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Comment Re:... nobody is talking about the privacy violati (Score 1) 304

You seem unaware that if you volunteer your private information to the interwebs, it becomes public.

So by your logic, every password, security question, or purchase you've ever made using the "interwebs" is open to public scrutiny? I suppose there is no reasonable expectation of privacy in your world?

Submission + - Sacked Googler claims Schmidt personally interfered with staff rankings (irishtimes.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: A sacked senior manager at Google Dublin claimed the company's executive chairman Eric Schmidt personally interfered with staff rankings. Google was found guilty of unfair dismissal by the Employment Appeals Tribunal, awarding $150,000 in damages . The senior manager claimed Google had a "unique" system of comparing performance of staff groups worldwide, in which each unit's ratings were assessed by their likeness to a template "bell curve". She said staff were ranked from one to five and someone at Google always had to get a low score "of 2.9", so the unit could match the bell curve. She was present when the ranking of a staff member was reduced electronically by Eric Schmidt even though "Mr Schmidt could not have known anything about the employee."

Posting here as it didn't seem to get coverage outside of Ireland, may be good to know for current Google employees.

Link to story [irishtimes.com]
http://www.irishtimes.com/news...

Comment Re:Not an upper limit (Score 1) 333

by monkeyFuzz (#46840965) Attached to: Blood of World's Oldest Woman Hints At Limits of Life
Ever stop to consider the implications of success in the quest for immortality on a planet with finite resources, let alone the social and political consequences of control over who will drink form said fountain of youth? We are already approaching the carrying capacity of the planet within a generation. If anything we could probably use some chlorine in the gene pool and better resource management.

Submission + - Make XP safer -- WinWin Linux 1.0 has been released (github.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: On April 9, 2014, WinWin Linux versin 1.0 has been released alongside of termination of Windows XP's security support.

The important new features of this release are
* Install function into local hard drive
* Automatic security update

WinWin Linux is the first and unique distribution in terms of its primary focuse: "run pre-installed Windows just as it is". Built-in scripts automatically detect Windows systems on your PC and prepare necessary configures without user's specific knowledge and operations.

WinWin Linux makes XP after support termination much safer, on the other hand, softwares with internet connection such as web browser runs safely on WinWin Linux.

According to the future plan, support of Windows other than XP and safe connection to intranet from guest Windows will be released.

You can just boot from USB memory or CD-R without side effects for existing Windows, so let's try!

Submission + - 200 million social security numbers possibly stolen in Experian breach (mercurynews.com)

Submitted by Beeftopia
Beeftopia writes: A 2012 breach at credit reporting company Experian may be much larger than first reported. The article states, "In what could be one of the biggest data breaches in history, the federal government and authorities in several states are investigating the criminal sale of Social Security numbers, bank account data and other personal information for up to 200 million U.S. citizens."

The investigations stem from the 2012 case of Hieu Minh Ngo, who sold names, addresses, Social Security numbers, dates of birth, places of work, duration of work, dates of employment, state driver's license numbers, mother's maiden names, bank account numbers, bank routing numbers, email account names and addresses and other account passwords, court records show.

Submission + - General Elections are here, will Aam Admi Party make it this time too? (chakkajam.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Aam Admi Party tried its hands in Delhi Assembly Elections and within one year of its establishment the party managed to form government in Delhi. Arvind Kejriwal, the founder of AAP took oath as chief minister for Delhi. But, soon things didn’t seem to work out for this new party. Arvind Kejriwal’s governance lasted for 49 days only.

Submission + - Supporters Rally After Teacher Removed For 'Dangerous' Science Projects

Submitted by Hugh Pickens DOT Com
Hugh Pickens DOT Com writes: Howard Blume reports that Greg Schiller, a popular Los Angeles high school science teacher, has been suspended after students turned in projects designed to shoot small projectiles that appeared dangerous to administrators, spurring a campaign calling for his return to the classroom. One project used compressed air to propel a small object, but it was not connected to a source of air pressure, so it could not have been fired. (Fun Fact: In 2012, President Obama tried out a more powerful air-pressure device at a White House Science Fair that could launch a marshmallow 175 feet.) Another project used the power from an AA battery to charge a tube surrounded by a coil. A school employee saw the air-pressure project and raised concerns about what looked to her like a weapon and both projects were confiscated as evidence. "It is the practice of the Los Angeles Unified School District to reassign an employee to a non-classroom setting when there are allegation related to student safety," said a statement by the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD). "We will always err on the side of protecting students." Hundreds of students and parents have rallied around Schiller after his suspension and organized a rally on his behalf at the campus, gathered hundreds of signatures on a petition calling for his reinstatement and set up a facebook page called "Free Schiller." “As far as we can tell, he’s being punished for teaching science,” says Warren Fletcher, president of United Teachers Los Angeles.

Comment Get over this crap already! (Score 1) 630

by monkeyFuzz (#46708095) Attached to: Navy Debuts New Railgun That Launches Shells at Mach 7
From the vast majority of /. posts on this weapon the community resembles a bunch of 10 year old boys playing war and comparing and contrasting all kinds of minutiae without considering what are arguably the more important issues: Why do we need yet more efficient means of destruction? What purpose does it achieve? Instead of being raving fanboys have you considered the opportunity cost of the resources expended in such programs?

Submission + - After 12 years of war, labor abuses rampant on US bases in Afghanistan (aljazeera.com)

Submitted by monkeyFuzz
monkeyFuzz writes: According to the article...
Over the past decade, the U.S. military has outsourced its overseas base-support responsibilities to private contractors who have filled the lowest-paying jobs on military bases with so-called third-country nationals, migrant workers who are neither American citizens nor locals. As of January 2014, there were 37,182 third-country nationals working on bases in the U.S. Central Command region, which includes Afghanistan and Iraq, outnumbering both American and local contract workers.

South Asian workers are at the bottom of the social hierarchy on U.S. bases. They earn far less than American or European contractors, work 12-hour days with little or no time off and, on some bases,
aren’t allowed to use cellphones or speak
to military personnel.
These laborers do the cooking, cleaning, laundry, construction and other support tasks necessary to operate military facilities. In Afghanistan, they primarily come from India and Nepal, and are employed by subcontractors for one of two large American companies, Fluor Corp. and Dyncorp International, which manage U.S. bases in Afghanistan under the Department of Defense’s Logistics Civil Augmentation Program (LOGCAP). Dozens of subcontracting companies, mostly headquartered in the Persian Gulf, work on Fluor and Dyncorp contracts.

The U.S. government has been aware of inequities and violations in the military contracting system for at least eight years. In 2012, both the Obama administration and Congress issued new rules to curtail these problems. But no contractor has ever been prosecuted, suspended or fined for trafficking abuses on U.S. military contracts. When pressed for a reason, McCahon responded: “If you look at most of the defense contractors, the large entities, they tend to be staffed and headed by former generals. They still have friends in the Pentagon.”

Submission + - If we Buck Feta and leave, where should we go? 17

Submitted by Covalent
Covalent writes: I am a long-time slashdot reader (don't let the UID fool you), and I agree with most of you that the Beta is a disaster. Dice has promised a fix, but what if this garbage is the new reality? Is there a suitable alternative to slashdot that members would find equally (or more) fulfilling? Is someone going to fork slashdot and start it anew (Taco can you hear me?) Or is this just the end of an era?

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