Birds Burst into Flames Flying Over Solar Energy Plants; Comcast Training Materials Leaked

Ballmer Quits Microsoft Board | 51% of Computer Users Share Passwords To view a web version of this message, click here Send this message to a friend Birds Burst into Flames Flying Over Solar Energy Plants 51% of Computer Users Share Passwords Comcast Training Materials Leaked Ballmer Quits Microsoft Board Transition from Fission to Fusion Needs to Be Quick Hot Comment: "Spying serves a valuable purpose. It allows a country..." From the Vault: Flash on Android Is 'Shockingly Bad' Watch It: Tim O'Reilly Talks Tech Big and Small Poll Booth: How many devices are connected to your home Wi-Fi? Sponsored Resource: Increase Your Data Center IQ Birds Burst into Flames Flying Over Solar Energy Plants "Workers at a state-of-the-art solar plant in the Mojave Desert have a name for birds that fly through the concentrated beams of solar energy focused upward by the plant's 300,000 mirrors -- 'streamers,' for the smoke plume that comes from birds that ignite in midair," according to an Associated Press report. Sound Off>> 51% of Computer Users Share Passwords Help Net Security reports that, "Consumers are inadvertently leaving back doors open to attackers as they share log in details and sign up for automatic log on to mobile apps and services, according to new research by Intercede." Sound Off>> Comcast Training Materials Leaked The Verge reports on leaked training manuals from Comcast, which show how selling services is a required part of the job, even for employees doing tech support. The so-called "4S training material" explicitly states that 20 percent of a call center employee's rating for a given call is dependent on effectively selling the customer new Comcast services. Sound Off>> Ballmer Quits Microsoft Board After leaving his position as CEO of Microsoft a year ago, Steve Ballmer has still held a position as a member of the board of directors for the company. Now, he is leaving the board, explaining why in a letter to fresh Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella. "I have become very busy," Ballmer explains. Sound Off>> Transition from Fission to Fusion Needs to Be Quick Yale's Jason Parisi makes a compelling case for fusion power, and explains why fusion is cleaner, safer, and doesn't provide opportunities for nuclear smuggling and proliferation. The only downside will be the transition period, when both fission and fusion plants coexist--which could be dangerous. Sound Off>> Re:Bottom line... "Spying serves a valuable purpose. It allows a country to ascertain whether another country's pols are lying or telling the truth. It can also help prevent surprise attacks, and it can help explain another country's behavior. We should want countries to spy on each other, then there are fewer secrets. Nation states arose not because of mistrust, but from shared language, culture, and so on. Trust has almost nothing to do with it." --by gtall Read More>>   Flash on Android Is 'Shockingly Bad' Four years ago, GigaOm wrote, "Flash has been touted as one of the advantages for Android mobile devices. But how does Flash video perform on handsets running Google's mobile OS? To find out we asked Kevin Tofel to test Flash video on his Nexus One -- and the results are not good." Read More>> Tim O'Reilly Talks Tech Big and Small Tim O'Reilly has been a powerful force in tech book publishing, popularized the term Web 2.0, and has been at least a godfather to the open source movement. He's also an interesting person in general. Timothy Lord got ahold of him via Hangout while he was in a relaxed mood, happy to give detailed responses to your questions that ranged from small everyday tech to big concepts like the Internet as "global brain". Watch the Video>>    How many devices are connected to your home Wi-Fi? 1 - 2 3 - 4 5 - 6 7 - 8 9 - 10 More than 10 Hard to tell since I chipped all the squirrels in the neighborhood Cast Your Vote>> Increase Your Data Center IQ Discover how to improve network efficiency, lower IT costs and more proactively manage your physical, virtual and cloud environments. Industry experts show you how to build data center success. Learn More>> Follow Slashdot on Twitter and Facebook. To unsubscribe, click here or send an email to: unsubscribe-213087@elabs10.com To ensure delivery of this newsletter to your inbox and to enable images, please add slashdot@newsletters.slashdot.org to your e-mail address book or safe senders list. Slashdot | 594 Howard Street, Suite 300 | San Francisco, CA 94105 To view our Privacy Policy click here.