Kidipede - Slashdot User

Comment Re:2012 strikes again (Score 5, Interesting) 404

by Kidipede on Saturday June 16, 2012 @05:13PM (#40346587) Attached to: Black Death Discovered In Oregon

One big cause of plagues in the Middle Ages was therefore situations that caused huge increases in the rodent population. This happened whenever there were food shortages, because people would stop being able to spare food to feed dogs and cats. When you stop feeding your dog, pretty soon you have to kill it (and then you may as well eat it). Without dogs and cats around, the rat population would take off. That's why in famines, as soon as people get done eating dogs and cats they start to eat rats. But of course the combination of lots of rats with underfed, weakened people means that plague can kill a lot of people. Indeed, the worse food security you had in your town, the more people tended to die of plague.

Comment Re:Oh come on... (Score 1) 697

by Kidipede on Monday May 28, 2012 @03:07AM (#40133147) Attached to: The Shortage of Women In IT

There is a shortage of women in IT, and it is hurting for women. Half the people in the world are women. Some of them are pretty smart. By creating an atmosphere that seems hostile to women, IT companies are depriving themselves of a large pool of smart people who would, if they were in IT, be inventing things, fixing things, and generally moving the field along. Would you just randomly decide not to hire anyone with brown eyes, no matter how smart they were, or how easy to work with? Not hiring women has the same effect on your company. I was the only woman in my first college programming class. I was so nervous about it that my mother came and sat in on all the classes with me.

Submission + - Etsy Hacker Grants Support Female Programmers (etsy.com)

Submitted by samazon on Wednesday April 11, 2012 @03:58PM

samazon writes: Online retail shop Etsy announced a living-expenses grant program for women interested in attending the free Hacker School 3-month programming course. The program is hosted in various New York locations (NYU and Spotify have both hosted sessions) and not only is Etsy offering $5,000 grants to ten women who are accepted into the program, they're also hosting the summer course, and have offered enough space to double the class size to 40 students.

Submission + - Assessing Media Bias: Microsoft Vs. Apple Vs. Google Vs. Facebook (infoworld.com)

Submitted by

snydeq

on Wednesday April 11, 2012 @02:56PM

snydeq writes: "J. Peter Bruzzese questions whether Microsoft receives unfair criticism in the media, while Apple, Facebook, and Google seem to get away from missteps unscathed. 'I've noticed an unfair, ongoing trend: If Microsoft does something a little off, it gets bashed into the ground for it. But if Google, Facebook, or Apple (all three of which can be categorized, like Microsoft, as The Man in their own rights) missteps, it generally gets mild reprimands and even support from the media and those drinking the Kool-Aid.' Do you feel any inherent media bias in its coverage of the tech industry?"

Submission + - Interview With TSA Screener Reveals 'Fatal Flaws' (wordpress.com)

Submitted by OverTheGeicoE on Tuesday April 10, 2012 @01:53PM

OverTheGeicoE writes: Jonathan Corbett, creator of the video showing that TSA's body scanners can't see metal objects on our sides, has a new video out. This time he's interviewing an experienced TSA screener identified only as 'Jennifer,' and her allegations point to 'fatal flaws' in TSA and its procedures. Worse, TSA's screeners are well aware of these flaws. According to 'Jennifer,' body scanners frequently fail to detect objects on passengers, and this flaw is well known to the screeners on the job. People with visible items in their pockets can pass through scanners without detection, even when the items are simulated weapons or explosives. 'Jennifer' also alleges that training for screeners is severely lacking. Screeners are directed to operate body scanners, even the X-ray scanners, without any training whatsoever. The manual of standard operating procedures often can't be found at the checkpoints, let alone read. 'Jennifer' was so alarmed by what she experienced that she wrote her congressional representative to complain. She was ultimately fired as a result, effective today.

Feed Techdirt: Google Maps Exodus Continues As Wikipedia Mobile Apps Switch To OpenStreetMap (techdirt.com)

From feed by feedfeeder on Friday April 06, 2012 @10:52PM

Last year, Google announced that it would begin charging high-volume users for access to its previously free Maps API. It seemed like an odd move. Jacking up the price on something, without actually offering anything new to entice customers to stay, only works if you have a total monopoly—and free competitor OpenStreetMap was already growing rapidly at the time.

Not long after the Google announcement, we reported that property search engine Nestoria was jumping ship to OpenStreetMap. Then, in March, news began to spread that Apple was making a strong push to move away from Google Maps data on the iOS platform. FourSquare also abruptly switched. Now the exodus is continuing, with Wikipedia announcing that the latest versions of its mobile apps for iOS and Android have also ditched Google Maps for OpenStreetMap:

Previous versions of our application used Google Maps for the nearby view. This has now been replaced with OpenStreetMap - an open and free source of Map Data that has been referred to as Wikipedia for Maps. This closely aligns with our goal of making knowledge available in a free and open manner to everyone. This also means we no longer have to use proprietary Google APIs in our code, which helps it run on the millions of cheap Android handsets that are purely open source and do not have the proprietary Google applications.

One wonders how Google didn't see this coming—or if they did, what exactly their strategy is here. OpenStreetMap is gaining a lot of momentum, and in some areas even features much better data. The real lesson here is that there's never an incumbent that isn't at risk of being unseated, no matter how widespread the adoption of their product or service—especially if they make an anti-customer decision like Google when it put a price tag on Maps. The situation also points to the long-term strength of open solutions: while a crowdsourced system like OpenStreetMap never could have put together a global mapping product as quickly as Google did, over time it has become a serious competitor in terms of both quality and convenience. Indeed, none of the companies that have switched pointed to the price as their number one reason—potentially superior quality, and the desire to support open data, are generally listed as significant factors. Location-based tools are a rapidly growing field, and by failing to stay ahead of their more open competitors (while becoming less open themselves), Google may have sacrificed their role as a crucial engine driving such services.

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Submission + - Nearby star has more planets than we do (discovermagazine.com)

Submitted by

The Bad Astronomer

on Friday April 06, 2012 @01:03PM

The Bad Astronomer writes: "HD 10180 is a near-twin of the Sun about 130 light years away. It's known to have at least six planets orbiting it, but a new analysis of the data shows clear indications of three more, for a total of nine! This means HD 10180 has more planets than our solar system. And whether you think Pluto is a planet or not, all nine of these aliens worlds have masses larger than Earth's, putting them firmly in the "planet" category."

Submission + - 'Father of Loud' Electric Amplifier inventor Jim Marshall dies (ibtimes.co.uk)

Submitted by asavin on Thursday April 05, 2012 @09:31AM

asavin writes: The founder of Marshall Amplification, Jim Marshall OBE, has died at the age of 88. A tribute to the man known as the Father of Loud was posted on his official website, praising the man whose name became iconic for electric guitarists.

Submission + - Arizona attempts to make trolling illegal. (yahoo.com) 1

Submitted by

LordofEntropy

on Tuesday April 03, 2012 @11:40PM

LordofEntropy writes: "Though unlikely to pass any First Amendment test. Arizona's Gov. Jan Brewer has a bill on her desk that would in essence make "trolling" illegal. The law states "It is unlawful for any person, with intent to terrify, intimidate, threaten, harass, annoy or offend, to use ANY ELECTRONIC OR DIGITAL DEVICE and use any obscene, lewd or profane language or suggest any lewd or lascivious act, or threaten to inflict physical harm to the person or property of any person.""

Submission + - TSA shuts down airport, detains 11 after 'science project' found (webpronews.com) 3

Submitted by OverTheGeicoE on Tuesday April 03, 2012 @02:20PM

OverTheGeicoE writes: A group of students and a professor were detained by TSA at Dallas' Love Field. Several of them were led away in handcuffs. What did they do wrong? One of them left a robotic science experiment behind on an aircraft, which panicked a boarding flight crew. The experiment 'looked like a cell phone attached to a remote control car with some exposed wires protruding.' Of course, the false alarm inconvenienced more than the traveling academics. The airport was temporarily shut down and multiple gates were evacuated, causing flight delays and diversions.

Submission + - NASA's Kepler mission extended for two years (nasa.gov)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 03, 2012 @10:15AM

An anonymous reader writes: A report just released from NASA's senior review panel recommends extending the Kepler mission, initially for two years. "Kepler is not only a unique source of exoplanet discoveries, but also an organizing and rallying point for exo-planet research. It has enabled remarkable stellar science." The scaled-down budget for the extended mission was broadly expected to include funding only for continued operations and management, with no funding for science. Astronomers have already started seeking private funding to continue their Kepler-related work, through crowd-funding websites like PetriDish and FundaGeek, as well as through the non-profit Pale Blue Dot project.

Submission + - Why Are Fantasy World Accents British? (bbc.co.uk)

Submitted by kodiaktau on Friday March 30, 2012 @12:32PM

kodiaktau writes: In an interesting article from the BBC News Magazine, the author explores the reasons why most fantasy worlds use British as their primary accent. Citing specific examples from recent/upcoming shows/movies like Lord of The Rings/The Hobbit and Game of Thrones. The article states that the British accent is "sufficiently exotic", "comprehensible" and has a "splash of otherness".

It would be odd to think of a fantasy world having a New Jersey accent, or even a Mid-West accent, which tends to be the default for TV and movies in the USA, but how do UK viewers feel about having British as a default? More specifically, what about the range of UK accents, like Scottish, Welsh, Cockney

The International Dialects of English Archive shows at least 9 regional sounds, with dozens of sub regional pronunciations in England alone. In the USA there have always been many regional accents that might be used more interestingly film makers might consider looking at speech accents from other areas of the world to create more interesting combinations in speech.

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