Comment What the, I don't even... (Score 1) 168
I, for one, welcome our new... oh fuck it.
Submission + - These 19th Century Postcards Predicted Our Future (singularityhub.com)
kkleiner writes: "Starting in 1899, a commercial artist named Jean-Marc Côté and other artists were hired to create a series of picture cards to depict how life in France would look in a century’s time. Sadly, they were never actually distributed. However, the only known set of cards to exist was discovered by Isaac Asimov, who wrote a book in 1986 called “Futuredays” in which he presented the illustrations with commentary. What’s amazing about this collection is how close their predictions were in a lot of cases, and how others are close at hand."
Submission + - Apple hires Amazon's Bill Statssior to head up Siri unit (edibleapple.com)
An anonymous reader writes: Another interesting hire over at Apple these days. Kara Swisher is reporting that Apple recently hired William (Bill) Statsior to head up the company’s Siri division.
Statsior previously was in charge of A9 which is Amazon’s search and search advertising unit and has been at the nation’s largest online retailer since 2003. Before working at Amazon, Statsior had stints working at Oracle and AltaVista.
Statsior previously was in charge of A9 which is Amazon’s search and search advertising unit and has been at the nation’s largest online retailer since 2003. Before working at Amazon, Statsior had stints working at Oracle and AltaVista.
Submission + - For About $20, Cardboard Bicycle Could 'Change The World,' Inventor Says (npr.org) 2
An anonymous reader writes: "... inventor has come up with a way to make a bicycle almost entirely out of cardboard — and so inexpensively that he thinks retailers would only need to charge about $20 for one."
Submission + - Humans' Risk for Cancer May Be a Result of Our Large Brains (medicaldaily.com)
An anonymous reader writes: What's the opposite of a silver lining? A hypothesis floating around in the scientific community, and published in PLoS One, argues that our big brain is the reason that humans are so prone to cancer.
The huge brains in humans are responsible for humans' long lives, which is why we are able to spend so much time lavishing attention on our children and learning new things.
But the downside is that the lack of apoptosis may put humans at risk for tumors, since the destruction of malfunctioning cells would lower the risk of cancer. "Reduced apoptotic function is well known to be associated with cancer onset,"
The huge brains in humans are responsible for humans' long lives, which is why we are able to spend so much time lavishing attention on our children and learning new things.
But the downside is that the lack of apoptosis may put humans at risk for tumors, since the destruction of malfunctioning cells would lower the risk of cancer. "Reduced apoptotic function is well known to be associated with cancer onset,"
Submission + - File-Sharing for Personal Use Declared Legal in Portugal (torrentfreak.com)
M0j0_j0j0 writes: After receiving 2000 complaints regarding "illegal file sharing" from ACAPOR on P2P network the Portuguese justice refused to take the case into court on the premise that file sharing is not illegal on the territory, if, files are for personal and not commercial use. The court also stated that the complaints had as a sole evidence the IP address of users, and that it is a wrong statement to assume an IP address is directly related to one individual. Torrent freak has a piece in English with more details here and the original source in Portuguese here
Submission + - comcast dns (75.75.75.75) 1
randini writes: "Dear slashdot,
I work in I.T. for a small company, and we recently have been having problems with slow internet. After some digging we noticed that comcast DNS servers were dropping between 20-70% of packets. Dns Server Address 75.75.75.75, we switched to using opendns, and now our packet loss is at 0%, i was just wondering if anyone else has noticed this or if anyone is aware of an active attack against comacast. i recall a few months back anons claimed they were going to perform a "reflection attack" agianst dns servers on the net, but i am not sure what came of that. Any light you can shed on this for me would be great."
I work in I.T. for a small company, and we recently have been having problems with slow internet. After some digging we noticed that comcast DNS servers were dropping between 20-70% of packets. Dns Server Address 75.75.75.75, we switched to using opendns, and now our packet loss is at 0%, i was just wondering if anyone else has noticed this or if anyone is aware of an active attack against comacast. i recall a few months back anons claimed they were going to perform a "reflection attack" agianst dns servers on the net, but i am not sure what came of that. Any light you can shed on this for me would be great."
Submission + - Google Maps App for iOS: When's It Coming? (slashdot.org)
Nerval's Lobster writes: "The controversy over Apple’s native mapping software hadn’t stopped some 100 million iOS users from downloading the latest version of the software by Sept. 24. But Apple dumping Google Maps in favor of its own app, along with that app’s widely-viewed-as-subpar performance, has left smartphone and tablet users wondering when Google will issue a Google Maps app for Apple’s App Store, akin to what it did with YouTube.
The apparent answer: be prepared to wait a bit.
“We have not done anything yet,” Google executive chairman (and former CEO) Eric Schmidt told an audience in Tokyo, according to Reuters.
The New York Times spoke with unnamed sources within Google, who said that Google is indeed developing a maps application for iOS with a target launch date of the end of 2012, but that the search-engine giant had been “caught off guard” by Apple’s decision to switch map apps."
The apparent answer: be prepared to wait a bit.
“We have not done anything yet,” Google executive chairman (and former CEO) Eric Schmidt told an audience in Tokyo, according to Reuters.
The New York Times spoke with unnamed sources within Google, who said that Google is indeed developing a maps application for iOS with a target launch date of the end of 2012, but that the search-engine giant had been “caught off guard” by Apple’s decision to switch map apps."
Comment Agile methodology... (Score 5, Funny) 362
With one-week sprints.
Comment Re:Um, yeah (Score 3, Funny) 527
*Actually* preparing for a zombie apocalypse should get you placed an some other lists as well.
I'm not insane. My mother had me tested.
Comment Re:What would you do if you had a million dollars? (Score 1) 152
I'll tell you what I'd do, man: 10 internet connections at the same time, man.
'cause chicks dig dudes with 10 internet connections at the same time.
Submission + - TSA Petition is back up! (whitehouse.gov)
An anonymous reader writes: The TSA petition that was taken down last Thursday (http://politics.slashdot.org/story/12/08/12/1521240/white-house-pulls-down-tsa-petition) has been recreated. Your help is needed to sign and push the petition back to its former glory.
Submission + - Could you hack into Mars rover Curiosity? (extremetech.com)
MrSeb writes: "NASA’s Curiosity rover has now been on the surface of Mars for just over a week. It hasn’t moved an inch after landing, instead focusing on orienting itself (and NASA’s scientists) by taking instrument readings and snapping images of its surroundings. The first beautiful full-color images of Gale Crater are starting to trickle in, and NASA has already picked out some interesting rock formations that it will investigate further in the next few days (pictures below). Over the weekend and continuing throughout today, however, Curiosity is attempting something very risky indeed: A firmware upgrade. This got me thinking: If NASA can transmit new software to a Mars rover that's hundreds of millions of miles away... why can't a hacker do the same thing? In short, there's no reason a hacker couldn't take control of Curiosity, or lock NASA out. All you would need is your own massive 230-foot dish antenna and a 400-kilowatt transmitter — or, perhaps more realistically, you could hack into NASA's computer systems, which is exactly what Chinese hackers did 13 times in 2011."
Submission + - Creating a school computer lab with Ubuntu for $0 (ifixit.org) 1
An anonymous reader writes: Here is an interesting story of a school in Oakland that used old computers running Ubuntu and OpenOffice.org to provide a school computer lab for students.
