Tyren - Slashdot User

Google Chairman on WhatsApp: $19 Bn For 50 People? Good For Them! 303

Posted by timothy on Monday March 10, 2014 @08:07AM from the voluntary-exchange-an-ideal-worth-praising dept.

theodp writes "Speaking at an SXSW panel, Google executive chairman Eric Schmidt emphasized that Google is 'very, very worried' about the class tensions that underlie recent Bay Area protests, where high-salaried techies have driven up rents. 'Ninety-nine percent of people have seen no economic improvement over the last decade,' he said, adding that 'the data suggest that the problem gets worse' and will become the 'number one issue in democracies around the world.' Schmidt's solution to this displacement? Foster conditions — e.g., better education, looser immigration laws, and deregulation in strictly-controlled areas like energy and telecommunications — that encourage the creation of fast-growing startups ('gazelles') that generate lots of jobs. When interviewer Steven Levy noted 'gazelles' like the 50-employee WhatsApp which was acquired by Facebook for a reported $19 billion seem to lead to more inequality, Schmidt brushed aside the apparent contradiction. 'Let us celebrate capitalism,' the tax-us-if-you-can Schmidt said, opening his arms. '$19 billion for 50 people? Good for them.' Eric, meet Tom."

Taking Sense Away: Confessions of a Former TSA Screener 354

Posted by timothy on Thursday December 20, 2012 @04:33PM from the why-do-they-hate-america? dept.

OverTheGeicoE writes "TSA gets discussed on Slashdot from time to time, usually negatively. Have you ever wondered about the TSA screeners' perspective? Taking Sense Away is a blog, allegedly written by a former TSA screener, offering insider perspectives on TSA topics. For example, there's the Insider's TSA Dictionary, whose entries are frequently about the code screeners use to discuss attractive female passengers (like 'Code Red,' 'Fanny Pack,' and 'Hotel Bravo'). Another posting explains what goes on in private screening rooms, which the author claims is nothing compared to screener conduct in backscatter image operator rooms. Apparently what happens in the IO room stays in the IO room. Today's posting covers how TSA employees feel about working for 'a despised agency'. For many the answer is that they hate working for 'the laughing stock of America's security apparatus,' try to hide that they work for TSA, and want to transfer almost anywhere else ASAP."

The Doomsday Clock Is Moved Closer To Midnight 313

Posted by Soulskill on Tuesday January 10, 2012 @06:09PM from the making-up-for-gained-time dept.

Harperdog writes "The Science and Security Board of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists has moved the hands of the Doomsday Clock from 6 minutes to midnight to 5 minutes to midnight. The Board deliberated on the decision and came to the conclusion based on a variety of events: failure on climate policy, Fukushima, nuclear proliferation, etc. This article is a good explanation of the policy decision. Lawrence Krauss said, 'As we see it, the major challenge at the heart of humanity's survival in the 21st century is how to meet energy needs for economic growth in developing and industrial countries without further damaging the climate, exposing people to loss of health and community, and without risking further spread of nuclear weapons, and in fact setting the stage for global reductions.'"

Slow Start For Mobile In 2012 Presidential Campaign 65

Posted by Soulskill on Monday January 02, 2012 @06:30PM from the vote-now-for-five-electoralbucks dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Social networks played an important role in the last U.S. presidential election, but the explosive growth in smartphone usage and the introduction of tablets since 2008 could make or break the candidates for president in 2012. As the Republican primaries heat up, the major contenders show on their official websites a strong recognition of social networking and connecting in digital ways via desktop computers. But the GOP and President Obama's campaigns are not yet making many mobile-specific connections to supporters via smartphones or tablets, analysts noted. Some campaigns have special links on their websites for getting updates via SMS to a phone, but they don't appear to have candidate-specific downloadable mobile apps on Apple's App Store or the Android Market so far."

Sony Sued Over PSN 'No Suing' Provision 384

Posted by Soulskill on Tuesday December 20, 2011 @07:01PM from the had-to-see-that-coming dept.

An anonymous reader writes with this excerpt from the Examiner: "In a grand dose of irony today, Sony was sued over a term in the PlayStation Network's End User Agreement that states that users cannot sue Sony. These terms were added in September, after a long string of Sony hacks (the official count is that Sony got broken into 17 times in a space of about 2 months), which included a massive outage of the PlayStation Network itself. The suit that was filed today is a class action suit for all of those who bought a PS3 and signed up for the PSN before the September update to the EULA. The suit also claims that this is a unfair Business practice on Sony's part, and requires users to forgo their rights in order to use the device that they purchased."

The Press Reacts To Steve Jobs' Departure — in 1985 207

Posted by timothy on Thursday August 25, 2011 @11:04PM from the didn't-know-what-they-were-missing dept.

harrymcc writes "After reading a ton of stories about Steve Jobs' decision to step down as Apple's CEO, I turned the clock back and read a bunch about the first time he did so — unwillingly — in 1985. Some observers thought his departure would have little impact on Apple; others seemed to believe it was a great idea. And the Washington Post's T.R. Reid figured out that an Apple that chose to eject Jobs would be a profoundly lesser place."

Comment Re:What? (Score 1) 345

by Tyren on Sunday March 07, 2010 @12:29PM (#31390770) Attached to: Toyota's Engineering Process and the General Public

Unfortunately, this sort of testing falls short when you start adding asynchronous events into the middle of your program flow. Preemptive operating systems are becoming increasingly common in automotive. With a fully preemptive system, it is impossible to test every possible stackup of task preemption on the bench and time prohibitive to do it in simulation. Concurrency issues are mainly avoided through proper design and implementation practices of both the operating system and the application itself.

When concurrency issues appear in the field or on the bench, you have the same scenario as Toyota... The knowledge of "It did this thing this time" and unless your testing generates the exact sequence of events to microsecond precision, you may never see the problem again...

Comment Re:Nice suggestion to... (Score 1) 534

by Tyren on Thursday February 18, 2010 @12:27AM (#31180302) Attached to: The 25 Most Dangerous Programming Errors

The biggest issue I see is that there is not a single party to blame for many bugs. Who is most to blame? The developer who made the mistake in the first place? The person who wrote the test plan that didn't cover the scenario in which the bug appears? The person who signed off functional testing? The person who signed off on the code review?

Quality processes are put in place to protect the company from the inevitable mistakes of a single developer. If the company has a proper process in place, it becomes extremely difficult to point the blame at any single person. And if the company can't be bothered to put a proper quality process in place, management is just as much to blame for errors in the end product as the developers themselves.

Comment Re:Are we getting the whole story here? (Score 1) 687

by Tyren on Saturday January 16, 2010 @08:30PM (#30794804) Attached to: Police Called Over 11-Year-Old's Science Project

Exactly.

My first assumption is that the 'policy' he violated is a rule against weapon lookalikes (aka, a fake bomb). Schools are crazy about 'zero tolerance' that common sense doesn't apply. I bet they think that because someone was able to mistake it for a bomb, it automatically becomes a lookalike, regardless of the actual design intent.

Unfortunately, it seems to be difficult to find out what the schools weapons policy actually is. Their stated policies don't list anything about their weapons policy, and their "Student Handbook" apparently was uploaded by someone who doesn't understand how to copy an attachment from an email....

UK Culture Secretary Wants Website Ratings, Censorship 377

Posted by Soulskill on Saturday December 27, 2008 @10:37AM from the since-the-aussies-seem-so-excited-about-it dept.

kaufmanmoore writes "UK culture secretary Andy Burnham calls for a website rating system similar to the one used for movies in an interview with the Daily Telegraph. He also calls for censorship of the internet, saying, 'There is content that should just not be available to be viewed.' Other proposals he mentions in his wide-ranging calls for internet regulation are 'family-friendly' services from ISPs, and requiring takedown notices to be enforced within a specific time for sites that host content. Mr. Burnham wants to extend his proposals across the pond and seeks meetings with the Obama administration."

Startup Seeks To Preempt Patent Trolls 117

Posted by CmdrTaco on Monday November 24, 2008 @05:46PM from the wonder-how-long-that'll-last dept.

anaesthetica writes "The WSJ reports that a San Francisco startup is buying up patents with the promise never to assert them in order to help large corporations hedge against patent trolling firms. The company, RPX Corp, receives an annual fee in exchange for licensing the patents it has purchased. Cisco and IBM have already signed up for this service of 'defense patent aggregation.'"

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."

Monty Python Banks On the Long Tail Via YouTube 222

Posted by timothy on Wednesday November 19, 2008 @04:31PM from the finally-a-perfect-use-for-the-foot-icon dept.

JTRipper writes "Monty Python seems to have done the right thing. Instead of issuing take down notices of their videos on YouTube, they are doing it better themselves with their own YouTube channel. They are putting all their clips (including snips from their movies) up in a decent resolution, with the only caveat being a link to buying the movies and TV episodes from Amazon."

Politician Forces German Wikipedia Off the Net 569

Posted by kdawson on Saturday November 15, 2008 @06:51PM from the inconvenient-truth dept.

Stephan Schulz writes "A German Member of parliament for a left-wing party, Lutz Heilmann, has obtained a preliminary injunction against the local chapter of the Wikimedia foundation, Wikimedia Deutschland e.V., forbidding the forwarding of the popular http://wikipedia.de to the proper http://de.wikipedia.org. Apparently Heilmann is not happy with the fact that his Wikipedia article (English version) contains information on his work for the former GDR Stasi, the much-hated internal secret service. Wikimedia Germany displays a page explaining the situation, and has announced that it will file an objection to get the injunction lifted. The German Wikipedia has more than 800,000 pages, and is hosted, like all Wikimedia projects, by the Florida-based Wikimedia Foundation, and hence beyond the effective reach of at least German politicians and judges."

Duke Demands Proof of Infringement From RIAA 159

Posted by Soulskill on Friday November 14, 2008 @11:01PM from the bluff-called dept.

NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "According to a report at p2pnet, Duke University has told the RIAA that it will no longer forward the RIAA's 'early settlement' letters to its students unless the RIAA submits 'evidence that someone actually downloaded from that student,' and said that 'if the RIAA can't prove that actual illegal behavior occurred, then we're not going to comply.' While it is good news that a university is requiring the RIAA to put up or shut up, the forwarding — or not forwarding — of letters is pretty insignificant. What I want to know is this: 'When the RIAA comes knocking with its Star Chamber, ex parte, 'John Doe' litigation to get the students' identities, is the University going to go to bat for the students and fight the litigation on the ground that it's based on zero evidence, and on the ground that the students weren't given prior notice and an opportunity to be heard?' Over 1,000 infringement notices were sent to Duke students in the last year."

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