Want to read Slashdot from your mobile device? Point it at m.slashdot.org and keep reading!

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
×

Comment Re:Whoever is responsible for this article (Score 3, Informative) 1258

by PacoSuarez (#39821015) Attached to: Analytic Thinking Can Decrease Religious Belief

Perhaps you can read the whole chapter, and you'll see that the sentence is uttered by a king in a story that Jesus was telling. It still seems like the king is being portrayed positively by Jesus, so the message remains contradictory, but you shouldn't remove the context so blatantly.
Data Storage

Portugal Is Considering a "Terabyte Tax" 353

Posted by samzenpus from the pay-to-store dept.
An anonymous reader writes "As a proposal to avoid becoming the 'next Greece', a Portuguese opposition party has proposed a tax on storage. The party claims that the tax will not effect the average citizen and is mostly levied at business users, but internal storage on mobile phones means a 64GB iPhone could be €32 more expensive. From the article: 'The proposal would have consumers paying an extra €0.2 per gigabyte in tax, almost €21 extra per terabyte of data on hard drives. Devices with storage capacities in excess of 1TB would pay an aggravated tax of 2.5 cents per GB. That means a 2TB device will in fact pile on €51.2 in taxes alone (2.5 cents times 2048GB). External drives or “multimedia drives” as the proposed bill calls them, in capacities greater than 1TB, can be taxed to the tune of 5 cents per gigabyte, so in theory, a 2TB drive would cost an additional €103.2 per unit (5 cents times 2048GB)."
Math

The Math of Leap Days 225

Posted by samzenpus from the extra-days-extra-credit dept.
The Bad Astronomer writes "We have leap days every four years because the Earth's day and year don't divide evenly. But there's more to it than that... a lot more. A year isn't exactly 365.25 days long, and that leads to needing more complicated math and rules for when we do and don't have a leap year. If you've ever wanted to see that math laid out, now's your chance, and it only comes along every four years. Except every hundred years. Except every four hundred years."
Google

OpenStreetMap Reports Data Vandalism From Google-Owned IPs 178

Posted by timothy from the yes-but-where-are-the-perps dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Following reports of misconduct by Google employees in Kenya and India, It has been found that Google IP addresses have been responsible for deliberate vandalism of OpenStreetMap data. While it is unlikely that this was a deliberate or coordinated attack by Google HQ on the competition, multiple such reports does raise the question of whether or not Google has become too big to effectively enforce its 'Don't be evil' philosophy across its massive organization."

Comment Re:HFT borderline illegal (Score 1) 791

by PacoSuarez (#36938426) Attached to: How and Why Wall Street Programmers Earn Top Salaries

HFT is somewhat illegal, since it could be considered insider trading, since you have time to process information before it becomes available to other people thanks to a faster network infrastructure.

You probably would also complain if you were playing soccer against people that run faster than you. It's not fair!

There is no insider trading If everyone in the market has access to the same information. You'll try to process it as quickly as possible and do something as smart as possible with it. If you are not fast enough or smart enough, you don't need to be in this business. Trading is not an amateur activity.

Comment Re:Whining, chess-playing, sore losers! (Score 1) 315

by PacoSuarez (#36615840) Attached to: World's Best Chess Engine Outlawed and Disqualified

An interesting note is that the article doesn't state if any of the 34-person panel of chess-playing programmers contributed code to any of the allegedly plagiarized codes. There may be a conflict of interest here.

Yes, at least Bob Hyatt (author of Crafty) was a member of the panel. I have a lot of respect Dr. Hyatt and I am not suggesting that the panel's conclusions are wrong: I am just providing the data you were requesting.
Image

Chinese iPad Factory Staff Forced To Sign 'No Suicide' Pledge Screenshot-sm 537

Posted by samzenpus from the and-you-thought-your-job-was-tedious dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Employees at Foxconn facilities in China, used to manufacture the iPhone and iPad, were forced to sign a pledge not to commit suicide after over a dozen staff killed themselves over the last 16 months. The revelation is the latest in a series of findings about the treatment of workers at Foxconn plants, where staff often work six 12-hour shifts a week, 98 hours of overtime in a month, and live in dormitories that look and feel like prison blocks."
Government

Jesse Jackson, Jr. Pins US Job Losses On iPad 628

Posted by timothy from the protectionism-as-religious-talisman dept.
theodp writes "Illinois Congressman Jesse Jackson Jr. went on an anti-technology rant on Friday on the floor of Congress, blaming the iPad for eliminating thousands of American jobs. 'Why do you need to go to Borders anymore?' asked Jackson. 'Why do you need to go to Barnes & Noble? Buy an iPad, download your book, download your newspaper, download your magazine.' Jackson continued: 'What becomes of publishing companies and publishing company jobs? And what becomes of bookstores and librarians and all of the jobs associated with paper? Well, in the not too distant future, such jobs simply will not exist. Steve Jobs is doing pretty well. He's created the iPad. Certainly, it has made life more efficient for Americans, but the iPad is produced in China. It is not produced here in the United States."

Comment Stoned (Score 4, Interesting) 366

by PacoSuarez (#33818884) Attached to: Simple Virus For Teaching?

Stoned is a classic and a pleasure to disassemble. It fits in a boot sector (512 bytes) and it's not particularly malicious, but it has all the elements that a virus needs. I don't know if it would still work on a modern computer, though: Some old viruses used funky instructions that became obsolete (like "POP CS"), and this one seems to have issues working on large-capacity disks.
The Military

Pentagon Selects Companies To Build Flying Humvees 302

Posted by Soulskill from the yes-really dept.
longacre sends in a quote from Popular Mechanics: "The Pentagon's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has selected two companies to proceed with the next stage of its Transformer, known as TX — a fully automated four-person vehicle that can drive like a car and then take off and fly like an aircraft to avoid roadside bombs. Lockheed Martin and AAI Corp., a unit of Textron Systems, are currently in negotiations with DARPA for the first stage of the Transformer project, several industry sources told Popular Mechanics at a robotics conference here in Denver." The picture included with the linked article says it all, really.
Crime

NY Governor Wants To Expand DNA Database 169

Posted by samzenpus from the leave-your-swab-at-the-door dept.
crimeandpunishment writes "If Governor David Paterson has his way, New York would take DNA samples from even the lowest level of criminal, doubling the state's DNA database. He says it would help to both solve crimes and clear people who were wrongly convicted. New York would become the first state in the country to do this. Currently DNA isn't collected in most misdemeanors. The plan is getting lots of support among law enforcement, but the New York Civil Liberties Union says there are questions about privacy."

Slashdot Top Deals

"A car is just a big purse on wheels." -- Johanna Reynolds

Close