By BeauHD from
Slashdot's buyer-beware department:
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Gizmodo: While the [Oculus Rift] is cool, like any interesting gadget, it's worth looking through the Terms of Service, because there are some worrisome things included. Quite a few of the items in the document are pretty typical in any sort of Terms of Service agreement. These include details like waiving your right to a juried trial and agreeing to go into arbitration instead. Oculus can also terminate your service for myriad reasons, and third parties can collect information on you. However, there are some even more devilish details in the Rift's full Terms of Service. If you create something with the Rift, the Terms of Service say that you surrender all rights to that work and that Oculus can use it whenever it wants, for whatever purposes. Basically, if you create something using the device, Oculus can't own it, but the company can use it -- and they don't have to pay you for for using it. Oculus can use it even if you don't agree with its use. Oculus can collect data from you while you're using the device. Furthermore, the information that they collect can be used to directly market products to you. As UploadVR noted, the Oculus Rift is a device that is always on (much like Microsoft's Xbox One Kinect feature) which leads to further concerns about when the information will be collected.
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By EditorDavid from
Slashdot's meet-the-new-bot department:
An anonymous reader writes: More than 22% of the jobs in Silicon Valley are now in the technology sector, reports the San Jose Mercury News, while the area has lost nearly 156,000 factory jobs over the last 15 years. But 59% of those lost manufacturing jobs were at tech companies, indicating that "the hardware has faded in importance compared with the software," says economist Christopher Thornberg. "It's all about the applications these days." Over the last 15 years employment gains happened in "information" areas characterized as mobile/internet/social media as well as software and tech services -- for example, at companies like Google, Facebook, Apple, and Salesforce -- and at hotels and restaurants catering to high-tech workers. "It's not just that tech is replacing other industries," reports the San Jose Mercury News. "Tech is replacing itself."
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By whipslash from
Slashdot's corruption department:
An anonymous reader writes: The hidden wealth of some of the world's most prominent leaders, politicians and celebrities has been revealed by an unprecedented leak of millions of documents that show the myriad ways in which the rich can exploit secretive offshore tax regimes. The Guardian, working with global partners, will set out details from the first tranche of what are being called "the Panama Papers". Journalists from more than 80 countries have been reviewing 11.5m files leaked from the database of Mossack Fonseca, the world's fourth biggest offshore law firm. Twelve national leaders are among 143 politicians, their families and close associates from around the world known to have been using offshore tax havens. Among national leaders with offshore wealth are Vladimir Putin, Nawaz Sharif, Pakistan's prime minister; Ayad Allawi, ex-interim prime minister and former vice-president of Iraq; Petro Poroshenko, president of Ukraine; Alaa Mubarak, son of Egypt's former president; and the prime minister of Iceland, Sigmundur Davio Gunnlaugsson. The leak is one of the biggest ever - larger than the US diplomatic cables released by WikiLeaks in 2010, and the secret intelligence documents given to journalists by Edward Snowden in 2013.
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By EditorDavid from
Slashdot's proud-Harvard-alumni department:
theodp writes: Sunday marks the 20th anniversary of the arrest of Theodore Kaczynski, aka the Unabomber, at his cabin in rural Montana. Kaczynski, a brilliant mathematician turned recluse, spread destruction and death throughout the U.S by mailing bombs to his victims, most of whom worked at UNiversities or in the Airline industry -- hence the "UNAbomber" moniker -- from 1978 until his arrest in Lincoln, MT, on April 3, 1996. For years, the only clue to his identity was a single now-iconic sketch of a shadowy, hooded figure. The big break in the case came in 1995, when David Kaczynski recognized the ramblings of the Unabomber's 35,000-word anti-technology manifesto entitled Industrial Society and its Future, which was published in the Washington Post, as those of his older brother Theodore and tipped off the FBI. (Kaczynski warns of a world of intelligent machines where "the fate of the human race would be at the mercy of the machines.") Kaczynski, now 73, is currently serving a life sentence without parole at the so-called Supermax prison in Colorado. Kaczynski's listing in the Harvard alumni directory for the class of 1962 gives his occupation as 'prisoner' and cites "eight life sentences, issued by the United States District Court for the Eastern District of California, 1998" in the awards section.
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By BeauHD from
Slashdot's too-much-to-handle department:
An anonymous reader writes: After receiving more than 198,000 Model 3 preorders in the first 24 hours, Tesla may need more cash if it hopes to deliver their new electric vehicle to customers on time, analysts said. Elon Musk plans to launch the Model 3 in late 2017, eventually boosting the company's annual production tenfold to 500,000 by 2020. Many analysts believe some customers making early reservations may not receive their vehicle until 2019 or 2020. Morgan Stanley analyst Adam Jonas, predicted Tesla's sales will hit under 250,000 in 2020. Barclays analyst Brian Johnson, believes the surge of Model 3 reservations could reach 300,000 by the end of June. Some analysts expect the first cars will sell for an average of $50,000-$60,000, but Tesla prices its current models in several "tiers," depending on content and optional features. RBC analyst Joseph Spak said strong initial orders for the Model 3 could help Tesla achieve positive free cash flow. In February, the company said it expected to be cash-flow positive in March. Spak said Tesla may not be able to fulfill many of the early orders before 2019: "Demand was never really our concern, it is more about execution and getting production up to meet demand."
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By BeauHD from
Slashdot's peace-of-mind department:
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Washington Post: Most of the time when we talk about silly scientific papers related to alien life, we're talking about crazy ideas for how to find aliens. But a new study in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society proposes a way of hiding from aliens. Humans are so fickle. A lot of our search for Earth-like planets (and, by extension, for life as we know it) hinges on transiting planets. These are planets that pass in front of their host star in such a way that the transit is visible from our perspective. The movement of the planet in front of the host star makes the light from that star dim or flicker, and we can use that to determine all sorts of things about distant worlds -- including how suitable they may be for life. Professor David Kipping and graduate student Alex Teachey, both of Columbia University, determined how much laser light it would take to mask the dimming caused by our planet transiting the sun, or cloak the atmospheric signatures associated with biological activity, [such as oxygen, which is achievable with a peak laser power of just 160 kW per transit].
From the report: "According to their math, it would take 10 continuous hours of shining a 30 MW laser once a year to eliminate the transit signal in visible light. Actually replicating every wavelength of light emitted by the sun would take about 250 MW of power."
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By BeauHD from
Slashdot's on-a-whim department:
An anonymous reader writes: Wim Coekaerts, formerly Oracle's Senior VP of Linux and Virtualization Engineering, has left Oracle for Microsoft. Many of you may know of Coekaerts as "Mr. Linux" as he delivered the first Linux products, transitioned Oracle's programming staff from Windows to Linux desktops, and turned Oracle into a Linux distributor with the launch of its Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) clone, Oracle Linux. Mike Neil, Microsoft's Corporate Vice President of the Enterprise Cloud, told ZDNet, "Wim Coekaerts has joined Microsoft as Corp VP of Open Source in our Enterprise Cloud Group. As we continue to deepen our commitment to open source, Wim will focus on deepening our engagement, contributions and innovation to the open-source community."
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