Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
Displays

Sony Unveils Flexible OLED Thinner Than a Hair 274

Posted by CmdrTaco from the good-at-yoga dept.
Elliot Chang writes "For Sony's newest display, the company decided to throw into the mix ultra-thinness (just 80m or a bit thinner than a human hair) and the energy-saving power of OLEDs. The new prototype is so bendy that it can be wrapped around a pencil while still streaming video!"
Privacy

Emergency Dispatcher Fired For Facebook Drug Joke 631

Posted by kdawson from the thin-pretense dept.
kaptink writes "Dana Kuchler, a 21-year veteran of the West Allis Dispatch Department, was fired from her job for making jokes on her Facebook page about taking drugs. She appealed to an arbitrator, claiming the Facebook post was a joke, pointing out she had written 'ha' in it, and noting that urine and hair samples tested negative for drugs. The arbitrator said she should be entitled to go back to work after a 30-day suspension, but the City of West Allis complained that was not appropriate. Is posting bad jokes on Facebook a justifiable reason to give someone the boot?"
Government

The Economist Weighs In For Shorter Copyright Terms 386

Posted by timothy from the and-that-guy-ought-to-know dept.
lxmota writes "The Economist says that long copyright terms are hindering creativity, and that shortening them is the way to go: 'Largely thanks to the entertainment industry's lawyers and lobbyists, copyright's scope and duration have vastly increased. In America, copyright holders get 95 years' protection as a result of an extension granted in 1998, derided by critics as the "Mickey Mouse Protection Act." They are now calling for even greater protection, and there have been efforts to introduce similar terms in Europe. Such arguments should be resisted: it is time to tip the balance back.'"
Censorship

Submission + - The Oz Pirate Party: how to bypass the net filter (computerworld.com.au)

Submitted by mask.of.sanity
mask.of.sanity writes: You're reading Slashdot. So it's fair to assume you're likely a nerd. A nerd who could traverse an Internet filter like side-stepping a puddle. But when Exit International discovered it was earmarked for Australia's Internet filter blacklist, it wanted to ensure its members could access its pro-euthanasia material.

But its members share an average age of 70. Not exactly from the tech generation.

So Exit International turned to the filter-hating Pirate Party of Australia which supplied a "hacker", who then taught a crowded room of grandmas and grandpas how to use proxies and advanced VPN tunnels to access Exit Internation's material — which the Australian government thinks breaches the moral compass of society.

Computerworld has the the presentation which you can use to teach your granny to "hack".
Bug

Warhammer Online Users Repeatedly Overbilled 216

Posted by Soulskill from the greenbacks-for-greenskins dept.
TheSpoom writes "A screw-up in EA's Warhammer Online billing system has resulted in many players being charged upwards of 22 times for a one-month subscription, filling bank accounts with overdraft fees and the Warhammer forums with very angry players, who are discussing the issue quite vocally. EA has said that refunds are in progress and that '[they] anticipate that once the charges have been reversed, any fees that have been incurred should be refunded as well.' They haven't specifically promised to refund overdraft charges, only to ask customers' banks to refund them once the actual charges are refunded. They seem to be assuming banks will have no problem with this."
Transportation

Submission + - "Phone in One Hand, Ticket in the Other"

Submitted by
Hugh Pickens
Hugh Pickens writes: "The NY Times reports that federal regulators plan a pilot project to test “high visibility” crackdown efforts to curb cellphone use by drivers in two cities, Hartford and Syracuse spending $200,000 in each city, while each state would contribute $100,000 more. The Transportation Department says it wants to send the message: “Phone in One Hand. Ticket in the Other” and plan ramping up enforcement on state bans of hands-free phones by motorists, advertising the campaigns and undertaking studies to see if the efforts curb behavior and attitudes. Safety advocates say that curbing the behavior requires enforcement and education, which they say has been clearly evident in past efforts with seat belts with the "Click It or Ticket Program" (PDF) that helped increase seat belt use to 83% nationally. “It’s time for drivers to act responsibly, put their hands on the wheel and focus on the road,” says Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood, who last year called distracted driving an “epidemic.”"
IBM

IBM Patents Optimization 156

Posted by CmdrTaco from the now-that's-a-good-one dept.
jamie(really) writes "IBM appears to want to patent optimizing programs by trial and error, which in the history of programming has, of course, never been done. Certainly, all my optimizations have been the result of good planning. Well done IBM for coming up with this clever idea. What is claimed is: 'A method for developing a computer program product, the method comprising: evaluating one or more refactoring actions to determine a performance attribute; associating the performance attribute with a refactoring action used in computer code; and undoing the refactoring action of the computer code based on the performance attribute. The method of claim 1 wherein the undoing refactoring is performed when the performance attribute indicates a negative performance effect of the computer code.'"

Comment Complexity and data structures are more important (Score 1) 407

by dleonard0 (#31477792) Attached to: Good Language Choice For School Programming Test?
I think if you are worried about the efficiency of their solution you ought to explain complexity/order notation, and then apply it to a some practical data structures, like arrays or hash maps. Even more awesome if you get them to do some time measurements in easy language X so to demonstrate the effect of complexity. At crunch time, if they can judge the design trade-offs of their model&implementation, then that will eclipse any speed benefits of a compiled language. Good luck!
Technology

Using EMP To Punch Holes In Steel 165

Posted by timothy from the you'll-need-some-big-batteries dept.
angrytuna writes "The Economist is running a story about a group of researchers at the Fraunhofer Institute for Machine Tools and Forming Technology in Chemnitz, Germany, who've found a way to use an EMP device to shape and punch holes through steel. The process enjoys advantages over both lasers, which take more time to bore the hole (0.2 vs. 1.4 seconds), and by metal presses, which can leave burrs that must be removed by hand."
Science

New "Wet Computer" To Mimic Neurons In the Brain 132

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the not-so-hard-hardware dept.
A new type of "wet computer" that mimics the actions of neurons in the brain is slated to be built thanks to a €1.8M EU emerging technologies program. The goal of the project is to explore new computing environments rather than to build a computer that surpasses current performance of conventional computers. "The group's approach hinges on two critical ideas. First, individual 'cells' are surrounded by a wall made up of so-called lipids that spontaneously encapsulate the liquid innards of the cell. Recent work has shown that when two such lipid layers encounter each other as the cells come into contact, a protein can form a passage between them, allowing chemical signaling molecules to pass. Second, the cells' interiors will play host to what is known as a Belousov-Zhabotinsky or B-Z chemical reaction. Simply put, reactions of this type can be initiated by changing the concentration of the element bromine by a certain threshold amount."
Security

Somali Pirates Open Up a "Stock Exchange" 666

Posted by kdawson from the send-in-the-sba dept.
reginaldo writes to clue us that pirates in Somalia have opened up a cooperative in Haradheere, where investors can pay money or guns to help their favorite pirate crew for a share of the piracy profits. "'Four months ago, during the monsoon rains, we decided to set up this stock exchange. We started with 15 "maritime companies" and now we are hosting 72. Ten of them have so far been successful at hijacking,' Mohammed [a wealthy former pirate who took a Reuters reporter to the facility] said. ... Piracy investor Sahra Ibrahim, a 22-year-old divorcee, was lined up with others waiting for her cut of a ransom pay-out after one of the gangs freed a Spanish tuna fishing vessel. 'I am waiting for my share after I contributed a rocket-propelled grenade for the operation,' she said, adding that she got the weapon from her ex-husband in alimony. 'I am really happy and lucky. I have made $75,000 in only 38 days since I joined the "company."'"
Idle

Canadian Blood Services Promotes Pseudoscience 219

Posted by samzenpus from the type-A-negative-personality dept.
trianglecat writes "The not-for-profit agency Canadian Blood Services has a section of their website based on the Japanese cultural belief of ketsueki-gata, which claims that a person's blood group determines or predicts their personality type. Disappointing for a self-proclaimed 'science-based' organization. The Ottawa Skeptics, based in the nation's capital, appear to be taking some action."
The Internet

Verizon Changes FiOS AUP, -1, Offtopic 560

Posted by timothy from the get-ready-for-municipal-broadband dept.
RasputinAXP writes "Verizon has changed their FiOS AUP effective yesterday, and added an interesting new clause to their specific examples that we're all familiar with: 'it is a violation of the Agreement and this AUP to ... post off-topic information on message boards, chat rooms or social networking sites.' At this point, every FiOS-based Slashdot user is breaking the new AUP."
Science

Programmable Quantum Computer Created 132

Posted by Soulskill from the four-out-of-five-ain't-bad dept.
An anonymous reader writes "A team at NIST (the National Institute of Standards and Technology) used berylium ions, lasers and electrodes to develop a quantum system that performed 160 randomly chosen routines. Other quantum systems to date have only been able to perform single, prescribed tasks. Other researchers say the system could be scaled up. 'The researchers ran each program 900 times. On average, the quantum computer operated accurately 79 percent of the time, the team reported in their paper.'"

Slashdot Top Deals

"How do I love thee? My accumulator overflows."

Close