scottedwards2000 - Slashdot User

Comment Re: that will make things better (Score 1) 40

by scottedwards2000 on Thursday November 13, 2025 @06:20PM (#65794474) Attached to: Verizon To Cut About 15,000 Jobs

Yeah, I've been wondering that for years! How exactly CAN the MVNO's make money with the markup from the networks and paying for good customer service (which I know from being in the biz, aint cheap!)? Do they just have much thinner margins?

Comment Re:Argument against seems week, or bad data (Score 1) 282

by scottedwards2000 on Tuesday May 16, 2023 @01:02PM (#63526345) Attached to: Saving AM Radio - the Case For and Against

as a gen-x'er, I agree but curious why you think mill's and z's might do better?

Submission + - Driverless Taxis Are Coming To the Streets of San Francisco (npr.org)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 03, 2022 @02:46PM

An anonymous reader writes: California regulators on Thursday gave a robotic taxi service the green light to begin charging passengers for driverless rides in San Francisco, a first in a state where dozens of companies have been trying to train vehicles to steer themselves on increasingly congested roads. The California Public Utilities Commission unanimously granted Cruise, a company controlled by automaker General Motors, approval to launch its driverless ride-hailing service. The regulators issued the permit despite safety concerns arising from Cruise's inability to pick up and drop off passengers at the curb in its autonomous taxis, requiring the vehicles to double park in traffic lanes.

The ride-hailing service initially will consist of just 30 electric vehicles confined to transporting passengers in less congested parts of San Francisco from 10 p.m. to 6 a.m. Those restrictions are designed to minimize chances of the robotic taxis causing property damage, injuries or death if something goes awry. It will also allow regulators to assess how the technology works before permitting the service to expand.

Cruise and another robotic car pioneer, Waymo, already have been charging passengers for rides in parts of San Francisco in autonomous vehicles with a back-up human driver present to take control if something goes wrong with the technology. But now Cruise has been cleared to charge for rides in vehicles that will have no other people in them besides the passengers — an ambition that a wide variety of technology companies and traditional automakers have been pursuing for more than a decade. The driverless vehicles have been hailed as a way to make taxi rides less expensive while reducing the traffic accidents and deaths caused by reckless human drivers.

Comment Re:Meh (Score 1) 100

by scottedwards2000 on Tuesday October 05, 2021 @02:30PM (#61864115) Attached to: US Lawmakers Demand Facebook Probes; Whistleblower Says Children Harmed

Excellent point!

Submission + - Sony Sends DMCA Notices Against Users Spreading Leaked e-Mails (freezenet.ca)

Submitted by Dangerous_Minds on Wednesday December 31, 2014 @05:39PM

Dangerous_Minds writes: Last week, Sony threatened legal action against users spreading leaked information obtained through the e-mails that were leaked as a result of the Sony hack. Freezenet is now pointing to an Arstechnica article saying that Sony has begun carrying through with those threats. Twitter, after resisting demands that a user account be suspended for publishing leaked e-mails, has received a DMCA notice saying that the e-mails are, weirdly enough, copyrighted. Freezenet notes that other media outlets have been publishing the leaked information and wonders if Sony would begin targeting other outlets for similarly publishing leaked information online. Citing Wikileaks as an example of previously leaked information, if Sony were to target others, it is unlikely that the information will ever be fully removed, but it won't likely be without casualties that the information remains online.

Facebook Acquires FriendFeed 71

Posted by kdawson on Monday August 10, 2009 @06:37PM from the friends-indeed dept.

Several readers including carpenter37 let us know that FriendFeed has sold itself to Facebook. Nobody who knows is talking about the terms of the deal. Here is Facebook's announcement, and here is FriendFeed's, which elaborates: "As my mom explained to me, when two companies love each other very much, they form a structured investment vehicle." FriendFeed was founded in 2007 by four ex-Googlers, including Paul Buchheit — the engineer behind Gmail and the originator of Google's "Don't be evil" motto — and Bret Taylor, a former group product manager who launched Google Maps.

Submission + - Facebook acquires FriendFeed (techcrunch.com)

Submitted by

carpenter37

on Monday August 10, 2009 @03:38PM

carpenter37 writes: "Facebook has acquired FriendFeed, we've learned. We're gathering details now. At this point details on the acquisition are still very sparse, but it's clearly a good match. Over the last year or so, Facebook has "borrowed" quite a few of features that FriendFeed popularized, including the 'Like' feature and an emphasis on real-time news updates."

How Do You Sync & Manage Your Home Directories? 421

Posted by kdawson on Tuesday June 23, 2009 @02:19PM from the kitchen-sync dept.

digitalderbs writes "A problem plaguing most people with multiple computers is the arduous task of synchronizing files between them: documents, pictures, code, or data. Everyone seems to have their own strategies, whether they involve USB drives, emailed attachments, rsync, or a distributed management system, all of which have varying degrees of success in implementing fast synchronization, interoperability, redundancy and versioning, and encryption. Myself, I've used unison for file synchronization and rsnapshot for backups between two Linux servers and a Mac OS X laptop. I've recently considered adding some sophistication by implementing a version control system like subversion, git, or bazaar, but have found some shortcomings in automating commits and pushing updates to all systems. What system do you use to manage your home directories, and how have they worked for you for managing small files (e.g. dot configs) and large (gigabyte binaries of data) together?"

Has Google Broken JavaScript Spam Munging? 288

Posted by kdawson on Tuesday June 23, 2009 @01:31PM from the step-too-far dept.

Baxil writes "For years now, Javascript munging has been a useful tool to share email addresses on the Web without exposing them to spammers. However, Google is now apparently evaluating Javascript when assembling summary text for web pages' listings, and publishing the un-munged email addresses to the world; and spammers have started to take advantage of this kind service." Anyone else seen this affecting their carefully protected email addresses?

John Hodgman Asks Obama, "Are You a Nerd?" 147

Posted by samzenpus on Tuesday June 23, 2009 @01:01PM from the gooble-gobble-one-of-us-one-of-us dept.

Hugh Pickens writes "Watch a video of comedian John Hodgman speak after Barack Obama at the recent Radio and Television Correspondents Association dinner in DC and discuss the central question of our age: "how we can heal the great and shameful division that has plagued our nation for so long — the age old conflict between jocks and nerds" and ask Obama: Are you now, or have you ever been, a nerd?"

Norwegian Lawyers Must Stop Chasing File Sharers 186

Posted by kdawson on Tuesday June 23, 2009 @12:41PM from the media-sentries-no-more dept.

Skapare sends word from TorrentFreak that Norway's Simonsen law firm has lost their license to pursue file sharers. "Just days after Norway's data protection department told ISPs they must delete all personal IP address-related data three weeks after collection, it's now become safer than ever to be a file-sharer in Norway. The only law firm with a license to track pirates has just seen it expire and it won't be renewed." Skapare adds, "Sounds like Norway's government treats privacy seriously. Maybe they've been watching the abuses in the USA. More info on the Norwegian perspective in this Google translation from Dagbladet.no."

Could We Beam Broadband Internet Into Iran? 541

Posted by timothy on Tuesday June 23, 2009 @11:55AM from the extend-the-tubes dept.

abenamer writes "Some reporter at a recent White House press briefing just asked the White House press secretary, Robert Gibbs, this question: Was 'the White House....considering beaming broad capability into Iran via satellite so the opposition forces would be able to communicate with themselves and the outside world?' 'Gibbs said he didn't know such a thing was possible. (Is it?) But he said he would check on the technological feasibility and get back with an answer.' I'm not sure what the reporter meant by beaming broadband into Iran: Do they even have 3G? Would we bomb the Iranians with SIM cards that would allow them to get text messages from the VOA? Or somehow put up massive Wi-Fi transmitters from Iraq and beam it into Iran? How would you beam broadband into Iran?"

The Commodore 64 vs. the iPhone 3G S 238

Posted by timothy on Tuesday June 23, 2009 @10:19AM from the next-week-chocolate-torte-vs.-charles-manson dept.

Harry writes "The unfortunate news about Apple rejecting a Commodore 64 emulator from the iPhone App Store inspired me to compare the C64 to the new iPhone 3G S, in more detail than any rational person is likely to compare them, ever again. If nothing else, it's a snapshot of just how far technology has come since the C64's release in August of 1982."

Submission + - Reflections on less cool effects of filesharing

Submitted by

surpeis

on Sunday April 19, 2009 @07:35AM

surpeis writes: "This snub is an attempt to point the finger at something I feel has been widely ignored in the ever-lasting debate surrounding (illegal) filesharing, now again brought in the spotlight by the Pirate Bay trial.

I should state that I am slightly biased, as I have been running my own indielabel for some years, spanning about 30 releases. It's now history, but it was NOT filesharing that got the best of us, just for the record. :-)
I try as far as humanly possible to view the debate from all angles, and before entering the music biz myself, I was a strong believer in Internet as the drving force to develop new markets. Since then life has thought me alot, and as said I will try to share one of my major concerns in this (hopefully) short snub.

My observation is based on alot of trying and failing, as well as being a moderate user of filesharing myself. Then mainly to check out stuff I read about but cannot get my hands on in the local store back here in Norway.

My concern is about this argument, that has been seen in most any debate about this subject for the last 10 years, usually formulated soughly as below:

"Filesharing will provide massive marketing to new artists, and drive forward a new and more dynamic music market".

I beg to differ.
One thing that has become more and more obvious to me is that the power of the market more than ever is still safely held by the biggest cooperations in the music biz. I will try to explain why.

If we use TPB as an example, they have about 10M visitors per day which gives us a good base for pulling out stats. If you look at their Top100 list at any given time, you will find excactly 0,00% artists that are not (major) label signed.

This might not be very surprising, as TPB naturally would reflect the music market in general.
But if one start thinking about it it has the ironic effect that TPB is a driving force of consolidating the market power of the major labels rather than driving forward any new music. The conclusion has to be that Pirates are just as little resistant to the major label marketing as any other person. Even though there are thousands and thousands of artists out there that WANTS their music to be shared and listened to, they are widely and effectively ignored by the masses. In fact, one might say that TPB and the likes are _countering_ the development of new markets, simply because the gap between the heavily marketed music and "the others" is wider than ever when the bare naked truth about peoples taste in music is put into such a system.

This puts a heavy responsibility on the Pirates, one that I dont think they are aware of nor able to handle. The day we find the top crop of the beforementioned artists that are actually free to share on the top 100 list, we have a winner. Until then the only thing that we will see "die" is the small indies that cannot benefit from heavy marketing. Thus, more market power is given to the major labels, and all of us reading this will be dead and buried long before they stop making a reasonable income from selling oldies and goldies, radioplay, publishing etc.

The actual "mystery" is why the major labels dont see this themselves, and continues to take services like TPB to court. They are, and im pretty sure about this, the actual winners in the ongoing war. The price payed is Status Quo in all means when it comes to new markets growing forth.

So, ladies and gentlenerds:
Are we really driving forth the music scene of the future? Or are we actually turning into useful idiots keeping the arch-enemy strong and healthy while the suppliers of correctives (indies, free music) are effectively kept out of the loop?

If this nugget passes the oh-so-mighty moderators, i'd love to get som input on this from interested users at /. What could possibly be done (technically or socially) to provoke changes to this and hit the major labels where it actually hurts?"

Wolfram Promises Computing That Answers Questions 369

Posted by timothy on Sunday March 08, 2009 @05:56PM from the he's-feeling-lucky-you-feel-lucky-too dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Computer scientist Stephen Wolfram feels that he has put together at least the initial version of a computer that actually answers factual questions, a la Star Trek's ship computers. His version will be found on their Web-based application, Wolfram Alpha. What does this mean? Well, instead of returning links to pages that may (or may not) contain the answer to your questions, Wolfram will respond with the actual answer. Just imagine typing in 'How many bones are in the human body?' and getting the answer." Right now, though the search entry field is in place, Alpha is not yet generally available -- only "to a few select individuals."

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