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User Journal

Journal Journal: Packers are Still Winning.

Journal by mistert2

I tell you what, I had a great time taking a limo to the Packer Game. I used Phase 1 Limo in West Bend, WI. They dropped me off at the door and picked me up in the same place. There web site is http://www.phase1westbendlimo.com/
The Internet

Wikipedia Breeds Unwitting Trust (Says IT Professor) 441

Posted by CmdrTaco from the unlike-slashdot-which-is-100%-reliable dept.
kingston writes ""As I say to my students 'if you had to have brain surgery would you prefer someone who has been through medical school, trained and researched in the field, or the student next to you who has read Wikipedia'?" So says Deakin University associate professor of information systems, Sharman Lichtenstein, who believes Wikipedia, where anyone can edit a page entry, is fostering a climate of blind trust among people seeking information. Professor Lichtenstein says the reliance by students on Wikipedia for finding information, and acceptance of the practice by teachers and academics, was "crowding out" valuable knowledge and creating a generation unable to source "credible expert" views even if desired. "People are unwittingly trusting the information they find on Wikipedia, yet experience has shown it can be wrong, incomplete, biased, or misleading," she said. "Parents and teachers think it is [okay], but it is a light-weight model of knowledge and people don't know about the underlying model of how it operates.""
Transportation

UPS Using Software To Eliminate Left Turns 511

Posted by CmdrTaco from the you-can't-get-there-from-here dept.
cybermage writes "The NY Times has a story about UPS using software to dramatically reduce the number of left turns their drivers take. With a fleet of vehicles their size, the time and money saved by pre-planning routes that try to eliminate left turns means big savings." Some CS major probably figured this out instead of traveling salesman.
Security

EBay Hacker's Conviction Upheld 174

Posted by Zonk from the watch-your-back-out-there dept.
An anonymous reader writes "The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled in the case of Jerome Heckenkamp, the former University of Wisconsin student convicted of federal computer crime charges in 2004 after hacking into Qualcomm, Cygnus Solutions and other companies, and defacing eBay. Heckenkamp was caught after a system administrator at the university hacked into his Linux box to gather evidence that Heckenkamp had been attacking the college mail server. The court ruled today that such counter-hacks are allowable under the 'special needs' exception to the Fourth Amendment, and upheld the warrantless search."
Music

Congress to Fight Piracy with Education Funds 163

Posted by Zonk from the wait-we-need-those-for-books dept.
Nomihn0 writes "The RIAA has announced that the House Education and Labor committee is considering an amendment, HR1689, to the Higher Education Act of 1965. The proposal would allocate federal education funds to anti-piracy measures on college campuses. Most concerning is the bill's wording. It's claimed that the proposal would 'save telecommunications bandwidth costs.' In other words, the government will fund private packet filtering and preferential bandwidth allocation. 'The Higher Education Act (HEA) generally allows schools to spend the money they receive only on certain prescribed areas such as financial aid grants and Pell loans. The new bill would allow that money to be used for more things, but does not contain a request for additional funding. Whether schools would be interested in using a limited pool of federal money to police student file-swapping remains to be seen.'"
Star Wars Prequels

USPS Announces Star Wars Stamp Set 153

Posted by CowboyNeal from the using-the-force dept.
morpheus83 writes "After R2D2 letter boxes, the USPS continues the saga, as it unveiled 15 new stamps featuring Star Wars characters at Grauman's Chinese theater in Hollywood where the original Star Wars movie opened 30 years ago. The 41 cent stamps will be released on May 25, and all the 15 stamps will be issued on a single sheet resembling a movie poster."
Communications

Boosting Cell Phone Signals in Strange Places? 40

Posted by Cliff from the places-like-my-basement dept.
hedgemage asks: "I work at a retirement home and we have trouble with the cell phones that our nursing and maintenance staff use. The problem is that our nursing home area is built into a lower level that was originally constructed as a fallout shelter in 1960. There's a lot of solid concrete in the walls and ceiling. We have paid out tens of thousands to try and get an on-site mobile to work using NEC Dterm PSII phones, but they have proven absolutely unreliable (not just in the bomb shelter but throughout the campus) and the only solution our telecom provider has is to install several thousand dollars more in transceivers. If we could use ordinary cell phones, it would be ideal for everyone. Is there an off-the-shelf solution that could boost regular cellular signals in our bomb shelter?"
Censorship

ABC/Disney Shuts Down Blog Exercising Fair Use 525

Posted by Zonk from the mouse-trap dept.
An anonymous reader writes "A blogger named Spocko had his blog shut down by ABC/Disney lawyers because he had posted clips from an ABC Radio-affiliated program and commented on their content, as well as informed show advertisers of what exactly they were paying for. Spocko merely pointed out the content that station KSFO was broadcasting, and as a result Visa pulled their advertising from the station. More companies were reportedly considering pulling their ads. A YouTube video summary is available. From the Daily Kos article: 'How'd he do it? He did it the way it's always done - by working within the law, identifying points of weakness, exploiting them and being absolutely tenacious ... It appears to me as if Disney is attempting to bully a little guy in an unethical manner. Any media lawyer worth the air she breathes knows that Spocko's use was well protected.'"

Own the Last Mile 172

Posted by Zonk from the get-the-last-word dept.
jonabbey writes "Robert X. Cringely's most recent column advocates a radical solution to the network neutrality thicket: create our own last mile infrastructure, rather than paying the telcos and cable companies to use our bandwidth as a lever. From the article: "A model in which the infrastructure is paid for as infrastructure -- privately, locally, nationally, and internationally can create a true marketplace in which the incentives are aligned. Instead of having the strange phenomenon of carriers spending billions and then arguing that they deserve to be paid, we'd have them bidding on contracts to install and/or maintain connectivity to a marketplace that is buying capacity and making it available so value can be created without having to be captured within the network and thus taken out of the economy."

Razer's New Mouse Optimized for MMO and RTS 218

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the does-it-farm-for-me dept.
An anonymous reader writes "XYZComputing has a review of Razer's new Krait mouse which is specifically designed for massively multiplayer online gaming as opposed to the usual design focus of first-person shooters. From the article: 'The criteria for an appropriate mouse for each style of gaming are different, or at least Razer would want you to think that this is the case. With the market starting to accept products like gaming mice and gaming keyboards, it was only a matter of time until someone introduced a mouse for a certain type of game. While it is easy to be skeptical of such an idea, Razer has a great reputation and may actually be onto something here.'"
OS X

Journal Journal: Grammarian X

Journal by mistert2
This is the coolest program. It is MS word on steroids. This will check my writing even check my Slashdot posting while I type. How cool is that! This program is forty dollars for a download.

Linguisoft

Now I want to know about Endnote

Slashdot Top Deals

grep me no patterns and I'll tell you no lines.

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