Houston Police Chief Wants Cameras in Homes 804

Posted by Zonk on Saturday February 18, 2006 @02:35AM from the would-be-funnier-if-it-wasn't-true dept.

An anonymous reader writes "In one of the most blatant and frightening statements made on privacy, the Associated Press reports that Houston's police chief wants surveillance cameras in apartment buildings and even private homes. Chief Harold Hurtt wants building permits to require cameras in shopping malls and large apartment complexes. He also wants them in private homes if the homeowner has called the police repeatedly. So, if you're in Houston, don't call the cops too much, or they might install a camera the next time they show up. And what does Hurtt have to say about privacy concerns? 'I know a lot of people are concerned about Big Brother, but my response to that is, if you are not doing anything wrong, why should you worry about it?'"

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Journal Journal: Tagging Slashdot Stories?

Journal by DeadSea on Friday February 17, 2006 @12:59PM

I just noticed a new Slashdot feature: tagging.

Ick.

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Why Don't You Sleep On It? 318

Posted by Zonk on Friday February 17, 2006 @12:16PM from the works-every-time dept.

thefirelane wrote to mention a New Scientist study that indicates your subconscious mind is a better decision maker than you are. From the article: "The research suggests the conscious mind should be trusted only with simple decisions, such as selecting a brand of oven glove. Sleeping on a big decision, such as buying a car or house, is more likely to produce a result people remain happy with than consciously weighing up the pros and cons of the problem, the researchers say. Thinking hard about a complex decision that rests on multiple factors appears to bamboozle the conscious mind so that people only consider a subset of information, which they weight inappropriately, resulting in an unsatisfactory choice. In contrast, the unconscious mind appears able to ponder over all the information and produce a decision that most people remain satisfied with."

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NASA To Push Human Spaceflight 84

Posted by Zonk on Friday February 17, 2006 @11:21AM from the boldly-going dept.

b00le wrote to mention a New Scientist article in which NASA chief Mike Griffin says that human spaceflight should be NASA's top priority. From the article: "Griffin countered that the same loss of expertise threatened NASA's human spaceflight programme, which had served to define the US as a world 'superpower'. He said NASA lost a substantial fraction of skilled engineers during a six-year gap between the end of the Apollo programme in 1975 and the first space shuttle flight in 1981. Letting the human spaceflight programme 'atrophy' after Apollo damaged the agency for three decades, he said."

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MySpace To Be Made Safer For Users 251

Posted by Zonk on Friday February 17, 2006 @11:14AM from the because-czars-are-always-the-best-approach dept.

Carl Bialik from the WSJ writes "'When News Corp. bought the social-networking Web site MySpace.com last July, the media company got two surprises, one good and one bad,' the Wall Street Journal reports. The good news: Traffic nearly doubled in the last half of last year. The bad news: MySpace is being criticized for exposing children to risqué content and sexual predators. In response, 'News Corp. plans to appoint a "safety czar" to oversee the site, launch an education campaign that may include letters to schools and public-service announcements to encourage children not to reveal their contact information."

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Journal Journal: "Mysterious Future" no so mysterious

Journal by DeadSea on Friday October 14, 2005 @12:33PM

Subsribers see stories before everybody else. These stories are marked in red to indicate that they aren't published yet. However, the Slashdot interface doesn't tell you how long until they will be published. The stories are just marked as "To be published in the Mysterious Future!"

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Journal Journal: Slashdot CSS needs div around signatures

Journal by DeadSea on Thursday September 22, 2005 @11:50AM

The ancient "--" before the signature to make it bloody obvious where the signature starts should now be replaced by a div around the signature. The old behavior could be emulated by sticking the "--" before the signature using css.

The new CSS layout rocks. It looks much cleaner, although a little flatter. Now that they Slashdot has it, it can be used to do all sorts of nifty new stuff.

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Journal Journal: Less Moderation

Journal by DeadSea on Thursday October 16, 2003 @09:47PM

It looks like there are less moderation points out there. I looked down the stories on the front page and I saw that many had zero comments that had reached my threshhold of four.

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Journal Journal: More Frequent Moderation

Journal by DeadSea on Monday June 23, 2003 @04:03PM

It seems that I have been asked to moderate slashdot discussions a lot more frequently recently. I used to be asked to moderate every two to three weeks. Now I'm being asked to moderate every two to three days.

I'm curious what is causing this. There are a few possibilities that I see:

Slashdot is giving out far more moderator points.
Fewer people are willing to moderate now.
Moderators are chosen differently.

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Journal Journal: Subscriber Plums

Journal by DeadSea on Thursday March 20, 2003 @10:16AM

I've been a slashdot subscriber for quite a while. I wanted to report on my experiences with the new Subscriber Plums.

The subscriber plum that I've used the most has been the ability to see stories up to twenty minutes before they are seen by everybody else. When this happens, the story header's backgound is red rather than the normal slashdot green and the story says that it will be posted in the Mysterious Future.

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