Sarcazmo - Slashdot User

Comment Anyone have Cliff Notes? (Score 0) 128

by MouseR on Monday July 14, 2014 @11:41AM (#47449007) Attached to: With New Horizons Spacecraft a Year Away, What We Know About Pluto

What do they expect to find on such a distant clump of rock and why is it they thought it to be a good investment to go snap a few slefies around it rather then use that money to go where things really ought to be interesting like Io and Europa?

Economist: File Sharing's Impact On Movies Is Modest At Most 214

Posted by samzenpus on Monday July 14, 2014 @09:48AM from the boosting-sales dept.

First time accepted submitter SillyBoy123 writes What is the impact of file sharing releases on the movie industry? Ask the studios and they will say billions. An economist named Koleman Strumph is presenting a paper at the National Bureau of Economics this week that tries to estimate the crowd out from these releases. His conclusion: "I find that file sharing has only a modest impact on box office revenue." In fact, Strumph finds that file sharing before the official release of a movie can actually be beneficial to revenues: "One consistent result is that file sharing arrivals shortly before the theatrical opening have a modest positive effect on box office revenue. One explanation is that such releases create greater awareness of the film. This is also the period of heaviest advertising. In conjunction with the main estimates, this suggests that free and potentially degraded goods such as the lower quality movies available on file sharing networks can have some beneficial effects on intellectual property."

Comment Another marketing ploy (Score 2) 187

by MouseR on Saturday July 05, 2014 @01:31AM (#47386983) Attached to: Train Derailment Dumps Two 737 Fuselages Into Clark Fork River

To lower the number of injuries per crash.

Comment Rot14 (Score 1) 115

by MouseR on Thursday July 03, 2014 @04:27PM (#47379471) Attached to: Use of Encryption Foiled the Cops a Record 9 Times In 2013

really confuses NSA.

Ask Slashdot: What Would It Take For You To Buy a Smartwatch? 427

Posted by Soulskill on Wednesday June 25, 2014 @06:21PM from the a-third-wrist-to-carry-in-my-pocket dept.

An anonymous reader writes: I don't wear a watch. I never have. So, to me, the push for smart watches has always been a non-starter. But I was discussing with friends some of the features of Android Wear that Google demonstrated at the I/O conference today, and it got me wondering: what set of features would be required for a smartwatch to become viable? Obviously, this is different for everybody — millions of people wear regular watches even though they could easily pull out their phone and check the time there. Any smartwatch can also tell time, but it has advantages (apps that do other things), and disadvantages (needs charging). Clearly, there are some functions for which it's useful to have an object strapped to your wrist, even if that function could be served by the device in your pocket. Telling time is one, and lots of people use sundry fitness doo-dads to measure exercise. It makes sense to me that checking the weather forecast would fall into this category, and perhaps checking notifications. (Conversely, other functions do not translate at all, like taking photos or playing games.) Thus, two questions: if you already wear a watch, what would it take for a smartwatch to replace it? If you don't wear a watch, what features would motivate you to get one?

Comment Re:How will history judge the F-35? (Score 1) 417

by MouseR on Friday June 06, 2014 @01:05PM (#47180887) Attached to: Canada Poised To Buy 65 Lockheed Martin F-35 JSFs

Still way more expensive than a EuroFighter. But Canada's close ties with US Gov would have made a EuroFighter awkward for our relations. Despite NATO.

Netflix Ditches Silverlight For HTML5 On Macs 202

Posted by Unknown Lamer on Wednesday June 04, 2014 @10:13AM from the giving-up-freedom-for-tv dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Netflix yesterday furthered its plans to ditch Silverlight for HTML5 on Macs, having already done so last year in IE11 on Windows 8.1. HTML5 video is now supported by Netflix in Safari on OS X Yosemite, meaning you can stream your favorite movies and TV shows without having to install any plugins." Courtesy of encrypted media extensions.

Apple Announces New Programming Language Called Swift 636

Posted by Unknown Lamer on Monday June 02, 2014 @08:04PM from the everyone's-got-one dept.

jmcbain (1233044) writes "At WWDC 2014 today, Apple announced Swift, a new programming language. According to a report by Ars Technica: 'Swift seems to get rid of Objective C's reliance on defined pointers; instead, the compiler infers the variable type, just as many scripting languages do. ... The new language will rely on the automatic reference counting that Apple introduced to replace its garbage-collected version of Objective C. It will also be able to leverage the compiler technologies developed in LLVM for current development, such as autovectorization. ... Apple showed off a couple of cases where implementing the same algorithm in Swift provided a speedup of about 1.3X compared to the same code implemented in Objective C.'" Language basics, and a few worthwhile comments on LtU.

Comment Re:A new programming language (Score 1) 411

by MouseR on Monday June 02, 2014 @04:19PM (#47149243) Attached to: Apple WWDC 2014: Tim Cook Unveils Yosemite

Will be available today but App Store not updated for the Swift manual.

XCode6 preview includes a syntactical guide (probably the same as what will be on iBooks).

10 minutes into it and I cringe at a specific feature:

Support for any unicode glyphs as variable/function names. Down to emoticons.

That will bode well when I need to use altavista to translate the chinese sources into something I can read.

Ask Slashdot: In What Other Occupations Are IT Skills and Background Useful? 158

Posted by samzenpus on Monday June 02, 2014 @09:37AM from the using-your-skills dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Here on Slashdot we sometimes see questions about how to get IT jobs while having little experience, changing from one specialty to another, or being (gasp) middle aged. And, we see comments that bemoan various aspects of IT work and express a desire to do something entirely different. This is what I'm wondering about, and I thought I'd put my questions to Ask Slashdot. Has anyone successfully applied their years of IT experience to other lines of work? Is the field that you moved on to entirely unrelated, or is there a more substantial link to your new (but clearly not IT) role?"

Former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer Buys the LA Clippers For $2 Billion 270

Posted by samzenpus on Thursday May 29, 2014 @08:14PM from the big-wallet dept.

DroidJason1 (3589319) writes "Former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer has purchased the LA Clippers for a whopping $2 billion, also setting a new record price for an NBA team. This deal is apparently tentative until Donald Sterling gives his blessing. Twenty-nine other NBA owners need to offer their approval as well, but that shouldn't be a problem as long as Ballmer reaffirms his commitment of keeping the Clippers in Los Angeles. Interestingly, Donald Sterling had purchased the team back in June of 1981 for $12.5 million." We talked about this earlier in the week when rumors of the purchase started circulating.

Comment What about multiple lecture? (Score 1) 339

by MouseR on Thursday May 29, 2014 @03:52PM (#47122647) Attached to: The Energy Saved By Ditching DVDs Could Power 200,000 Homes

Movies I buy (and I still do buy DVDs as well as online content such as through iTunes), usually are bought because I plan to watch more than once.

I'm sure the manufacturing and distribution costs of my DVD purchases are a lot less of a strain on the environment than having streamed these movies over and over. I cant count how many times I have watches some movies in my collection.

SpaceX To Present Manned Dragon Capsule 128

Posted by timothy on Thursday May 29, 2014 @12:20PM from the calling-shotgun dept.

camperdave (969942) writes "SpaceX CEO Elon Musk is set to unveil the Dragon V2 at a media event from Hawthorne, California, tonight at 7 pm. Pacific. The 'Dragon V2' is an upgraded, man rated version of the unmanned spaceship that has made several successful cargo trips to the International Space Station. The new craft will carry a mix of cargo and up to a seven crewmembers to the ISS. According to Musk, this is 'Actual flight design hardware of crew Dragon, not a mockup.' Following the space shuttle's forced retirement in 2011, US astronauts have been totally dependent on the Russian Soyuz capsules for ferry rides to orbit and back. The crisis in Ukraine, which has resulted in some U.S. economic sanctions imposed against Russia, also has the potential to threaten U.S. access to the ISS as the Russian government considers reciprocal sanctions of its own. 'Sounds like this might be a good time to unveil the new Dragon Mk 2 spaceship that @SpaceX has been working on with @NASA,' Musk tweeted. SpaceX is one of three commercial space companies competing for funding from NASA's Commercial Crew Transportation Capability program." (You can watch the event as a webcast.)

Microsoft Demos Real-Time Translation Over Skype 169

Posted by samzenpus on Wednesday May 28, 2014 @06:59PM from the speaking-the-same-language dept.

Z80xxc! (1111479) writes "Today at the first annual Code Conference, Microsoft demonstrated its new real-time translation in Skype publicly for the first time. Gurdeep Pall, Microsoft's VP of Skype and Lync, compares the technology to Star Trek's Universal Translator. During the demonstration, Pall converses in English with a coworker in Germany who is speaking German. 'Skype Translator results from decades of work by the industry, years of work by our researchers, and now is being developed jointly by the Skype and Microsoft Translator teams. The demo showed near real-time audio translation from English to German and vice versa, combining Skype voice and IM technologies with Microsoft Translator, and neural network-based speech recognition.'"

Firefox OS Powered Flame Available For Pre-order; Ships Globally 109

Posted by Unknown Lamer on Wednesday May 28, 2014 @12:05PM from the everyone-has-a-phone dept.

sfcrazy (1542989) writes "Developers need access to device running the platform for which they develop. Nexus was Google's reference device and now Mozilla is coming out with its own device. Mozilla has opened pre-order for Flame, its Firefox OS reference devices for $170 including free shipping." Specs are, of course, modest: a dual core 1.2GHz snapdragon, 1G of RAM, 8G of flash, an 854×480 4.5" screen, and a 5MP camera. Now, if only they would release a device with a keyboard.

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