Comment Re:Incremental and/or parallel computing? (Score 0) 114
Blah blah blah Google employee alert yawn.
Comment Irritating to the socially disadvantaged. (Score 1) 72
No matter my easygoing, optimistic, humorous internal state -- I have a disability whereby I look cranky and/or crazy. I get social crapola by the ton. People treat me like crap. I AM easygoing optimistic and humorous. Will I live long and prosper...or die young?? This study is irritating.
Submission + - Blue Light is "Magic" Day Length Cue (sciencenews.org)
Clogoddess writes: Flowering plants (in other words, food) often flowers based on the day length. Research news! Scientists find that plants with day length awareness detect BLUE light. Atmospheric scattering is greatest in the blue/violet end of the spectrum(*) making plants' choice of blue light the most sensitive color choice to detect seasonal change. Smart vegetables? I for one munch cheerfully on our tasty lettuce overlords!
- * The degree of scattering decreases in the following order: UV-B > UV-A > violet > blue > green > yellow > orange > red > infrared; source: http://almashriq.hiof.no/lebanon/600/610/614/solar-water/idrc/01-09.html
Submission + - Star Trek Luminaries Become The Fastest Funded Film Project on Kickstarter (kickstarter.com)
An anonymous reader writes: Legendary sci-fi writer Marc Zicree (Star Trek, Babylon 5, Sliders) and special effects wizard Doug Drexler (Star Trek, Battlestar Galactica) just became the fastest funded film project on Kickstarter. They're currently working together to bring back sci-fi! They're using crowd-funding website kickstarter to directly communicate with and enlist the support of fans for their latest project Space Command. Maybe with direct communication with the fans, sci-fi fans can rest easy and not have to worry about their favorite shows being cancelled like FireFly. If you want to check out the website at spacecommandmovie.com.
Ask Slashdot: Why Not Linux For Security? 627
An anonymous reader writes "In Friday's story about IBM's ban on Cloud storage there was much agreement, such as: 'My company deals with financial services. We are not allowed to access Dropbox either.' So why isn't Linux the first choice for all financial services? I don't know any lawyers, financial advisers, banks, etc., that don't use Windows. I switched to Linux in 2005 — I'm well aware that it's not perfect. But the compromises have been so trivial compared to the complete relief from dealing with Windows security failings. Even if we set aside responsibility and liability, business already do spend a lot of money and time on trying to secure Windows, and cleaning up after it. Linux/Unix should already be a first choice for the business world, yet it's barely even known of. It doesn't make sense. Please discuss; this could use some real insight. And let's at least try to make the flames +5 funny."
Submission + - Barter-Based School Catching on Globally (shareable.net)
sethopia writes: "In 2010, three people had the crazy idea to start a school where the teachers teach whatever they want and the students pay for classes with whatever teachers need—cutlery, art, advice—but never with money. Trade Schools have been popping up around the world and are now active in 15 cities and 10 countries, with almost no prodding from its founders. Caroline Woolard, one of the founders, discusses the challenges and opportunities of adapting their idea to an international audience and making the Trade School software—based on Python and Django—great."
Submission + - 19 year old squatted at AOL for 2 months (cnet.com)
mrnick writes: "Eric Simons, 19 years old, was working at incubator, Imagine K2, in Silicon Valley and when his grant money ran out he moved into the office. He slept on a couch, took showers and washed clothes in the office gym, and ate for free in the cafeteria all the while working on his new start-up. He was able to get away with this for two months before being discovered by security guard."
Submission + - Hacked Bitcoin Financial Site Had No Backups (bitcointalk.org)
An anonymous reader writes: A fortnight ago the Bitcoin financial website Bitcoinica was hacked and the hacker stole $87,000 worth of Bitcoins. At the time the owner promised that all users would have their Bitcoins and US dollars returned in full, but one of the site developers has just confirmed that they have no database backups and are having difficulty figuring out what everyone's account balance should actually be. A failure of epic proportions for a site holding such large amounts of money.
Comment Good point, copyrights and iP corrupted, so: (Score 1) 577
I want to free my copyright and trademark protected intellectual property. Advice on what legal formalities need to be considered?
Stifle creativity = bad ethics. Free currently IP-protected creativity = creative gift! But, how?
Comment Taxation Tarnation (Score 1) 911
RADIO: CBS News reported two weeks ago that tax laws changes (US) recently created onerous reporting burdens, to the tune of thousands of dollars in paperwork fees. I can't find a link to that news article, but NYTimes (ref below) also reports,
- “The administrative costs of being an American and living outside the U.S. have gone up dramatically,” said Marnin Michaels, a tax lawyer with Baker & McKenzie in Zurich. (and...) After Congress sharply raised taxes this year for many Americans living abroad, some international tax lawyers say they detect rising demand from citizens to renounce ties with the United States, the only developed country that taxes it citizens while they live overseas. Americans abroad are also taxed in the countries where they live.“
Increased citizens fleeing, passport returns, well darn it--it has been reported--they are objecting to unfair taxation. In a Foghorn leghorn voice, "I says un-fair tax-ation!
The number of people trolling loudly about taxes owed by people who use United States' elite infrastructure--please be properly grateful to citizens living abroad and not "using up" any of that 1337 infrastructure!
Reference: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/18/world/18expat.html?_r=1&ex=1182312000&en=a0208f4fcc1484bc&ei=5070
Comment Publicity Whoremongering (Score 1, Offtopic) 204
Please dear moderators of The Flow --
CAN WE CUT THE FACEBOOK PUBLICITY STORIES please please please.
-clogoddess
Facebook Tests the Waters With Paid Perks 204
CNET reports that Facebook has experimented lately with a small group of users by offering people the chance to promote their own account status messages the old-fashioned way: by paying for them. The author of the linked article asks whether it's inevitable that "Facebook will have to start dinging users in earnest," post-IPO. Facebook still says "It's free and always will be," but that doesn't rule out paying for additional features — that's certainly a model that many game makers had adopted.
Facebook Is Killing Text Messaging 270
An anonymous reader writes "We've heard many times and from multiple sources that text messaging is declining. There are multiple reasons for this (BlackBerry Messenger, Apple's iMessage, and even WhatsApp), but the biggest one is Facebook (Messenger). Facebook is slowly but surely killing the text message. As a result, the social networking giant is eating into the traffic carriers receive from text messaging, and thus a huge chunk of their revenues."
Comment Re:What is the use of the right side of the brain (Score 1) 102
Primarily they missed any sort of social or emotional processing, such as face recognition, emotional recognition, metaphor comprehension, the kinds of intelligence known to reside in the right hemisphere.
(My snarky private thought was, wow, a new way of ignoring areas of intelligence that don't correspond to standardized tests.)
Comment "We developed a new architecture!" (not research.) (Score 1) 102
My informed opinion: --- the researchers were presenting, primarily, a MAPPING SYSTEM ("An integrative architecture for general intelligence mapping.") There are many many areas of intelligence that were not represented within this limited group, composed of verbal deficit injuries. There's no big news here, there's just a promising system for conducting future research on intelligence.
