GeneralSunTzu - Slashdot User

Comment: Scientific proof (Score 0) 188

by GeneralSunTzu on Thursday January 05, @09:02AM (#38594740) Attached to: Ask Slashdot: Tech For Small Library Automation?

You state: "Scientific proof is available for few things in the human experience.".
Really?
Like e.g. the entire corpus of experimental physics, astronomy, biology, etc.
You do need to take Basic Science for Freshmen 101...
It would be perhaps best avoiding to repeate rather stale arguments used by a bunch of illiterate theists. They carry no weight.

HTC Arrive arrives on CREDO Mobile at 9 [Specifica-> 0

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 12 2011, @05:45AM

An anonymous reader writes "HTC Arrive brings all the juice of Mango platform to this device.CREDO Mobile has just unveiled its first Windows Phone powered by Mango OS, HTC Arrive"
Link to Original Source

How litigation only spurred on P2P file sharing-> 0

Submitted by littlekorea on Thursday November 10 2011, @10:01PM

littlekorea writes "The growth in peer-to-peer file sharing surged in response to efforts by the content industry to litigate over the past decade, according to a new study by a researcher at Melbourne's Monash University. Dr Rebecca Giblin explains why 'physical world' assumptions don't apply to the online world."
Link to Original Source

The sexual habits of the British-> 0

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 23 2011, @04:28PM

An anonymous reader writes "It's off topic, but this might be a bit of fun for the quiet days of August. It's a data visualisation showing what the British get up to between the sheets: http://sexperienceuk.channel4.com/the-sexperience-1000

It is unique (or at the very least unusual) in that as well as showing aggregate data, you can click on each person to find out more about each individual who makes up the totals. So, for instance, you can see that of the 167 people who have had sex in their parents bed (http://bit.ly/plzK2p), 10 now drive a BMW (http://bit.ly/pBS0HZ)"
Link to Original Source

Facebook Tweaks Site To Clarify Who Can See What-> 0

Submitted by

CWmike

on Tuesday August 23 2011, @04:07PM

CWmike writes "Facebook is making a series of design changes to the site to make it clearer to users who can see the content that they post, an issue Google has been criticizing Facebook about since it launched its own social network, Google+, in June. 'You have told us that 'who can see this?' could be clearer across Facebook, so we have made changes to make this more visual and straightforward," Facebook said in a blog post on Tuesday. The main change is that Facebook will now display the intended audience for a photo, a text post, a tag or any other piece of content right next to it, or 'inline.' Until now, those controls have been on a separate Settings section of the profile. 'Your profile should feel like your home on the web — you should never feel like stuff appears there that you don't want, and you should never wonder who sees what's there.' Another change Facebook is introducing is allowing users to modify the audience of a post after it's published, which they couldn't do before."
Link to Original Source

Smartphone Keystroke Logging Using the Motion Sens-> 0

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 23 2011, @03:41PM

Link to Original Source

Mozilla Firefox 6 Released Ahead of Schedule-> 0

Submitted by

BogenDorpher

on Saturday August 13 2011, @04:26PM

BogenDorpher writes "Mozilla is currently on schedule to release Firefox 6 on August 16th but it looks like the final version has already been signed off and is unofficially available on Mozilla's servers."
Link to Original Source

US health administrative costs 4x that of Canada-> 3

Submitted by microbox on Saturday August 13 2011, @01:49PM

microbox writes "Free-market healthcare is a hot political topic, with both Republicans and Democrats heavily invested in their positions. Republicans often claim that US healthcare is the best in the world thanks to Adam Smiths' invisible hand. The US system certainly has advantages; however, no other country spends anywhere near as much on healthcare, and US physicians and administrative staff spend 4x as many hours per week dealing with payers and insurance companies as their colleagues in Canada. Is it possible that laissez-faire health-care is an inefficient solution, or are high administrative costs nothing to be concerned about, and reflect a more efficient and higher quality healthcare system?"
Link to Original Source

Comment: A supranational assessment code (Score 1) 742

by GeneralSunTzu on Friday February 25 2011, @07:03PM (#35318002) Attached to: Does Syfy Really Love Sci-Fi?

Rather that push my favourite show/novel/TV series, I take the liberty of proposing an assessment code which is not only for Americans.
1. Thou shalt not compare books with movies, ever;
2. Thou shalt not compare movies with video games, ever;
3. Thou shalt not vilify fantasy/hard SF/vintage SF/alternate history, etc.;
4. Thou shalt not believe that the inordinate passion for vampires/demons/supernatural horrors extends to countries which are far less religious than the USA;
5. Thou shalt not acritically judge any prequel, as so far, in most areas, from Star Wars to Star Trek to Caprica, they were chemically pure drivel.
And, to prove that human beings are illogical, here I go now providing contradictory advice.
Read books like "Twister", written by a real research physicist, if you want to read very entertaining hard SF, not Greg Bear, not Isaac Asimov.
You will instantly see the difference from folks like Asimov (a biochemist) who had (forgive me...) a manifestly insufficient grasp of physics.
Even I, research physicist, was always underwhelmed by his forays in areas he knew precious little about (a PhD in biochemistry does not make you an authority on particle physics or quantum mechanics or a number of other things).
He even proceeded to top up his display of ignorance by publishing divulgative stuff on any possible subject.
That he is still considered a saint by a sizable community makes me wonder...
And to finish in beauty: casting a Scotsman who was famous for roles as e.g. the lead male actor in The Full Monty was not just catastrophic, but plain dumb. This contributed greatly to transform a would-be SF series as Stargate Universe into a boring reality-like show, eventually killing (deservedly) the show. Just like dreadful Caprica.
Should I be so dumb to want to watch a reality, then I will go for the real thing, not for an SF travesty...

Obama Eyeing Internet ID for Americans 1

Submitted by

Pickens

on Saturday January 08 2011, @02:12AM

Pickens writes "CBS News reports that the Obama administration is currently drafting the National Strategy for Trusted Identities in Cyberspace, which will be released by the president in the next few months. "We are not talking about a national ID card," says Commerce Secretary Gary Locke whose department will be in charge of the program. "We are not talking about a government-controlled system. What we are talking about is enhancing online security and privacy and reducing and perhaps even eliminating the need to memorize a dozen passwords, through creation and use of more trusted digital identities." Although details have not been finalized, the "trusted identity" may take the form of a smart card or digital certificate that would prove that online users are who they say they are. These digital IDs would be offered to consumers by online vendors for financial transactions. White House Cybersecurity Coordinator Howard Schmidt says that anonymity and pseudonymity will remain possible on the Internet. "I don't have to get a credential if I don't want to," says Schmidt. There's no chance that "a centralized database will emerge," and "we need the private sector to lead the implementation of this.""