lordharsha - Slashdot User

iPhone App Tracks Sex Offenders 358

Posted by samzenpus on Thursday July 30, 2009 @09:28AM from the there's-a-sweaty-app-for-that dept.

The Narrative Fallacy writes "All 50 states in the US require the 50,000 people convicted of sexual offenses to sign a register so that their whereabouts can be tracked and monitored. The Telegraph reports that now users of the iPhone Offender Locator application can search for sex offenders living nearby a friend or colleague whose address is stored in their Apple iPhone address book, or they can type in a street address to generate a list of convicted sex offenders in the local area. 'Offender Locator gives everyone the ability to find out if registered sex offenders live in their area,' says the application developer, ThinAir Wireless, on its iTunes page. 'Knowledge equals safety. They know where you and your family are...now it's time to turn the tables so that you know where they live and can make better decisions about where to allow your kids to play.' Offender Locator uses the iPhone's built-in GPS to pinpoint the user's location, and then provide a map listing sex offenders in the local area. Tapping on one of the 'pins' dropped on to the map brings up a photograph of the offender, as well as their address, date of birth and list of convictions."

Comment sneaky business (Score 1) 334

by lordharsha on Thursday July 30, 2009 @02:29AM (#28878211) Attached to: EMI Only Selling CDs To Mega-Chains From Now On

EMI probably read this, figured something had to be done to get rid of piracy, and decided to hamper their sales. This way when the next study is conducted, they can blame piracy.

Before someone points it out, this is supposed to be funny. I might be overly paranoid, I might hate them greedy buggers, and a little conspiracy theory does the soul good, but this is probably just corporate stupidity. Been seeing a lot of it lately.

Comment Bullies in the playground (Score 4, Insightful) 172

by lordharsha on Wednesday July 29, 2009 @05:25AM (#28863743) Attached to: China Bans Games That "Glorify Gangsters' Lives"

*sigh* Gorram governments.

When I was a kid, politics was this big boring thing that all the grown ups with moustaches and beards went on and on about.

Now that I'm older, it's a hell of a lot more like a pissing contest, with each country trying to introduce more asinine laws and control each and every moment of their citizens lives. Hell, it's almost like a black comedy.

I'd laugh at the whole thing, but some of the shit that the governments of the world do in our name really scare me. Eventually enough people are going to come to their senses and fight back.

That's it for my rant. Mod me up, mod me down, ignore me, but I felt I had to get my 2c in.

Comment Google in trouble? (Score 5, Insightful) 301

by lordharsha on Tuesday July 28, 2009 @11:52PM (#28862107) Attached to: Microsoft and Yahoo Reach Deal

Cobbling together 2 inferior technologies doesn't give you a superior one. I don't really think Google has anything to worry about. Kindly take your rabble rousing elsewhere.

Comment Re:This is a great breakthrough... (Score 1) 406

by lordharsha on Tuesday July 28, 2009 @02:55PM (#28856761) Attached to: Transparent Aluminum Is "New State of Matter"

The bombardment that makes it transparent only lasts for fractions of a nanosecond before the foil is comlpetely destroyed.

Hell, I could probably get similar results with a handful of C4

Comment Re:This is a great breakthrough... (Score 1) 406

by lordharsha on Tuesday July 28, 2009 @02:52PM (#28856709) Attached to: Transparent Aluminum Is "New State of Matter"

Do you honestly think that the government reads /.? If they did, they'd have destroyed the planet three times over what with some of the ideas that get tossed around here.

Submission + - The Best First Language For A Young Programmer (infoworld.com)

Submitted by

snydeq

on Friday July 24, 2009 @12:40PM

snydeq writes: "Fatal Exception's Neil McAllister questions whether Scheme, a dialect of Lisp taught as part of many first-year C.S. curricula and considered by some to be the 'latin of programming,' is really the best first language for a young programmer. As McAllister sees it, the essentially write-only Scheme requires you to bore down into the source code just to figure out what a Scheme program is trying to do — excellent for teaching programming but 'lousy for a 15-year-old trying to figure out how to make a computer do stuff on his own.' And though the 'hacker ethic' may in fact be harming today's developers, McAllister still suggests we encourage the young to 'develop the innate curiosity and love of programming that lies at the heart of any really brilliant programmer' by simply encouraging them to fool around with whatever produces the most gratifying results. After all, as Jeff Atwood puts it, 'what we do is craftmanship, not engineering,' and inventing effective software solutions takes insight, inspiration, deduction, and often a sprinkling of luck, McAllister writes. 'If that means coding in Visual Basic, so be it. Scheme can come later.'"

Comment Re:So what? (Score 1) 368

by lordharsha on Wednesday July 08, 2009 @09:38PM (#28631135) Attached to: Human Sperm Produced In the Laboratory

Hmmm... would that be considered incest?

Comment Re:What value? (Score 1) 182

by lordharsha on Friday February 13, 2009 @01:26PM (#26845991) Attached to: Terabit Ethernet Inches Closer To Reality

Not in Australia

Terabit ethernet, govt filter, dialup speeds

5-25 gig is more than enough

(That's probably a bit dramatic, but I think you get the point)

Canadian Groups Call For Massive Net Regulation 318

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on Monday December 08, 2008 @05:25PM from the driving-websites-offshore dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Michael Geist is reporting that Canadian cultural groups including ACTRA and SOCAN have called on Canada's telecom regulator to implement a massive new Internet regulation framework. This includes a new three-percent tax on ISPs to pay for new media creation, Canadian content requirements for commercial websites, and licensing requirements for new media broadcasters, including for user-generated content."

Ethical Killing Machines 785

Posted by kdawson on Tuesday November 25, 2008 @03:53PM from the i-for-one-welcome dept.

ubermiester writes "The New York Times reports on research to develop autonomous battlefield robots that would 'behave more ethically in the battlefield than humans.' The researchers claim that these real-life terminators 'can be designed without an instinct for self-preservation and, as a result, no tendency to lash out in fear. They can be built without anger or recklessness ... and they can be made invulnerable to ... "scenario fulfillment," which causes people to absorb new information more easily if it agrees with their pre-existing ideas.' Based on a recent report stating that 'fewer than half of soldiers and marines serving in Iraq said that noncombatants should be treated with dignity and respect, and 17 percent said all civilians should be treated as insurgents,' this might not be all that dumb an idea."

1.4 Billion Pixel Camera To Watch For Asteroids 138

Posted by timothy on Tuesday November 25, 2008 @01:40PM from the one-last-hawaiian-vacation dept.

SpaceSlug writes "The world's largest digital camera is to be used to keep an eye out for asteroids heading towards Earth. The Panoramic Survey Telescope and Rapid Response System (Pan-STARRS) has been built by researchers at MIT's Lincoln Lab. At its heart is a 1.4 billion pixel (or 1400 megapixel) camera that will scan the night sky looking for rogue near-Earth objects from atop Mount Haleakala in Maui Island, Hawaii. The system uses something called an orthogonal transfer CCD to remove atmospheric blur from images."

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