Readycharged - Slashdot User

Submission + - Google To Shut Down Calendar Features, Google Sync, Google Calendar Sync, Punchd 1

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 14, 2012 @06:00PM

An anonymous reader writes: Google on Friday announced it is shutting down a slew of features and services as part of its winter cleaning. Google Calendar will be losing a few features, Google Sync will be axed (on the consumer side), as will Google Calendar Sync, SyncML, the Issue Tracker Data API, and the Punchd app.

Submission + - Imagine if Google Had Been Developed in the 1960s

Submitted by

Hugh Pickens writes

on Friday December 14, 2012 @04:21PM

Hugh Pickens writes writes: "Jennifer O'Mahony writes in the Telegraph about Google parody web sites including one by Designer Norbert Landsteiner that allows users to imagine what google would be like if it had been invented in the era of 'Mad Men' complete with a punch card machine, magnetic tape unit and central processor using Job Control Language (JCL), a scripting language used on IBM 360 mainframe operating systems to instruct the system on how to run a batch job or start a subsystem. To complete the theme, the search engine is quite noisy, with typewriter key clicks and bells, and constant printing and paper-loading noises. Landsteiner says the goal of the project is to “explore distances and heroism in user interfaces.” Another Landsteiner project re-imagines Google as as a BBS terminal in the 1980s."

Submission + - People are living longer, with more disabilities than ever (washingtonpost.com)

Submitted by skade88 on Friday December 14, 2012 @01:02PM

skade88 writes: Worldwide people are living longer. Their lives are starting to look more like the lives of Americans, too much food is the problem, death in childhood is becoming less common etc... Yet with a population that lives through what would once have killed us, disabilities are starting to become the norm. The research has a good glimpse into the new emerging world we find ourselves in.

Submission + - Automation is making unions irrelevant (computerworld.com) 1

Submitted by dcblogs on Friday December 14, 2012 @11:27AM

dcblogs writes: Michigan lawmakers just approved a right-to-work law in an effort to dismantle union power, but unions are already becoming irrelevant. The problem with unions is they can’t protect jobs. They can’t stop a company from moving jobs overseas, closing offices, or replacing workers with machines. Indeed, improvements in automation is making the nation attractive again for manufacturing, according to U.S. intelligence Global Trends 2030 report. The trends are clear. Amazon spent $775 million this year to acquire a company, Kiva Systems that makes robots used in warehouses. Automation will replace warehouse workers, assembly-line and even retail workers. In time, Google’s driverless cars will replace drivers in the trucking industry. Unions sometimes get blamed for creating uncompetitive environments and pushing jobs overseas. But the tech industry, which isn’t unionized, is a counterpoint. Tech has been steadily moving jobs overseas to lower costs.

Submission + - World's First Fully Functioning Missle Shooting Robotic Transformer

Submitted by

Readycharged

on Wednesday November 28, 2012 @07:47PM

Readycharged writes: "A generations' childhood dreams have come true with the creation of a working "robot in disguise" Transformer which, when operated by remote control, morphs from a luxury sports car to a missile hurling robot in seconds. Japanese inventor, Kenji Ishida, is planning to make 10 lucky (and undoubtedly rich) purchasers owners of these toys in the run up to Christmas, having first displayed them at the Maker Faire in Tokyo during the first week of December. For those willing to wait a few years, Ishida plans to have created a life size, drivable model by 2030."

Submission + - Texas student who called RFID 'the mark of the beast' headed to federal court (networkworld.com) 2

Submitted by colinneagle on Wednesday November 28, 2012 @03:50PM

colinneagle writes: Opinions about RFID have long been controversial, but no more so than when a Texas school tried to suspend a girl for refusing to wear a student ID card embedded with an RFID chip. By forcing students to hang the ID card around their necks and to keep it visible at all times, the school claims it is guaranteed proof of class attendance or absence. Sophomore Andrea Hernandez said, "I feel it's an invasion of my religious beliefs. I feel it's the implementation of the Mark of the Beast. It's also an invasion of my privacy and my other rights."

The newest hearing about the tracking chips was canceled. According to WOIA, San Antonio's Northside Independent School District issued this statement:

Since the Jay High School student and her father are alleging a violation of the student's federal constitutional rights, Northside ISD asked that the case be heard in federal court. The case scheduled to be heard today in State court has been canceled and now will rest with a Federal judge to make a ruling. Neither a judge nor a date for a federal hearing has been set.

NISD acknowledged the family's objection based on religious grounds and offered the student a Student ID Card without the RFID technology. The student and family refused the exception.

Comment Common Practice On Aggregate Sites (Score 0) 369

by Readycharged on Monday January 02, 2012 @08:12PM (#38567456) Attached to: Customers Gleefully Mock Best Buy's $1,095.99 HDMI

Changing the price from a competitive one to a hugely disproportionate one when a product is sold out is a common practice on sites like Ebay and Amazon - and now presumably Bestbuy.

You see the products on these sites are subject to a 'best match' algorithim which is based on the amount of clicks the product . If the product listing is withdrawn (due to it being sold out or unavailable), it receives no clicks and is consequently demoted in ranking when it is relisted (as the automated system assumes that rival, similar products are more popular).

The longer it is unavailable, the further it is demoted. This can lead to a loss of premium visibility when it does come into stock, for the reasons given above.

It seems weird, but it is sometimes better to keep the item listed at a ridiculously prohibitive price, than to remove it from search (particularly if the item was popular when it was available) so that it does not lose its ranking when it comes back into stock. As previously mentioned, this practice happens a lot on eBay and Amazon.

Comment No surprise (Score 0) 110

by Readycharged on Saturday December 24, 2011 @06:16PM (#38484944) Attached to: Study Finds Online Cheating Is Infectious

It simply follows the old adage: 'bad company corrupts good morals'.

Comment An unashamed Firefox fan (Score 0) 507

by Readycharged on Saturday December 17, 2011 @11:06PM (#38413266) Attached to: Chrome 15 Overtakes IE 8 For Top Browser Spot

Gotta love Firefox, I leave tabs open as a reminder of stuff I gotta do (even hibernating my PC with them still open), and the last time and the last time I had to do a proper PC shut down Firefox asked, "Are you sure you want to close 108 tabs?" I didn't realise I had that many open. There's no way any version of IE or Chrome could have coped with that quantity of open tabs. The CPU would have gone haywire. I guess it helps that I don't overload Firefox with lots of add-ons

Submission + - Could This Be The End Of Cancer?

Submitted by adeelarshad82 on Friday December 16, 2011 @03:54PM

adeelarshad82 writes: It's a disease that kills millions a year and a slew of hoped-for miracle treatments have gone nowhere until recently. In an interesting change of events, scientists say vaccines could hold the key—not just to a cure but to wiping out cancer forever. Shari Baker, who was diagnosed with stage IV (metastatic) breast cancer in 2005, signed up for clinical trial at the University of Washington. A vaccine was injected into her upper arm; she got five more shots over the next five months. Today, with scans detecting no cancer anywhere, Baker seems to have beaten some extremely stiff odds.

Submission + - How Doctors Die

Submitted by

Hugh Pickens writes

on Monday December 12, 2011 @08:04PM

Hugh Pickens writes writes: "Ken Murray, a Clinical Assistant Professor of Family Medicine at USC, writes that it's not a frequent topic of discussion, but doctors die, too. But they don’t die like the rest of us because what’s unusual about doctors is not how much treatment they get compared to most Americans, but how little. For all the time they spend fending off the deaths of others, they tend to be fairly serene when faced with death themselves. "Almost all medical professionals have seen what we call “futile care” being performed on people," writes Murray. "What it buys is misery we would not inflict on a terrorist. I cannot count the number of times fellow physicians have told me, in words that vary only slightly, 'Promise me if you find me like this that you’ll kill me.'" Feeding into the problem are unrealistic expectations of what doctors can accomplish. Many people think of CPR as a reliable lifesaver when, in fact, the results are usually poor. "If a patient suffers from severe illness, old age, or a terminal disease, the odds of a good outcome from CPR are infinitesimal, while the odds of suffering are overwhelming. Poor knowledge and misguided expectations lead to a lot of bad decisions.""

Submission + - Adblock No Longer Filtering All Ads (adblockplus.org) 2

Submitted by SharkLaser on Monday December 12, 2011 @05:59PM

SharkLaser writes: Adblock developers have made a radical change to their addon. From the newest version forward, Adblock will only filter the most irritating advertisements. This includes advertisement with sounds, flashy pictures or animations. This means, for example, that Adblock is no longer filtering Google's text ads and any other advertisements that isn't irritating to most users. The developers are saying that this change should push website owners to change to less irritating ads, for example Google's AdSense.

Submission + - Kazaa, StreamCast founders file new patent suit (itnews.com.au)

Submitted by littlekorea on Monday December 12, 2011 @05:48PM

littlekorea writes: The founders of P2P services Kazaa and StreamCast have filed suit against Google/YouTube, Amazon, VMware, EMC, Dropbox, Caringo and NEC over cloud computing patents. Weiss (StreamCast/Morpheus) and Burmeister (Kazaa) has originally planned to target hosted music services but widened the scope considerably. The suit is filed in East Texas, home of the patent troll.

Submission + - Scientists Are Now Tracking the Spread of Diseases (vice.com)

Submitted by

pigrabbitbear

on Monday December 12, 2011 @05:29PM

pigrabbitbear writes: "Call it researching disease in the cloud or just plain illuminating, but Princeton researchers today published a paper in Science that demonstrates how aerial night images can be used to monitor the spread of an epidemic in the developing world by tracking light density."

Submission + - Apple Forfeits Ipad name in China: Sued for $1Bill (zdnetasia.com)

Submitted by

Readycharged

on Monday December 12, 2011 @12:46PM

Readycharged writes: "ZDNet Asia reports on Chinese media news that Apple have lost the right to use the IPad name in China. Further reports from multiple media sources, including DailyTech, claim that the original trademark owners are suing for $1Billion compensation.

The claim stems from the fact that the trademark holders, Proview Technology (Shenzhen), registered the name 'Ipad' back in 2000.

Proview has a Taiwanese based subsidary who, allegedly, sold the "worldwide" rights to Apple for $54,000. At the heart of dispute was whether these rights included China. The court appears to have sided with Proview's view that it did not, paving the way for the company to mount its massive compensation claim.

The Financial Times adds that Proview are optimistic that the ruling will help make their "negotiations with Apple a bit easier".

The company is a subsidiary of LCD screen maker Proview International Holdings Ltd., headquartered in Hong Kong""

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