Want to read Slashdot from your mobile device? Point it at m.slashdot.org and keep reading!

 



Forgot your password?
typodupeerror

Comment Innovation is only possible if we focus on the big (Score 1) 190

People of the modern age want autonomy. A lot of today's consumers want features like doors, whether they be of car or home, recognize who's an intruder and who's not. They want smart homes that have their favorite flavour of coffee made in the morning or their preferred climate set in the home in advance to their arrival. Features like these would not be possible without "privacy concerns" such as facial recognition and data tracking taking place. Some fail to see the bigger picture. Yes, companies like Google track everything you do. But it's companies like Google who are bringing things like autonomy into fruition. Tracking of user likes and dislikes is no different than walking into your favorite coffee shop and the server has already punched in your order as you walk up to the cashier. They know what your order is ahead of time because they remember your order from the past 3-4 visits and notice a trend. The feeling you get when that server hands you your cup of coffee just the way you like it isn't, "OMG, they are tracking me". It's more likely, "WOW! That service is outstanding!" A few harmless ads shouldn't be what anyone should be concerned about but rather, how that data is kept and how it is decided who sees it. Innovation is only possible if we all focus on the end goal and stop trying to put up blockades every step of the way. If you don't want to play the game, get off the field. If you don't want to be tracked and paranoid about your privacy or there lack of, use another browser like Duck Duck Go. Stop trying to make decisions for everyone else who aren't necessarily as concerned about these minor issues, who want to see these innovations and modern advances come to light.

Comment Responsibility (Score 1) 493

To hold the principal of the school responsible for the conduct of those under his or her supervision is one thing, while they are within the confines of his or her jurisdiction, but it seems they have neglected a key factor in the equation, the parents of the misbehaving. I have listened to 10 year olds tell their parents to go f* themselves. I have seen children do ruthless things to other children, as their parent stood there and watched. The parents may have their children for a few hours in the evening and on weekends but guess who has to babysit them through out the working day. Should it be the responsibility of the principal for their developed attitudes? It should be the responsibility of the parent to get a handle on their kids. I am no pro for beating a child till they are black and blue but parenting as a whole, has become soft. Parents are more reluctant these days to punish their children appropriately.
Earth

New Fish Species Discovered 4.5 Miles Under the Ocean 96

eldavojohn writes "The University of Aberdeen's Oceanlab (a partner in the recent census of marine life) has discovered a new snailfish. That might not sound very exciting, unless you consider that its habitat is an impressive four and a half miles below the ocean's surface (video). If my calculations are correct, that's over ten and a half thousand PSI, or about seventy-three million Pascals. The videos and pictures are a couple years old, as the team has traveled around Japan, South America and New Zealand to ascertain the biodiversity of these depths. The group hopes to eventually bring specimens to the surface. It seems the deepest parts of the ocean, once thought to be devoid of life, are actually home to some organisms. As researchers build better technology for underwater exploration, tales of yore containing unimaginable monsters seem a little more realistic than before."
Patents

Dr. NakaMats Is the World's Most Prolific Inventor 194

MMBK writes to share an interesting look at Dr. "NakaMats" Nakamatsu, mastermind behind a world-record 3,000 patents. The 81-year-old scientist has inventions like the "PyonPyon" spring shoes, the karaoke machine, and others. He's also at least partly to blame for things like the digital watch, the floppy disk, and CDs. "Dr. Nakamatsu harbors other ambitions too: in 2007, he took his penchant for political campaigning to a new level, becoming a candidate in the gubernatorial election in Tokyo, and the election for the Upper House. Although he failed to get a seat, Dr. NakaMats has other tricks up his sleeve. In 2005 he was awarded the Ig Nobel prize for Nutrition, for photographing and retrospectively analyzing every meal he has consumed during a period of 34 years (and counting). By the time he dies at the age of 144 (a goal he maintains with an elaborate daily ritual that rejuvenates his body and triggers his creative process), he intends to patent 6,000 inventions."
Hardware

New Heat-Reduced Magnetic Solder Could Revolutionize Chip Design 103

A new heat-reduced soldering technique using magnets may lead to some revolutionary changes in the way chips are manufactured. Details are scant since the inventor seems to be playing it close to the vest for now in hopes of attracting chipmaker interest. "The result is a tin-silver alloy that contains a dispersion of iron particles tens of micrometers in diameter. When a magnetic field is applied to the solders, two things happen. First, the iron particles heat up, locally melting the solder. This localized heating, which works on the same principle as inductive stoves, remains completely contained, keeping the surrounding area cool. And second, the iron particles line up with the direction of the magnetic field, squeezing and pushing the liquid in that direction. This alignment is retained when the solder solidifies, and the well-ordered particles provide mechanical reinforcement that's greater than that afforded by a regular dispersion of particles."
Science

New Material Sets Stage For All-Optical Computing 53

An anonymous reader writes with this excerpt from the International Business Times: "Researchers have made a new material that can be used to guide waves of light, a breakthrough that could lead to ultra-fast computing. Georgia Tech scientists are using specially designed organic dyes that can process and redirect light without the need to be converted to electricity first. ... 'For this class of molecules, we can with a high degree of reliability predict where the molecules will have both large optical nonlinearities and low two-photon absorption,' said [Georgia Tech School of Chemistry professor Seth] Marder." According to the article, using an optical router could lead to transmission speeds as high as 2,000 gigabits per second, five times faster than current technology.
Moon

Obama Choosing NOT To Go To the Moon 920

bonch writes "Obama's budget proposal will contain no funding for the Constellation program, which was to send astronauts to the moon by 2020. Instead, NASA will be focused on terrestrial science, such as monitoring global warming. One anonymous official said: 'We certainly don't need to go back to the moon.'"
GUI

Programming With Proportional Fonts? 394

theodp writes "Betty or Veronica? Mary Ann or Ginger? Proportional or Monospaced? There's renewed interest in an old blog post by Maas-Maarten Zeeman, in which M-MZ made the case for programming with proportional fonts, citing studies that show proportional fonts can be read 14% faster than fixed-width fonts. Try it for a couple of weeks, he suggests, and you might like it too. Nowadays, Lucida Grande is M-MZ's font of choice on OS X, and he uses Lucida Sans on Windows. Helvetica, anyone?"
Software

Providing a Closed Source License Upon Request? 245

goruka writes "As a citizen of the open source community, I have written several applications and libraries and released under the BSD license. Because of my license choice, I often run into the situation where a company wants to write software for a closed platform using my code or libraries. Even though there should be no restrictions on usage, companies very often request a different license, citing as a valid reason that the creator of such platform has special terms forbidding 'open source software' in the contracts forced upon the developer. So my question is, has anyone else run into this situation, and are there examples of such licenses that I can provide? (Please keep in mind that I'm not a US resident and I don't have access or resources to afford a lawyer there.)"
The Internet

Sandy, Utah Tops US Cities For Broadband Speed 121

darthcamaro writes "If you want to live in the city with the fastest average broadband connection speed in the US, you have to move to Utah. According to Akamai's latest State of the Internet Report, Sandy, Utah is at the top of the list for US cities with the fastest average broadband speeds, with an average connection speed of 33,464 Kbps (33.5 Mbps). Overall in the US, the average broadband connection speed in the third quarter of 2009 came in at 3.9 Mbps, down by 2.4 percent on a year-over-year basis, but that's not a major cause for concern in Akamai's view. 'The overall year-over-year decline in the US average connection speed was relatively minor,' report author David Belson, director of market intelligence at Akamai Technologies said. 'The larger year-over-year sample base may have contributed to the decline, especially as mobile usage grows.'"
Education

CMU Web-Scraping Learns English, One Word At a Time 148

blee37 writes "Researchers at Carnegie Mellon have developed a web-scraping AI program that never dies. It runs continuously, extracting information from the web and using that information to learn more about the English language. The idea is for a never ending learner like this to one day be able to become conversant in the English language." It's not that the program couldn't stop running; the idea is that there's no fixed end-point. Rather, its progress in categorizing complex word relationships is the object of the research. See also CMU's "Read the Web" research project site.
Image

Own Your Own Fighter Jet 222

gimmebeer writes "The Russian Sukhoi SU-27 has a top speed of Mach 1.8 (more than 1,300 mph) and has a thrust to weight ratio greater than 1 to 1. That means it can accelerate while climbing straight up. It was designed to fight against the best the US had to offer, and now it can be yours for the price of a mediocre used business jet."

Slashdot Top Deals

** MAXIMUM TERMINALS ACTIVE. TRY AGAIN LATER **

Working...