kdawson - Slashdot User

Submission + - The real reasons companies won't hire telecommuters

Submitted by Esther Schindler on Tuesday October 04, 2016 @11:58AM

Esther Schindler writes: Those of us who telecommute cannot quite fathom the reasons companies give for refusing to let people work from home. But even if you don't agree with their decision, they do have reasons — and not all of them are, "Because we like to be idiots." In 5 reasons why the company you want to work for won’t hire telecommuters, hiring managers share their sincere reasons to insist you work in the office—and a few tips for how you might convince them otherwise.

Submission + - Carriers Won't Win the War on Netflix

Submitted by Nemo the Magnificent on Sunday February 09, 2014 @05:20PM

Nemo the Magnificent writes: A few days ago we talked over a post by David Raphael accusing Verizon of slowing down Netflix, by way of throttling Amazon AWS. Now Jonathan Feldman gives us reason to believe that the carriers won't win the war on Netflix, because tools for monitoring the performance of carriers will emerge nd we'll catch them if they try. I just now exercised one such tool, NetNeutralityTest.com from Speedchedker Ltd. My carrier is Verizon (FiOS), and the test showed my download speed at the moment to be 12 Mbps. It was the same to Linode in NJ but only 3 Mbps to AWS East. Hmm.

Submission + - Blowing up a pointless job interview

Submitted by Nemo the Magnificent on Friday January 17, 2014 @04:16PM

Nemo the Magnificent writes: Ever been asked a question in a job interview that's just so abysmally stupid, you're tempted to give in to the snark and blow the whole thing up? Here are suggested interview-ending answers to 16 of the stupidest questions candidates actually got asked in interviews at tech companies in 2013, according to employment site Glassdoor. Oil to pour on the burning bridges.

Submission + - NSA, Obama Sued Over Domestic Surveillance Program 4

Submitted by Trailrunner7 on Tuesday June 11, 2013 @09:55AM

Trailrunner7 writes: A group of people, including a former federal prosecutor and the parents of a Navy SEAL sniper killed in action, have filed a class-action law suit against the National Security Agency, Verizon and President Obama over the NSA’s collection of cell phone data. The suit says the order that enabled the surveillance program is “the broadest surveillance order to ever have been issued” and enables indiscriminate collection of data.

The suit, filed this week in federal court in Washington, D.C., also names Roger Vinson, the judge who signed the Verizon order, as a defendant, along with Attorney General Eric Holder and NSA Director Keith Alexander. The plaintiffs say that the NSA’s surveillance program violates the Constitution and unfairly and unnecessarily infringes on citizens’ privacy. The classified order directs Verizon to hand over all of the so-called metadata for calls on its network to the NSA. The metadata includes the originating and terminating phone numbers along with details of the call, but not the contents of the call.

“The order, issued and signed by Judge Roger Vinson, violates the U.S. Constitution and also federal laws, including, but not limited to, the outrageous breach of privacy, freedom of speech, freedom of association, and the due process rights of American citizens.”

Submission + - Emergent Gravity Disproved (technologyreview.com)

Submitted by

kdawson

on Saturday August 27, 2011 @11:37AM

kdawson writes: "A paper up on the ArXiv claims to disprove the gravity-from-entropy theory of Erik Verlinde, which we discussed soon after he introduced the idea in a symposium late in 2009. Archil Kobakhidze says that experiments measuring the effect of gravity on quantum particles (neutrons in this case) match results expected from classical Newtonian gravity, not Verlindian entropic gravity. Here is Kobakhidze's paper (PDF)."

Submission + - Court overturns Mass law banning recording of cops (universalhub.com) 1

Submitted by schwit1 on Friday August 26, 2011 @09:19PM

schwit1 writes: In its ruling, which lets Simon Glik continue his lawsuit, the US Court of Appeals for the First Circuit in Boston said the wiretapping statute under which Glik was arrested and the seizure of his phone violated his First and Fourth Amendment rights.

Submission + - Do Supercomputers Still Matter? (hp.com)

Submitted by

Esther Schindler

on Thursday June 09, 2011 @02:15PM

Esther Schindler writes: "The innovations that are redefining the way businesses compute today were made feasible by supercomputers, the first platforms to enable parallel processing on a scale anywhere close to that of the cloud. Supercomputing would have been a lost art had it not been for the capability of everyday PC processors to be stacked together by the thousands — a technology for the high end made possible at the low end. But now, writes Scott Fulton in an exhaustive technical essay, a looming engineering bottleneck may have already rendered it technically and financially impossible for supercomputers to continue evolving at the current rate. Can the cloud go forward if the “grid” on which it’s based grinds to a halt?"

Submission + - Is Process Killing the Software Industry? (oreilly.com)

Submitted by blackbearnh on Tuesday May 10, 2011 @09:09AM

blackbearnh writes: We all know by now that Test Driven Development is a best practice. And so is having 100% of your code reviewed. And 70% unit test coverage. And keeping your CCN complexity numbers below 20. And doing pre-sprint grooming of stories. And a hundred other industry 'best practices' that in isolation seem like a great idea. But at the end of the day, how much time does it leave for developers to be innovative and creative?

A piece on O'Reilly Radar is arguing that excessive process in software development is sucking the life out of passionate developers, all in the name of making sure that 'good code' gets written. TFA:"The underlying feedback loop making this progressively worse is that passionate programmers write great code, but process kills passion. Disaffected programmers write poor code, and poor code makes management add more process in an attempt to 'make' their programmers write good code. That just makes morale worse, and so on."

Submission + - Russian Drug Cops Storm Rogue Pharmacy Party (krebsonsecurity.com)

Submitted by tsu doh nimh on Wednesday February 23, 2011 @11:59AM

tsu doh nimh writes: Brian Krebs has posted a fascinating, inside look at a battle that's been brewing between two Russian men who run a pair of the largest online rogue pharmacy programs in the world. The story focuses more on Pavel Vrublevsky, the man alleged to run Rx-Promotion — a pharmacy program that specializes in selling addictive, controlled substances like Oxycodone — and how Russian drug authorities recently raided a party in Moscow thrown for Rx-Promotion affiliates who had been competing for cash and prizes and the grand prize — a one kilogram bar of gold.

Submission + - "The Hidden Reality" Draws Ire from Physicists (scientificamerican.com) 1

Submitted by eldavojohn on Monday January 31, 2011 @09:32AM

eldavojohn writes: Scientific American is running a piece by science journalist John Horgan attacking pop physicist Brian Greene's latest offering titled "The Hidden Reality." He's not entirely alone, Not Even Wrong backs him up and reminds us of a growing list of multiverse propaganda. The Journal of Nature ran a short piece trying to remind everyone that Greene's book is more theory than fact but apart from those three responses, the popular press seems to be gobbling up this tantalizing concept of a multiverse. NPR offers an excerpt while SFGate and The Wall Street Journal entertain us with interviews of the controversial Greene. The New York Times and Salon seem to think it's worthwhile with Salon even calling it "the science behind" the multiverse theory. The New York Times thought it worthwhile to give Greene an op-ed column. For better or for worse, Greene has certainly brought this great debate to the public's attention — similar to his exhibition of String Theory.

Submission + - Pondering Egypt and Net Activism (internetevolution.com)

Submitted by rsmiller510 on Friday January 28, 2011 @12:50PM

rsmiller510 writes: A new book that calls into question the power of the internet to affect real political change is quite prescient given the situation in Egypt today where the government has literally shut down the internet.

Submission + - NFC Could Make iPhone a Payment Machine (internetevolution.com)

Submitted by rsmiller510 on Wednesday January 26, 2011 @01:25PM

rsmiller510 writes: You might not know what 'near field communication is,' but there's a chance it could transform the iPhone into a payment machine tied to your iTunes account. And if that happens, it could put Apple in the payments business.

Tens of Thousands Protest In Cairo, Twitter Blocked 167

Posted by timothy on Tuesday January 25, 2011 @07:16PM from the lol-cats-won't-save-you dept.

Haffner writes "Protests in Cairo, Egypt have now reached the tens of thousands. Police have deployed water cannons and tear gas. I am writing this live from Cairo, where I witnessed a throng of 1000-3000 march towards Tahrir Square in downtown Cairo. I also witnessed 300-500 protesting on one of the bridges heading downtown. Most importantly, twitter has been blocked by many national carriers." Why Twitter? As reader pinkushun writes "Using Twitter and Facebook, the people instigated a series of fast-moving, rapidly shifting demos across half a dozen or more Egyptian cities. The police could not keep up – and predictably, resorted to violence. Sadly this has led to three known deaths thus far." Update: 01/26 02:05 GMT by T : Jake Appelbaum is tweeting up a storm about the state of the active filters.

Obama Nominates RIAA Lawyer For Solicitor General 463

Posted by CmdrTaco on Tuesday January 25, 2011 @10:26AM from the this'll-be-great dept.

Xiph1980 writes "President Barack Obama on Monday nominated former Recording Industry Association of America lawyer Donald Verrilli Jr. to serve as the nation's solicitor general. The solicitor general is charged with defending the government before the Supreme Court, and files friend-of-the court briefs in cases in which the government believes there is a significant legal issue. The office also determines which cases it would bring to the Supreme Court for review. Verrilli is best known for leading the recording industry's legal charge against music- and movie-sharing site Grokster. That 2003 case ultimately led to Grokster's demise when the US Supreme Court sided with the RIAA's verdict."

The Fall of Traditional Entertainment Conglomerates 204

Posted by samzenpus on Sunday January 23, 2011 @10:42PM from the let-me-know-how-that-goes-for-you dept.

Advocatus Diaboli writes "We no longer live in the era of 'plantation-type' movie studios or recording houses. However large private companies still have considerable power over content production, distribution and promotion. Technology has been slowly changing this state of affairs for almost 30-40 years, however certain new technological advances, enabling systems and cost considerations will change the entertainment industry as we know it within 5 years."

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