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Submission + - Seattle Police Consider Actually Trying to Solve Property Crimes

Submitted by vortex2.71
vortex2.71 writes: In a story you might expect to see in the Onion, the Seattle Police Department is reviewing it policy on property crime to determine whether they should actually try to solve some crimes. This follows a column by Danny Westneat detailing a nonexistent police response to multiple 911 calls after he tracked down his wife's stolen cell phone and watched the thieves taunt him by waving it in front of their car windows. Not only did the police refuse to show up in favor of filing an online police report, but the 911 operator advised Mr. Westneat to “Pull over immediately. You’re going to get yourselves shot.”

Submission + - Gigabit Internet Connections Make Property Values Rise

Submitted by Jason Koebler
Jason Koebler writes: When families go to buy a new home, they're most often looking for a couple things: Good schools, a safe neighborhood, maybe something that's near public transportation. And, increasingly and undeniably, access to gigabit internet service. A study by RVA LLC Market Research and Consulting found that fiber optic internet adds roughly $5,250 to the value of a $300,000 home.
"It's getting to the point where, if my neighboring community has a gig and we're still doing satellite, the property value in that town is going to go up," Deb Socia, director of Next Century Cities, a coalition of cities trying to provide gigabit internet speeds to their citizens, said. "You're going to lose people and you're going to lose revenue without it. I'm hearing it from folks in different chambers of commerce, in real estate, in politics."

Submission + - States Ditching Electronic Voting Machines, Some Issues Occurring (thehill.com)

Submitted by cold fjord
cold fjord writes: The Hill reports, "States have abandoned electronic voting machines in droves, ensuring that most voters will be casting their ballots by hand on Election Day. With many electronic voting machines more than a decade old, and states lacking the funding to repair or replace them, officials have opted to return to the pencil-and-paper voting that the new technology was supposed to replace. Nearly 70 percent of voters will be casting ballots by hand on Tuesday, according to Pamela Smith, president of election watchdog Verified Voting. "Paper, even though it sounds kind of old school, it actually has properties that serve the elections really well," Smith said. It’s an outcome few would have predicted after the 2000 election, when the battle over “hanging chads” in the Florida recount spurred a massive, $3 billion federal investment in electronic voting machines." — There are also reports of various issues, including "calibration issues" which have resulted in votes to the wrong candidate.

Comment This is a really dismal judgement! (Score -1, Flamebait) 457

by BenFenner (#47676957) Attached to: Web Trolls Winning As Incivility Increases
This judgement is really dismal. I'd like to see what the handful of scholars have to say when studying users interaction with the shitty Slashdot Beta site. They could study the user's extreme boredom as this user waits for the shitty Beta site's page and all its shitty JavaScript and CSS crap to initially load. Then they could capture the trillionth of a second when the person notices that it's the shitty Beta site rather than the Classic site, and the person's anger starts to grow. The photos would progressively show the anger turning into madness, and then finally utter and complete disappointment and despair once the shitty Beta site has finally loaded. The photos could also capture the formation and flow of the very first of many teardrops to cascade down this poor victim's cheeks as the user struggles in vain to read the stories' small text with poor contrast. These trillions upon trillions of frames of total anguish could be examined in excruciating detail, so the awful nature of the Slashdot Beta site could be truly comprehended.

Comment Re:Things that go fast (Score 2) 94

by BenFenner (#47674773) Attached to: World's Fastest Camera Captures 4.4 Trillion Frames Per Second
After thinking about this for a beat, I went from "great idea" to "how in the hell would that work?" pretty quickly.

I have admittedly not read the article, but if the camera captures photos, are there photons flying around in particle colliders just flying around bouncing off sub-atomic particles all over the place, enough to get a video of it all happening? I get the feeling photons don't interact with the particles much if at all, which is why now they can only see where they end up (trapped or puncture a gold film?) and guess their path with math...

Comment Re:not impressed (Score 5, Informative) 81

by BenFenner (#47230181) Attached to: Cockpit Revealed For Bloodhound Supersonic Car
No one has stopped doing wheel driven land speed cars. This is just a different class. If you want wheel driven, you can look to those classes and there is still plenty of partisipation. However, the wall of air encountered by a wheel driven car causes traction issues (imagine trying to accelerate pressed up against a birck wall) and at some point (I think it is around 400-500 MPH) the wheels just start spinning. it is not an issue of power. Power is easy to come by these days. The traction is the problem, especially on poor surfaces like salf flats. I agree it would be impressive to see these traction issues overcome, but it has been an issue since the ''60s and I don't see a solution in sight. Do you?

Comment Slashdot Beta is back? (Score 1) 36

by BenFenner (#46724299) Attached to: Fire Risk From Panasonic Batteries In Sony Vaio Laptops
I was just pushed to Slashdot Beta. Truthfully, this is the first time I've taken a hard look at it. After some time giving it a real chance, I've decided the comment section is the most troublesome (still?) with the lack of truncated comments and abysmal contrast between the background and the separation delineations.

I thought they backed the fuck off of beta? Why is it back?

Comment Re:Have you stopped beating your wife yet? (Score 5, Informative) 101

by BenFenner (#46279957) Attached to: Are You a Competent Cyborg?
Those who modded this poster as a troll have no clue what the poster is doing. They are pointing out that the headline of the article is a LEADING QUESTION, and pigeonholes the reader into a false scenario. The poster simply says they reject the premise that they are a cyborg at all.

The beating your wife question is a classic example of a leading question. Hopefully the post will get modded properly? I'm sorry kruach aum, there are some fools modding today.

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