party system to manage online access to my medical history. Through a stroke of forgetfulness I discovered that the third-party system's password reset function emails out a user's plain-text password. It was even more worrisome that the email indicated that it was safe to ignore the email if I hadn't requested it in the first place (as in the scenario where an attacker requested a password reset for me). I contacted the third-party provider to ask about their password management policy and to express my concerns that they are either storing plain-text passwords or storing the passwords in an encrypted but clearly reversible format. The response from the third-party provider indicated a resounding misunderstanding of cryptography. I attempted to find medical industry guidelines and certifications covering password security for online medical record access, but I have been unsuccessful to date. Lacking such knowledge of legal and industry standards violations with which to force the third-party provider to change, I attempted to educate the provider. I provided a brief introduction to cryptographic concepts and references to some of the high profile security breaches from the past year that resulted in the release of user information. I have not heard back from the third-party provider nor have they changed their security practices.

What can I do, within the limits of the law, to get the third-party provider to fix their system and to raise awareness of this issue among customers of my health care provider?

Submission + - Programming / I. T. job opportunities for older retrained workers? 1

Submitted by 12_West
12_West writes: I seek opinions from the Slashdot community about entry level job opportunities as programmers (or other I.T. Staff) for seniors who want to switch careers and continue to work full time. I do not want to retire, nor go part time, as long as I can get up and drive myself in to work.
I'm currently 58 years old, working as an industrial electrician in a maintenance department setting for a building products manufacturer. I like the work, but it is becoming hard on my aging body, so, I would like to begin gradually retraining and hope to switch careers in about 4 years. A lower paying, less physical job would be just fine as there will be pension money coming in.
I'm not currently a programmer, but have done some hobbyist level coding in Qbasic and MS-DOS batch files "back in the days". I also have some exposure to the Rockwell Automation RSLogix programmimg tools that are now going obsolete. So, I will be retraining whether I switch careers or not.
Your input is most welcome, I thank you!
Sony

Submission + - Sony to make its last MiniDisc system next month (bbc.co.uk)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The BBC reports that Sony, the creators of the MiniDisc audio format, are to deliver their last MiniDisc stereo system in March.

Launched over 20 years ago in late 1992 as a would-be successor to the original audio cassette, MiniDisc outlasted Philips' rival Digital Compact Cassette format, but never enjoyed major success outside Japan.

Other manufacturers will continue making MiniDisc players, but this is a sign that- over ten years after the first iPod- the MiniDisc now belongs to a bygone era.
Space

Submission + - Multiple minds smooths your ship's path (newscientist.com)

Submitted by FatLittleMonkey
FatLittleMonkey writes: My mind to your mind... my thoughts to your thoughts... Researchers at the University of Essex have shown that combining the output from two non-invasive "brain-computer interfaces", computer-interpreted EEG signals, led to a much clearer signal of the subjects' intention than the output from a single subject. To test this idea, they had two subjects try to steer a simulated space-ship at a target planet, by thinking of one of eight possible directions. While a single user could achieve 67% accuracy, this jumped to 90% when two minds were combined. Researchers believe the technique also compensates for individual lapses in attention, and thus may have applications in real-world space missions.
AT&T

Submission + - AT&T Will Opt You Into a Data Plan for Smartphones Whether You Want It Or No (clickboom.me)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Joel Runyon recounts a tale that will be familiar to many people who have bought secondhand smartphones. After his old phone died a few months ago, Runyon picked up a used iPhone. He just needed it for basic phone capabilities, and used it as such, turning data off. However, AT&T eventually figured out he was making calls from a smartphone, and they decided he needed a data plan, even if he wasn't going to use it. They went ahead and opted him into a plan that cost an extra $30 a month. Quoting: 'According to AT&T: They can opt me into a contract that I didn't agree to because I was using a phone that I didn't buy from them because it had the ability to use data that I wasn't using (and was turned off). To top it all off, they got the privilege of charging me for it because I bought a differently categorized device – even though the actual usage of their network did not change at all and I never reconstituted a new agreement with them.'

Submission + - The Google Bus as a Presage of Dystopia (lrb.co.uk)

Submitted by glowend
glowend writes: Rebecca Solnit writes about the symbolism of Google buses to those who are not part of the new gold rush: "The buses roll up to San Francisco’s bus stops in the morning and evening, but they are unmarked, or nearly so, and not for the public. They have no signs or have discreet acronyms on the front windshield, and because they also have no rear doors they ingest and disgorge their passengers slowly, while the brightly lit funky orange public buses wait behind them. The luxury coach passengers ride for free and many take out their laptops and begin their work day on board; there is of course wifi. Most of them are gleaming white, with dark-tinted windows, like limousines, and some days I think of them as the spaceships on which our alien overlords have landed to rule over us."
Biotech

Submission + - International challenge to computationally interpret protein function (muohio.edu)

Submitted by Shipud
Shipud writes: We live in the post-genomic era, when DNA sequence data is growing exponentially. However, for most of the genes that we identify, we have no idea of their biological functions. They are like words in a foreign language, waiting to be deciphered. The Critical Assessment of Function Annotation, or CAFA, is a new community-wide experiment to assess the performance of the multitude of computational methods developed by research groups worldwide to help channel the flood of data from genome research to deduce the function of proteins.

Thirty research groups participated in the first CAFA, presenting a total of 54 algorithms. The results are published in an article in Nature Methods. The researchers participated in blind-test experiments in which they predicted the function of protein sequences for which the functions are already known but haven't yet been made publicly available. Independent assessors then judged their performance. The challenge organizers explain that: 'The accurate annotation of protein function is key to understanding life at the molecular level and has great biochemical and pharmaceutical implications, explain the study authors; however, with its inherent difficulty and expense, experimental characterization of function cannot scale up to accommodate the vast amount of sequence data already available.The computational annotation of protein function has therefore emerged as a problem at the forefront of computational and molecular biology.'

Submission + - Ask Slashdot: What to do about patent trolls seeking Wifi license fees? 2

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: My company has been contacted by certified letter by Delaware law firm “Stamatios & Weinblatt LLC”. They are seeking license fees for a Wifi patent. I believe this is a patent troll (not that this matters in relation to dealing with this issue). This is a newly formed law firm less than 4 months old. They are representing “Wyncomm LLC” in regards to a “Wifi patent”. This patent is U.S. Patent No. 5,506,866. This patent covers equipment and method related to the transmission of information involving the multiplexing information into a stream of signal points (and demultiplexing the same), and related technology. They have “offered” to license this patent with no amounts specified. Unfortunately we are a small free software company. The company is setup as a sole proprietorship. I'm not asking for legal advise from the Slashdot community. The question is where might one look for “legal counsel” with the expertise to answer these types of legal questions as it relates to this inquiry. I would prefer to avoid legal fees, court cases, or license fees running the company into the ground. The company is registered in New Jersey.
Android

Submission + - Persistant wifi and bluetooth bugs in Android 4.2 (blogspot.com)

Submitted by
DougDot
DougDot writes: "Lately, it seems all the news sources have been soft-balling Google regarding the Nexus 4, the Nexus7, and the 10. And especially with regard to wifi and bluetooth bugs that crept into the Adnroid distribution with version 4.2.

Well, as it turns out, the masses are not happy. Not happy at all. Read on to find out why."
Technology

Submission + - Turning SF's Bay Bridge into a Giant LED Display (xconomy.com)

Submitted by
waderoush
waderoush writes: "It may be the biggest art hack ever: a project to install 25,000 individually addressable LED lights on the western span of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge. New York-based 'light sculptor' Leo Villareal was in San Francisco last week to test the vast 'Bay Lights' art installation, which will officially debut on March 5 and last for two years; Xconomy has photos and video of Villareal running the light show from his laptop. To optimize his algorithms and figure out which patterns would be most interesting or arresting, Villareal needed to experiment on the bridge itself, says Bay Lights director Ben Davis, who has raised $5.8 million for the project so far. 'This has never been done before in history — literally debugging software 500 feet in the air, in front of a million people,' says Davis."
Privacy

Submission + - Whatsapp Accused of Violating Privacy by Canadian, Dutch Authorities (paritynews.com)

Submitted by hypnosec
hypnosec writes: Whatspp has been accused of inappropriately handling personal information of its users by Canadian and Dutch privacy officials for the manner in which it goes about scanning the phone books of users’ phones. Whatsapp scans users’ phone books or contact list to find who all can the users chat with from that list. The investigations carried out by Dutch Data Protection Authority (CBP) and the Privacy Commissioner of Canada (OPC), which has been going on since about a year, have found that the messaging company, after receiving all the numbers from a user’s contact list, doesn’t delete the number of non-users but, stores them in a hash form. This practice violates the privacy law of both the countries.

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