slick_shoes - Slashdot User

Comment online vs real life (Score 1) 446

by slick_shoes on Thursday December 10, 2009 @02:35PM (#30391812) Attached to: Facebook Masks Worse Privacy With New Interface

I have two Twitter accounts and two Facebook ones. One with a fake name that I use for trolling, harassing celebrities, attempting to get laid and using applications that my real-life friends would scoff at me for. And one in my real name with very minimal personal info and nothing that could be damaging should a prospective employer search me out, simply to see what old mates are up to, stay 'in the loop' with my real life friends and receive PMs, (no one I know seems to use email any more. I always reply via gmail though - better the devil you know...) event invitations and stuff.

You deserve everything you get if you are naive enough to think that free social networking sites aren't going to use whatever information you disclose, however transparent their privacy policy is.

Submission + - Depeche Mode's Martin Gore subpoenaed in WoW Suit (guardian.co.uk)

Submitted by slick_shoes on Saturday November 28, 2009 @10:45AM

slick_shoes writes: Having unsuccessfully tried to sue (among others) Microsoft for "undue stress" over a broken Xbox 360 and Sony for banning him from the PSN, therefore violating his First Amendment rights in the past, Erik Estavillo has now filed suit against the makers of World of Warcraft. He is claiming that the game is a "harmful virtual environment" and its developers follow "sneaky and deceitful practices". Despite this, Estavillo admits he "relies on videogames heavily for the little ongoing happiness he can achieve in this life".

More bizzarely, he has subpoenaed the guitarist of UK gloom merchants Depeche Mode as an 'expert witness on melancholy' as "he himself has been known to be sad, lonely, and alienated, as can be seen in the songs he writes". Winona Ryder's love of Catcher in the Rye has also landed her with a subpoena to testify about "how alienation in the book can tie to alienation in real life videogames such as World of Warcraft.".

Estavillo is seeking $1m in damages.

Submission + - Duke Nukem Forever gameplay footage leaked (gossipgamers.com) 2

Submitted by

Tjeerd

on Sunday May 10, 2009 @02:44PM

Tjeerd writes: "It seems that while 3D-realms is dead, new footage has been leaked of Duke Nukem Forever. See the trailer here."

Submission + - Star Trek Technology Is Today (sfgate.com) 1

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 10, 2009 @12:20PM

An anonymous reader writes: The gadgets that emerged in Star Trek on TV 40 years ago are not so futuristic anymore, as movie goers to the latest Star Trek movie, clutching their cell phones, demonstrate. While the possibility of warp drive was discussed on Slashdot the other day (http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/05/06/2228251&art_pos=2), there's a lot more technology that became real (http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/05/10/MNPH17GI1J.DTL&type=printable): a "tricorder" has become a bloodless medical probe, the no-kill phaser is reincarnated as the military's Active Denial System, and the universal translator is in use as the "Phraselator" used by troops in Iraq since 2003.

Submission + - Test Driving the Wolfram Alpha (bytesizebio.net)

Submitted by SilverMind on Sunday May 10, 2009 @12:18AM

SilverMind writes: Byte Size Biology reports: "After playing around with Wolfram Alpha for a few hours, I can safely say the following: it's different, it's incomplete, it's idiosyncratic, and it's funky cool. And no, it will not dethrone Google, nor does it aim to do so". For more see: Test Driving the Wolfram Alpha

Comment Re:Not any tougher on iPhone according TFA (Score 1) 144

by slick_shoes on Wednesday March 25, 2009 @03:29PM (#27333975) Attached to: All Five Smartphones Survive Pwn2Own Contest

I read pretty much this same story on another site (which escapes me at the moment) claiming that Safari-Hack Guy DID have an iPhone exploit but wanted more than $10,000 for it, not because it was ineligible.

Comment Shennanigans (Score 3, Funny) 823

by slick_shoes on Thursday February 19, 2009 @10:26AM (#26916031) Attached to: Arctic Ice Extent Understated Because of "Sensor Drift"

Clearly some oil company executives have been to the Arctic and moved the sensors, just to discredit the campaigners.

Comment Re:I pulled all of my photos off (Score 1) 409

by slick_shoes on Wednesday February 18, 2009 @08:36AM (#26900719) Attached to: Facebook Scrambles To Contain ToS Fallout

What can Faecesbook do with millions of staged 'look at me I'm in a nightclub standing next to (supposedly) cool people' photos exactly? This is another case of a policy which is never likely to be invoked causing a company terrible PR damage. Has it been used yet?

Comment Re:Duh, of course the earth is flat! (Score 1) 578

by slick_shoes on Sunday August 10, 2008 @12:19PM (#24546183) Attached to: The Flat Earthers Are Still With Us

Time is DEAD - what we experience is merely the inter-dimensional smell of its rotting corpse. Everyone knows that.

McDonald's UK CEO Blames Video Games for Childhood Obesity 321

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on Friday January 11, 2008 @02:05PM from the fat-and-mean dept.

BoingBoing is reporting that Steve Eaterbrook, McDonald's UK CEO, says that video games are leading the charge in obesity. He does have the decency to at least admit fatty foods are a part of the problem, but points the finger at interactive games for keeping kids indoors and not out burning off energy. "According to The Times, McDonalds UK is 'on the brink of its best year for two decades'. The firm has enjoyed six per cent like-for-like sales growth in the last year. More than 88 million visits were made to McDonald's restaurants last month, up 10 million on the previous year." Don't forget, we have known for ages that video games make us fat and mean.

Submission + - Researchers Simulate Rat's Brain (guardian.co.uk) 3

Submitted by slick_shoes on Sunday December 23, 2007 @10:42AM

slick_shoes writes: Researchers working on the 'Blue Brain' project have developed a computer simulation of the neocortical column — the basic building block of the neocortex, the higher functioning part of our brains — of a two-week-old rat, and it behaves exactly like its biological counterpart. The machine that simulates this column is an IBM Blue Gene/L supercomputer. Project director Henry Markram believes that with the state of technology today, it is possible to build an entire rat's neocortex. From there, it's cats, then monkeys and finally, a human brain.

Submission + - Brain grown in jar pilots F-22 sim (pantherhouse.com) 5

Submitted by NJ Hewitt on Saturday December 15, 2007 @08:40AM

NJ Hewitt writes: "Florida scientists have grown a brain in a petri dish and taught it to pilot an F-22 jet simulator." The brain, with neurons connected to 60 electrodes, at first had no ability to pilot the fighter jet, but slowly learned and can now reliably navigate through even hurricane-force winds in the simulator.

Submission + - The UN IPCC bans dissenting scientists 3

Submitted by LynnwoodRooster on Sunday December 09, 2007 @12:23AM

LynnwoodRooster writes: The UN's Bali meeting about Climate Change has refused to let any scientists associated with the ICSC to participate in the meeting. Not a very open, scientific and non-political way to handle climate concerns...

Submission + - Reading paralysed man's mind (bbc.co.uk)

Submitted by

Tjeerd

on Friday November 16, 2007 @08:57AM

Tjeerd writes: "Electrodes have been implanted in the brain of Eric Ramsay, who has been "locked in" — conscious but paralysed — since a car crash eight years ago. These have been recording pulses in areas of the brain involved in speech. Now, New Scientist magazine reports, they are to use the signals he generates to drive speech software. Although the data is still being analysed, researchers at Boston University believe they can correctly identify the sound Mr Ramsay's brain is imagining some 80% of the time."

Submission + - Major Breakthrough in Speech Brain Hack

Submitted by

jd

on Friday November 16, 2007 @03:31AM

jd writes: "In a major breakthrough, neurologists are reporting that they can decypher neurological impulses into speech with an 80% accuracy. A paralyzed man who is incapable of speech has electrodes implanted in his brain which detect the electrical pulses in the brain relating to speech. These signals are then fed into computers which covert these pulses into signals suitable for speech synthesis. As a biotech marvel, this is astonishing. Depending on the rate of development it is possible to imagine Professor Hawking migrating to this, as it would be immune to any further loss of body movement and would vastly accelerate his ability to talk. On the flip-side, direct brain I/O is also a major step towards William Gibson's Neuromancer and other cyberpunk dark futures."

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