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Submission + - Ruling by Secret US Court Allegedly Reduces Spying

Submitted by conspirator57
conspirator57 writes: TFA http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la- na-spying2aug02,0,5813563.story?coll=la-home-cente r states that the US Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (a court that no citizen can establish standing to appear before) has ruled against Executive requests for so-called "basket warrants" as violating the 4th amendment to the Constitution, namely that such warrants do not meet the clearly expressed criteria in the second half of the amendment. To accomplish this they must have looked startlingly like British general warrants which were the original motivation for the 4th amendment. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warrant_(law) for more.

TFA is very sympathetic to the Executive branch, going on to depict ways in which we're all less safe because of this ruling. Personally, I feel safer with more rulings like this one. Just wish the process were a bit more transparent.

"The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."
The Courts

Submission + - Dell Punishes Workers By Closing Call Center

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: After employees at Dell's Roseburg, Oregon call center filed a lawsuit about violations of state and federal labor law Dell responds by closing the call center and stating "the closure has nothing to do with a lawsuit filed by employees of the Roseburg center in February". This act in itself seems to be another violation of labor law due the closure being a retaliatory act.
Power

Submission + - Electrostatic Magnet Motor Made from Kitchen Stuff (peswiki.com)

Submitted by
Sterling Allan
Sterling Allan writes: "Scott F. Hall, an associate professor of art at the University of Central Florida, was tinkering around with stuff in his kitchen and came up with a continuously rotating mechanism that appears to harness electrostatic energy from the atmosphere — or something. The gizmo spins at around 80 revolutions per minute, and is constructed from a can of dog food, tooth picks, refrigerator magnets, a pencil, spring clips, and a small corner cut out of a box. Three toothpics are formed into an inverted tripod and spin atop the fourth toothpick held vertical by a spring clip that has magnets situated around the base. A graphite pencil is held over the the point of the inverted tripod via another spring clip sitting atop the can of dog food. Hall (suitable last name) posted a video at YouTube showing the gizmo running. The next day, he posted another video showing a round paperweight spinning (though not continuously) via magnets placed on its perimeter, with magnets on two adjoining dog food cans."
Microsoft

Submission + - Mac users' Internet experience to remain seamless 2

Submitted by thefickler
thefickler writes: Mac users will continue to see the Internet as it was intended, thanks to the renewal of a font licensing agreement between Microsoft and Apple. At TypeCon2007 Microsoft and Apple announced they have renewed their font licensing agreement, giving Apple users ongoing use of the latest versions of Microsoft Windows core fonts.

Back in 1996 Microsoft started the "Core fonts for the Web" initiative. The idea of this initiative was to create a a standard pack of fonts that would be present on all or most computers, allowing web pages to be displayed consistently on different computers. While the project was terminated in 2002, some of the fonts defined as core fonts for the web have gone on to become known as "web safe fonts", and are therefore widely used by Internet developers.
Linux Business

Submission + - How would you sell Linux?

Submitted by
DF5JT
DF5JT writes: "Imagine: You have at your hand a fully equipped office, a staff of two telesales agents and 3 months to show that Linux in itself is a product that you can sell. Your goal is to penetrate SMBs that usually run Windows on all their servers and desktops and try to convince them that Linux is a veritable alternative, both from a technical and financial side.

How would you do it, who would you talk to and specifically, what would you try to sell them on the phone?

Would you mention Vista and its downsides? Would you mention terms like vendor-lock-in, proprietary standards and Trojan attacks? Or would you stick to Linux' advantages and emphasize Open Source as a development model, costs of licensing and Open Standards?

Tell me your view, because I'd like to learn about your experience, since I have now at my hand a fully equipped office, a staff of two telesales agents and 3 months to show that Linux in itself is a product that I can sell."
Privacy

Bush Claims Mail Can Be Opened Without Warrant 714

Posted by kdawson from the gentlemen-don't-do-that dept.
don_combatant writes to note that President Bush claimed new powers to search US mail without a warrant. He made this claim in a "signing statement" at the time he signed a postal overhaul bill into law on December 20. The signing statement directly contradicts part of the bill he signed, which explicitly reinforces protections of first-class mail from searches without a court's approval. According to the article, "A top Senate Intelligence Committee aide promised a review of Bush's move."
Google

Submission + - Google extends Checkout free processing

Submitted by
JHU
JHU writes: "Google has extended free payment processing for Checkout merchants until December 31, 2007. There is also a rumor about Google's upcoming discount promotion — $10 off purchases of $10 or more. Good news for major retailers that have Google savvy customers."
Music

Submission + - RIAA Admits 70-cents price is "in the range

Submitted by
NewYorkCountryLawyer
NewYorkCountryLawyer writes: "In its professed battle to protect the "confidentiality" of its 70-cents-per-download wholesale price, the RIAA has now publicly filed papers in UMG v. Lindor in which it admits that the 70-cents-per-download price claimed by defendant is "in the range".(pdf)(Pages 6 & 7). Are they really concerned about the confidentiality of this exceedingly well known fact, or are they just trying to keep the cost of defending their lawsuits high?"
Microsoft

Submission + - MSN Live Search Censores FSF criticism on vista

Submitted by
scenestar
scenestar writes: "In an attempt to hide the negative side of vista MSFT's Live search has filtered out all direct links to badvista.org

From the badvista article:
"climate pointed out that a search for BadVista-related terms using Microsoft's live.com engine was producing rather...unexpected results. Many posts and pages turn up that link to BadVista.org, but no results from badvista.org itself appear."

Read the rest on badvista.org

This is perhaps another good reason to switch to one of their search competitors"
Biotech

Submission + - Life in Sulphuric Acid. The first Earthling?

Submitted by
Maikel_NAI
Maikel_NAI writes: "A microorganism found by a group of scientist in a Russian area, is able to survive in sulphuric acid, feeding on some kind of pyrite. This fact suggest this creature has not evolve since the very first moments of life's appearance on Earth, and thus this could be the most ancient form of life in our planet. The paper, published in the last issue of the journal Nature, says that this microorganism, called Ferroplasma acidiphilum had arose at the begining of the Earth formation, more than 5 billion years ago."
Software

Submission + - Outsourcer Luxoft Issues Industry Predictiions

Submitted by
Anonymous Coward
Anonymous Coward writes: "Luxoft, one of Russia's leading providers of IT outsourcing development and services to companies like IBM, Dell, Deutsche Bank, T-Mobile and others, today issued its predictions for the IT outsourcing industry in 2007. Looking at Agile technology, retention, security and other key topics, the predictions are available at http://www.luxoft.com/press/press_release_article. html?id=715."
Software

Submission + - Text based UI: which one?

Submitted by JHWH
JHWH writes: I've been asked to design and implement a management software system with text based user interface as the replacement of an older one running on AS/400.
Despite my attempts towards a web UI, the customer is actually willing to have a text based UI.
The main reasons are the need for a very low bandwidth and the ability to run on serial terminals. All this in the 21st century!
Host systems will be Linux, the language will be C or C++.
I already thought about the use of text based browsers like lynx or links. But I fear user interaction could be less powerful that a plain text interface.
So now I have to wipe the dust away from my ncurses manual.
Or is there anyone suggesting something more effective?
Microsoft

Submission + - Microsoft's Enchanted Office Marketing Campaign

Submitted by 3-D
3-D writes: And you thought the dinosaurs were bad? Take a look at this study in horrible, trite, dead-on-arrival marketing campaigns. Certainly hope they're not going to pay good money to get mini versions of that slapped in magazines. Oh, and how about that simple layout that doesn't even work in Firefox? Ow. Just ow.
Software

Submission + - How to Mashup Mileage for Tax Relief

Submitted by
Kligmond
Kligmond writes: "If, like most of us, you have no idea how many business-related miles you drove last year, check out Mileage Calculator, a mashup tool designed to quickly construct or reconstruct those elusive year-end mileage reports tax preparers clamor for each year.

Track Your Calendar, Track Your Mileage

Created by Recursive Function, developers of the popular Ponyfish RSS tool, Mileage Calculator uses Google Maps and your Google Calendar to pull your mileage records into a .csv file that can be downloaded into a spreadsheet. For more about the developer visit adeolonoh.com"

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