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Technology

Ask Slashdot: Hacking Urban Noise? 474

b1tbkt writes "I live at the corner of one of the busiest intersections in my city (pop. 350k). Although I've replaced all windows, insulated, and caulked every square inch of the place, the fire trucks and cars with obnoxious stereos still regularly intrude on my home office. Most of the noise comes in through the windows. I'm considering mounting an oblong parabolic reflector in the ceiling above the windows with a steady feed of white or brownian noise directed into it (e.g., via a small speaker placed within the reflector) to create a 'wall' of sound that would act as a buffer to the outside world. Active noise cancellation would be nice, too, but that's probably more than I want to take on. I don't see any products on the market for this sort of thing. Does anyone have any experiences to share with similar homebrew noise remediation efforts?"
Music

Study Finds New Pop Music Does All Sound the Same 576

whoever57 writes "A study of music from the '50 to the present using the Million Song Dataset has concluded that modern music has less variation than older music and songs today are, on average, 9dB louder than 50 years ago. Almost all music uses just 10 chords, but the way these are used together has changed, leading to fewer types of transitions being used. Variation in timbre has also reduced over the past decades."
Censorship

An HTTP Status Code For Censorship? 369

New submitter Tryfen writes "UK ISPs are being forced to block The Pirate Bay. One is using 'HTTP 403 Forbidden' to tell users that they cannot access the site. From the article: 'However, chief among my concerns is the technical way this censorship is implemented. At the moment, my ISP serves up an HTTP 403 error.' ... As far as I am concerned, this response is factually incorrect. According to the W3C Specifications: "The 4xx class of status code is intended for cases in which the client seems to have erred."' So, should there be a specific HTTP status code to tell a user they are being censored?"
Australia

Autralian Mining Companies Increasing Use of UAVs 67

aesoteric writes "Australia's top miners have opened a new front in their march to automation, flying unmanned aerial vehicles in increasing numbers at remote sites across the country. They've been used to inspect a fire-damaged oil rig, perform aerial photography and stockpile surveys. There is also a trend towards non U.S.-built UAVs, due to the lag in receiving export approvals for the aircraft and spare parts."

Comment Re:A Different Interpretation of the Tiers (Score 1) 176

The Billy Goat (great place, highly recommended) is only a couple of blocks from this school.

I'll assume, in the absence of any actual facts, the OP goes to that high school and had an unpleasant encounter with the normal clientele of that fine establishment.

If you try to play Drake in the Billy Goat:

You're gonna have a bad time.

Submission + - Most advanced auto user electronics?

TrailerTrash writes: "I want next car (USA based) to be determined largely on the sophistication of the user electronics. Who has the best system, or at least the system with the most features? GPS, Bluetooth, in-car hotspot, cameras, etc.? Cars over USD$50K need not apply..."

Comment Decoy? (Score 1) 550

if you think this is a real possibility in your line of work, there's always the classic teenager move - the decoy account. The decoy account using your real name gets very bland, vanilla posts with bland, vanilla pictures, just active enough to make it look real (Mary Sue now LIKE'S the United Way and Habitat for Humanity). The other account with a fake name has those ones of you with the stack of red solo cups on your head while you're passed out and the sharpie drawings all over your face. The employers get free access to your decoy account, which not coincidentally, links to your parents' accounts and other decoy accounts.

Comment Re:Big Brother is speaking (Score 1) 370

I want one of these for my next flight.

Using a cell phone after the door is closed and the flight attendant told you to turn your phone off?

Five year old loudly announcing their boredom every 30 seconds?

and the best...

Pilot refusing to stop announcing that on the left is the Grand Canyon, what the ground wind speed is at our destination, and giving a special welcome to our frequent fliers?

Comment Then why... (Score 5, Insightful) 438

Don't carriers drop Apple? "We'll lose money on every transaction but make it up in volume" has nevevr worked.

Or, is it that profits are reduced, not eliminated? Value destruction means losing money, not reduced margins. Pretty important to distinguish. If they were losing huge buckets of money, we wouldn't see carriers clamoring to carry the devices. OTOH, selling at reduced margins at high volume can potentially be profit maximizing (e.g., Wal*Mart).

Comment Head to Hawaii... (Score 5, Informative) 321

They've been there, done that:

http://www.punageothermalventure.com/

A 30 MW plant producing heat and energy from the world's most active volcano. An 8 MW addition was just approved, and the utility (HELCO) is looking to expand even further:

http://www.hawaii247.com/2012/01/06/helco-announces-plans-to-expand-geothermal-energy-on-the-big-island/

If there is an area that has a shot at 100% of their electricity from non-petroleum sources, it's the Big Island, with abundant wind, solar and geothermal options.

Comment Re:Not exactly. (Score 4, Insightful) 469

Dramatic oversimplification, but that's common in armchair marketers. After all, everyone's an expert in marketing, right?

Not so much.

An antecedent post got it right - marketing is assessing customer needs, assessing product features, communicating how they align, and influencing product development when they don't. Examples like Axe are fine in the consumer packaged goods industry, but you don't sell corn on sexy. You don't sell industrial supplies on rockstar vibe. You don't sell ERP systems on hipster cool. You do sell iPads and shower soap that way, true; but that isn't a representative sample of the world economy.

Sales is convincing you to buy. Very different skill set than Marketing.

I was a programmer for years, then wrote a marketing system for my employer, who promptly moved me to Marketing to make me eat my dog food. It was great, until we were bought by new corporate overlords who gutted us for our manufacturing plants and closed us down... 25 years and several company moves later I'm a VP in Marketing in a Really Big Company. Been on both sides. And dealing with programmers is still frustrating to me as well as my peers who do not share the same background.

Why? Because the programmers are typically condescending, do not value what their clients do, and take the fashionable mentality of "Tell us what problem you are trying to solve and WE'LL design your solution." They inevitably return with something very powerful, horribly ugly, and far too complex for our employees to use. IT departments need to do a little marketing themselves - and develop in partnership with their customers. Understand our needs, yes, but work with us on designing our solutions. An unusable power solution that doesn't get used did not solve my needs.

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