Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
Australia

ASIC Seeks Power To Read Your Emails 114

Posted by samzenpus from the let's-take-a-look-mate dept.
nemesisrocks writes "ASIC, Australia's version of the SEC, has called for phone call and internet data to be stored by Australian ISPs, in a submission to the Parliamentary Inquiry into mandatory data retention. Not only does the authority want the powers to intercept the times, dates and details of telecommunications information, it also wants access to the contents of emails, social media chats and text messages."

Submission + - Ask Slashdot: Tech manufacturers with better labor practices?

Submitted by srs5694
srs5694 writes: In light of the recent flood of stories about abysmal labor practices at Foxconn and other Chinese factories that produce most of the tech products we consume, the question arises: Who makes motherboards, plug-in cards, cell phones, and other devices WITHOUT relying on labor practices that are just one rung above slave labor? If I want to buy a new tech gadget, from whom can I buy it without ethical qualms?

Comment OT Technical probs; mod points expire soon. Help! (Score 1) 108

by clickforfreepizza (#39019241) Attached to: "Liberated" Tunisia Still Censoring Websites

I'm sorry for posting OT (and such a stupid question, too), but my mod points will expire soon. If there's a better place to ask, please let me know (I don't think it rates as an FAQ suggestion.)

I have recently gotten mod points for the first time.

I see the dropdown box under comments. I select, say, Insightful on a +3 posting. But the score does not change. /. still tells me I have all 5 mod points left.

I tried reloading, waiting overnight and 2 browsers (Firefox and current Opera; Linux). For testing, I allowed all scripts.

How is it supposed to work? Just the dropdown box, and as soon as you select an entry, the moderation takes effect?

I'd be grateful for any helpful suggestions about what I'm doing wrong. I have read the FAQ and moderation guidelines.
Earth

Boiling Down the Meaning of Life 218

Posted by timothy from the why-are-we-here-what's-life-all-about dept.
Shipud writes "A recent article in Journal of Biomolecular structure and Dynamics proposes to define life by semantic voting [Note: open-access article]: 'The definitions of life are more than often in conflict with one another. Undeniably, however, most of them do have a point, one or another or several, and common sense suggests that, probably, one could arrive to a consensus, if only the authors, some two centuries apart from one another, could be brought together. One thing, however, can be done – short of voting in absentia – asking which terms in the definitions are the most frequent and, thus, perhaps, reflecting the most important points shared by many.' The author arrives at a six-word definition, as explained here."
Privacy

TomTom Satnavs To Set Insurance Prices 605

Posted by samzenpus from the unseen-mechanized-eye dept.
nk497 writes "TomTom has signed a deal with an insurance firm that will see its satnavs used to monitor drivers. Fair Pay Insurance, part of Motaquote, will use monitoring systems built into the TomTom PRO 3100 to watch for sharp braking and badly managed turns, rewarding 'good' drivers with lower premiums and warning less skilled motorists when they aren't driving as they should. 'We've dispensed with generalization's and said to our customers, if you believe you're a good driver, we'll believe you and we'll even give you the benefit up front,' said Nigel Lombard of Fair Pay Insurance."
Data Storage

Submission + - Hard Drive of the Future: Built With Frickin' Lasers (wired.com) 1

Submitted by
MikeatWired
MikeatWired writes: "A team of researchers from across Europe and Asia has demonstrated a way of using laser heat to store data rather than magnetic fields, potentially increasing the speed of your hard drive by 100 times or more. Tom Ostler — a physicist at the University of York, which led the research project — tells Wired that this would allow your machine to save files much faster, but also reduce the machine’s power consumption by avoid traditional magnetic storage techniques. This month, Ostler and his colleagues — who span research institutions in Spain, Switzerland, Ukraine, Russia, Japan and, the Netherlands — published a paper describing their breakthrough in the pages of Nature Communications. Typically, data is written to hard drives using magnetic fields. By shifting fields, you can write 1s and 0s, changing the polarization of the material where the data is stored. One polarization represents a 1; another represents a 0. Heat has long been the enemy of this technique, because it distorts the fields. But with their paper, Ostler and crew have shown a way using heat that changes a material’s polarization without using magnetic fields, storing thousands of gigabytes of data in a single second"
Books

The Science Fiction Effect 210

Posted by samzenpus from the I-want-my-flying-car dept.
Harperdog writes "Laura Kahn has a lovely essay about the history of science fiction, and how science fiction can help explain concepts that are otherwise difficult for many...or perhaps, don't hold their interest. Interesting that Frankenstein is arguably the first time that science fiction appears. From Frankenstein to Jurassic Park, authors have been writing about 'mad scientists' messing around with life. Science fiction can be a powerful tool to influence society's views — one scientists should embrace."

Comment Tablet, not iPad (Score 5, Interesting) 348

by clickforfreepizza (#38974591) Attached to: US Air Force Buys iPads To Replace Flight Bags

TFA specifies once that in truth, they are looking at tablets, not just iPads. Than it's back to Apple this and iPad that. If it indeed is a forgone conclusion, they should have explained why. That's some mighty fine journalism, there. Also, they mention iOS isn't certified yet; don't know if any tablet is.
Mars

Submission + - Deep Space Surgery (vice.com)

Submitted by
pigrabbitbear
pigrabbitbear writes: "Humans are pretty fragile. A bad break in your hip can mean surgery and months of rehab. That’s pretty bad, but what if you fall and break your hip on the Moon, or even Mars? You’d be hundreds of thousands or millions of miles from a fully stocked hospital and a surgeon with steady hands. There’s the option of doctor-assisted surgery from Earth — a fellow astronaut performing the surgery with remote assistance from a doctor via video link. But the lengthy communications delay make this a poor option anywhere further than the Moon.

Luckily for our Mars-bound descendants, the European Space Agency has a solution: an information-loaded assisted reality helmet that will let anyone identify and perform minor surgery to repair injuries."
The Media

Ask Slashdot: Does Europe Have Better Magazines Than the US? 562

Posted by timothy from the german-stereo-magazines-are-spitzenklasse dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Now that all the large chain book stores have disappeared from the landscape, I visited my local independent book store. In the basement I found a dazzling array of amazing magazines from the UK and Germany. Not only were the magazines impressive, they included CDs and DVDs of material. Nearly every subject was there: Knitting, Photography, Music, Linux, and Fitness. I snapped up a magazine called 'Computer Music,' which had a whole issue dedicated to making house music, including a disc of extra content. I subscribe to U.S. magazines like Wired, 2600, & Make, but their quality seems to ebb and flow from issue to issue and I don't ever recall a bonus disc. Are the UK magazines really better? If yes, why and which of them do you subscribe to? The other interesting thing about them is they weren't filled with tons of those annoying subscription cards. What is the best way to subscribe?"

Comment Re:no 5th? (Score 1) 1047

by clickforfreepizza (#38806741) Attached to: US Judge Rules Defendant Can Be Forced To Decrypt Hard Drive
I don't disagree, just asking in addition: So if one cop (thinks he) saw something before a computer is turned off and testifies with enough confidence, this testimony would not be scrutinized as strictly as if a conviction were based on it, but it would suffice for an order to hand over the encryption key. What if they then find evidence of a different crime? Would that be the fruit of the poisonous tree?

the court already had consistent and concurring testimony from 2 Customs agents, if they had committed perjury it would have been ridiculously easy to very that without much compromising the defendant's privacy

Sorry, it's not obvious to me which method you suggest.

Slashdot Top Deals

Let's organize this thing and take all the fun out of it.

Close