timothy - Slashdot User

Submission + - Lotus creator Ray Ozzie is back -- with Talko (networkworld.com)

Submitted by alphadogg on Tuesday September 23, 2014 @04:47PM

alphadogg writes: Ray Ozzie, the man who created Lotus Notes and later went on to become Microsoft's chief software architect after selling the company his collaboration company called Groove, is back with a startup called Talko that on Tuesday introduced its first product — an iPhone app designed to encourage people to start using their cellphones again for voice conversations. The app mixes text and voice messaging, voice calling, image sharing and more, and is designed for delivering more meaningful group conversations.

Submission + - To fight $5.2B in identity theft IRS may need to change the way you file taxes (networkworld.com) 2

Submitted by coondoggie on Tuesday September 23, 2014 @12:13PM

coondoggie writes: Crime in this case is paying lots of scammers. Based on preliminary analysis, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) estimates it paid $5.2 billion in fraudulent identity theft refunds in filing season 2013 while preventing an additional $24.2 billion (based on what it could detect). As a result the IRS needs to implement changes in a system that apparently leaks like a sieve and such changes could impact legitimate taxpayers by delaying refunds, extending tax season and likely adding costs to the IRS.

Submission + - Is The Majority Of Global Warming Caused By Natural Atmospheric Circulation?

Submitted by tranquilidad on Tuesday September 23, 2014 @12:12PM

tranquilidad writes: In a paper published by the National Academy of Sciences of the United States, two authors ascribe the majority of northeast pacific coastal warming to natural atmospheric circulation and not to anthropogenic forcing. In AP's reporting, Ken Caldeira, an atmospheric scientist with the Carnegie Institution for Science says the paper's authors, '...have not established the causes of these atmospheric pressure variations. Thus, claims that the observed temperature increases are due primarily to "natural processes are suspect and premature, at best."' The paper's authors, on the other hand, state, '...clearly, there are other factors stronger than the greenhouse forcing that is affecting...temperatures,' and that there is a 'surprising degree to which the winds can explain all the wiggles in the temperature curve.'

Submission + - Debian switched from XFCE4 back to GNOME3 as default (debian.org)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 23, 2014 @11:25AM

An anonymous reader writes: Just for the protocol. They changed back from XFCE4 to GNOME3.

Submission + - How Techies Should Pick A City To Live In (itworld.com)

Submitted by jfruh on Tuesday September 23, 2014 @11:12AM

jfruh writes: You've just graduated from college with a technical degree, and you're more mobile than you've ever been in your life or ever will be again. How do you decide where to settle? If you're trying to advance your technical career, you might want to try working through the checklist offered by Fred Shilmover. Shilmover is the CEO of a cloud-based company but his guidelines could apply to anyone in a technical field. (He picked Boston, by the way.)

Submission + - Widespread Chernobyl Radiation Risk From Forest Detritus

Submitted by Rambo Tribble on Tuesday September 23, 2014 @11:10AM

Rambo Tribble writes: It is being reported that forest detritus, contaminated in the aftermath of the 1986 Chernobyl disaster [abstract], is decaying at a much slower rate than normal, building up and creating a significant fire risk. This, in turn, is creating a real potential for the residual radioactive material to be distributed, through smoke, over a broad area of Europe and Russia. Looking at different possible fire intensities, researchers speculate, "20 to 240 people would likely develop cancer, of which 10 to 170 cases may be fatal". These figures are similar to those hypothesized for Fukushima.

Submission + - Dell's Unexpected Next Act: Stylish, High-Quality Tablets And PCs

Submitted by jfruh on Tuesday September 23, 2014 @11:06AM

jfruh writes: If Dell has a reputation in the PC market, it's as the company that got low-end PCs to customers cheaply. But after the great drama of founder Michael Dell taking the company private, the company is following a new path, adding higher-quality (and more expensive) products like the Venue 8 7000, the thinnest tablet on the market today, to its lineup. One analyst notes that "Because they are no longer reporting to Wall Street, they can be more competitive."

Submission + - The Site That Teaches You to Code Well Enough to Get a Job

Submitted by HughPickens.com on Tuesday September 23, 2014 @11:03AM

HughPickens.com writes: Wanna be a programmer? Klint Finley reports that software developer Katrina Owen has created a site called Exercism.io where students can learn to craft code that’s both clear and efficient and get a lot of feedback on what they're doing right and what they're doing wrong. Exercism is updated every day with programming exercises in a variety of different languages. First, you download these exercises using a special software client, and once you’ve completed one, you upload it back to the site, where other coders from around the world will give you feedback. Then you can take what you’ve learned and try the exercise again. The idea was to have students not only complete the exercises, but get feedback. Exercism.io now has over 6,000 users who have submitted code or comments, and hundreds of volunteers submit new exercises or translate existing ones into new programming languages. But even Owen admits that the site is a bit lack in the usability department. “It’s hard to tell what it is just by looking at it,” she says. “It’s remarkable to me that people have figured out how to use it.”

Submission + - jQuery.com Compromised To Serve Malware

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 23, 2014 @10:34AM

An anonymous reader writes: jQuery.com, the official website of the popular cross-platform JavaScript library of the same name, had been compromised and had been redirecting visitors to a website hosting the RIG exploit kit and, ultimately, delivering information-stealing malware. While any website compromise is dangerous for users, this one is particularly disconcerting because of the demographic of its users, says James Pleger, Director of Research at RiskIQ.

Submission + - Billionaire PayPal Founder Wants To Cure Death (telegraph.co.uk)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 23, 2014 @10:19AM

An anonymous reader writes: Google co-founder Larry Page is not the only Silicon Valley billionaire funding scientific research aimed at ending death and aging (slashdot.org/story/13/09/18/1735250). Peter Thiel, co-founder of PayPal, says he is also intent on solving what he calls the 'problem of death.'

Thiel is funding the work of S.E.N.S. Foundation (www.sens.org) and has signed up for cryonic suspension with Alcor(www.alcor.org). 'I think there are probably three main modes of approaching it,â(TM) he says. âYou can accept it, you can deny it or you can fight it. I think our society is dominated by people who are into denial or acceptance, and I prefer to fight it.â(TM)

Submission + - New Brunswick election in question after Voting Machine Fiasco (www.cbc.ca)

Submitted by Dr Caleb on Tuesday September 23, 2014 @10:18AM

Dr Caleb writes: "The New Brunswick Progressive Conservatives say they won't accept Monday's election result until all ballots are counted by hand."
Elections New Brunswick used 713 vote tabulation machines in the election, which had been expected to speed up the process of counting the ballots. This was the first provincial election to use them. However, problems emerged within two hours of polls closing, as manual counts were not matching up with electronic counts. For at least 90 minutes, Elections New Brunswick stopped transmitting updated results. "Michael Quinn, the chief electoral officer, said in a statement Monday night that some of his staff noted some of the results being entered manually were not getting replaced properly with results being uploaded from the tabulators."

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/...

There have also been reports on TV and Radio that some of the memory cards from the machines are missing and unaccounted for. They had been removed from some machines that were not transmitting the data to the central servers, so the memory cards were to be physically taken there and entered into the records. Reports also say some machines were not certified properly.

Submission + - Fedora 21 Alpha Released (fedoraproject.org)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 23, 2014 @10:14AM

An anonymous reader writes: Fedora 21 Alpha has been released. After encountering multiple delays, the first development version is out for the Fedora.NEXT and Fedora 21 products. Fedora 21 features improved Wayland support, GNOME 3.14, many updated packages, greater server and cloud support, and countless other improvements with Fedora 20 already being nearly one year old.

Comment Re:His Dark Materials? (Score 4, Insightful) 410

by timothy on Tuesday September 23, 2014 @10:04AM (#47973291) Attached to: It's Banned Books Week; I recommend ...

We're constrained by the size of the poll ;)

Many, many books are missing from here -- it's a depressingly fruitful area of search ("banned science fiction"), but the poll system has a finite number of choices, whicih is one reason (of several) that we know the polls aren't very scientific, and like to provide some "opt-out" choices. Like most things on Slashdot, the posted part is just the kernel, hoped / intended to spark conversation, including comments about what's wrong with any given post (whether on the front page or here in the polls).

In short, you're right about Narnia, and raise an interesting point re: His Dark Materials.

A bit on that ...

When people make these lists (namecalling "censorship" or "banning"), they often stray toward the site that (depending on your viewpoint) you might consider "cautious," or "paranoid and misguided." If a privately funded school decides not to buy, or to remove from circulation, any particular book or author, are they "censoring"? Or just exercising discretion? That kind of distinction is the downside to claims of oppression -- some of them come off as "Boy Who Cried Wolf." I would be happy if every school library stocked The Anarchist Cookbook, but I don't *expect* it. Similarly, if I had a child in kindergarten, there are books that I'd be a little off-put by saw them on the shelf, just because not everything is appropriate (for some values of appropriate) at every age. Everyone's list for what books those might be might vary quite a bit ... would be an interesting excercise to figure out the answer from a wide range of people, with a list of options including titles that are

- really racy stuff (Fanny Hill? Things even more explicit?)
- "classics" of what might be called hate literature. ("Mein Kampf")
- perhaps gross-out traumatic (has The Human Centipede had a child-audience book version yet?)
- just crass (I know I read a lot of books collecting low-brow humor as a kid, much of which might make me chuckle but that I wouldn't repeat in public)
(etc.)

Submission + - Kicking the Tires on 5 Free Python Editors (dice.com)

Submitted by Nerval's Lobster on Tuesday September 23, 2014 @10:02AM

Nerval's Lobster writes: With so many options for Python editors out there, which should you use? Over on Dice (yes, yes, we know), developer and programmer David Bolton takes a look at five free Python editors, many of which are cross-platform: Eclipse plus PyDev and other plugins, PyScripter, Eric Python IDE, PyCharm Community Edition, and CodeSkulptor. He finds PyCharm "slick," Eric Python loaded up with some cool features, PyScripter nicely simple, and so on. "I’m leaning toward Eric because it’s just so full-featured, but that’s a personal preference," he writes. Everybody might not agree with his conclusions, especially given the popularity of Eclipse, but he does give an overview of what's out there.

Submission + - Netflix Rejects Canadian Regulator Jurisdiction Over Online Video (michaelgeist.ca)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 23, 2014 @10:01AM

An anonymous reader writes: Last week's very public fight between the CRTC and Netflix escalated on Monday as Netflix refused to comply with Commission's order to supply certain confidential information including subscriber numbers and expenditures on Canadian children's content. While the disclosure concerns revolve around the confidentiality of the data, the far bigger issue is now whether the CRTC has the legal authority to order it to do anything at all. Michael Geist reports that Netflix and Google are ready to challenge it in a case that could head to the Supreme Court of Canada.

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