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Comment Re:They are dealing with the insanity of parents (Score 1) 367

by thuh Freak (#31877122) Attached to: Lower Merion School District Update

I agree with much of what you said, and the overall feeling - I prefer common sense instead of corner case laws.

Gays at the prom? Because there is no equal protection under the law for gays, and too many people in american society still view gay relationships as evil. Allowing gays in the right conservative school district will get you just as sued.

I just wanted to point out many states (as well as Canada) have outlawed discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity entirely and the US recently recently passed ENDA. Civil Rights from Stanford Encyclopedia Employment Non-Discrimination Act

"US recently passed ENDA" Actually, I don't think ENDA (with lgbt inclusion) is settled law yet. I don't think it's actually passed (or even been voted on) in the senate.
Idle

Directed Energy Weapon Downs Mosquitos 428

Posted by samzenpus from the two-pound-hammer-and-ten-penny-nail dept.
wisebabo writes "Nathan Myhrvol demonstrated at TED a laser, built from parts scrounged from eBay, capable of shooting down not one but 50 to 100 mosquitos a second. The system is 'so precise that it can specify the species, and even the gender, of the mosquito being targeted.' Currently, for the sake of efficiency, it leaves the males alone because only females are bloodsuckers. Best of all the system could cost as little as $50. Maybe that's too expensive for use in preventing malaria in Africa but I'd buy one in a second!" We ran a story about this last year. It looks like the company has added a bit more polish, and burning mosquito footage to their marketing.
Image

Political Affiliation Can Be Differentiated By Appearance 262

Posted by samzenpus from the if-it-looks-like-a-liberal-and-quacks-like-a-liberal dept.
quaith writes "It's not the way they dress, but the appearance of their face. A study published in PLoS One by Nicholas O. Rule and Nalini Ambady of Tufts University used closely cropped greyscale photos of people's faces, standardized for size. Undergrads were asked to categorize each person as either a Democrat or Republican. In the first study, students were able to differentiate Republican from Democrat senate candidates. In the second, students were able to differentiate the political affiliation of other college students. Accuracy in both studies was about 60% — not perfect, but way better than chance."

Comment Re:Yes (Score 1) 605

by thuh Freak (#30607174) Attached to: Do Your Developers Have Local Admin Rights?

ideally, this would be nice. but as a developer, i need to work with toolsets that don't take into account a proper multiuser system. [i agree, in *nix, local root is probably not necessary; but i've only done prof work in windows.] also, since i work for a huge multinational, it takes forever to get IT support to actually get around to installing software for me. so i req'd admin rights and access to the net share with all the disc images. they know what i have --they audit the program files folder or whatever sysadmins do-- and take care of licensing.

also, for certain systems, installing isn't quite as simplistic as "next.. next.. next" (which is basically what i'd get from IT support). you need certain configuration and it needs to fit in with the developed systems. i massage the machines to make them purr (both my box and the dev servers), and thus i can be very hands on and helpful as we deploy up to test and prod envs.

i do not have admin access anywhere except my own machine. but i have elevated perms on the dev boxes. and no direct access to test nor prod.
Windows

Boot Windows Vista In Four Seconds 326

Posted by timothy from the says-them dept.
arcticstoat writes "Asus' budget motherboard wing, ASRock, claims that it's found a way to load a clean boot of Windows from a full shut down in just four seconds, using its new Instant Boot technology. The technology takes advantage of the S3 and S4 features of ACPI, which normally enable the Sleep/Standby and Hibernation modes in Windows respectively. However, by calling them at different times in the boot-up and shutdown process, Instant Boot enables you to boot up to your Windows desktop in three to four seconds, even after a proper shut down. Two modes are available; Fast mode, which uses S3 and boots up in around four seconds, and Regular Mode, which uses S4 and apparently takes between 20 and 22 seconds to boot. The advantage of Instant Boot when compared with normal Sleep and Hibernation modes is that you get the advantage of a clean boot of Windows, without what ASRock calls 'accumulated garbage data,' and you also get the security of knowing that you won't lose any data if there's a power cut and you lose AC power. There's also a video of it in action at the link above."
Education

Philosophy and Computer Science Revisited 204

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the philosophy-goes-nicely-with-many-things dept.
Soren Kierkegaard writes "While reading the two-and-a-half-year-old Slashdot post on Does Philosophy have a role in Computer Science, it occurred to me that over these past few years Philosophy has a more prominent role in Computer Science then ever before. Cognitive Science and Computer Ethics are more established disciplines in universities, and the numbers of philosophy graduates double majoring in computer science and information systems are climbing. Is a merger of Philosophy, a discipline steeped in history and intelligent thought, and Computer Science, a discipline that looks to the future, the best of both worlds?"
Media (Apple)

Ultimate iPhone Review — Will It Blend? 347

Posted by CmdrTaco from the everything-blends-in-a-blendtec dept.
I've been enjoying the Will it Blend videos forever. There's something about a labcoat clad crazy man putting things like marbles and soda cans into a blender and after reducing them to powder, warning you not to breathe in the particles. Well today they ask the ultimate question of the latest over-hyped internet sensation Will the iPhone Blend? Fans of these videos can probably guess the answer... and this story made my morning. I've been waiting for an excuse to link these forever. If you haven't seen these, you're in for a real treat.
Businesses

AT&T Offering Merger Concessions 98

Posted by CowboyNeal from the speeding-things-along dept.
TheFarmerInTheDell writes that AT&T is offering concessions to make their merger with SBC happen as fast as possible. From the article: "AT&T filed a letter of commitment with the [Federal Communications Commission] Thursday night that adds a number of new conditions to the deal, including a promise to observe 'network neutrality' principles, an offer of affordable stand-alone digital subscriber line service and divestment of some wireless spectrum."

Death of the Cell Phone Keypad As We Know It? 273

Posted by Zonk from the two-to-beam-up dept.
An anonymous reader writes, "According to a CNet article, two companies called Mobience and Nuance have created viable and possibly better alternatives to the standard cell phone keypad. 'Mobience, which is based in South Korea, has redesigned the ABC and Qwerty key layout, and come up with MobileQwerty. It's essentially the same three-letters-per-key system as the standard mobile keypad layout, but the letters have been rearranged in a Qwertyesque way to increase efficiency.' The other system developed by Nuance is a mobile speech platform that turns speech into text and replaces the keypad altogether. I was skeptical at first but the video of Nuance's software vs. Ben Cook, the ex world texting champion, is undeniably impressive."
Security

Help Black Box Voting Examine ES&S Software 197

Posted by kdawson from the ooh-fresh-code dept.
Gottesser writes, "Bev Harris of Black Box Voting has asked for the help of the Slashdot community. She would like people to take a look at ES&S's central tabulator software and start reporting on their impressions of it. This is a past release of the software but it is similar to the applications in production. Sorry, no source code." Read on for Bev's request and pointers to the code repositories. Update 23:38 GMT by SM Bev has confirmed that blackbox1.org is indeed owned by BlackBoxVoting making both a comment in the discussion and a post on the front page of blackboxvoting.org to help assuage reader fear/doubt.

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"If you want to eat hippopatomus, you've got to pay the freight." -- attributed to an IBM guy, about why IBM software uses so much memory

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