lightbox32 - Slashdot User

Comment Re:I just don't get it (Score 1) 229

by lightbox32 on Wednesday December 03, 2014 @11:01AM (#48514293) Attached to: FBI Seizes Los Angeles Schools' iPad Documents

I generally agree however I've got to say: my community colleges smartboard + projector combo is super awesome. People who don't want to take notes and would rather focus on what the teacher is saying can do so, and then download a .pdf from the instructor's website. It's really slick.

While it's great that students can focus on the teacher, the process of putting the concepts in your own words and writing them down helps the process of understanding. When I studied I would may times create summaries and "posters" from my own notes, which helped me learn the concepts.

Submission + - Black Holes Grow By Eating Quantum Foam (medium.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 11, 2013 @11:55AM

An anonymous reader writes: The discovery that even the most distant galaxies have supermassive black holes at their cores is a puzzle for astrophysicists. These objects must have formed relatively soon after the Big Bang. But if a galaxy is only a billion years old and contains a black hole that is a billion times more massive than the Sun, how did it get so big, so quickly? Now one cosmologist says he has the answer: black holes feed off the quantum foam that makes up the fabric of spacetime. This foam is "nourishing" because it contains quantum black holes that can contribute to the black hole's growth. This idea leads to a prediction: that the supermassive black hole at the centre of the Milky Way must also be growing in this way and at a rate that we should be able to measure. Just watch out for the burps.

Submission + - BT Pull Plug On Dial-up... Or Does It? (techweekeurope.co.uk)

Submitted by judgecorp on Friday August 30, 2013 @10:06AM

judgecorp writes: BT has proudly announced it will switch off its dial-up service on 1 September. But it turns out it isn't the end of the line for dial-up modems in the UK. BT charges £17.25 per month for dial-up, and broadband is only £10, so anyone who can switch across probably has by now. There are areas where broadband is not available, and BT reckons it still has 1000 dial-up customers who can't move to ADSL. For them, BT recommends a switch to Plusnet — an ISP which offers cheaper dial-up prices and is owned by .... BT.

Submission + - An Interactive Map of Car Accidents Across the Globe (vice.com)

Submitted by Daniel_Stuckey on Monday August 19, 2013 @12:23PM

Daniel_Stuckey writes: In a word, everywhere. About 1.24 million people die on the roads each year already, and that figure is set to triple to 3.6 million by 2030. Fatal road accidents happen so frequently that it becomes easy to lose sight of their standing in today's taxonomy of death, especially throughout the developing world. There, road-death counts have hit pandemic levels, on pace to suprass HIV/AIDS, malaria, tuberculosis, and other still-common killers as the fifith most common cause of death. Toggle around this new interactive feature from the Pulitzer Center and you'll get the idea. The map charts every traffic death in the world, color sorting deaths in 2010 (the most recent year for which we have data) by 100,000 people. Here are some key takeaways, among others.

Submission + - Comcast Allegedly Confirms that Prenda Planted Porn Torrents (arstechnica.com)

Submitted by lightbox32 on Monday August 19, 2013 @11:59AM

lightbox32 writes: Porn-trolling operation Prenda Law sued thousands for illegally downloading porn files over BitTorrent. Now, a new document from Comcast appears to confirm suspicions that it was actually Prenda mastermind John Steele who uploaded those files.
The allegations about uploading porn to The Pirate Bay to create a "honeypot" to lure downloaders first became public in June, when an expert report filed by Delvan Neville was filed in a Florida case. The allegations gained steam when The Pirate Bay dug through its own backup tapes to find more evidence linking John Steele to an account called sharkmp4.

Submission + - Amazon's Secret Plan For Same Day Delivery (yahoo.com)

Submitted by lipanitech on Monday August 19, 2013 @08:52AM

lipanitech writes: The vision goes well beyond just groceries. Groceries are a Trojan Horse. The dirty secret of Amazon is that it really doesn't distinguish between a head of lettuce and a big screen TV. If Amazon can pull off same-day grocery delivery in NYC, it ostensibly means consumers can order anything online and receive it the same day. By logical extension, that means Jeff Bezos, the CEO of Amazon, is on the cusp of rendering every retailer on earth obsolete.

Comment Re:Bad math (Score 0, Troll) 330

by lightbox32 on Sunday July 14, 2013 @04:55PM (#44279521) Attached to: Microsoft Slashes Prices On Surface

Actually, it is a 70% reduction from list price. $150 is 30% of $499, or in other words, a 70% reduction.

Comment Re:Not even close (Score 1) 486

by lightbox32 on Friday May 17, 2013 @08:04AM (#43750563) Attached to: Larry Page: You Worry Too Much About Medical Privacy

Not only did he make a choice, but he chose to wait over ONE YEAR before disclosing his medical condition. I wonder what he would have thought if this information would have been disclosed sooner.

Comment Slashdot Editors (Score 1) 138

by lightbox32 on Tuesday April 16, 2013 @10:28AM (#43461411) Attached to: The Forgotten Macro Language of HTML: XBL 2.0

[...]separate object contained with in it self.

Honestly, is this where the English language is headed? Breaking up words until all sense is lost?

Submission + - Netflix streamed over HTML5 for ARM Chromebook, end of silverlight? (muktware.com)

Submitted by sfcrazy on Monday March 11, 2013 @05:16PM

sfcrazy writes: Netflix has pushed an update today to its Chrome Store app which brings support for the ARM-based Samsung Chromebook. This is a major change as instead of using Microsoft's Silverlight Netflix is using HTML5 video streaming (which now supports DRM for HTML5 on Chromebooks). Recently Google enabled the much controversial DRM support for HTML5 in Chrome OS to bring services like Netflix to Chromebooks using HTML5 instead of controversial Silverlight of Microsoft.

Submission + - What if Manning had leaked to the New York Times? (nytimes.com)

Submitted by minstrelmike on Monday March 11, 2013 @03:36PM

minstrelmike writes: Two page editorial in the NYTimes (10 free articles / month then firewalled) about what would have been different legally, morally, and security-wise: "If Manning had delivered his material to The Times, WikiLeaks would not have been able to post the unedited cables, as it ultimately did, heedless of the risk to human rights advocates, dissidents and informants named therein. In fact, you might not have heard of WikiLeaks. The group has had other middling scoops, but Manning put it on the map."

He also discusses what the Times would and would not have done, admitting they probably wouldn't have shared with other news outlets but also admitting they would definitely have not shared everything.

Submission + - Microsoft Open Sources Kinect Code (crn.com)

Submitted by lightbox32 on Monday March 11, 2013 @03:13PM

lightbox32 writes: Microsoft this week released 22 pieces of Kinect source code as Open Source. Posted on its codeplex developer website, the code is a mixture of C#, C++ and Visual Basic and is released under the Apache 2.0 open source license. This code includes pieces for performing a variety of functions, including face tracking, audio capture, slideshow gestures and green-screen effects
By releasing this code Microsoft hopes members of the open source community will provide feedback and useful suggestions for improvement.

Submission + - iOS App Store Didn't Use HTTPS Until Two Months Ago (itworld.com)

Submitted by

jfruh

on Monday March 11, 2013 @11:57AM

jfruh writes: "HTTPS has long been a part of good Web security strategy, but apparently Apple didn't get the memo. The company's wildly successful app store for iOS didn't encrypt traffic via HTTPS by default until January 23 of this year. The researcher who discovered ways to exploit this vulnerability says he alerted Apple back in July of 2012."

Submission + - Amazon wipes Kindle account of Norwegian customer and refuses to tell why (bekkelund.net)

Submitted by

Max Romantschuk

on Tuesday October 23, 2012 @02:29AM

Max Romantschuk writes: "Martin Bekkelund writes about his friend Linn, who had her Kindle wiped and account closed by Amazon, with Amazon refusing to say why. The only thing Amazon is saying seems to be that 'We have found your account is directly related to another which has been previously closed for abuse of our policies. As such, your Amazon.co.uk account has been closed and any open orders have been cancelled.' According to the blog post, Linn has only ever had a single Amazon account and has no idea how she could have done somethwing wrong.

Can we really trust corporations to wield this much power, while providing no transparency at all?"

Submission + - Amazon Deletes User's Kindle Account (bekkelund.net)

Submitted by lightbox32 on Monday October 22, 2012 @02:26PM

lightbox32 writes: It appears that Amazon is at it again. Not content with the backslash received after deleting the ebook 1984 from user's Kindle, it appears that they have now banned a user from their service, erasing all their Kindle's paid content in the process.

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