Comment Not if you're the IRS... (Score 1) 396
...and you want to prevent those nosy congressmen pawing through your emails looking for felonies...
After Non-Profit Application Furor, IRS Says It's Lost 2 Years Of Lerner's Email 372
As reported by the Associated Press, via US News & World Report, the IRS says that it cannot locate much of the email sent by a former IRS official over a two-year period. "The IRS told Congress Friday it cannot locate many of Lois Lerner's emails prior to 2011 because her computer crashed during the summer of that year. Lerner headed the IRS division that processed applications for tax-exempt status. The IRS acknowledged last year that agents had improperly scrutinized applications for tax-exempt status by tea party and other conservative groups." Three congressional committees are investigating the agency because of the allegations of politically motivated mishandling of those applications, as is the Justice Department and the IRS's own inspector general. As the story says, "Congressional investigators have shown that IRS officials in Washington were closely involved in the handling of tea party applications, many of which languished for more than a year without action. But so far, they have not publicly produced evidence that anyone outside the agency directed the targeting or even knew about it." CBS News has a slightly different version, also based on the AP's reporting.
Comment Re:Hardware sampling rates (Score 1) 121
I swear on some late night upgrades I've heard the machines talking to me, but NOW I know it was true...
Comment I'd be more impressed if I heard of any of them (Score 4, Informative) 234
"Bright Future Jobs, the Programmers Guild and WashTech."
Who, who, and who?
As of August 1999, the Programmers Guild had 400 members. Mighty important organization there, if you can't be bothered to offer membership numbers from this century. Which, to be fair, looks to be the last time their web page look was updated.
As far as I can tell, "Bright Future Jobs" is one person Donna Conroy.
WashTech is a union. No thanks.
I suspect that IBM, Infosys and Manpower won't even notice their "boycott."
Comment Asphixiation ? (Score 1) 483
Why not use gas asphyxiation. A simple carbon monoxide mixture would put people to sleep and then they would die from lack of oxygen.
White House Pressures Legislators Into Gutting USA FREEDOM Act 284
The U.S. House of Representatives has substantially reduced the effectiveness of the USA FREEDOM Act, a surveillance reform bill that sought to end mass collection of U.S. citizens' data. House Leadership was pressured by the Obama Administration to weaken many of the bill's provisions. The EFF and the Center for Democracy & Technology had both given their backing to the bill earlier this month, but they've now withdrawn their support. CDT Senior Counsel Harley Geiger said, "The Leadership of the House is demonstrating that it wants to end the debate about surveillance, rather than end bulk collection. As amended, the bill may not prevent collection of data on a very large scale in a manner that infringes upon the privacy of Americans with no connection to a crime or terrorism. This is quite disappointing given the consensus by the public, Congress, the President, and two independent review groups that ending bulk collection is necessary."
Robyn Greene of the Open Technology Institute added, "We are especially disappointed by the weakening of the language intended to prohibit bulk collection of innocent Americans’ records. Although we are still hopeful that the bill’s language will end the bulk collection of telephone records and prevent indiscriminate collection of other types of records, it may still allow data collection on a dangerously massive scale. Put another way, it may ban ‘bulk’ collection of all records of a particular kind, but still allow for ‘bulky’ collection impacting the privacy of millions of people. Before this bill becomes law, Congress must make clear—either through amendments to the bill, through statements in the legislative record, or both—that mass collection of innocent people’s records isn’t allowed."
Robyn Greene of the Open Technology Institute added, "We are especially disappointed by the weakening of the language intended to prohibit bulk collection of innocent Americans’ records. Although we are still hopeful that the bill’s language will end the bulk collection of telephone records and prevent indiscriminate collection of other types of records, it may still allow data collection on a dangerously massive scale. Put another way, it may ban ‘bulk’ collection of all records of a particular kind, but still allow for ‘bulky’ collection impacting the privacy of millions of people. Before this bill becomes law, Congress must make clear—either through amendments to the bill, through statements in the legislative record, or both—that mass collection of innocent people’s records isn’t allowed."
Comment Re:Not me (Score 0) 255
Doesn't your friend have access to
1) public transit? At least buses?
2) taxis?
3) Airport shuttles of some kind?
4) Zipcar or other car rental services?
Comment Translation (Score 1) 255
"People didn't like my original piece and had points of view that disagreed with my own. Therefore they're wrong. Now I'll just double-down by calling my critics idiots whose ideas are based of science fiction stereotypes. Then I'll just wait for my critics to admit they were wrong and finally get around to praising my obvious genius."
The 69 Words GM Employees Can Never Say 373
bizwriter (1064470) writes "General Motors put together its take on a George Carlin list of words you can't say. Engineering employees were shown 69 words and phrases that were not to be used in emails, presentations, or memos. They include: defect, defective, safety, safety related, dangerous, bad, and critical. You know, words that the average person, in the context of the millions of cars that GM has recalled, might understand as indicative of underlying problems at the company. Oh, terribly sorry, 'problem' was on the list as well."
Studies: Wildfires Worse Due To Global Warming 379
An anonymous reader writes "According to scientists we can look forward to more devastating wildfires like the ones scorching Southern California because of global warming. "The fires in California and here in Arizona are a clear example of what happens as the Earth warms, particularly as the West warms, and the warming caused by humans is making fire season longer and longer with each decade," said University of Arizona geoscientist Jonathan Overpeck. "It's certainly an example of what we'll see more of in the future.""
Comment Turnstile Jumping and Broken Windows Policing (Score 2) 389
New York City's crackdown on turnstile jumping was part of the Giuliani Administrations implementation of broken window policing. But reducing low level disorder and misdemeanor crime, broken windows policing makes the law abiding residents of neighborhoods feel safer.
"A government’s inability to control even a minor crime like graffiti signaled to citizens that it certainly couldn’t handle more serious ones."
Stopping and arresting turnstile jumpers in particular frequently turned up wanted felons, parole violators, and gangbangers with illegal guns. Arresting them not only took criminal predators, off the streets, it encouraged other criminals to leave their guns at home for fear of having them confiscated. This further reduced their abilities to commit criminal acts in places like subways, and reduced criminal gun incidents when members of rival gangs would bump into each other.
Comment Because fabs can run $10 billion each (Score 1) 345
Actually running your own fab can give you tremendous economies of scale if you know you'll be running you part (or its die shrink successors) 24/7/365. The per chip costs are going to be lower.
But to build a state-of-the-art, 300mm, 14-nm fab with all the latest process technology can run you $10 billion. AMD doesn't have enough mnoney to make those bets anymore, and few companies do.
Going with a foundry means you earn less profit per chip sold, but it also let's you avoid that $10 billion up-front investment.
Comment And Timothy Wins the Slashdot Office Pool... (Score 1) 113
...for who can cram the most acronyms into a single headline!
Comment Re:you've got male (Score 1, Insightful) 315
It is 2014. It is not 1974. The whole tabula rasa myth is a proven lie. The whole "politically correct protected class is a social construct and is oppressed due to evil white men" is a lie. We have vast genetic studies across the world that disprove all of this.
Women are not interested in technology, period. As with any natural law, there are exceptions. In this case, they are very few. The reason is simple: the intelligence and creative drive that lends itself to technology and art evolved in humans as male display of genetic fitness. Just as the peacock has feathers, and songbirds sing their songs, it is our raw intelligence that is the best predictor of deleterious genetic load. Yes, the evil geneticists can predict the deleterious genetic load of animals based upon their mating displays. Human females, like virtually all female animals, have evolved to judge genetic fitness based upon whatever is the characteristic of a particular species or subspecies. Technology is such a display that simply does not interest the vast majority of females.
This is old news now. The first book to delve into it, before the human genome was decoded, came out in 2001. Behavioral genetics and evolutionary pscyhology have become such important fields, the former editor of the Science section of the New York Times just released a whole book on the subject last week.
Strangely, slashdot type geeks appear to be the least amenable to evolutionary theory. Sure, they like Dawkins. They think people who believe in God are stupid. They believe apes evolved into humans, but THEN. evolution stopped. And, all people became equal. Especially nerdy white guys with aspergers.
In my experience, this is due to the very naive hope that belief in this strange geek religion of human equality will get said geeks laid. It doesn't. It never has. It never will.
Comment I call BS... (Score 1) 111
Somehow they have convinced themselves that advertising dollars is part of development costs.
