Quanticfx - Slashdot User

Submission + - VoIP Provider Files Net Neutrality Complaint With FCC (pcworld.com)

Submitted by himilean on Tuesday May 22, 2012 @03:32PM

himilean writes: A Florida VoIP carrier has filed a net neutrality complaint against a Georgia utility and broadband provider, after the utility accused the VoIP firm of theft of service for using its network to deliver voice service without paying for it.

L2Networks filed the net neutrality complaint with the U.S. Federal Communications Commission Tuesday, the first formal complaint since the FCC passed net neutrality rules in December 2010. L2Networks' filing comes after the telecommunications manager for the City of Albany Water, Gas & Light Commission, a municipal utility in Georgia, filed a theft-of-service complaint with the Dougherty County Police Department in Albany earlier this year.

So- Would this not be considered the most abusive power of all within the legal system? Does this mean if I Skype my buddy and he's on Comcast, Comcast can file theft charges against me?

Submission + - KDE announces the Make Play Live Partner Network (kde.org)

Submitted by

jrepin

on Tuesday May 22, 2012 @03:17PM

jrepin writes: "In the wake of the announcement of the first ever KDE powered tablet, quite a few interesting things are happening in the background. One of them is the formation of a professional Partner Network for devices such as the Vivaldi tablet. The Make Play Live Partner Program is designed to build and support a collaborative business and economic network. Members work together to provide comprehensive professional service and product offerings around Plasma Active and devices such as Vivaldi. Professional support options make it easier to convince potential parties, such as users, clients, customers and partners, bringing KDE software to a larger group of users. Nine organizations have already joined."

Submission + - The Price of Military Tech Assistance in Movies (vice.com)

Submitted by derekmead on Tuesday May 22, 2012 @02:48PM

derekmead writes: Last week at Camp David, President Obama met up with fellow NATO leaders to discuss the road ahead in Afghanistan. Although no one there used the language of defeat, the implicit message was clear: the war has gone nowhere in the past few years and it’s time to start packing up. Meanwhile, what raked in $25.5 million at the box office? Battleship. And who provided director Peter Berg with the war technology that beats the aliens? The U.S. military.

He’s not the only one: the past few years have seen an explosion of high-profile cooperation between the armed forces and the movie industry. If the most powerful armed force in history isn’t winning in reality, it certainly is on the big screen. And like so many problematic aspects of late capitalism, the military-Hollywood complex has a grimly understandable logic.

Submission + - Fake Facebook Accounts Cost As Little As $0.06 (itworld.com)

Submitted by

jfruh

on Tuesday May 22, 2012 @02:32PM

jfruh writes: "Are you interested in buying a the kind of Facebook account a scammer dreams of — one with a of a pretty young woman as the profile pic? You can get them for as little as six cents apiece, if you buy in bulk. Of course, you pay for quality — to get a phone-verified account that an actual human has signed off on, you'd pay up to $1.50. The fact that anyone would be buying so many at a time points to the emergence of Facebook botnets. (And lest you think we're picking on Facebook, there are bots for sale for Google+, Craigslist, and other sites as well.)"

Submission + - EA releases two games for linux (techspot.com) 1

Submitted by lister king of smeg on Wednesday May 09, 2012 @05:47PM

lister king of smeg writes: In a rather unexpected move, Electronic Arts has added two web-based game titles to the Ubuntu Software Center of the popular Linux distribution, and although they're far from the newest games, Linux users will likely welcome Command and Conquer Tiberium Alliances as well as the Lord of Ultima with open arms.

Before Linux fans get too excited, it isn't the full game installation, but rather a loading web-app. That said, the move does suggest that the game developer has potentially spotted the currently untapped opportunity of using Ubuntu Linux as a another channel for delivering its content.

Submission + - Overheated Voting Machine Cast its Own Votes for Governor in NY Election (wnyc.org)

Submitted by

longacre

on Wednesday May 09, 2012 @05:31PM

longacre writes: "Tests of a number of electronic voting machines that recorded shockingly high numbers of extra votes in the 2010 election show that overheating may have caused upwards of 30 percent of votes in some South Bronx voting precincts to go uncounted."

Submission + - 55,000 Twitter Accounts Hacked, Passwords Leaked (hothardware.com) 1

Submitted by

MojoKid

on Wednesday May 09, 2012 @04:40PM

MojoKid writes: "Tens of thousands of Twitter accounts have been compromised in a recent hack attack in which more than 55,000 passwords were leaked and posted to Pastebin by anonymous hackers. Most of the accounts supposedly belonged to spammers, and there were many duplicate entries, Twitter officials pointed out. However, to play it safe, you should probably change your Twitter password ASAP."

Submission + - Freedom fighters at Twitter block access to Occupy protester's account (foxnews.com)

Submitted by Velcroman1 on Wednesday May 09, 2012 @03:47PM

Velcroman1 writes: Twitter is fighting an attempt by the District Attorney’s office in New York to access the message feed of an Occupy Wall Street activist who was arrested on the Brooklyn Bridge last fall. Malcolm Harris was one of 700 people arrested during an October 1 rally after the group walked onto the roadway of the bridge. Prosecutors ordered a subpoena for Twitter to hand over months of tweets from Harris, which they feel might show that he was aware that police had ordered protesters not to go onto the Bridge’s roadway. Twitter said no way. “Twitter's Terms of Service make absolutely clear that its users *own* their content. Our filing with the court reaffirms our steadfast commitment to defending those rights for our users,” said Ben Lee, General Counsel for Twitter.

Submission + - Password Protection Act: Ban Bosses Asking For Facebook Passwords 1

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 09, 2012 @03:31PM

An anonymous reader writes: A group of Democrats today introduced legislation in both the House and Senate to prevent employers from forcing employers and job applicants into sharing information from their personal social networking accounts. In other words, Maryland may soon not be the only state that has banned employers demanding access to Facebook accounts. The Password Protection Act of 2012 (PPA) would also prevent employers from accessing information on any computer that isn’t owned or controlled by an employee, including private e-mail accounts, photo sharing sites, and smartphones.

Submission + - Co-op hydro-power at risk under new DOE scheme

Submitted by Scarred Intellect on Wednesday May 09, 2012 @11:30AM

Scarred Intellect writes: A new proposal by US Secretary of Energy Steven Chu will alter the mission of Power Maketing Administrations (such as Bonneville Power Administration, which administrates electricity between multiple dams, wind farms, and natural gas plants throughout the Northwest) and threaten electricity costs.

Sec. Chu served notice that PMAs would serve as laboratories to test various energy initiatives. These energy initiatives will increase the cost and could adversely affect the reliability of power provided by the PMAs.

Electric cooperative members, will pay the additional cost of these energy initiatives while consumers elsewhere would receive any benefits.

I seem to recall hearing about news of this sort of research from several DOE laboratories. It's almost like we already have a National Renewable Energy Laboratory and programs at various other locations.

Comment Re:Alternative Answer... (Score 1) 380

by Quanticfx on Wednesday March 28, 2012 @05:16PM (#39501225) Attached to: When I drive, I place my hands at ...

The answer is obvious, outlaw motorcycles. Considering the current laws regarding cars, (mandatory seat belts, safety standards, etc ) i dont see how motorcycles can possibly be legal anymore.

Guaranteed there is someone, somewhere advocating this.

Comment Re:There's Your Problem Right There (Score 1) 1108

by Quanticfx on Wednesday March 21, 2012 @02:10PM (#39430383) Attached to: Tennessee Passes Bill That Allows "Teaching the Controversy" of Evolution

Most creationists do not accept the existence of beneficial mutations. (They argue that adaption only brings out attributes that already have some preexisting genetic basis, and that no new beneficial alleles can be created)

Do they also refute the existence of non-beneficial mutations?

I don't have much knowledge on the subject and I'm probably wrong, but can't the existence of mutations can be proved through experimentation?

Submission + - The 1,000-Year-Old Message That Saved a Village

Submitted by

Hugh Pickens writes

on Tuesday March 13, 2012 @01:17AM

Hugh Pickens writes writes: "Disaster researcher José Holguín-Veras writes in the LA Times that when he went to Japan after the Tohoku earthquake to identify lessons that could benefit future disaster-response operations, he discovered a message sent across 50 generations that saved the residents of a fishing village called Murohama. "A millennium ago, the residents of Murohama, knowing they were going to be inundated, had sought safety on the village's closest hill. But they had entered into a deadly trap," writes Holguín-Veras. "A second wave, which had reached the interior of the island through an inlet, was speeding over the rice paddies from the opposite direction." The waves collided at the hill and killed those who had taken refuge there. To signify their grief and to advise future generations, the survivors erected a shrine. Holguín-Veras asked a community leader if "a thousand years ago" was a figure of speech and to his astonishment, village elders had reviewed the local temple's records and found reports pinpointing a large tsunami 1,142 years ago that coincided with the massive Jogan Jishin earthquake of 869. On March 11, 2011 residents relied on the lesson that had been transmitted generation to generation for 1,000 years. "We all knew the story about the two tsunami waves that collided at the shrine," and instead of taking refuge on hill with the shrine, they took the time to get to high ground farther away and watched two tsunami waves colliding at the hill with the shrine, just as they did long ago. "I know that science and engineering save lives. But in this instance neither did much to help," says Holguín-Veras. "Reaching out from the distant past, long-gone ancestors — and a deeply embedded story — saved their children.""

Submission + - Ask Slashdot: How Qualified Are 'Cybersecurity Professionals'?

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 06, 2012 @12:54PM

An anonymous reader writes: In lieu of the recent cybersecurity mistakes made by some of the largest companies in the world, we should be asking ourselves how competent the professionals who are supposed to be stopping these attacks actually are. It's understandable that there will always be security flaws and loopholes for hackers to attempt to exploit, but how are professionals working to secure our most precious data?

As technologies continue to become more sophisticated and integrated into our lives, more and more of our data will be available on digital networks and databases connected to the web. This could be alarming to some of you who don't have faith in the current state of cybersecurity, but rest assured there are several schools and organizations working towards creating better professionals in this field.

So while 2010 and 2011 were big years for anti-security groups and hackers, perhaps the future looks a little brighter. On the other hand, perhaps these black hat groups will have the upper hand for years to come. What are your thought, Slashdot?

Submission + - Facebook Seeks to Automate Data Center Cooling (datacenterknowledge.com)

Submitted by miller60 on Tuesday March 06, 2012 @12:47PM

miller60 writes: Facebook is the latest company seeking to perfect technology that automates data center cooling, dynamically adjusting airflow to address "hot spots" within high-density server racks. Engineers from Facebook are seeking to patent an approach that uses a load balancer to automatically shift workloads among racks of servers. The system can also manage fans that adjust the volume of air in either the hot aisle or cold aisle. The goal is to reduce or eliminate on-board server fans to make it easier to run servers at warmer temperatures. Research has shown that if you raise the temperature past 77 degrees, the energy savings are offset by fan activity.

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