Become a fan of Slashdot on Facebook

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
×

Comment Re:Obligatory Fight Club (Score 1) 357

by Ardipithecus (#46625009) Attached to: An Engineer's Eureka Moment With a GM Flaw

It is a measure of our adherence to the rule of law, but really more like sheepification (http://tinyurl.com/lpeltlp), that of all the Enron execs, Wall Street gamblers, crooked bankers, Madoff and the innumerable other grifters that pollute, infect and degrade our society the total number that has been spit on, pushed, slapped, punched in the nose, kneecapped, shot, blown up, or even had his car keyed is approximately zero.

That might more effective than having the company pay a hundred million.

This is after ruining and destroying the life of millions, so some dozens of deaths and handicaps is more of the same. /rant

Congrats to Mr. Mark Hood and thanks for his fine effort that helps not just the client but society at large.

Submission + - How I cut my Time Warner Cable bill by 33%

Submitted by lpress
lpress writes: I was at a Time Warner Cable (TWC) store returning a router, when I asked what my new monthly bill would be. The answer — $110 — surprised me, so I asked a few questions and ended up with the same service for $76.37. Check out my conversation with their representative to see what was said, then do the same yourself.

Submission + - Free version of Windows could be a reality soon (pureinfotech.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Microsoft is exploring whether to release a free version of Windows to increase the number of computers using the latest operating system. Currently the company seems to be testing a new version of the OS called “Windows 8.1 with Bing”, which will include Microsoft’s key modern apps and services.

Submission + - The Spy In Our Living Room (polygon.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Ben Kuchera at Polygon ponders the surveillance capabilities of our gaming consoles in light of recent NSA revelations. 'Xbox One Kinect can see in the dark. It can keep a moving human being in focus without motors. It knows how to isolate voices from background noise. The privacy implications of having a device that originally couldn't be removed pointed at your living room at all times was always kind of scary, and that fear has been at least partially justified.' Kuchera, like many of us, habitually disconnects cameras and microphones not currently in use. But he also feels a sense of inevitability about the whole thing: 'If the government wants this information they’re going to get it, no matter what we do with our gaming consoles. It's important to pay attention to what our government is doing, but this issue is much bigger than our gaming consoles, and we open ourselves up to much greater forms of intrusion on a daily basis.'

Submission + - Middle Eastern Virus More Widespread Than Thought (sciencemag.org) 1

Submitted by sciencehabit
sciencehabit writes: It's called Middle East respiratory syndrome, or MERS, after the region where almost all the patients have been reported. But the name may turn out to be a misnomer. A new study has found the virus in camels from Sudan and Ethiopia, suggesting that Africa, too, harbors the pathogen. That means MERS may sicken more humans than previously thought—and perhaps be more likely to trigger a pandemic.

Submission + - Dogs' Brains Have Human-like "Voice Area" (sciencemag.org)

Submitted by sciencehabit
sciencehabit writes: When you hear a friend’s voice, you immediately picture her, even if you can’t see her. And from the tone of her speech, you quickly gauge if she’s happy or sad. You can do all of this because your human brain has a “voice area.” Now, scientists using brain scanners and a crew of eager dogs have discovered that dog brains, too, have dedicated voice areas. The finding helps explain how canines can be so attuned to their owners’ feelings.

Submission + - Fatal car crashes involving pot use have tripled in U.S. (myfoxwausau.com) 1

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: WFXS Fox 55 reports, "The legalization of marijuana is an idea that is gaining momentum in the United States, but there may be a dark side to pot becoming more commonplace ... Fatal crashes involving marijuana use tripled during the previous decade, fueling some of the overall increase in drugged-driving traffic deaths ... "Currently, one of nine drivers involved in fatal crashes would test positive for marijuana," said co-author Dr. Guohua Li, director of the Center for Injury Epidemiology and Prevention at Columbia. "If this trend continues, in five or six years non-alcohol drugs will overtake alcohol to become the most common substance involved in deaths related to impaired driving." ... Alcohol contributed to about the same percentage of traffic fatalities throughout the decade, about 40 percent, Li said. ... Drugged driving accounted for more than 28 percent of traffic deaths in 2010, up from more than 16 percent in 1999. Marijuana proved to be the main drug involved in the increase, contributing to 12 percent of 2010 crashes compared with 4 percent in 1999. The study authors also noted that the combined use of alcohol and marijuana dramatically increases a driver's risk of death. "If a driver is under the influence of alcohol, their risk of a fatal crash is 13 times higher than the risk of the driver who is not under the influence of alcohol," Li said. "But if the driver is under the influence of both alcohol and marijuana, their risk increases to 24 times that of a sober person.""

Submission + - Audience Jeers Contestant Who Uses Game Theory to Win at 'Jeopardy'

Submitted by Hugh Pickens DOT Com
Hugh Pickens DOT Com writes: USA Today reports that Arthur Chu, an insurance compliance analyst and aspiring actor, has won $102,800 in four Jeopardy! appearances using a strategy —- jumping around the board instead of running categories straight down, betting odd amounts on Daily Doubles and doing a final wager to tie — that has fans calling him a "villain" and "smug". Arthur's in-game strategy of searching for the Daily Double that has made him such a target. Typically, contestants choose a single category and progressively move from the lowest amount up to the highest, giving viewers an easy-to-understand escalation of difficulty. But Arthur has his sights solely set on finding those hidden Daily Doubles, which are usually located on the three highest-paying rungs in the categories (the category itself is random). That means, rather than building up in difficulty, he begins at the most difficult questions. Once the two most difficult questions have been taken off the board in one column, he quickly jumps to another category. It's a grating experience for the viewer, who isn't given enough to time to get in a rhythm or fully comprehend the new subject area. "The more unpredictable you are, the more you put your opponents off-balance, the longer you can keep an initial advantage," says Chu. "It greatly increases your chance of winning the game if you can pull it off, and I saw no reason not to do it." Another contra-intuitive move Chu has made is playing for a tie rather than to win in "Final Jeopardy" because that allows you advance to the next round which is the most important thing, not the amount of money you win in one game. "In terms of influence on the game, Arthur looks like a trendsetter of things to come," says Eric Levenson. "Hopefully that has more to do with his game theory than with his aggressive button-pressing."

Submission + - Greenland's fastest glacier sets new speed record (washington.edu)

Submitted by vinces99
vinces99 writes: The latest observations of Jakobshavn Glacier show that Greenland’s largest glacier is moving ice from land into the ocean at a speed that appears to be the fastest ever recorded. Researchers from the University of Washington and the German Space Agency measured the speed of the glacier in 2012 and 2013. The results were published Feb. 3 in The Cryosphere, an open access journal of the European Geosciences Union.

Jakobshavn Glacier, which is widely believed to be the glacier that produced the large iceberg that sank the Titanic in 1912, drains the Greenland ice sheet into a deep-ocean fjord on the west coast of the island. This speedup of Jakobshavn means that the glacier is adding more and more ice to the ocean, contributing to sea-level rise.

“We are now seeing summer speeds more than four times what they were in the 1990s, on a glacier which at that time was believed to be one of the fastest, if not the fastest, glacier in Greenland,” said lead author Ian Joughin, a glaciologist at the UW’s Polar Science Center.

The new observations show that in summer of 2012 the glacier reached a record speed of more than 10 miles (17 km) per year, or more than 150 feet (46 m) per day. These appear to be the fastest flow rates recorded for any glacier or ice stream in Greenland or Antarctica, researchers said.

Submission + - Why the only thing better than big data is bigger data (qz.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Quartz reports in a Kajiu illustrated feature that scientists have discovered a kind of data that, like black holes or evil wizards of Middle Earth, only becomes more powerful the larger it grows. The implication being that competing firms can actually gain advantages over each other, depending on which type and how much data they gather. Is this the beginning of a corporate data war or has the outcome already been decided in favor of the larger firms?

Slashdot Top Deals

New York... when civilization falls apart, remember, we were way ahead of you. - David Letterman

Close