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+ - Removing harrasing photos from social media 1

Submitted by EtherMonkey
EtherMonkey writes "Here's the situation. A friend of mine's wife's photo was used without permission on some creep's Facebook page. This 20y/o creep was arrested on suspicion of murdering a 15 year old girl he contacted through Facebook. My friend and his wife feel harassed and threatened by any association with the creep and asked Facebook repeatedly to take down the image from creep's page. Facebook refused. My friend reached out and asked his friends, including myself, to also report the image in the hope that sufficient reports would encourage Facebook to actually get a human being to look into the situation and make a responsible decision, but so far this has been ineffective.

Questions: I there any legal basis for forcing Facebook to remove the image? Is there anyway to contact a living human being at Facebook to have a conversation? Any other suggestions?

Story on the arrest: http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/body-found-in-woods-could-be-missing-maine-teen-hundreds-have-been-searching-for-her/2013/05/21/97d11b14-c20c-11e2-9642-a56177f1cdf7_story.html
Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/kyle.dube.775/about"

+ - Reporters threatened with CFAA suit, labeled hackers for finding security hole-> 1

Submitted by colinneagle
colinneagle writes "Scripps News reporters discovered 170,000 records online of customers of Lifeline, a government program offering affordable phone service for low-income citizens, that contained everything needed for identity theft . Last year, the FCC "tightened" the rules for the program by requiring Lifeline phone carriers to document applicants' eligibility, which led to collecting more sensitive information from citizens. A Scripps News investigative team claims it "Googled" the phone companies TerraCom Inc. and YourTel America Inc. to discover all of the files.

A Scripps reporter asked (pdf) for an on-camera interview with the COO of TerraCom and YourTel after explaining the files were freely available online. That did not happen, but shortly thereafter the customer records disappeared from the internet. Then, the blame-the-messenger hacker accusations and mudslinging began. Although the Scripps reporters videotaped the process showing how they found the documents, attorney Jonathon Lee for both telecoms threatened the "Scripps Hackers" with violating the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA)."
Link to Original Source

+ - 450 Million Lines Of Scanned Software Code Can't Be Wrong->

Submitted by CowboyRobot
CowboyRobot writes "The 2012 Coverity Scan Open Source Report details the analysis of more than 450 million lines of software code. Key findings this year suggest that code quality for open source software continues to mirror that of proprietary software. Defect density (defects per 1,000 lines of software code) is a commonly used measurement for software quality. Coverity's analysis found an average defect density of .69 for open source software projects that leverage the firm's own scan service. It also found an average defect density of .68 for proprietary code developed by the firm's own enterprise customers. Both have better quality as compared to the accepted industry standard defect density for good quality software of 1.0."
Link to Original Source

+ - Least used key on your keyboard?->

Submitted by AmiMoJo
AmiMoJo writes "Over on Slashdot Japan (between discussions of the price of beef bowl and Linux kernel vulnerabilities) there has been some discussion over which key is least used on a PC keyboard. According to a small survey conducted by Yahoo Japan it is unsurprisingly the Pause/Break key. More interesting are the next three keys in descending order of unpopularity: F3, F6 and F12. No mention of the "multimedia" keys found on many keyboards these days, or Num Lock.

Which key do you use the least? What, if anything, would you replace it with?"
Link to Original Source

+ - IBM takes System/z to the cloud with COBOL update->

Submitted by hypnosec
hypnosec writes "IBM is taking its COBOL server platform to the next level by updating the mainframe platform in a bid to extend and enable its mainframes to host cloud based applications and services. The latest update is looking to add XMLS Server as well as Java 7 capabilities to the System/z COBOL platform and this update would extend the overall lifespan of COBOL by taking it up a notch and gearing it towards the cloud computing arena."
Link to Original Source

Google News Sci Tech: Invasive Crazy Ants Are Displacing Fire Ants, Researchers Find - University of T->

From feed by feedfeeder

Science World Report
Invasive Crazy Ants Are Displacing Fire Ants, Researchers Find
University of Texas at Austin News
Invasive “crazy ants” are displacing fire ants in areas across the southeastern United States, according to researchers at The University of Texas at Austin. It's the latest in a history of ant invasions from the southern hemisphere and may prove to have dramatic ...
Alien 'crazy ants' invading southern USLos Angeles Times
'Crazy ants' a threat in southern USCNN International
Crazy ants are invading parts of the US, including HoustonHouston Chronicle
LiveScience.com-Nature World News-Science Recorder
all 22 news articles

Link to Original Source

+ - North Carolina May Ban Tesla Sales To Prevent "Unfair Competition"-> 7

Submitted by nametaken
nametaken writes "From the state that brought you the nation’s first ban on climate science comes another legislative gem: a bill that would prohibit automakers from selling their cars in the state.

The proposal, which the Raleigh News & Observer reports was unanimously approved by the state’s Senate Commerce Committee on Thursday, would apply to all car manufacturers, but the intended target is clear. It’s aimed at Tesla, the only U.S. automaker whose business model relies on selling cars directly to consumers, rather than through a network of third-party dealerships.

[The article adds] it’s easy to understand why some car dealers might feel a little threatened: Tesla’s Model S outsold the Mercedes S-Class, BMW 7 Series, and Audi A8 last quarter without any help from them. If its business model were to catch on, consumers might find that they don’t need the middle-men as much as they thought."
Link to Original Source

+ - How do you deal with programmers who have not stayed current? 1

Submitted by skaffen42
skaffen42 writes "The recent Ask Slashdot about becoming a programmer later in life got me thinking about a related question. How do you deal with programmers who have not stayed current with new technologies?

In the hiring process this is easy, you simply don't hire them. However, at most companies I have worked at there are usually a few programmers who have been employed there for long enough that the skill-set they were originally hired for has become irrelevant. At the same time they have not bothered to stay current with newer technologies. They usually have enough business knowledge that they provide some value to the company, but from a technical perspective they are a slowly increasing liability. As an example, I work with a developer who is 10 years my senior, but still doesn't understand how to write concurrent code and cannot be trusted to use a revision control system without causing a mess that somebody else will have to clean up. On top of that he is really resistant to the idea of code reviews, which I think is due to him disliking people he considers junior to him making suggestion about how to improve his code.

So how do my fellow Slashdotters handle situations like this? How do you help somebody like this to improve their skill-sets? And most importantly, how do you do so without stepping on anybody's feelings?"

+ - Are software and pattents about to seperate?

Submitted by laitcg
laitcg writes "According to PJ at Groklaw: CLS Bank v. Alice Corp. has been decided [PDF] by the the Federal Circuit en banc. And Patently O says the court "finds many software patents ineligible"!

        As described more fully below, we would affirm the district court’s judgment in its entirety and hold that the method, computer-readable medium, and corresponding system claims before us recite patent-ineligible subject matter under 35 U.S.C. 101.1

        _____
        1 While Chief Judge Rader is correct to note that no single opinion issued today commands a majority, seven of the ten members, a majority, of this en banc court have agreed that the method and computer-readable medium claims before us fail to recite patent-eligible subject matter. In addition, eight judges, a majority, have concluded that the particular method, medium, and system claims at issue in this case should rise or fall together in the 101 analysis."

Comment: Re:Because it's valuable, duh. (Score 1) 210

by fleebait (#43691575) Attached to: Why Is Science Behind a Paywall?

Guess who else gets a cut of that pie.

The research institution does not give this stuff to publishers for free, they get their percentage too. So in addition to the publishers disappearing from existence, the researchers, or institutions lose their cut, too.

I guess we should be able to get this stuff for free, and the individuals, or institutions should give up their additional source of income.

+ - Ask Slashdot: How do you sell an Algorithm to Venture Capitalists?

Submitted by dryriver
dryriver writes "Dear Slashdotters, We are a 2 man crew who have spent almost 3 years developing a video processing algorithm that "upgrades" the visual quality of digital video footage. We take video footage that is "of average quality" — think an amateur shooting on a cheap digital camcorder or on a smartphone camera — and use various mathematical tricks we have developed to make the footage look better — optically sharper, better lit, more vivid colours, improved contrast, enhanced sense of three-dimensionality and of "being-there realism". — In about a month from now, we will be presenting our algorithm to some venture capitalists. We have the obligatory before-after video demos prepared for this, of course. But there will also be a short PowerPoint presentation where we explain our tech in some detail. Now here is our main question: What, in your opinion, should we — or indeed should we NOT — put in the PowerPoint presentation to impress a Venture Capitalist? Should we talk about how we developed the algorithm at all — what kind of R&D and testing was involved? Should we try to walk the VCs through how our algorithm works under the hood — simplified a bit for a "non-engineer" audience of course? Or should we stick to talking about market potential, marketing strategy & money-related stuff only? If you were in our shoes — presenting a digital video-quality improvement technology to professional VCs — what would and would you not put in your PowerPoint? Any advice on this from Slashdotters with some experience would be most welcome!"

+ - Ask Slashdot: Wasn't early email a replacment for voice?

Submitted by bluestair
bluestair writes "I'm a retired Air Force officer who is back in school, sitting through a business communications class that keeps stressing the importance of picture-perfect grammar and punctuation in all email. I clearly recall that in the very early days of email use, the guidance was pretty clearly the opposite: be brief, get your point across, ignore capitalization and punctuation. Email replaced voice communications (not mail) and should receive the same effort you give to speaking perfectly correctly (ie none). Can anyone back me up on this? Is there an old reference that I can show to my class to keep them from just thinking I'm getting senile when I bring this up?"

+ - How to teach IT to senior management 1

Submitted by gagol
gagol writes "I recently took a position at a small industrial equipment manufacturer. We are looking to buy a new ERM software package and my boss, who is looking forward to buy the thing, knows nothing about computers or software. I will be providing basic IT training to the senior management and I am looking for your input on the scope and content of said training. I am thinking: basic components and architecture -> networking -> software -> proprietary vs open source. What do you think?"

Thufir's a Harkonnen now.

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