xTMFWahoo - Slashdot User

Comment Where has personal responsibility gone???? (Score 1) 477

by xTMFWahoo on Wednesday October 13, 2010 @03:59PM (#33886788) Attached to: FCC Will Tackle Cell Phone 'Bill Shock'

Why does the FCC need to enact rules to prevent people from doing DUMB things? If I go over my minutes, I should pay for them. How is it that hard to understand? The carriers give you a way (sometimes free) to check your minutes, via your account webpage, or sending text messages. People need to start taking responsibility for themselves.

Comment Re:1 to 2 pieces per day??? (Score 1) 228

by xTMFWahoo on Friday August 20, 2010 @06:45AM (#33311924) Attached to: Typically, I get N pieces of snail mail per day;

I took it from the perspective that it was total mail, include junk mail/ads/bill etc. I get maybe 2-3 actual letters a month.

Measuring the User For CPU Frequency Scaling 190

Posted by timothy on Wednesday May 13, 2009 @05:50PM from the no-this-one-goes-in-your-mouth dept.

An anonymous reader writes "The Empathic Systems Project a Northwestern University demonstrate up to 50% power savings by controlling CPU frequency scaling based upon the end user. They measure the user with eye trackers, galvanic skin response, and force sensors to find a CPU frequency that the user is satisfied with. They are currently studying user activity and system performance on mobile architectures, specifically the Android G1 phone."

Comment Re:Military Eggheads did not think put the domain (Score 1) 131

by xTMFWahoo on Monday April 27, 2009 @07:00PM (#27738557) Attached to: Military Enlists Open Source Community

Try https://www.forge.mil/ it works fine. You must have a DOD CAC or ECA certificate to login.

Why AT&T Wants To Keep the iPhone Away From Verizon 237

Posted by Soulskill on Saturday April 25, 2009 @12:20PM from the all-about-the-benjamins dept.

Hugh Pickens writes "Saul Hansell of the NY Times has an interesting post analyzing AT&T's earnings report and highlighting the enormous stakes involved in the renewal of its exclusive contract to distribute Apple's iPhone in the United States. Hansell does some rough calculations: 'If the average iPhone customer brings in $90 a month, or $1,080 a year in revenue, and the operating profit margin stays constant at 26 percent, that means an iPhone customer represents at least $561 in operating profit over a two-year contract,' says Hansell. 'Put another way, if the company gets 2.5 million new customers a year because of its iPhone exclusivity, the deal represents at least $700 million a year in operating profits — profits that it could lose if Verizon sold the iPhone, too.' With those sort of numbers, AT&T has every reason to make Apple an offer it can't refuse to keep its exclusive deal for another few years. Of course, the incentives for Verizon are presumably the mirror image, so expect Verizon to come to Cupertino, checkbook in hand, to see what sort of deal they can make. 'The benefit of somewhat more iPhone sales from wide distribution is likely to be swamped by a huge bid from AT&T to keep exclusivity, and an equally high bid from Verizon to win some (or maybe even all) of the business for itself.'"

Fair Use Affirmed In Turnitin Case 315

Posted by timothy on Tuesday April 21, 2009 @02:00PM from the sensing-sensibility dept.

Hugh Pickens writes "The Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals has issued an opinion affirming a ruling that will be cheered by digital fair use proponents for allowing a fair use of students' work when their teachers electronically file students' written work with the turnitin.com Web site so that newly submitted work can be compared against Turnitin's database of existing student work to assess whether the new work is the result of plagiarism. The court stepped through the fair use analysis, dropping positive notes that affirm commercial uses can be fair uses, that a use can be transformative 'in function or purpose without altering or actually adding to the original work,' and that the entirety of a work can be used without precluding a finding of fair use. Techdirt suggests that all of these points could have been helpful to Google in defending its book scanning efforts, 'since it could make pretty much the identical arguments on all points.' Unfortunately Google caved in that lawsuit and settled, 'denying a strong fair use precedent and making Google look like an easy place for struggling industries to demand cash.'"

Brazilian Pirates Hijack US Military Satellites 359

Posted by CmdrTaco on Tuesday April 21, 2009 @11:40AM from the because-they-can dept.

blantonl writes "Brazilians all over the country are using modified amateur radio equipment to communicate with each other using US Military communications satellites — effectively creating their own CB radio network on the backs of the US Military. Recent efforts to crack down have resulted in arrests of some of the users, however the behavior still continues today."

Submission + - Slot Machine with Bad Software: Players To Jail? (yahoo.com)

Submitted by dcollins on Friday July 20, 2007 @12:15PM

dcollins writes: Numerous Slashdot threads turn into a debate over who's liable for faulty software: the programmers, the publisher, etc. Here's a new option: perhaps the users are themselves criminally liable. From the AP: ( http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070719/ap_on_fe_st/ge nerous_slot_machine ): "Prosecutors are considering criminal charges against casino gamblers who won big on a slot machine that had been installed with faulty software... A decision on whether to bring criminal charges could come in a couple of weeks, said John Colin, chief deputy prosecutor for Harrison County. He said 'criminal intent' may be involved when people play a machine they know is faulty."

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