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Comment: "Engage shields" in certain situations? (Score 1) 138

by theodp (#45754175) Attached to: Putting a Panic Button In Smartphone Users' Hands

Admittedly, it could be pretty intrusive, but I can envision certain situations where one might want to have someone "keeping an eye on you" for at least a short period of time: driving in bad weather, bad areas (ever have your GPS direct you to "take a shortcut" through a drug-dealing neighborhood or industrial area?), etc.

Comment: The Who: Magic Bus (Score 1) 509

by theodp (#45753709) Attached to: Protesters Block Apple and Google Buses In California

Magic Bus, Magic Bus, Magic Bus ...

I said, now I've got my Magic Bus (Too much, Magic Bus)
I said, now I've got my Magic Bus (Too much, Magic Bus)
I drive my baby every way (Too much, Magic Bus)
Each time I go a different way (Too much, Magic Bus)

I want it, I want it, I want it, I want it ...

+ - Putting a Panic Button in Smartphone Users' Hands

Submitted by theodp
theodp writes "If you own an Android phone, you may have inadvertently butt-dialed 911 from time-to-time. So, wonders Kix Panganiban, why don't our phones come with a universal 'Panic Button', that would make it just as easy to intentionally dial the police when it's truly needed? Panganiban envisions "a smartphone app that when triggered, would discreetly send out a distress message to contacts of your choice, and perhaps do some other functions that can get you out of bad (and maybe even life-threatening) situations." While a quick search reveals that some have taken a crack at apps that put a Panic Button in smartphone users' hands, are there good reasons why such a feature isn't just standard on mobile devices? And, with GPS and always-watching and always-listening tech only becoming cheaper and more ubiquitous, how far out in the future is it before your person can be continuously remotely monitored like your residence, even while mobile, and what might that look like?"

+ - Protesters Block Apple and Google Busses in California

Submitted by Hugh Pickens DOT Com
Hugh Pickens DOT Com writes "Business Insider reports that protesters have stopped a bus filled with Apple employees in San Francisco and a Google bus in Oakland. Tech companies like Google, Apple, and Facebook provide free buses that take their employees from San Francisco to their headquarters in the suburbs. Protesters are mad at the tech companies because the wealthy tech employees have driven up the price of housing in San Francisco, which is pricing out some people. The buses also use public transit stops, and some protesters think that's wrong. Between 70 and 100 protesters gathered for the blockade of Apple private tech shuttle to protest evictions in the city of San Francisco. The activists in San Fransisco were from Eviction Free San Francisco, Our Mission No Eviction, Causa Justa /Just Cause. Protesters stood in front of a white shuttle bus holding banners and signs. Some peeked through cardboard signs fashioned in the shape of place markers on Google maps, with “Evicted” written across the front. Meanwhile violence occurred in Oakland, according to reports from IndyBay, as protesters unfurled two giant banners reading “TECHIES: Your World Is Not Welcome Here” and “Fuck off Google" and "a person appeared from behind the bus and quickly smashed the whole of the rear window, making glass rain down on the street. Cold air blew inside the bus and the blockaders with their banners departed." Two weeks ago, protestors stopped a Google bus."

+ - DHS Turns to Unpaid Interns for Nation's Cyber Security

Submitted by theodp
theodp writes "A week after President Obama stressed the importance of computer science to America, the Department of Homeland Security put out a call for 100+ of the nations' best-and-brightest college students to work for nothing on the nation's cyber security. The unpaid internship program, DHS notes, is the realization of recommendations from the Homeland Security Advisory Council's Task Force on CyberSkills, which included execs from Facebook, Lockheed Martin, and Sony, and was advised by representatives from Cisco, JP Morgan Chase, Goldman Sachs, Northrop Grumman, the NSF, and the NSA. "Do you desire to protect American interests and secure our Nation while building a meaningful and rewarding career?" reads the job posting for Secretary's Honors Program Cyber Student Volunteers (salary: $0.00-$0.00). "If so, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is calling." Student volunteers, DHS adds, will begin in spring 2014 and participate throughout the summer. Get your applications in by January 3, kids!"

+ - He Seemed Nice: What Happens When a Co-Worker Dies

Submitted by theodp
theodp writes ""The first thing that happens is someone tells you," says Michael Hobbes, explaining what happens when one of your co-workers dies. "The next thing that happens is we are terrible," he continues, talking about office speculation over why their colleague killed himself, even though it's not known if he actually did. "The next thing that happens is we mourn," Hobbes writes, describing how the office recorded their memories of the departed. "I wish I had gotten to know him better," says the boss. "He seemed nice." And then, "The next thing that happens is it makes us close," as coworkers, sparked by their shared grief, begin to open up to each other. Unfortunately, that's short-lived. "The next thing that happens is it's all over," says Hobbes, "as our dead colleague becomes just another thing we think about but don't say." And finally: "The last thing that happens is [formerly full of new-hire enthusiasm] Naomi quits," troubled enough by the death of the co-worker she barely knew that she elects to move back home where she knows she at least "has family waiting for me at the end of the day.""

+ - Nokia Lumia 2520, A Tablet Joe Dirt Could Love

Submitted by theodp
theodp writes "Apple and Google aren’t just advertising their products, reports BuzzFeed. They seem to want you to shed tears, too. So, in a world of tech advertising where Apple has a sullen teen make a family weep at Christmas to sell the iPhone, and Google kills off a young man's dog while he's away at college to sell the Nexus 7, Nokia's creep-tastic commercial that likens its Lumia 2520 tablet to a mullet haircut is kind of a breath of fresh air. The mullet tie-in? "The point of the ad," explains GeekWire, "is that the 2520 is ready for both business and fun, like the [business in the front, party in the back] mullet was supposed to be." Finally, a tablet that earns the endorsement of Joe Dirt and the NHL!"

+ - Ted Nelson's Passionate Eulogy for Douglas Engelbart

Submitted by theodp
theodp writes "Speaking at a memorial event for the legendary Douglas Engelbart at the Computer History Museum, Ted Nelson was pissed-with-a-capital-P. Nelson in effect gave two powerful eulogies — one for his friend Dr. Engelbart, who left this Earth in July, and a second for Engelbart's career, which essentially began "dying" four decades earlier due to short-sighted organizations' failure to fund the brilliant guy who gave the world The Mother of All Demos in 1968. "Let us never forget that Doug Engelbart was dumped by ARPA," Nelson laments. "Doug Engelbart was dumped by SRI, Doug Engelbart was snubbed by Xerox PARC, and for the rest of his working life he had no chance to take us further...Just as we can only guess what John Kennedy might have done, we can only guess what Doug Engelbart might have done had he not been cut down in his prime." It's a very moving and passionate speech (despite some oddly inappropriate audience laughter). And, alas, a very sad one in a world that throws $4 billion at the likes of Snapchat and Pinterest."

+ - Bing Maps Architect Seeks Google Driving Directions

Submitted by theodp
theodp writes "In another case of Microsoft's-loss-is-Google's-gain, GeekWire reports that Google has made a big hire from Microsoft, bringing aboard TED crowd-pleaser Blaise Agüera y Arcas, the well-known software architect and designer who was among the Redmond company’s elite ranks of distinguished engineers. Known for his work on services including Photosynth and Bing Maps, Agüera y Arcas called the move 'the hardest decision of my life'. A stunning preview of Photosynth was released by Microsoft last week, and TED just released a video of Agüera y Arcas demonstrating the technology at a conference earlier this year."

+ - Of 15M Hour of Code Students, 8.3M US K-12 Kids?

Submitted by theodp
theodp writes "Following a Slashdot discussion of the Hour of Code usage stats, Code.org has shared an infographic with VentureBeat to demonstrate the Hour of Code's reach. Of the widely-cited stat of '15 million students participating in the Hour of Code,' Code.org does some adjusting and estimates in accompanying notes that 'the total in-school participation in the Hour of Code by US K-12 students = 8.3 million students.' The organization adds what it calls an important note: 'We measure students who start the Hour of Code, because our goal has been participation, rather than completion.' An accompanying spreadsheet further explains that Code.org did 'double-count some participants' (people who 'did' more than one of the many tutorials). Code.org does concede that some SWAG is involved in the estimates ("we’ve used best guesses to approximate things"). However, one's comfort level with the numbers isn't helped when a calc for '% of US K-12-aged students who have done Hour of Code' uses a denominator of 50.1 million students for the 'Total students in K-12 schools in the US,' when the cited U.S. Dept. of Education figures indicate this fails to include 'an additional 5.2 million students [that] are expected to attend private schools.' And if they're making revisions, Code.org might also want to fix that scale on the first bar chart in the infographic, which is 1/10th of what it should be (1.5M vs 15.0M)."

+ - Facebook tracks the Status Updates and Messages You Don't Write too.-> 1

Submitted by Jah-Wren Ryel
Jah-Wren Ryel writes "Do you think that facebook tracks the stuff that people type and then erase before hitting (or the “post” button)? Turns out the answer is yes. If you start writing a message, and then think better of it and decide not to post it, Facebook still adds it to the dossier they keep on you."
Link to Original Source

Comment: 2013 Code.org Like Dumbed-Down 1973 PLATO? (Score 3, Interesting) 123

by theodp (#45695453) Attached to: Code.org Stats: 507MM LOC, 6.8MM Kids, 2K YouTube Views

Probably worth mentioning that Code.org's online programming tutorial for kids, created in 2013 with collaboration with engineers from Microsoft, Google, Twitter and Facebook, is kind of like a dumbed-down, albeit slicker, version of online instruction given to children in 1973 on the University of Illinois' PLATO computer-assisted instruction system.

Programming by Children (1973): "Young children can be taught the basic elements of programming...In Figure 7a the child has walked the man, one step at a time, through a maze."

Overview of Code.org's Hour of Code activity (2013): "Our activity is a set of 20 self-guided puzzles that teach the basics of computer science for users with no prior experience. In each puzzle, students write a program that gets a character through a maze."

Almost anything derogatory you could say about today's software design would be accurate. -- K.E. Iverson

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