Comment Re:Cookies and referers (Score 1) 158
The Priv3 and Ghostery browser plugins can block those Facebook and Google+ like buttons for you.
Japanese Police Offers First-Ever Reward For Wanted Hacker 63
alphadogg writes "Japanese police are looking for an individual who can code in C#, uses a 'Syberian Post Office' to make anonymous posts online, and knows how to surf the web without leaving any digital tracks — and they're willing to pay. It is the first time that Japan's National Police Agency has offered a monetary reward for a wanted hacker, or put so much technical detail into one of its wanted postings. The NPA will pay up to $36,000, the maximum allowed under its reward system. The case is an embarrassing one for the police, in which earlier this year 4 individuals were wrongly arrested after their PCs were hacked and used to post messages on public bulletin boards. The messages included warnings of plans for mass killings at an elementary school posted to a city website."
Submission + - Google boss says tax avoidance IS capitalism (independent.co.uk) 1
Bruce66423 writes: Eric Schmidt said £2.5 billion tax avoidance 'is called capitalism': is totally unrepentant. One must admit to being impressed by his honesty, unlike Starbucks who are gratuitously giving the British government money. So the question is — how can British geeks ensure their displeasure is demonstrated — apart from making sure that ALL their friends have Adblocker software installed
Comment Re:Europeans, beware! (Score 5, Funny) 817
Chuck "Walker" Norris himself will watch over this and will roundhouse-kick you until you learn to respect democracy!
He's just doing his part to prevent "1000 years of darkness".
Comment Re:Lawyers (Score 1) 43
Their contribution was to help pave the way for the lawsuit to disappear. Sounds like a win/win between them and the defendants. Also, the plaintiffs get a settlement. A technical win/win/win. I'm sure everyone will spend the next weekend at their winter beach houses celebrating with some fine caviar and champagne relieved to see that privacy is once again on their side.
Comment Re:Outta here (Score 1) 1113
Y
Fund his opponent in the next election. Put in some time in getting the competition elected.
And amazingly enough the next election is this November and he's running without a democrat (or any other as far as I know) opponent. It's being handed to him.
Comment Re:iSuppli ignores recent history (Score 2) 513
I agree, I was convinced to shell out the cash for the first time in 2009 after always owning PCs (and a couple free Ataris & 1 free Mac in the 90s).It was definitely more expensive than comparable Win laptops. But I had a good job and low expenses. What got me was that it had a metal case, the multi touch track pad is awesome and it was a reasonably powerful computer. Also, I dj in nightclubs using Serato which happens to be more stable in OS X (it started on the Linux platform but I suppose they switched due to OS market share).
I currently dual boot it in Win7 (which I am using at the moment). I also got a small amount of RAM then installed my own after my warranty was up. If I had to gripe about anything at this point it's really mostly the price and sometimes I wanna mess with something that OS X just doesn't allow me to access, but the fact that it's based on BSD has remedied some of those issues.
Comment Re:Facebook Killer? Sensation? (Score 1) 215
The only place I ever heard Diaspora even mentioned at all was right here on Slashdot.
Same here, and I forgot about it since it was a late night and just remembered when I saw today's article.
Comment Re:Romneybot to lose debate (Score 1) 168
OK, and North Korea is known as The Democratic People's Republic of North Korea. Holy crap, democratic republics are evil... wait... isn't the United States of America a democratic republic? Damn, I didn't realize we were so fucked as a country.
Comment Why stop there? (Score 1) 114
They forgot to ask for all of your snail mail to be scanned and GPS tracking logs in case you have secret meetings in person so they can at least suggest a conspiracy depending on who you're with.
Submission + - With 'Access Codes,' Textbook Pricing More Complicated Than Ever (chronicle.com)
jyosim writes: "Some see it as the latest ploy by textbook publishers to kill the used book market: 'access codes' for online supplements for course work. In some cases professors require students to purchase these codes in order to even see the required homework. One U. of Maine's student's struggle to find a reasonably priced textbook demonstrates the limits the new publisher practices put on students, but some argue that ultimately the era of digital course materials will be better for student learning."
Submission + - Former NASA engineer designs app to chart water quality (trust.org)
DevotedSkeptic writes: "When environmental engineer John Feighery got an internship at NASA in the 1990s, he wanted to be an astronaut but he was given a job working with a team designing the U.S. bathroom for the space station.
After the Columbia Space Shuttle accident in 2003 left seven crew members dead, the Space Shuttle programme was suspended and further work on the International Space Station was delayed.
Feighery turned his focus from managing water, sanitation and health problems in space to those on Earth.
After he left the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration Feighery tested well water in Bangladesh for a job funded by the National Institutes of Health, part of the U.S. Health and Human Services department.
He felt the work, which involved using heavy equipment, charting notes and locations by hand and transporting samples in incubators to a distant laboratory could be simpler and less expensive.
That's how he came up with the idea to use inexpensive testing equipment available online, and mWater — an Android app that records the data results of water quality tests and maps them.
The app, which is available in the Google Play Store, also allows users to leave notes for other users about the appearance of the water, its scent, and how the water is flowing from the source, building up an archive of information over time.
A photograph of the water source can be uploaded and location details are registered automatically using a GPS reading from the mobile device.
Health workers can use the data or even go with a sick patient and easily test the water where they live.
"Anybody can look at it and see what's going on to see if anyone else might get infected," Feighery said. "When fecal contamination occurs somewhere it is the first precursor of disease in water systems. Before cholera spreads there's usually some failure in the sanitation system."
Giving poor people proper access to safe water and sanitation would save 2.5 million people a year from dying from diarrhoea and other diseases spread by a lack of hygiene, according to the charity WaterAid."
After the Columbia Space Shuttle accident in 2003 left seven crew members dead, the Space Shuttle programme was suspended and further work on the International Space Station was delayed.
Feighery turned his focus from managing water, sanitation and health problems in space to those on Earth.
After he left the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration Feighery tested well water in Bangladesh for a job funded by the National Institutes of Health, part of the U.S. Health and Human Services department.
He felt the work, which involved using heavy equipment, charting notes and locations by hand and transporting samples in incubators to a distant laboratory could be simpler and less expensive.
That's how he came up with the idea to use inexpensive testing equipment available online, and mWater — an Android app that records the data results of water quality tests and maps them.
The app, which is available in the Google Play Store, also allows users to leave notes for other users about the appearance of the water, its scent, and how the water is flowing from the source, building up an archive of information over time.
A photograph of the water source can be uploaded and location details are registered automatically using a GPS reading from the mobile device.
Health workers can use the data or even go with a sick patient and easily test the water where they live.
"Anybody can look at it and see what's going on to see if anyone else might get infected," Feighery said. "When fecal contamination occurs somewhere it is the first precursor of disease in water systems. Before cholera spreads there's usually some failure in the sanitation system."
Giving poor people proper access to safe water and sanitation would save 2.5 million people a year from dying from diarrhoea and other diseases spread by a lack of hygiene, according to the charity WaterAid."
Submission + - World's first Linux Ultrabook ships (pcworld.com)
Rozzin writes: "Everyone here has heard of Dell's `Project Sputnik', but a little manufacturer of strictly Linux computers in California appears to have beat them to the punch: PCWorld reports that ZaReason has started shipping the world's first Linux Ultrabook. And they've somehow managed to fit 16 GB of RAM and two solid-state drives inside, along with a 6-hour battery and 14" display. CEO Cathy Malmrose explains: "It's one of my pet peeves that the world's most robust, high-end software is so often housed in low-end, unappealing machines or, worse, tweaked to work on machines that were built for Windows. Our goal is to build hardware that more aptly matches the high-end aspects of FOSS"."
Submission + - Hugo awards live stream cut by copyright bot (io9.com)
Penmanpro writes: "Quotes from the linked article "UStream's incorrectly programmed copyright enforcement squad had destroyed our only access."
"just as Neil Gaiman was giving an acceptance speech for his Doctor Who script, "The Doctor's Wife." Where Gaiman's face had been were the words, "Worldcon banned due to copyright infringement." ""
"just as Neil Gaiman was giving an acceptance speech for his Doctor Who script, "The Doctor's Wife." Where Gaiman's face had been were the words, "Worldcon banned due to copyright infringement." ""
Submission + - We Need a Longer School Year
Hugh Pickens writes writes: "Jennifer Davis writes that while summer holds a special place in our hearts: lazy afternoons, camping at the lake, warm evenings gazing at the moon, languid summers can be educationally detrimental, with most youth losing about two months of grade-level equivalency in math computational skills over the summer and students from low-income families falling even further behind. A consensus is building that the traditional nine-month school year might be a relic of the 20th century that has no place in an increasingly competitive global work force and an analysis of charter schools in New York reveals that students are most likely to outperform peers if they attend schools that are open at least 10 days more than the conventional year. What of the idea that summer should be a time of respite from the stresses of school? There are two wrong notions wrapped up in this perspective. The first is that somehow summer is automatically a magical time for children but as one fifth-grader, happy to be back at school in August, declared, "Sometimes summer is really boring. We just sit there and watch TV." The second misperception is that school is automatically bereft of the excitement and joy of learning. On the contrary, as the National Center on Time and Learning describes in its studies of schools that operate with significantly more time, educators use the longer days and years to enhance the content and methods of the classroom. "We should expect our schools to furnish today's students with the education they will need to excel in our global society," says Davis. "But we must also be willing to provide schools the tools they need to ensure this outcome, including the flexibility to turn the lazy days of summer into the season of learning.""
