Follow Slashdot stories on Twitter

 



Forgot your password?
typodupeerror
×
Image

Corporations Hiring Hooky Hunters 610

No longer satisfied with your crinkled doctor's note, a growing number of corporations are hiring "Hooky Detectives." Private investigator Rick Raymond says he's staked out bowling alleys, pro football games, weddings and even funerals looking for people using sick days. From the article: "Such techniques have become permissible at a time when workers are more likely to play hooky. Kronos, a workforce productivity firm in Chelmsford, Mass., recently found that 57 percent of salaried employees take sick days when they're not sick — almost a 20 percent increase from statistics gathered between 2006 and 2008."

Comment Fight government hegemony (Score 1) 1155

get everyone to carry around virgin laptops, thus the feds will be consumed pursuing dead ends. The whole, we have rights to your data just flies so in the face of the 1st amendment, it is worth the citizens to carry unbreakable encryption just cause. Nothing illegal, just a nuisance. I am a libertarian. The counter veiling policy is everyone is some kind of terrorist. Just absurd. We need to fight this total power grab under the guise of terror preparation. The number of people meaning harm is tiny. The number of citizens is great and all under the gun. That is bas ackwards. Let's restore individual liberty in this environment of wacko violence.

Comment pitifully easy to create a false persona online (Score 1) 554

so create one and use it exclusively. Maintain your real name persona as dull and lifeless. Corporate goodness ensues. Honestly, I fail to see the validity in this. Just too easy to be a different age, profession or even gender online. This test will trap the morons, but not much else. No excuse for due diligence in the hiring process. There just is no substitute for doing the hard research on an applicant.

Comment Re:Boondoggle (Score 1) 1139

I sat in hour long traffic getting into DC to take the key bridge because the American Legion bridge on the outer loop was jammed with an accident seven miles further down that closed 2 left lanes of 4. I could sit and wait for an hour and hope to clear the accident or detour. I detoured, but still took an hour because traveling by car down River Road to Wisconsin Av and onto the Key Bridge pretty much sucks with pedestrians, other cars parallel parking and delivery trucks. Smooth it was not. Did it save me time? Debatable. Did it make me wish I took the Marc train today? Yep. The big issue I have is trains run into a city center. Not the other way. Because I live on the opposite side of the city from my job, the train becomes a burden over driving. Generally, 2 hours each way riding (bus to train to metro to bus, bus to metro to train to bus) Sorry, mass trans that I favor loses. The DC area really needs a purple line that runs around the beltway and serves the major commercial sectors. Not everyone works inside DC and not everyone lives outside the city center. Not a destination for most. Serve the people and mass transit makes uber sense. Not serve them and it fails. Simple really.
Image

Indian Police Using Facebook to Catch Scofflaw Drivers 130

New Delhi police have a new weapon in the battle against bad drivers, Facebook. Two months ago the police created a Facebook page that allowed people to inform on others breaking traffic laws, and upload pictures of the violations. The page has more than 17,000 fans, and 3,000 pictures currently. From the article: "The online rap sheet was impressive. There are photos of people on motorcycles without helmets, cars stopped in crosswalks, drivers on cellphones, drivers in the middle of illegal turns and improperly parked vehicles. Using the pictures, the Delhi Traffic Police have issued 665 tickets, using the license plate numbers shown in the photos to track vehicle owners, said the city’s joint commissioner of traffic, Satyendra Garg."

Comment Governments are the problem, not the solution (Score 5, Insightful) 281

they have no right whatsoever to read email traffic. Terrorists have officially won as government is leveraging attacks to increase their power over all. Wake up people, government is the problem. Terrorists, even when very successful, effect a tiny percentage of a population. Yet, the government grows more powerful over all in order to supposedly protect the population. This is about control, not protection. Such a shame that so may are willing to throw away their rights in the face of terror. The terrorists have won. Now they are fighting over who will control the levers of power. The citizens have already lost all liberty.

Comment Oh Katrina why won't you set us free? (Score 1) 260

set us free now? This calls into question the entire creative commons. What is fair artist use and what is corporate greed? Where is the line? The RIAA? They are the zombies, already fully subsumed. What is the next step? What comes after the nightmare of the RIAA? What's next because these guys are seriously what was. Where does the next fair use doctrine arise and who does it protect, the artists? the record companies? The consumer? How about all three?
Piracy

The Pirate Bay's Founding Organization Shuts Down 107

kcurtis sent the news that Piratbryån, the lobbying organization out of which The Pirate Bay sprang, has disbanded. (The torrent tracker is alive and well.) "Piratbyrån had many purposes, but could be described as a pro-piracy lobbying organization. It was founded in response to Antipiratbyrån, the local anti-piracy outfit in Sweden. The goal was to start a debate on copyright issues and how they affect society. Until then, most press in Sweden would simply take everything Antipiratbyrån said for granted. Internationally, Piratbyrån is mostly known for launching The Pirate Bay in the fall of 2003, just a few months after the group itself was founded. ... The final decision to disband the group came after Ibi Kopimi Botani, a prominent member and co-founder of the group, passed away. Without one of its greatest minds, the group would never be the same again, Piratbyrån's members felt."
Image

Study Shows Standing Up To Bullies Is Good For You 458

It will come as no surprise to anyone who's ever talked to my grandpa, but a recent study has shown that standing up to a bully is good for you. Although being bullied can be stressful and lead to depression, children who returned hostility were found more likely to develop healthy social and emotional skills. From the article: "In a study of American children aged 11 and 12, researchers from the University of California, Los Angeles, compared those who stood up to aggressors with those who did not. Children who returned hostility with hostility appeared to be the most mature, the researchers found. Boys who stood up to bullies and schoolyard enemies were judged more socially competent by their teachers. Girls who did the same were more popular and more admired by teachers and peers, the researchers found."
Nintendo

Brain Training Games Don't Train Your Brain 151

Stoobalou writes with this excerpt from Thinq.co.uk: "A new study has shown that brain training games do little to exercise the grey matter. Millions of people who have been prodding away at their Nintendo DS portable consoles, smug in the knowledge that they are giving their brains a proper work-out, might have to rethink how they are going to stop the contents of their skulls turning into mush."
Firefox

Mozilla Plans Fix For Critical Firefox Vulnerability In Next Release 140

Trailrunner7 writes "A month after an advisory was published detailing a new vulnerability in Firefox, Mozilla said it has received exploit code for the flaw and is planning to patch the weakness on March 30 in the next release of Firefox. Mozilla officials said Thursday that the vulnerability, which was disclosed February 18 by Secunia, is a critical flaw that could result in remote code execution on a vulnerable machine. The vulnerability is in version 3.6 of Firefox."

Comment GM improved the Saab 93 tremendously (Score 1) 438

they made it more reliable. I talked to a Saab mechanic and he told me to be very happy I had a 2001 93. GM improved many things in the Saab to make it more reliable. I have no reason to doubt him. He gave me specifics that have long since slipped my mind, but GM failed Saab in marketing, not platform.
Mars

Mars Polar Cap Mystery Solved 77

Matt_dk writes "Scientists are now able to explain why Mars' residual southern ice cap is misplaced, thanks to data from ESA's Mars Express spacecraft (the same probe running the 'Mars Webcam'). It turns out the martian weather system is to blame. And so is the largest impact crater on Mars — even though it is nowhere near the south pole. Like Earth, Mars has frozen polar caps, but unlike Earth, these caps are made of carbon dioxide ice as well as water ice. During the southern hemisphere's summer, much of the ice cap sublimates, a process in which the ice turns straight back into gas, leaving behind what is known as the residual polar cap. The mystery was that while the winter cap is symmetrical about the south pole, the residual cap was offset, and scientists couldn't figure out why."

Slashdot Top Deals

Understanding is always the understanding of a smaller problem in relation to a bigger problem. -- P.D. Ouspensky

Working...