Comment Too bad (Score 5, Funny) 849
No one thought to do this pre 9/11.
US Grants Home Schooling German Family Political Asylum
1324
A US judge has granted political asylum to a family who said they fled Germany to avoid persecution for home schooling their children. Uwe Romeike and his wife, Hannelore, moved to Tennessee after German authorities fined them for keeping their children out of school and sent police to escort them to classes. Mike Connelly, attorney for the Home School Legal Defence Association, argued the case. He says, "Home schoolers in Germany are a particular social group, which is one of the protected grounds under the asylum law. This judge looked at the evidence, he heard their testimony, and he felt that the way Germany is treating home schoolers is wrong. The rights being violated here are basic human rights."
PS3 Hacked? 296
Several readers have sent word that George Hotz (a.k.a. geohot), the hacker best known for unlocking Apple's iPhone, says he has now hacked the PlayStation 3. From his blog post:
"I have read/write access to the entire system memory, and HV level access to the processor. In other words, I have hacked the PS3. The rest is just software. And reversing. I have a lot of reversing ahead of me, as I now have dumps of LV0 and LV1. I've also dumped the NAND without removing it or a modchip. 3 years, 2 months, 11 days...that's a pretty secure system. ... As far as the exploit goes, I'm not revealing it yet. The theory isn't really patchable, but they can make implementations much harder. Also, for obvious reasons I can't post dumps. I'm hoping to find the decryption keys and post them, but they may be embedded in hardware. Hopefully keys are setup like the iPhone's KBAG."
Scientists To Breed the Auroch From Extinction 277
ImNotARealPerson writes "Scientists in Italy are hoping to breed back from extinction the mighty auroch, a bovine species which has been extinct since 1627. The auroch weighed 2,200 pounds (1000kg) and its shoulders stood at 6'6". The beasts once roamed most of Asia and northern Africa. The animal was depicted in cave paintings and Julius Caesar described it as being a little less in size than an elephant. A member of the Consortium for Experimental Biotechnology suggests that 99% of the auroch's DNA can be recreated from genetic material found in surviving bone material. Wikipedia mentions that researchers in Poland are working on the same problem."
Comment I voted "more than a million" (Score 4, Funny) 395
Because the poll does not say "lines of code written by me in my life."
App Store Piracy Losses Estimated At $459 Million 202
An anonymous reader passes along this quote from a report at 24/7 Wall St.:
"There have been over 3 billion downloads since the inception of the App Store. Assuming the proportion of those that are paid apps falls in the middle of the Bernstein estimate, 17% or 510 million of these were paid applications. Based on our review of current information, paid applications have a piracy rate of around 75%. That supports the figure that for every paid download, there have been 3 pirated downloads. That puts the number of pirate downloads at 1.53 billion. If the average price of a paid application is $3, that is $4.59 billion dollars in losses split between Apple and the application developers. That is, of course, assuming that all of those pirates would have made purchases had the application not been available to them for free. This is almost certainly not the case. A fair estimate of the proportion of people who would have used the App Store if they did not use pirated applications is about 10%. This estimate yields about $459 million in lost revenue for Apple and application developers."
A response posted at Mashable takes issue with some of the figures, particularly the 75% piracy rate. While such rates have been seen with game apps, it's unclear whether non-game apps suffer the same fate.
Ocean-Crossing Dragonflies Discovered 95
grrlscientist writes "While living and working as a marine biologist in Maldives, Charles Anderson noticed sudden explosions of dragonflies at certain times of year. He explains how he carefully tracked the path of a plain, little dragonfly called the Globe Skimmer, Pantala flavescens, only to discover that it had the longest migratory journey of any insect in the world."
Antarctic's First Plane, Found In Ice 110
Arvisp writes "In 1912 Australian explorer Douglas Mawson planned to fly over the southern pole. His lost plane has now been found. The plane – the first off the Vickers production line in Britain – was built in 1911, only eight years after the Wright brothers executed the first powered flight. For the past three years, a team of Australian explorers has been engaged in a fruitless search for the aircraft, last seen in 1975. Then on Friday, a carpenter with the team, Mark Farrell, struck gold: wandering along the icy shore near the team's camp, he noticed large fragments of metal sitting among the rocks, just a few inches beneath the water."
Comment Re:not surprising (Score 4, Interesting) 386
Except not a single person leaving that theater knew that DRM had anything to do with it. Or even the meaning of the acronym itself.
"Sorry, folks, little glitch with the 3D thingamajig here! Heh heh... Well, you're all welcome to stay and enjoy the show in all it's 2D glory, including some free popcorn! Or we'll gladly refund your money."
And they all came back the next day, and paid their money to support the now properly-running DRMed-up-the-ass movie, none the wiser. Do you really think the theater hauled out Cory Doctorow to hold forth on the evils of DRM for the audience's benefit?
"Sorry, folks, little glitch with the 3D thingamajig here! Heh heh... Well, you're all welcome to stay and enjoy the show in all it's 2D glory, including some free popcorn! Or we'll gladly refund your money."
And they all came back the next day, and paid their money to support the now properly-running DRMed-up-the-ass movie, none the wiser. Do you really think the theater hauled out Cory Doctorow to hold forth on the evils of DRM for the audience's benefit?
Comment This was so cool (Score 1) 315
I'm going to go watch the longer version of it called "The War of the Worlds" (2005) again tonight. No, seriously, the Youtube vid was VERY cool. But I think what I liked most about it was that it reminded me of the Dakota Fanning movie. Oh, I guess Tom Cruise might have been in it too... Anyway, it was a very cool, very scary movie.
Comment Re:A dream I had. (Score 1) 920
Leave it to Ann Arbor to have an organic pizza joint!
Comment Re:too funny (Score 1) 219
Sorry, but no. We see all 202 of your friends.
It seems that you, Lisa, are a bit of a paradox. I see by your facebook profile that you're a fan of Malwarebytes, suggesting you must be pretty proficient with a computer. At the same time, you seem to be unaware that FB provides you with a tool to see what your profile looks like to other users - suggesting you're *NOT* that computer proficient!
"Wait til I get going! Now, where was I? " (Bensafrickingenius proves his mettle by quoting The Princess Bride)
OK, next, you show what a gun nut you are by linking to the "Firearms Multimedia Guide." BUT!!! No true gun nut would do that! If you advertise that you're a gun nut, then the Obama administration knows EXACTLY who's door to knock down first when they come for our guns!!! Silly girl!!!
In closing, I don't know WHAT to think about you, so I take it back. Well done, Lisa (or whatever your name is).
It seems that you, Lisa, are a bit of a paradox. I see by your facebook profile that you're a fan of Malwarebytes, suggesting you must be pretty proficient with a computer. At the same time, you seem to be unaware that FB provides you with a tool to see what your profile looks like to other users - suggesting you're *NOT* that computer proficient!
"Wait til I get going! Now, where was I? " (Bensafrickingenius proves his mettle by quoting The Princess Bride)
OK, next, you show what a gun nut you are by linking to the "Firearms Multimedia Guide." BUT!!! No true gun nut would do that! If you advertise that you're a gun nut, then the Obama administration knows EXACTLY who's door to knock down first when they come for our guns!!! Silly girl!!!
In closing, I don't know WHAT to think about you, so I take it back. Well done, Lisa (or whatever your name is).
Comment Re:Herein lies the answer (Score 1) 334
more diagnosis != better diagnosis
I work in public education. The more special ed. students we can identify, the more money we get. Think on that a bit...
I work in public education. The more special ed. students we can identify, the more money we get. Think on that a bit...
Comment Re:Oh, hey, (Score 1) 1011
Utterly brilliant. Thanks for posting. Just shared it with a bunch of people.
Comment Re:personally (Score 1) 1721
I guess it makes sense they would give this to him now, before he has accomplished anything. The longer the wait, the more of an abysmal failure he will be. They *HAVE* to give it to the first black US President. But it must have been clear to them that it was now or never.
