KC5VKX - Slashdot User

Change Google's Background Color To Save Energy? 519

Posted by CowboyNeal on Friday July 27, 2007 @03:51AM from the turned-off-until-further-notice dept.

i_like_spam writes "Recent commentary at Nature Climate Change describes an on-going debate about the energy savings associated with the background colors used by high-traffic websites such as Google and the NYTimes. A back of the envelope calculation has suggested energy savings of 750 Megawatt hours per year if Google switched their background from white to black. In response, a new version of Google called Blackle was created. However, other calculations by the Wall Street Journal suggest minimal energy savings."

Feed ATT Charging Eight Minutes For One Minute Call; Blames Regulations That Don't Ap (techdirt.com)

From feed by techdirtfeed on Tuesday May 08, 2007 @05:52PM

It really would be nice to have a day go by when we don't hear about yet another attempt by telcos to rip people off, usually either by exploiting some bad regulation or simply pretending that the fee is required by regulations. Falling into the latter camp is a story Broadband Reports points us to. It appears that in a few states, including Missouri, ATT is charging phone card users 8 minutes of time for every 1 minute used for in-state calling. The company claims this is due to FCC regulations -- though the FCC responds that "Calling cards aren't regulated. Period." Oops. That last link shows a state-by-state list of what multiple is used for in-state calls. The only places where you get a 1 to 1 conversion are Washington DC, Illinois, Indiana, Massachusetts, Rhode Island and the US Virgin Islands. Everywhere else, and you're being charged three, five or eight minutes for every minute used.

Submission + - Ceiling height affects problem-solving skills

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 08, 2007 @05:45PM

An anonymous reader writes: A recent study at the University of Minnesota suggests that ceiling height affects problem-solving skills and behavior by priming concepts that encourage certain kinds of brain processing. According to researcher Joan Meyers-Levy, "When people are in a room with a high ceiling, they activate the idea of freedom. In a low-ceilinged room, they activate more constrained, confined concepts." The concept of freedom promotes information processing that encourages greater variation in the kinds of thoughts one has, while the concept of confinement promotes more detail-oriented processing. From the article: "Managers should want noticeably higher ceilings for thinking of bold initiatives. The technicians and accountants might want low ceilings." There could be consequences in the world of health care as well, she said. "If you're having surgery done, you would want the operating room to encourage item-specific processing."

Submission + - Spy chief hints at more limits on satellite photos

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 08, 2007 @05:41PM

An anonymous reader writes: Vice Adm. Robert Murrett, director of the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, says that the increasing availability of commercial satellite photos may require the government to restrict distribution. "I could certainly foresee circumstances in which we would not want imagery to be openly disseminated of a sensitive site of any type, whether it is here or overseas," he said. This would include imagery on Web sites such as Google Earth, because the companies that supply the photos get help from the NGIA with launches.

Sun Debuts JavaFX As Alternative To AJAX 441

Posted by kdawson on Tuesday May 08, 2007 @05:24PM from the YASL dept.

r7 writes "Internetnews is reporting on Sun's introduction of JavaFX at JavaOne today. Looks like a combination Applet, Flash, Javascript, and AJAX with a friendly programming interface. Does this really spell the end of AJAX? I sincerely hope so. Nothing built on Javascript will ever achieve the security, cross-platform reliability, and programmatic friendliness that Web 2.0 needs. Proprietary solutions and vendor lock-in are also dead ends. JavaFX has the potential to satisfy this opportunity even better than did Java over a decade ago. Along with AJAX, let's hope JavaFX also puts paid to Microsoft's viral Active-X and JScript, and, more importantly, that it really is a web scripting language that developers can grok."

A Foolproof Way To End Bank Account Phishing? 436

Posted by kdawson on Monday May 07, 2007 @08:15PM from the worth-a-try dept.

tcd004 writes "F-Secure's Mikko Hypponen proposes an elegant solution to the problem of bank account phishing in the latest Foreign Policy magazine. Hypponen thinks banks should have exclusive use of a new top-level domain: .bank. 'Registering new domains under such a top-level domain could then be restricted to bona fide financial organizations. And the price for the domain wouldn't be just a few dollars: it could be something like $50,000 — making it prohibitively expensive to most copycats. Banks would love this. They would move their existing online banks under a more secure domain in no time."

Comment Re:Screen Locking... (Score 1) 532

by KC5VKX on Monday September 12, 2005 @09:12PM (#13542966) Attached to: Ars Technica's iPod nano Dissection

I've been meaning to suggest the whole screen locking thing to Apple for ages, complete with combination lock (It just seemed to fit). I don't really keep contact info or anything on my ipod, but I do often leave it sitting in room, playing music while hooked to a sound system. I always have the problem with people picking up the ipod, saying "Oh, I'm just looking at it" and before I know it, they've started playing whatever song they were supposed to be just "looking" it. If this screen lock also locks out the wheel and buttons, it's a godsend!

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