AliasMarlowe - Slashdot User

Comment: Possibly adios... (Score 3, Insightful) 185

by AliasMarlowe on Saturday May 26, @09:50AM (#40120455) Attached to: Is Facebook Going To Buy Opera?

Damn. I've been using Opera for several years now. If it comes under the thumb of Facebook, I'll jump ship. I don't want those fuckers backdooring themselves into everything I do online.

Likewise. Opera has been my main browser for more than a decade, although my wife generally uses Firefox. Luckily, I've also been using Chromium, and consider it an acceptable replacement: not quite as good with privacy settings, but slightly more compatible with weird web sites. If Opera becomes part of Facebook, I'll drop it on principle (all Facebook IPs are already blocked by my router to inhibit unwanted tracking).

Comment: Douchebaggery (Score 4, Insightful) 185

by AliasMarlowe on Saturday May 26, @05:01AM (#40119233) Attached to: Texter Not Responsible For Textee's Car Accident, Rules Judge

There are two douchebags in this case, but they are not the victims of the crime or the merely peripherally involved girlfriend.

The first douchebag is the guy who ploughed into the victims' motorcycle as he texted while driving. The second douchebag is the NJ court which "punished" him with a $775 fine and a few hours community work, but did not even suspend his driver's licence. It has been repeatedly established that texting while driving is more dangerous than driving while impaired by alcohol. He should have received rather more than this slap on the wrist, and the victims of his crime apparently plan to appeal his light sentence.

In Finland and various other countries, and in several states of the US, the law is you stop your car to talk or text on any communication device. You may get fined if observed talking or texting on the phone even if your driving is otherwise perfect.

IT price hike inquiry kicks off: Submissions wanted-> 0

Submitted by wirelessduck on Friday May 25, @03:01AM

wirelessduck writes "After some recent complaints from a Labor MP about price markups on software and technology devices in Australia, Federal Government agencies decided to look in to the matter and an official parliamentary inquiry into the issue was started.

"The Federal Parliament’s inquiry into local price markups on technology goods and services has gotten under way, with the committee overseeing the initiative issuing its terms of reference and calling for submissions from the general public on the issue.""
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Sound increases the efficiency of boiling-> 0

Submitted by

hessian

on Thursday May 24, @10:01PM

hessian writes "Scientists at the Georgia Institute of Technology achieved a 17-percent increase in boiling efficiency by using an acoustic field to enhance heat transfer. The acoustic field does this by efficiently removing vapor bubbles from the heated surface and suppressing the formation of an insulating vapor film."
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BitTorrent Traffic Falls In The U.S.-> 0

Submitted by CAKAS on Thursday May 24, @11:08PM

CAKAS writes "After legal actions taken by several industry outfits, BitTorrent traffic has fallen in the United States to the all time low of 12.7 percent of internet traffic. However, this trend seems to be unique to the U.S. — In other parts of the world, like Europe and Asia, BitTorrent traffic continues to rise. "According to Sandvine, the absence of legal alternatives is one of the reasons for these high P2P traffic shares". In the U.S. legal content delivery has flourished and provided customers easy access to content. This seems to suggest that due to these alternatives, people are less willing to pirate and pay the publishers for entertainment."
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Bessel beam "tractor beam" concept theoretically demonstrated-> 0

Submitted by cylonlover on Friday May 25, @03:18AM

cylonlover writes "Last year, NASA revealed it was evaluating three potential “tractor beam” technologies to deliver planetary or atmospheric particles to a robotic rover or orbiting spacecraft. At the time, the third of these, which involved the use of a Bessel beam, only existed on paper. Researchers at Singapore’s Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR) have now proven the theory behind the concept, demonstrating how a tractor beam can be realized in the real world – albeit on a very small scale."
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Court ruling shuts down Australian cloud TV recorders-> 0

Submitted by joshgnosis on Friday May 25, @12:02AM

joshgnosis writes "In the wake of an Australian Federal Court ruling last month that free-to-air TV recording app Optus TV Now was infringing on the copyright of some of the country's biggest sports broadcasts, two other services — Beem and MyTVR have also been forced to suspend their services.

Beem lashed out at the ruling, telling customers that their rights had been "diminished' by the judgment and rights owners were "scared" of cloud-based TV recording services in the same way they once were of VCRs."
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Comment: About 1% (Score 1) 146

by AliasMarlowe on Friday May 25, @02:15PM (#40111159) Attached to: % of my digital storage that is solid-state:

But surely you have an SD card or other such solid state media for things like a digital camera, no?

This is why I picked the "more than 0 but not more than 25" percentage level. I have a hell of a lot of SD and SDHC and CF cards, along with a bunch of USB sticks. Even so, the solid state stuff probably adds up to less than 300GB worth, whereas we have about 30TB of spinning magnetic disks in service at home, so call it about 1%. If the CD-R and DVD±R archives of photos, home videos, software, and so forth were to be counted also, the ratio would be even worse.

Really, the more than "0 but not more than 25" category should have been divided into two or three. Say up to 3%, 3-10% and 10-25%.

Photographer threatened with legal action after asserting his copyright-> 0

Submitted by JamieKitson on Friday May 25, @05:14AM

JamieKitson writes "Photographer Jay Lee got more than he bargained for after sending some DMCA take down notifications out to hosts of sites using one of his pictures. One Candice Shwagger accuses him of everything from conspiracy over local sheriff elections to child abuse. Since Candice is now threatening legal action Jay has said he'll take down the post, so here's a snap shot.

After reading the story I checked for use of my own pictures and found one of them being used on a review site without even a credit. Here's a snap shot of that page."
Link to Original Source

Faculty vote for open access policy at UC San Francisco-> 0

Submitted by Marian the Librarian on Thursday May 24, @11:11PM

Marian the Librarian writes "UCSF is among the first public institutions to adopt an open access policy and the largest scientific institution to have such a policy. The policy, voted unanimously by the faculty, will allow UCSF authors to put electronic versions of their published scientific articles on an open access repository making their research findings freely available to the public."
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