Follow Slashdot blog updates by subscribing to our blog RSS feed

 



Forgot your password?
typodupeerror

Feed Google News Sci Tech: West Virginia May Ban Google Glass-ing While Driving - All Things Digital (google.com)


Daily Mail

West Virginia May Ban Google Glass-ing While Driving
All Things Digital
West Virginia legislators proposed a bill on Friday aimed at Google Glass that would ban using a wearable computer with a head-mounted display while driving a car. What's ironic is Google is building the device to try to distract people less than smartphones ...
West Virginia Introduces Legislation To Ban Google-Glassing-And-DrivingDrJays.com Live
Don't drive on glass! Lawmakers want to ban wearing Google Glass while on the ... Daily Mail

all 7 news articles

Games

Submission + - Video Game Industry Starting to Feel Heat on Gun Massacres

An anonymous reader writes: In the 2003 film 'Daredevil', Ben Affleck's character says 'I'm not the bad guy here' twice — first as a statement, then as a question. While much of the scrutiny following the lone gunman-perpetrated massacres at Aurora, CO and Newtown, CT has fallen on the National Rifle Association and its lobbying efforts against gun control, the shooters in both of the aforementioned incidents seemed to have been encouraged (to say the least) by violence in movies and video games. The New York Daily News' Mike Lupica reported last week that investigators of the Newtown case found a huge spreadsheet in the Lanza home where 20-year old Adam Lanza had methodically charted hundreds of past gun massacres, including the number of people killed and the make and model of weapons used. A Connecticut policeman told Lupica 'it sounded like a doctoral thesis, that was the quality of the research', and added, '[Mass killers such as Lanza] don’t believe this was just a spreadsheet. They believe it was a score sheet. This was the work of a video gamer'. In response, the Entertainment Software Association and other lobbyists representing the video game industry have ramped up their Washington lobbying efforts. While still tiny in dollar terms next to the NRA's warchest, this effort seemed to help derail a proposal to fund a Justice Department study of the effects of video games on gun violence, offered as an amendment on the gun control bill by a Republican senator. A spokesman summarized the ESA's position: 'Extensive research has already been conducted and found no connection between media and real-life violence'.

Comment Re:Where Google Glass will take us (Score 1) 120

This thread reminds me a discussion I had with a friend for an idea for a "killer" app. With the megapix on camera on the rise, GPS, and little network intel, you can build an app that will tell you whether you should try to run the yellow light and beat the red-light camera.

If we build it, they will die.

Businesses

How Does a 9/80 Work Schedule Work Out? 1055

cellocgw writes "My company is in the process of implementing a version of '9/80,' a work schedule that squeezes 80 hours' labor time into 9 business days and provides every other Friday off. I was wondering how this has been implemented in other companies, and how it's worked out for other Slashdot readers. Is your system flexible? Do you find time to get personal stuff done during the week? Is Friday good for anything other than catching up on lost sleep? And perhaps most important, do your managers respect the off-Fridays, or do they pull people in on a regular basis to handle 'crises?'"

Comment The solar system may not be around for this event (Score 1) 343

In about 3 billion years our Milky Way galaxy will be merging the Andromeda Galaxy: http://www.galaxydynamics.org/tflops.html With the the expect rain of gamma rays and shock wave clouds from supernova that expected to be going at the rate of several per year, or the tidal forces from star passing through the solar system, the Earth might be freed from the solar grasp, if not totally destroyed in the process. Of course there might the more quiet possibility that solar system could be lucky enough to be flung out of the galaxy by slingshot to await the sun's bloat 4 billion years later.

Feed Techdirt: Digg And Others Sued For Infringing Infamous Computer Solitaire Patent (techdirt.com)

The Patent Troll Tracker is back from holiday vacation and he's got quite a post listing out a bunch of interesting (i.e., depressing) lawsuits involving questionable patents and even more questionable patent holders. In one case, the Troll Tracker even manages to track down a bizarre set of circumstances making it look like an associate at a well known IP law firm spent millions of dollars scooping up a bunch of patents for himself.

However, perhaps the most interesting is the third case discussed by the Troll Tracker. It involves the somewhat infamous patents of Sheldon Goldberg, which got plenty of attention back in 2004 when he started claiming that computer solitaire was covered by his patents. The two key patents are for a network gaming system and a method for playing games on a network.

It appears that after years of threats about these patents, Goldberg has now actually started filing lawsuits -- and some of the targets are a bit surprising. The one that stood out was Digg, as you don't often see company's like Digg involved in patent infringement suits (and, as far as I can tell, the news that Digg was being sued for patent infringement hasn't been mentioned anywhere else). Others sued over those same patents include some of the "usual targets" such as Google, AOL and Yahoo. However, it also includes a variety of media properties both big and small -- including the NY Times, The Washington Post, CNET, Tribune Interactive and (another slightly odd one) eBaum's World. While the patents themselves seem quite questionable, it's even harder to understand how these sites could possibly be violating those patents. Either way, perhaps the fact that Digg is now on the receiving end of a silly patent infringement lawsuit, it'll get more of the Digg crowd even more interested in the massive problems with the patent system.

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story

Slashdot Top Deals

Reality must take precedence over public relations, for Mother Nature cannot be fooled. -- R.P. Feynman

Working...