Catch up on stories from the past week (and beyond) at the Slashdot story archive

 



Forgot your password?
typodupeerror
×
Censorship

Indian Man Charged With Blasphemy For Exposing "Miracle" 796

bhagwad writes "When a statue in Mumbai began to miraculously drip tears, huge crowds began to gather, pray, and collect the water in vials. Sanal Edamaruku has exposed such bogus miracles before, and when he was called in, his investigations showed that it was nothing more than a nearby drainage. The entire investigation was caught on tape. The priests were outraged and demanded an apology. When he refused, a case of 'blasphemy' was registered at the police station and they now want to have him arrested." In related news, today Kuwait's parliament "passed amendments to the Gulf state's penal code stipulating the death penalty for those who curse God, Islam's Prophet Mohammed or his wives." However, they made no change to the penalty for playing a joke national anthem at a sporting event.
Apple

Submission + - Apple claims to have created over 500,000 US jobs (neowin.net)

butilikethecookie writes: There's been a lot of criticism of Apple in the past several weeks about how the company seems to tolerate poor working conditions at the third party factories where devices like the iPhone and iPad are made. Apple has since announced that it is working to hold special audits at those plants to help change and improve the workers' life at those plants. However, those plants are located in overseas locations, mainly in Asia, and some have asked that Apple make more of their products in its home country of the US.

Now, in perhaps in an attempt to do more spin control, Apple has posted up a new page on its official web site that claims the company has been directly or indirectly responsible for creating 514,000 jobs in the US. It cites one study by Analysis Group that claims the company has 47,000 employees in the US. That same study also claims Apple is responsible for creating 257,000 jobs at third party companies, including those that make Apple-based device components, transportation workers, sales jobs and other positions.

In addition, Apple claims that 210,000 jobs have been made in the US as part of the iOS app economy that began with the launch of the iPhone in 2007. Apple adds that it has generated over $4 billion in in royalties to App Store developers (although its likely that some of that money went to developers working outside the US). Apple also claims that the job search web site indeed.com now lists over 5,000 iOS app developer jobs openings.

Submission + - Incompetent People Too Ignorant to Know It (lifeslittlemysteries.com)

GLMDesigns writes: "Researchers tested people and then followed up by asking the subjects how they felt they did.

"For people at the bottom who are really doing badly — those in the bottom 10th or 15th percentile — they think their work falls in the 60th or 55th percentile, so, above average," Dunning told Life's Little Mysteries. The same pattern emerges in tests of people's ability to rate the funniness of jokes, the correctness of grammar, or even their own performance in a game of chess. "People at the bottom still think they're outperforming other people.""

Comment Re:Name revealed (Score 4, Interesting) 890

It's a shame the word "anti-semitic" has been rendered virtually meaningless lately. It used to mean something about hating or discriminating against Jews.

Which in itself is a shame because being Jewish, on it's own, doesn't make one Semitic, and the Hebrew people aren't the only Semitic peoples who get hated and discriminated against. But don't tell an Israeli that. You'll be called anti-semitic.

Google

Submission + - Microsoft can remotely delete Windows 8 apps (itnews.com) 3

tripleevenfall writes: Microsoft will be able to throw a "kill switch" to disable or even remove an app from users' Windows 8 devices, the company revealed in documentation released earlier this week for its upcoming Windows Store.

"In cases where your security is at risk, or where we're required to do so for legal reasons, you may not be able to run apps or access content that you previously acquired or purchased a license for," said Microsoft in the Windows Store terms."If the Windows Store, an app, or any content is changed or discontinued, your data could be deleted or you may not be able to retrieve data you have stored," Microsoft said.

Both Apple and Google can flip such a switch for apps distributed by the iOS App Store and Android Market, respectively.

Submission + - US Supreme Court upholds removal of works from Pub (wsj.com) 2

langelgjm writes: While much of the web is focused on the SOPA and PIPA blackout, supporters of the public domain today quietly lost a protracted struggle that began back in 2001.The Supreme Court, in a 6-2 decision, rejected the argument that Congress did not have the power to convey copyright upon works that were already in the public domain. The suit was originally filed to challenge provisions that the U.S. adopted when signing the TRIPs agreement. Justices Breyer and Alito dissented, arguing that conveyed copyright on already existing works defied the logic of copyright law. Justice Kagan recused herself. The text of the opinions is available here (PDF).

Comment Re:Quote from my friends at Monsanto: (Score 1) 288

The link you provided was to a description of a farmer getting sued for intentionally selecting the modified crops and replanting them to take advantage of the patented improvements.

It wasn't 'his normal crops' at all.

He was saving seeds produced by *his* plants. Monsanto couldn't control their crop and things cross-pollinated? Tough shit for Monsanto. It was his crop that was contaminated by theirs. He has every right to continue using the seeds. As for 'patented improvements', that's a load of horseshit too. They didn't invent anything. That's like design patents, a whole truckload of horseshit.

Slashdot Top Deals

If a thing's worth having, it's worth cheating for. -- W.C. Fields

Working...