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Comment Re:Ahh Slashdot (Score 4, Informative) 550

Your point would make sense if it were at all true that the common description of the law had any legal weight outside of the actual text of the law and the applicable case law. That you can call something the "Was Being Bad" law doesn't mean that's what legal standard is applied by judge or jury. Presumably this description is applicable in New York:

http://law.onecle.com/new-york/penal/PEN0195.05_195.05.html

A reasonable person may disagree with the law or it's exact wording (we are "free" to do so), but don't imply that the title of the law somehow proves a vague catch-all conspiracy.

Submission + - Artist destroyed evidence in fair use lawsuit (msn.com)

smooth wombat writes: As a follow-up to this story, artist Shepard Fairey has now admitted he used the original picture the AP claimed he used as the basis for his iconic red, white and blue image of Obama, underlined with the caption "HOPE" and not a different photo as he initially claimed. Fairey said that he tried to cover up his error by submitting false images and deleting others. As a result, his attorneys have said they intend to withdraw from the case and said the artist had misled them by fabricating information and destroying other material.

At the Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh on Saturday night for the opening of an exhibit of his works, Fairey said that the error should not be viewed as "premeditated and sinister."

Bug

Submission + - Major bug in snow leopard deletes all user data (neowin.net)

inglishmayjer writes: From the article:
"Reports have been cropping up on the Apple Support forums that users have been losing all their data due to a nasty bug in Snow Leopard, Apple's latest Operating System. Many users are reporting that all settings are being reset and most data is gone, according to iTWire."

The issue is caused by logging into a guest account, the user finds "that their account has been fully reset with all data wiped and lost — the account is like a brand new one."

D'oh.

Businesses

Submission + - Is working for the gambling industry a black mark? 5

An anonymous reader writes: I'm a recent university graduate. I and have been offered a software developer position in a company that supplies software to the gambling and betting industry. At first I was very excited about the opportunity. However, a few of my friends have told me that working for the gambling industry will put a permanent black mark on my career as a software developer. I don't know that many people in the industry with experience in hiring. Google has not helped in any way. And everybody else I ask doesn't know. So I'm asking slashdot. In your experience is this true? When you hire developers, is the fact that they worked for a gambling company a big turn off? Also, I'm currently in the UK, but would like the freedom of working in US or somewhere else later on in life. So experience from anywhere in the world is welcome.
Government

G20 Protesters Blasted By "Sound Cannon" 630

aaandre sends word of the use of a "sound cannon" on G20 protesters in Pittsburgh. Only a few hundred protesters took to the streets. The NY Times notes: "City officials said they believed it was the first time the sound cannon had been used publicly." The device projects a narrow beam of extremely annoying sound, at levels that can reach 151 decibels, over a distance of a mile or more. The Guardian notes, "It is feared the sounds emitted are loud enough to damage eardrums and even cause fatal aneurysms." Officials of the company that manufactures the sound cannon say that ear damage is only possible if someone manages to stand directly in front of the device for an extended period.
Bug

Recovery Tool Includes Leak of Palm's WebOS 1.2 43

El Royo writes "Today, Palm leaked version 1.2 of the webOS operating system that powers the Palm Pre. According to PreCentral, the new version was inadvertently included in a recovery tool Palm makes available. New features include support for the forthcoming App Catalog changes, copy and paste from Web sites, improved e-mail search and faster boot times."
Communications

Facial Expressions Are "Not Global" 137

An anonymous reader sends in a BBC report on new research out of Glasgow University, which detected differences in how facial expressions are read between Westerners and East Asians. Using eye tracking, the researchers determined that "people from different cultural groups observe different parts of the face when interpreting expression. East Asians participants tended to focus on the eyes of the other person, while Western subjects took in the whole face, including the eyes and the mouth." Interestingly, the researchers point out that the emoticons used online by the two groups reflect this difference.
Earth

Periodic Table Gets a New, Unnamed Element 461

koavf writes "More than a decade after experiments first produced a single atom of 'super-heavy' element 112, a team of German scientists has been credited with its discovery, but it has yet to be named. The International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry has temporarily named the element ununbium, as 'ununbi' means 'one one two' in Latin; but the team now has the task of proposing its official name." Slashdotium? Taconium? Man, I shoulda gone into science so I could have named something sweet that kids have to memorize in classes.

Comment Summary (Score 1) 262

Sadly this summary has no information at all, provides no description of the issue to be discussed, and provides no content other than links to other sources. Perhaps the submission could have contained:

- A description of the issue at hand
- A reason why an uninformed reader would care about patent royalties at 24-40 dollars (per what?)
- An explicit argument about why this is or is not a good thing

I have been a member of this website for years, and while I am as guilty of not reading the article(s) as the cliche suggest of most readers, I still do so if the summary has some, any, information as to why I should. This summary provides no context whatsoever to evaluate the article's worth nor describes in any way it's content.

Security

Mac OS X Users Vulnerable To Major Java Flaw 306

FruitWorm writes in with word of a vulnerability in Java that has been patched by everyone but Apple. "Security researchers say that Mac OS X users are vulnerable to a critical, 6-month-old, remote vulnerability in Java, a component that is enabled by default in Web browsers on this platform. Julien Tinnes notes that this vulnerability differs from typical Java security flaws in that it is 'a pure Java vulnerability' and doesn't involve any native code. It affected not only Sun's Java but other implementations such as OpenJDK, on multiple platforms, including Linux and Windows. 'This means you can write a 100% reliable exploit in pure Java. This exploit will work on all the platforms, all the architectures and all the browsers,' Julien wrote. This bug was demonstrated during the Pwn2own security challenge this year at CanSecWest, but the details were not made public at that time. Tinnes recommends that Mac OS X users disable Java in their browsers until Apple releases a security update."
Space

Successful Launch of ESA's Herschel and Planck 121

rgarbacz writes "Today at 13:12 GMT, the ESA launched successfully new and long-awaiting spacecraft: Herschel, the infrared telescope with a 3.5m mirror, and Planck, the CMB mapper. The spacecraft were carried by the Ariane-5, which lifted off from Kourou in French Guiana. They will stay in L2 to perform the research. This launch is one of the most expensive and important missions of the European Space Agency. Planck will measure the CMB with an accuracy more than 10 times better than the previous mission, WMAP. Because of this high sensitivity, both spacecraft are cooled to temperatures close to absolute zero by on-board liquid helium; staying in L2 is very helpful to maintain this state. Both spacecraft are designed to observe the Universe at its infancy: Herschel by observing the first stars and galaxies (whichever came first), and Planck by scrutinizing the first photons that were set free, making up the cosmic microwave background radiation."
Handhelds

Submission + - Eclipse Rich Client Platform for mobile Workforce

An anonymous reader writes: The Mobile Workforce Framework project, also known as Maestro, illustrates how many architectural drivers like synchronization, plug-in functionality, and offline support are met by the using the Eclipse RCP. See how easy it is to extend the Eclipse platform to support mobile devices.
Portables

Submission + - My most memorable computer ever... (technologizer.com)

Harry writes: "Everybody has a computer they've owned or used that means more to them than any other--often, but not always, their first. I asked folks to share memories of theirs, and heard from a bunch of Apple and Commodore aficionados as well as owners of Sinclairs, Ataris, Compaqs, and even IMSAI and NeXT boxes. But I'd love to get more memories--especially from folks who loved classics such as the TRS-80 Model 100 and the Kaypro. And, for that matter, from people who loved exotic and/or forgotten computers, too."

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