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+ - Dealing with a Fear of Technological Change? 2

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes "Despite the fact that I am fairly young at twenty-four years old, people see me as rather "old school." I regularly use Lynx, IRC, Pine, have many consoles open, and am currently typing this on an older plain black laptop that has a matte 4:3 display and no chiclet keys. As the days progress, I am coming to the realization that the "old school" computing world that I grew up in is slowly fading away and a new world of Windows 8, Web 3.0, tablets, smart televisions, and social networking is starting to become fairly common. If there is anything I have learned, it is that most humans have a desire to throw out the old and accept the new without any sort of hesitation. Like many Slashdot users (I am sure you know who you are), I do not accept the new as easily as I probably should. How have you learned to adapt and accept things that are new and different in the world of technology and computers? If not, what are some effective strategies to utilize to keep these kids off my lawn?"

+ - Rice Professor Predicts Humans Out Of Work In 30 Years-> 1

Submitted by kkleiner
kkleiner writes "Rice University professor Moshe Vardi has been evaluating technological progress in computer science and artificial intelligence and has recently concluded that robots will replace most, if not all, human labor by 2045, putting millions out of work. The issue is whether AI enables humans to do more or less. But perhaps the real question about technological unemployment of labor isn't "How will people do nothing?" but "What kind of work will they do instead?""
Link to Original Source

+ - 50 million Apache OpenOffice downloads in a year->

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes "Just a few days after the one year anniversary of the release of the first version of OpenOffice from the Apache Foundation (Apache OpenOffice 3.4) on 8 May 2012, the project can now boast 50 million downloads of the open source office suite. 10 million of those downloads happened since the beginning of March. In contrast, LibreOffice claimed it had 15 million unique downloads of its office suite in all of 2012."
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Idle

+ - Unraveling Claims of Conspiracy Behind Venezuela's Shortage->

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes "Is it a subtle and devious conspiracy? Incompetent government at work? Market forces? Or perhaps the law of unintended consequences? Any way you look at it, Venezuela is in a bad way, as reported by the Guardian: "First milk, butter, coffee and cornmeal ran short. Now Venezuela is running out of the most basic of necessities – toilet paper. . . Economists say Venezuela's shortages stem from price controls meant to make basic goods available to the poorest parts of society and the government's controls on foreign currency. "State-controlled prices – prices that are set below market-clearing price – always result in shortages. The shortage problem will only get worse, as it did over the years in the Soviet Union," said Steve Hanke, professor of economics at Johns Hopkins University. President Nicolás Maduro, who was selected by the dying Hugo Chávez to carry on his "Bolivarian revolution", claims that anti-government forces, including the private sector, are causing the shortages in an effort to destabilise the country. ""
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+ - A New Dawn - Google's Android IDE ->

Submitted by mikejuk
mikejuk writes "Yawn, not much happening at Google I/O this year. Well you can't expect it to be exciting every year. What! What's this — an official Android IDE! It can't be! Why isn't this headline news? OK, I admit I should probably get out more, but while Android Studio hasn't got the wow value of Glass for the general geek it should have a big wow value for any programmer thinking of working with Android.
It is a one package download that gets the beginner started with creating Android apps and has lots of editing and refactoring help. It also has a UI preview option that lets you see what your app looks like on a range of devices and lots more.
The main thing is that it promises to bring Android development into the same class as WP8 with Visual Studio and iOS with XCode.
This really is the way forward not only for Android and Java but all programming environments — More Tools!"
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+ - Would you trust a self driving car?

Submitted by npetrov
npetrov writes "1. Yes, human errors ccause most accidents.
2. No, human can avoid a dangerous situation.
3. Depends on number of self driving cars on the road.
4. Depends on regulations or subsidies."

+ - Quad-core Android Phone Keeps Cool With Water Pipe->

Submitted by DeviceGuru
DeviceGuru writes "NEC has announced an Android smartphone that uses a water-cooling system to keep its quad-core 1.7GHz Snapdragon S4 Pro system-on-chip (SOC) from overheating. The NEC Medias X 06E integrates a liquid cooling pipe near the SOC to cool off the 4.7-inch phone, which is being marketed at Japanese women. As reported first on The Verge, the phone is equipped with a water-filled heatpipe, as well as a graphite sheet that runs parallel to the motherboard, thereby drawing heat away from the Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 Pro SOC. Improved power management and hardware design have largely kept complaints about overheated smartphones to a minimum, but with more cores comes more heat. Consequently, reports of overheating on the new wave of quad-core phones have been on the rise, and it's likely to get worse as more and more cores are pressed into service."
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+ - US Gov't Can't Track Savings From Data Center Closings->

Submitted by itwbennett
itwbennett writes "The goal of saving $3 billion by closing 1253 data centers is 'very realistic,' says David Powner, director of IT management issues at the U.S. Government Accountability Office — except that agencies haven't been able to track cost savings for the initiative. Eighteen months from the 2015 deadline, 'we have no idea how much we've saved the taxpayers,' said Steve O'Keeffe, founder of MeriTalk, an online community for government IT issues. This isn't the first snag in the project. Almost a year ago, Slashdot reported that the project was woefully behind schedule."
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+ - A Saudi Arabia Telecom's Surveillance Pitch->

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes "Last week I was contacted by an agent of Mobily, one of two telecoms operating in Saudi Arabia, about a surveillance project that theyâ(TM)re working on in that country. Having published two reasonably popular MITM tools, itâ(TM)s not uncommon for me to get emails requesting that I help people with their interception projects. I typically donâ(TM)t respond, but this one (an email titled âoeSolution for monitoring encrypted data on telecomâ) caught my eye.

Really, itâ(TM)s no shock that Saudi Arabia is working on this, but it is interesting to get fairly direct evidence that itâ(TM)s happening. More to the point, if youâ(TM)re in Saudi Arabia (or really anywhere), it might be prudent to think about avoiding insecure communication tools like WhatsApp and Viber (TextSecure and RedPhone could serve as appropriate secure replacements), because now we know for sure that theyâ(TM)re watching.

For the rest of us, I hope we can talk about what we can do to stop those who are determined to make this a reality, as well as the ways that weâ(TM)re already inadvertently a part of that realityâ(TM)s making."
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Comment: Re:Greed (Score 1) 292

by Unknown Lamer (#43687727) Attached to: Hanford Nuclear Waste Vitrification Plant "Too Dangerous"

Hell, they installed a steam turbine from the unit at TMI that melted down over at Shearon-Harris near me!

I feel perfectly safe, and now that they've cancelled the plant expansion I am tempted to move a bit further south to get closer to Vogtle... why people hate safe and long-term cheap power is beyond me.

Comment: Re:Hopeless (Score 1) 292

by Unknown Lamer (#43687655) Attached to: Hanford Nuclear Waste Vitrification Plant "Too Dangerous"

I think you are ignoring the external cost of keeping spent fuel from LWRs around... the volume isn't insurmountable right now because we're not generating most of our power using it. There's also the waste stream from initial processing; at least if the U.S. opts to kill SILEX after running the pilot plant in Wilmington for a while...

Supposedly Molten Salt Reactors could be built that would ease reprocessing (if the other material issues with those pesky Fluoride Salts interacting with metal can be solved of course). Even solid metal rods are better than oxide rods...

I feel like the waste from reprocessing problem is surmountable. We've suspended most research into efficient reprocessing because of the non-proliferation treaty, who knows what throwing a few dozen billion at the problem could do.

+ - Microsoft Win8 Ads: 'Insanely Great' or Insane?

Submitted by theodp
theodp writes "Two dueling classical pianists simultaneously play tournament-caliber ping-pong with their butts in what GeekWire terms 'Microsoft’s crazy, brilliant Windows 8 ads'. "We created these online-only social videos for the Asian market, where they were well-received," Microsoft explained. So, do you find the trilogy of wacky Win8 ads insanely great, or merely insane?"

The sight of death frightens them [Earthers]. -- Kras the Klingon, "Friday's Child", stardate 3497.2

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