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Software

Submission + - Where have the Topics gone?

permaculture writes: "There used to be a 'Topics' link on Slashdot. Search reveals nothing when the input is 'topics' 'education' nor 'where have the topics gone?'

Where do I click now to see the list of topics?"

Comment Re:Why TF doesn't it happen in US? (Score 1) 188

As I understand it, the US mainstream media is almost entirely owned by a small handful of companies.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concentration_of_media_ownership

They often have a vested interest in the stories they choose to report on or avoid.

e.g.

> Reporters Steve Wilson and Jane Akre were first asked by FOX News and later bribed,
> to downplay a story they had on a cancer-causing growth hormone called Posilac
> which is growth hormone for dairy cows which is absorbed by humans through milk.
> The reporters decided to blow the whistle on FOX News and filed a law suit.
> After the ordeal was over, it was discovered in the appeals court that it's
> actually not against the law to falsify the "News."

http://behavioralhealth.typepad.com/markhams_behavioral_healt/food_and_drink/

The Courts

Judge In Pirate Bay Trial Biased 415

maglo writes "The judge who handed down the harsh sentence to the four accused in the The Pirate Bay trial was biased, writes Sveriges Radio (Sweden Public Radio): sr.se (swedish). Google translation. The judge is member of two copyright lobby organizations, something he shares with several of the prosecutor attorneys (Monique Wadsted, Henrik Pontén and Peter Danowsky). The organizations in question are Svenska Föreningen för Upphovsrätt (SFU) and Svenska föreningen för industriellt rättsskydd (SFIR)."
Books

Copyright Lobby Targets "Pirate Bay For Books" 356

An anonymous reader writes "TTVK, a Finnish national copyright lobby, is threatening a book rental service called Bookabooka for allegedly running the 'Pirate Bay for Books.' Bookabooka however does not offer a torrent tracker service, nor does it enable a user in any way to download eBooks; it simply provides a place for book owners to rent textbooks to each other via the traditional mail service. It is mandatory that all textbooks must be originals. The service is used by a lot of School and University students, and it does not handle the shipping or returns of the textbooks. Nevertheless, the Finnish book publishers' association (Suomen Kustannusyhdistys) is convinced the service is breaching the copyright laws and threatening their business. TTVK has given Bookabooka until Friday to cease operations or face a lawsuit. Bookabooka's founders have vowed to keep the service online and ignore the threat."
Privacy

EU Data-Retention Laws Stricter Than Many People Realized 263

An anonymous reader writes with a snippet from the Telegraph: "A European Union directive, which Britain was instrumental in devising, comes into force which will require all internet service providers to retain information on email traffic, visits to web sites and telephone calls made over the internet, for 12 months."

Comment Re:The juggling analogy again? (Score 1) 114

> The soul of juggling is passing objects between two or more jugglers (I humbly assert).

Absolutely yes, amongst the juggling population in my vicinity this seems to be generally regarded as the ultimate expression of the art.

Some jugglers like 4 count with tricks best, but there's a notable resurgence of interest in passing with both hands - 3 count and other such patterns.

Nice to hear from another juggler here on Slashdot. :)

Comment The juggling analogy again? (Score 5, Interesting) 114

As a juggler, it's a little annoying when people use juggling as an analogy and get it wrong. So here's an explanation of juggling and how to do it, whether it's clubs or tasks.

It's all in the throw, not in the catch. If the throw is perfect, the catch happens without any corrections or concious thought.

You may have two hands, but your two eyes can only look at one thing at a time. Jugglers just peep at the object as it arcs over and downwards, and that's enough to tell them where and when to stick out a hand and catch it. This has been confirmed experimentally using opaque glasses to block off the view of the objects except around about the top of the arc.

Once you get beyond juggling three objects, you peep at the object but then you have to remember how it's falling while you peep at another, before you stick out your hand to catch the first object. So 1) consistency is hugely important and 2) you have to practise daily until it's completely automatic.

The most important tool for juggling is gravity. That's how jugglers stack the objects and know where and when they'll fall. If gravity wavered, it'd bring the pattern down. You have to know what to expect. Remember in Firefly how something unexpected would happen, and it'd turn out they'd prepared for that contingency? Same thing, really.

Now let's apply the theory of juggling to 'juggling' a bunch of tasks. You have to be able to give each task some impetus and then move on, knowing the point at which you'll have to return to that task. You have to have some method, equivalent to the way jugglers use gravity, that smoothly handles the tasks while your attention is elsewhere. Finally, you have to make it funny. Or perhaps that only applies to juggling? Well, analogies can only be stretched so far.

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