IMoriarty - Slashdot User

Comment Re:College is a choice... (Score 1) 804

by IMoriarty on Thursday December 30, 2010 @12:54PM (#34711996) Attached to: Should Colleges Ban Classroom Laptop Use?

True - if college is in any way designed to teach you how to do adult level work, it should also teach you how to deal with adult level distraction. It's not like those laptops are going away when you hit the workforce. ~I

The French Government Can Now Censor the Internet 419

Posted by Soulskill on Thursday December 16, 2010 @03:00PM from the think-of-le-children dept.

Psychophrenes writes "A new episode in French internet legislation — French ministers have passed a bill (original in French) allowing the government to add any website to a black list, which access providers will have to enforce. This black list will be defined by the government only, without requiring the intervention of the legal system. Although originally intended against pedo-pornographic websites, this bill is already outdated, as was Hadopi in its time, and instead paves the way for a global censorship of the 'French internet.'"

Comment Re:Uh (Score 1) 90

by IMoriarty on Wednesday March 10, 2010 @11:39AM (#31426720) Attached to: Puzzle In xkcd Book Finally Cracked

I wonder if the Lunar Eclipse will be visible from that point at that time. ~I

Typical Windows User Patches Every 5 Days 388

Posted by timothy on Thursday March 04, 2010 @04:47PM from the about-how-often-I-shave dept.

CWmike writes "The typical home user running Windows faces the 'unreasonable' task of patching software an average of every five days, security research company Secunia said on Thursday. 'It's completely unreasonable to expect users to master so many different patch mechanisms and spend so much time patching,' said Thomas Kristensen, the company's CSO. The result: Few consumers devote the time and attention necessary to stay atop the patching job, which leaves them open to attack. Secunia says that of the users who ran the company's Personal Software Inspector in the last week of January, half had 66 or more programs from 22 or more different vendors on their machines. ... Secunia has published a white paper (PDF) that details its findings."

Jaron Lanier Rants Against the World of Web 2.0 231

Posted by timothy on Monday January 04, 2010 @08:48AM from the cue-up-disinterested-erudite-analysis dept.

hao3 writes "In his new book, You Are Not A Gadget, former Wired writer Jaron Lanier bemoans what the internet has become. 'It's early in the twenty-first century, and that means that these words will mostly be read by nonpersons,' it begins. The words will be 'minced into anatomized search engine keywords,' then 'copied millions of times by some algorithm somewhere designed to send an advertisement,' and then, in a final insult, 'scanned, rehashed, and misrepresented by crowds of quick and sloppy readers.' Lanier's conclusion: 'Real human eyes will read these words in only a tiny minority of the cases.' He goes on to criticise Google, Wikipedia, Facebook, Twitter, open-source software and what he calls the 'hive mind.'"

Student Banned From Minnesota Campus Over Facebook Comments 806

Posted by timothy on Wednesday December 16, 2009 @03:14PM from the but-we're-gonna-kill-ya-slow dept.

Be careful just how you vent online is the lesson from this story pointed out by reader kungfugleek, from which he excerpts: "A University of Minnesota student has been banned from the Twin Cities campus after three of her instructors felt threatened by some of her Facebook postings. Amanda Tatro was patted down and questioned by campus police when she got to class Monday. The 29-year-old mortuary science student had posted comments on her Facebook page after breaking up with her boyfriend. She told her Facebook friends she wanted to stab a 'certain someone in the throat' with an embalming instrument. Tatro said she was 'looking forward to Monday's embalming therapy.' When the instructors learned of the postings, they contacted police." The Star-Tribune's account offers more detail.

Israeli Border Police Shoot US Student's Laptop 929

Posted by kdawson on Wednesday December 16, 2009 @06:37AM from the no-less-no-more dept.

zerothink writes "American student Lily Sussman, 21, upon entry into Israel from Taba (Egypt, Sinai) caught Israeli border police in grumpy mood — after two hours of questions and searching through her belongings they decided to put three bullets through her laptop. Explanation? 'I'm sorry but we had to blow up your laptop.' Haaretz also covered the story." All three bullets missed the hard disk.

Comment Kinda Sad... (Score 1) 932

by IMoriarty on Thursday November 12, 2009 @03:51PM (#30077690) Attached to: Easing the Job of Family Tech Support?

that a request for materials to educate is met with the usual array of "Swtich to x OS", "Lock down the system", and "Deal with it". I'm sure somewhere out there is the answer to this man's question of attempting to improve the basic computer literacy of his family, but it's apparently not on Slashdot.

Slashdot Top Deals