Follow Slashdot blog updates by subscribing to our blog RSS feed

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
×
Displays

Ask Slashdot: Does LED Backlight PWM Drive You Crazy? 532

Posted by timothy from the it's-how-they-send-messages dept.
jones_supa writes "I would like to raise some discussion about a hardware issue that has increasingly started to bug me: backlight flicker, from which many LED-backlit monitors suffer. As you might know, the backlight and its dimming is driven by a pulse width modulated square wave, essentially flicking the LEDs on and off rapidly. Back in the CRT days a 100Hz picture was deluxe, due to the long afterglow of the display phosphor. LEDs, however, shut off immediately and my watering eyes and headache tell that we should be using frequencies in multiple kHz there. Unfortunately we too often fall behind that. As one spark of hope, the display review site PRAD has already started to include backlight signal captures to help assessing the problem. However with laptops and various mobile gadgets, finding this kind of information is practically impossible. This issue sort of lingers in the background but likely impacts the well-being of many, and certainly deserves more attention." So do LEDs bother your eyes? I think CRTs gave me headaches far more often than has any form of flat panel display, at least partly because of the whining noise that CRTs emit.

Comment Which Ones?!?! (Score 5, Insightful) 145

by Rob Riggs (#44052581) Attached to: Millions At Risk From Critical Vulnerabilities From WordPress Plugins
What an absolutely useless article and report. Scaremongering at its best, with no actionable content. Which plugins have vulnerabilities? Can they be mitigated through configuration changes or do they need to be disabled/uninstalled? What is the potential exposure? Those are the sort of things a computer professional needs. Where are the damned CVEs?
Google

Google's Crazy Lack of Focus: Is It Really Serious About Enterprise? 226

Posted by Soulskill from the looking-for-ways-to-put-ads-in-your-brain dept.
curtwoodward writes "Driverless cars. Balloon-based wireless networks. Face-mounted computers. Gigabit broadband networks. In recent months, Google has been unveiling a series of transformative side projects that paint a picture of the search pioneer expanding far beyond an online advertising company. At the same time, Google has been trying to convince enterprise software buyers that it's finally, really, truly serious about competing with Microsoft for their business. Which version of Google's future should you believe?"

Comment Re:God (Score 2) 359

by Rob Riggs (#44042003) Attached to: My view of touchscreen laptops:

If he wanted us to use sharpened sticks and clay tablets then why did he give me an appendage to write my name in the snow with?

Climate change -- no more snow. See -- this is what climate change brings. Touchscreen laptops. Now you know who to blame.
Cellphones

Prosecutors Push For Anti-Phone-Theft Kill Switches 257

Posted by Soulskill from the who-doesn't-love-a-kill-switch? dept.
New submitter EdPbllips writes "Law enforcement officials nationwide are demanding the creation of a 'kill switch' that would render smartphones inoperable after they are stolen, New York's top prosecutor said Thursday in a clear warning to the world's smartphone manufacturers. Citing statistics showing that 1 in 3 robberies nationwide involve the theft of a mobile phone, New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman announced the formation of a coalition of law enforcement agencies devoted to stamping out what he called an 'epidemic' of smartphone robberies. 'All too often, these robberies turn violent,' said Schneiderman, who was joined at a news conference by San Francisco District Attorney George Gascon. 'There are assaults. There are murders.'" Apple described a system like this in their presentation about iOS 7 at WWDC.

Comment This is Stupid (Score 4, Interesting) 622

by Rob Riggs (#43987307) Attached to: Keeping Your Data Private From the NSA (And Everyone Else)

None of those things will help you. To the NSA, the content of your email may be less important than with whom you are communicating. Yes, the care about the content of some emails, but their dragnet appears to be for network analysis -- sender, recipients, date, time, etc. The NSA almost certainly catalogs every DNS lookup you do. This is the stuff that is erroneously being referred to as metadata.

One possibly surprising way to keep your communications private is to read/post your communications to a very public forum. That way the intended recipient is difficult to determine. Keep the communication slightly covert -- a little steganography goes a long way if you can fly under the radar. Just don't trust others with your privacy.

Our rights are inalienable -- but only if we use them.
Privacy

Majority of Americans Say NSA Phone Tracking Is OK To Fight Terrorism 584

Posted by Unknown Lamer from the don't-want-to-get-onto-a-list dept.
An anonymous reader writes "While the tech media has gone wild the past few days with the reports of the NSA tracking Verizon cell usage and creating the PRISM system to peer into our online lives, a new study by Pew Research suggests that most U.S. citizens think it's okay. 62 percent of Americans say losing some personal privacy is acceptable as long as its used to fight terrorism, and 56 percent are okay with the NSA tracking phone calls. Online tracking is fair less popular however, with only 45 percent approving of the practice. The data also shows that the youth are far more opposed to curtailing privacy to fight terror, which could mean trouble for politicians planning to continue these programs in the coming years."

Comment Re:Yes it is real (Score 1) 206

Yeah, if only they'd invent some sort of device to turn a transmitter on in civilian airspace and off in restricted airspace. Maybe they could call it a Radio-Controlled Switch or something. In other news... if you're worried about insurgents shooting down your precious drones, why the fuck did you clear that area for civilian aviation?

Right.... because no insurgent would ever choose to put their hang out near a civilian airport. Someplace nice and safe from those pesky drones. Nope... that would never, ever happen.
Data Storage

Moore's Law Fails At NAND Flash Node 147

Posted by Unknown Lamer from the honey-i-couldn't-shrink-the-transistor dept.
An anonymous reader writes "SanDisk sampling its 1Y-based NAND flash memory products and has revealed they are manufactured at same minimum geometry as the 1X generation: 19 nm. The author speculates that this is one of the first instances of a Moore's Law 'fail' since the self-fulfilling prophecy was made in 1965 — but that it won't be the last."

Submission + - How Did You Learn How to Program?

Submitted by theodp
theodp writes: 'Every programmer likely remembers how they learned to code,' writes GeekWire's Taylor Soper. 'For guys like Bill Gates and Paul Allen, the magic began on the Teletype Model 33 (pic). For others, it may have been a few days at a coding workshop like the one I attended for journalists.' If you're in the mood to share how and in what ways your own developer days began, Soper adds, 'cyborg anthropologist' Amber Case is collecting stories to help people understand what it takes to learn how to code. Any fond computer camp stories, kids?

Slashdot Top Deals

Top Ten Things Overheard At The ANSI C Draft Committee Meetings: (5) All right, who's the wiseguy who stuck this trigraph stuff in here?

Close