Leti - Slashdot User

Comment Re:Love my kindle and my Nexus 7 (Score 1) 465

by Leti on Monday January 07, 2013 @04:25PM (#42509153) Attached to: Death of Printed Books May Have Been Exaggerated

so... if you're using bookmarks that probably means they aren't actually all open at the same time? If they are how does a bookmark help to keep them open? and how do you do it without something heavy to keep the book open? and if you are using bookmarks and don't have them all open why not use a tablet/ e-reader?

On my phone I use an app called aldiko which keeps a handy list of all the recent books I've read and also automatically goes to the last page I had open in that book. If I don't want to go to that page then I hit menu and then the goto option which lets me go to any bookmark or notes or highlights in the book. How is that not better than having a large space/table with multiple books on it and having to keep track of multiple bookmarks manually?

Maybe you just don't have the imagination to do something in a new and better way?

Comment Re:Ban of outside laptops (Score 1) 510

by Leti on Monday January 07, 2013 @03:58PM (#42508731) Attached to: Ask Slashdot: Should Employers Ban Smartphones?

I don't really think that the ability to take pictures is a useful reason for banning smart phones, if I worked for you and really wanted your information and I had physical access to the documents do you really think a ban is going to stop me? Even supposing that your building is super secure and has guards with metal detectors and authority to search people (which I'm pretty sure most places don't) and could catch everyone who attempted to bring a smart phone into the building i doubt they could catch everyone with cameras these days. a 5 second search on a website that's not even specialised in spy equipment turns up a key fob camera and a spy watch camera both of which can probably get through a standard security check without problems. http://www.ebuyer.com/search?q=spy+camera So you've just wasted everyone's time for no appreciable gain in security, yay!

Comment Re:Love my kindle and my Nexus 7 (Score 1) 465

by Leti on Sunday January 06, 2013 @10:38AM (#42495227) Attached to: Death of Printed Books May Have Been Exaggerated

or you use calibre on the pc and it opens up a window for each ebook? then you compare multiple side by side. much much easier than doing it with paper books, specially since to do something similar with a real book you probably have to either find something heavy to put on the book to keep the page open or break the spine. not that i can actually see why you would do this more than once or twice in your life.

Homebrew Cray-1 140

Posted by CmdrTaco on Tuesday August 31, 2010 @01:00PM from the when-i-was-a-child dept.

egil writes "Chris Fenton built his own fully functional 1/10 scale Cray-1 supercomputer. True to the original, it includes the couch-seat, but is also binary compatible with the original. Instead of the power-hungry ECL technology, however, the scale model is built around a Xilinx Spartan-3E 1600 development board. All software is available if you want to build one for your own living room. The largest obstacle in the project is to find original software."

Artificial Life Forms Evolve Basic Memory, Strategy 206

Posted by kdawson on Sunday August 08, 2010 @05:14AM from the but-not-as-we-know-it dept.

Calopteryx notes a New Scientist piece on how digital organisms in a computer world called Avida replicate, mutate, and have evolved a rudimentary form of memory. Another example of evolution in a simulation lab is provided by reader Csiko: "An evolutionary algorithm was used to derive a control strategy for simulated robot soccer players. The results are interesting — after a few hundred generations, the robots learn to defend, pass, and score — amazing considering that there was no trainer in the system; the self-organizing differentiated behavior of the players emerged solely out of the evolutionary process."

EA Introduces "Online Pass" To Get In On Used Games Market 223

Posted by Soulskill on Tuesday May 11, 2010 @06:29AM from the gee-thanks dept.

EA Sports has unveiled a new feature that they hope will help them get a piece of the lucrative used games market: the Online Pass. Each of their new titles will come with a one-time code that allows access to "premium" content and features. Players who buy the games used can get the same content, but will need to pay $10 for the privilege. "According to EA, the content can include anything from title updates and downloads to features like online leagues — and even online gameplay and multiplayer modes. ... EA will offer 10-day trials of Pass content so that users can see what they would be getting. So far, EA seems to be limiting the premium add-on experiment to its sports portfolio. ... The company has apparently gained the support of retailer GameStop, which has been watching with a close eye efforts on the part of publishers to discourage its thriving used games business. According to the retailer, encouraging premium content add-ons still benefits GameStop, since it sells PlayStation Network and Microsoft Points cards. It praised EA's Online Pass as 'forward-thinking.'"

What If They Turned Off the Internet? 511

Posted by timothy on Saturday October 24, 2009 @09:47PM from the very-funny-now-where-is-slashdot dept.

theodp writes "It's the not-too-distant future. They've turned off the Internet. After the riots have settled down and the withdrawal symptoms have faded, how would you cope? Cracked.com asked readers to Photoshop what life would be like in an Internet-addicted society learning to cope without it. Better hope it never happens, or be prepared for dry-erase message boards, carrier pigeon-powered Twitter, block-long lines to get into adult video shops, door-to-door Rickrolling, Lolcats on Broadway, and $199.99 CDs."

The Road to Big Brother 212

Posted by samzenpus on Monday May 11, 2009 @03:11PM from the read-all-about-it dept.

brothke writes "In The Road to Big Brother: One Man's Struggle Against the Surveillance Society, Ross Clark journals his struggles to avoid the myriad CCTV cameras in his native England. That's difficult given the millions of cameras in public locations there. Before going forward, the use of the term 'Big Brother' in both the title and throughout the book is erroneous. Big Brother has its roots in George Orwell's novel 1984 and refers to an omnipresent, seemingly benevolent figure representing the oppressive control over individual lives exerted by an authoritarian government. The term has been misappropriated to describe everything from legitimate crime-fighting, to surveillance cameras, to corporate e-mail and network usage monitoring. Localities that deploy CCTV cameras in public thoroughfares in the hope of combating crime are in no way indicative of the oppressive control of Orwell's Big Brother. Should we be concerned that such a scenario play itself out in Ross Clark's UK or in the US? Likely no, as US government agencies are widely decentralized and isolated. Just getting the networks within a single federal agency unified is a daunting task; getting all of the agencies to have a single unified data sharing mechanism is a pipe-dream. Look at it this way: the US Department of Defense has more networks than some countries have computers." Read below for the rest of Ben's review.

FTC Kills Scareware Scam That Duped Over 1M Users 329

Posted by samzenpus on Wednesday December 10, 2008 @08:45PM from the don't-let-it-happen-to-you dept.

coondoggie writes "The Federal Trade Commission today got a court to at least temporarily halt a massive 'scareware' scheme, which falsely claimed that scans had detected viruses, spyware, and pornography on consumers' computers. According to the FTC, the scheme has tricked more than one million consumers into buying computer security products such as WinFixer, WinAntivirus, DriveCleaner, ErrorSafe, and XP Antivirus. The court also froze the assets of Innovative Marketing, Inc. and ByteHosting Internet Services, LLC to preserve the possibility of providing consumers with monetary redress, the FTC stated."

BT Silences Customers Over Phorm 196

Posted by Soulskill on Saturday November 22, 2008 @01:06AM from the lalala-i-can't-hear-you dept.

An anonymous reader writes "The Register reports that BT, the UK's dominant telecom and internet service provider, has 'banned all future discussion of Phorm and its "WebWise" targeted advertising product on its customer forums, and deleted all past threads about the controversy dating back to February.' Phorm is a controversial opt-out system for delivering targeted advertising that intercepts traffic passing through an ISP in order to profile subscribers via an assigned unique ID based on their online activities. Subscribers can opt-out at the Webwise website but are opted-in again if the Phorm cookie is cleared. Firefox users can install Melvin Sage's Firephorm add-on to manage their interaction with Phorm and Webwise."

Linux-Based E-Voting In Brazil 302

Posted by kdawson on Tuesday October 07, 2008 @05:36AM from the watch-and-learn-grasshopper dept.

John Sokol writes "I just heard from a good friend and Linux kernel hacker in Brazil that they have just finished their municipal election with 128 million people using Linux to vote. They voted nationwide for something like 5,000 city mayors. Voting is mandatory in Brazil. The embedded computer they are using once ran VirtuOS (a variant of MS-DOS); it now has its own locally developed, Linux-based distro. These are much nicer, smaller, and cheaper than the systems being deployed here in the US. Here is a Java-required site with a simulated Brazilian voting system. It's very cool; they even show you a picture of the candidate you voted for."

Schneier's Keynote At Linux.conf.au 138

Posted by kdawson on Tuesday January 29, 2008 @10:49PM from the necessary-security-theater dept.

Stony Stevenson writes "Computer security expert Bruce Schneier took a swipe at a number of sacred cows of security including RFID tags, national ID cards, and public CCTV security cameras in his keynote address to Linux.conf.au (currently being held in Melbourne, Australia). These technologies were all examples of security products tailored to provide the perception of security rather than tackling actual security risks, Schneier said. The discussion of public security — which has always been clouded by emotional decision making — has been railroaded by groups with vested interests such as security vendors and political groups, he claimed. 'For most of my career I would insult "security theater" and "snake oil" for being dumb. In fact, they're not dumb. As security designers we need to address both the feeling and the reality of security. We can't ignore one. It's not enough to make someone secure, that person needs to also realize they've been made secure. If no-one realizes it, no-one's going to buy it,' Schneier said."

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