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Submission + - Researchers Create Working Laser the Size of a Virus Particle (gizmag.com)
Submission + - Ask Slashdot: How would you convince someone to give up an old system? 5
Some of the big issues are:
- The system is very disorganized, there are documents from the late 90’s that aren’t relevant, but have to be sifted through to find more current stuff.
- Often documents are not where they should be and are difficult to find.
- No one except Bob really knows how the system works, and
- No one really wants to use the system because of the monster it’s become.
My concern is if Bob decided to leave the organization no one would be able to maintain the existing system and we would be scrambling to put something new in place. I feel, for what we want to do, Google Docs would be an excellent platform for collaborating and sharing documents. The other board members, except Bob, have agreed with me, but are worried that bringing the issues with the existing system may cause offense and ultimately cause Bob to leave. Other than being overly vested in a system he developed, Bob is an important part of our board and a very valuable member.
We’re already having a difficult time finding members to serve on the board so it’s very important that we don’t lose any existing board members. I’m hoping that I can convince the Bob to start supporting some Google docs objects on the site and try to wean him off his existing system to something a bit more manageable and collaborative that can be passed on to new members and maintained easily.
I don’t want this to turn into old dogs and new tricks. I’m not that far behind Bob in years and can appreciate the difficulty of being told it’s time to give in to something more modern. I’m wondering how the situation could be approached tactfully so maybe Bob will see how much easier a new system could be for everyone, including him.
Submission + - Storing medical records on an obsolete system makes it expensive to get copies.. (bbc.co.uk)
Submission + - Bad UI design - George Bush votes for Obama (dailycurrant.com)
two-term Republican was confused by the instructions on his electronic voting machine and mistakenly cast a ballot he intended to discard.
Submission + - World's first 100 percent biofuel-powered flight of civil aircraft (gizmag.com)
Submission + - Apple Refuses To Disclose When It Learned About Hogan's Previous Court Cases (muktware.com)
Submission + - The Web Won't Be Safe or Secure until We Break It
"These attacks are primarily written with HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, so they are not identifiable as malware by antivirus software in the classic sense. They take advantage of the flawed way in which the Internet was designed to work."
Grossman's proposed solution is to make the desktop browser more like its mobile cousins.
"By adopting a similar application model on the desktop using custom-configured Web browsers (let's call them DesktopApps), we could address the Internet's inherent security flaws. These DesktopApps could be branded appropriately and designed to launch automatically to Bank of America's or Facebook's Web site, for example, and go no further. Like their mobile application cousins, these DesktopApps would not present an URL bar or anything else making them look like the Web browsers they are on the surface, and of course they would be isolated from one another.""
Submission + - Me.ga Suspended, Dotcom Says "We Have Alternative Domain" (paritynews.com)
Submission + - Tuition Should be Lower for Science Majors Says Florida Task Force
Submission + - AT&T To Pay $700,000 For Overcharging Consumers (cnet.com)
Submission + - Clock-For-Clock, Nouveau Can Compete With NVIDIA's Driver (phoronix.com)
The Nouveau driver can be rather competitive with the NVIDIA binary driver when both Linux GPU drivers are controlling the hardware at the lower boot frequencies for the graphics cards.
Submission + - Google security engineer issues Sophos warning (cso.com.au)
Submission + - Imagination Technology buys MIPS (barrons.com)
Submission + - HIV Vaccine Safe Enough To Pass Phase 1 Human Trials (communications.uwo.ca)
Submission + - Study Says Humans Can Smell Fear, Emotion Is Contagious
Submission + - Ask Slashdot: What is the best way to become a rural ISP? 1
Currently, there are no last-mile providers in my area, and the regional project only considers itself a middle-mile provider, and will only provide service to last-mile providers. Assuming this will not be my day job, that the local populace is rather poor, and that because of the hills, line-of-sight service will be difficult, how could I set myself up as an ISP? I have considered WiFi mesh networking, and even running wires on the power/telephone polls, but the required licensing and other issues are foreign to me. What would you do?"
Submission + - A Trail of Clicks, Culminating in Conflict (nytimes.com)
From the NYT Article:
“If adopted, the effect of these new rules would be to slow the deployment of applications that provide tremendous benefits to children, and to slow the economic growth and job creation generated by the app economy,” Catherine A. Novelli, vice president of worldwide government affairs at Apple, wrote in comments to the agency.
But would that be a bad thing? As reported in the New York Times last week, Matt Richtel of the NYT writes:
There is a widespread belief among teachers that students’ constant use of digital technology is hampering their attention spans and ability to persevere in the face of challenging tasks, according to two surveys of teachers being released on Thursday.
So, will the new FTC rules end up helping children (by enhancing their privacy and, if industry pundits are right, reducing the amount of content available online for children — thus enhancing their attention spans), or will the negative effects on corporations have as deleterious an effect on the economy as to measurably reduce the quality of education?
Submission + - Microsoft Shutting Down Messenger (bbc.co.uk)
Submission + - Voting Machines Should Be as Secure as Slot Machines (networkcomputing.com) 2
Howard Marks at NetworkComputing has an essay, pointing out exactly what we need for reliable, accurate voting:
"A valid audit trail, such as a printed ballot the voter can verify; A mechanism for recounting the printed ballots on a machine made by another vendor so the results can be compared; and An audit of the software by an independent third party to insure that the software accurately records and tabulates the voter's true intent."
He then looks at his own experience working with casinos, who would never tolerate the kinds of problems voting machines have. So why not take a lesson from gaming machines and build voting machines the same way?
"The slot machine industry is several times bigger, and significantly more competitive, than the voting machine industry. If IGT, Bally's and Aristocrat can compete for the slot market, then Diebold and Election Systems and Software can stand the same level of scrutiny.""