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Submission + - Favorite unexpected comment/slang/denigration phrase? (infoworld.com) 2

Submitted by grep -v '.*' *
grep -v '.*' * writes: I just ran across a new turn-of-a-phrase: "kitten-chewing software vendor." (They were maligning a software vendor for an $8K per seat application upgrade charge from XP to W7.) Now that may or may not be justified — my point here is that the word imagery was more shocking than the upgrade charge. (Then again, maybe I'm just jaded.)

So, what's your favorite new or old phrase? Mine is still: "No good deed goes unpunished", although "Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they're not out to get you" is looking better and better. (The "I'm from the government and here to help you" joke just seems to be a lost cause.)

Now: ID-10-T error is good too, although I've lately come to realize that there are some smart people who like things other than computers and just want their immediate problem solved so they can move on to their other fun, non-computer stuff. That's was a surprise — fine, but there also seem to be a lot of ID-#-T people too, where # seems to be their IQ, or at least their interest in anything that I can detect.

Submission + - Online Skim Reading Is Taking Over The Human Brain

Submitted by Hugh Pickens DOT Com
Hugh Pickens DOT Com writes: Michael S. Rosenwald reports in the Washington Post that according to cognitive neuroscientists humans seem to be developing digital brains with new circuits for skimming through the torrent of information online at the expense of traditional deep reading circuitry developed over several millennia. Maryanne Wolf, one of the world’s foremost experts on the study of reading, was startled last year to discover her brain was apparently adapting, too. After a day of scrolling through the Web and hundreds of e-mails, she sat down one evening to read Hermann Hesse’s challenging novel “The Glass Bead Game.” “I’m not kidding: I couldn’t do it,” says Wolf. “It was torture getting through the first page. I couldn’t force myself to slow down so that I wasn’t skimming, picking out key words, organizing my eye movements to generate the most information at the highest speed. I was so disgusted with myself.”

The brain was not designed for reading and there are no genes for reading like there are for language or vision. But spurred by the emergence of Egyptian hieroglyphics, the Phoenician alphabet, Chinese paper and, finally, the Gutenberg press, the brain has adapted to read. For example, at the neuronal level, a person who learns to read in Chinese uses a very particular set of neuronal connections that differ in significant ways from the pathways used in reading English. Before the Internet, the brain read mostly in linear ways — one page led to the next page, and so on. The Internet is different. With so much information, hyperlinked text, videos alongside words and interactivity everywhere, our brains form shortcuts to deal with it all — scanning, searching for key words, scrolling up and down quickly. This is nonlinear reading, and it has been documented in academic studies.

Some researchers believe that for many people, this style of reading is beginning to invade our ability to deal with other mediums. “We’re spending so much time touching, pushing, linking, scrolling and jumping through text that when we sit down with a novel, your daily habits of jumping, clicking, linking is just ingrained in you,” says Andrew Dillon. Wolf points out that she’s no Luddite but she is now training her own brain to be bi-literate. She went back to the Hesse novel the next night, giving herself distance, both in time and space, from her screens. “I put everything aside. I said to myself, ‘I have to do this,’” she said. “It was really hard the second night. It was really hard the third night. It took me two weeks, but by the end of the second week I had pretty much recovered myself so I could enjoy and finish the book.”

Submission + - Object seen in skydiver's helmetcam unlikely to be a meteorite 3

Submitted by The Bad Astronomer
The Bad Astronomer writes: The viral video showing what looked like a meteorite falling past a skydiver made quite a splash, with many people assuming it was true. However, further analysis shows that it's also perfectly consistent with being a small (1-3 cm) rock that fell out of the parachute itself, which is a far more likely explanation.

Comment firewall (Score 1) 2

by JohnVanVliet (#46670211) Attached to: ask slashdot: tight firewall for brand-new linux user

As a Linux user for 10+ years .
The Default settings for the firewall in almost any linux OS are good

and set up to be secure
Ubuntu dose NOT use "yum" .That is a Redhat tool
about the only thing the user might need to do is if they are using a P2P program and there isp blocks port 6881
is open ports for it

"set up a default deny rule"
unused ports on linux systems are already BLOCKED in "stealth" mode
as in there will be no "deny" answer going back

Submission + - 60 Minutes Dubbed Engines Noise Over The Tesla Model S 3

Submitted by cartechboy
cartechboy writes: Did you watch the Tesla 60 Minutes segment the other night? If you did, you might have ended up on the floor rolling around laughing like I did. Since when does the Tesla Model S electric car make audible engine noises? Or downshift? Turns out, 60 Minutes dubbed engine noises and a downshift over the Model S running footage. The show claims it was an editing error. Call it what you want, it was absolutely hilarious. A little note to TV producers assigned to cover Tesla Motors in the future: Electric cars don't upshift or downshift.

Submission + - Some bad ideas for anyone still running XP (yahoo.com) 1

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: It's been well documented that Microsoft is finally ending support for the Operating System That Wouldn't Die. Rafe Needleman at Yahoo! Tech has some options that look good, but you shouldn't really consider, like just not worrying about it to... installing Linux? From the article:

"But here’s why it’s a bad idea: It really is a platform for nerds. Few people you know — unless you know a lot of programmers — will be able to help you out. And your Windows software won’t work. If you have apps you like, you’ll have to find Linux equivalents for them. You’re better off moving to a consumer-friendly operating system."

He goes on to later recommend that folks move to a Mac, where your Windows software still won't work, but any "good apps", he explains, have Mac versions, too.

That raises a question: What would it take for Linux to be seen as viable alternative to Windows and Mac OS rather than a hobby project that only programmers could install, use, and like?

Submission + - UN Report: Climate Changes Overwhelming (bbc.com)

Submitted by iONiUM
iONiUM writes: From the article, "The impacts of global warming are likely to be "severe, pervasive and irreversible", a major report by the UN has warned." A major document was released by the IPCC outlining the current affects on climate change, and they are not good. For specific effects on humans: "Food security is highlighted as an area of significant concern. Crop yields for maize, rice and wheat are all hit in the period up to 2050, with around a tenth of projections showing losses over 25%."

Submission + - Office 365 "On Demand" gone? (office.com) 2

Submitted by jbarr
jbarr writes: Back in December, I paid for an Office 365 Home Premium subscription. One of the selling features (which is still being advertised as a feature) is the Office On Demand feature. You open a Web browser, login to your Office 365 account, and click on an "On Demand application (like Word, Excel, Access, outlook, etc.) and it launches a "streamed" instance of the application. It's like a Remote Desktop or Citrix session that provides access to a full version of each Office application from any Internet-connected Windows 7 and Windows 8.x box.

On Demand is not to be confused with their "Office Online" feature which are Web Apps of most Office applications (except Access and Publisher.) These versions are limited in function, whereas the On Demand versions were full, streamed instances of the application.

About a week or so ago, I signed in, and the ability to launch the On Demand applications was gone, effectively locking me out of an important feature that I paid for. I did a Google Search, and found several threads discussing this, yet no one seems to know what's going on. There is one kind soul who presented a workaround to launch Word and Excel On Demand which is great (thank you!) but to no fault of his, it doesn't address launching other On Demand applications.

I paid-for a feature that is still advertised, and it is now not available without notice. And there is no explanation. If servers are down, fine. Post a message stating it. If you are adding or changing features, then post a page stating it. But as it stands, all On Demand functionality has simply been stripped out with no explanation rendering my Access databases useless. Yes, I can locally install Access 2013 from my Office 365 Home Premium subscription, but that misses the point that a paid-for feature has been removed without explanation or compensation.

Comment linux (Score 3, Insightful) 84

well for those of us that have been using one version or another for the last ten years
it might be a good review
-- quote --
" As long as I never see or need to use the command line, it doesn't matter what operating system I use."
--- end quote--
Most of the programs i use DO NOT !!!! use a GUI
or do not need the one that it might have

the terminal is GREAT !!!!
learn to use it !!!!!

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