If not a hoax, then it would seem that DHS/ICS may have overstepped it's authority or is outside it's jurisdiction and is stepping on the Secret Service's and especially the FBI's toes.

The FBI still has primary jurisdiction in copyrights violation cases, IIRC.

What may have happened here is that someone went to the FBI to shutdown the sites, was denied, then went agency shopping and found the DHS/ICS eager to make their internet bones.

This seems somewhat like the FBI and Secret Service inept & incompetent Keystone Kops actions from the 90's when the DMCA was enacted, up to and including going after innocent parties, without evidence, without investigation, based solely on hearsay.

If they are in fact acting outside their jurisdiction, I would hope that EFF and other attorneys give the DHS and ICS a justly deserved roasting in court. But the people who induced the DHS/ICS to do this would get off scot-free, even if they lied to DHS/ICS.

Does anyone remember that little ball of hot stuff at the core of the planet and how it's producing various elements and compounds? Does anyone remember that carbon is one of the elements produced in abundance? Does anyone remember that compounds from the core move out to the surface, combining with other elements (such as oxygen) along the way?

With that nuclear furnace fusioning/fissioning away at the core (and which happens to be the source of carbon, oxygen, etc. for this planet) why would there be a need for atmospheric carbon to somehow go below the ground? Why wait for plant material to get buried underground?

It's not politically correct to mention this and it is Green heresy but a fact is a fact, even when it goes against whatever "correct" thinking is currently fashionable.

Once again, Army genius comes up with a half-assed and dangerous solution.

From the article:
"The power lines that run from the street to a house usually consist of one insulated wire that carries electricity to the house, paired with a bare wire that carries electricity away to complete a circuit."

uh, what? I haven't seen any overhead drops that consist of less than two insulated cables and one bare one to carry the split-220 to the typical home, small business, street lamp, etc.

If this device cuts into both insulated wires, there will be fireworks and they will blow any "covert op" they may be indulging in.

There's the wrong way, the right way and the Army way. This is so not the right way.

Is this the kind of "free advertising" you would want for your small magazine?

They're going to be too far in debt responding to lawsuits from everyone whose works they've lifted without permission.

Also, the website with the original author's article has already been disabled due to excessive traffic. it was apparently pre-slashdotted.

The article was copied, not just the recipe(s). The article is copyrighted.

And lately:

Cooks Source website name won't resolve in DNS.

It's a twitter trending topic: http://twitter.com/#search?q=Cooks%20Source

it's on the Guardian: http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/pda/2010/nov/04/cooks-source-copyright-complaint

The Cooks Source website's domain name doesn't resolve and The Guardian has an article on the situation:

This is not a civil matter of fraud, breach of contract or any such thing. It is criminal as the civil complaint makes clear. The goal of the school was in fact to conduct a criminal and covert program of spying on their students outside of the school. If there were no criminal intent, why was it kept secret? Schools are not exempt from criminal laws regarding this no matter what their intentions. I doubt very much that there was a "lack of criminal intent". Anyway, it is irrelevant. It is a tenet of law that ignorance is no excuse and these people, being "responsible adults", could reasonably be expected to know or at least presume that it is illegal as well as unethical to spy on others. They admitted that they knew it was wrong. Are they above the law? Are they "special"? Let's not try to explain it away and excuse criminal behaviour with talk of good and noble intentions. Too many crimes are committed under the guise of "good intentions".

What most likely happened is that their unions called in a favor and got the government to drop the case. These privileged elites get a free pass. No non-union individual would ever be given the same consideration as shown here even if it were purely accidental and the images went directly to /dev/null.

Businesses resist the new dollar coins because they are still easily confused with quarters and the costs of accomodating the new coin is high. People who handle money all day do not stop and look at the coins every single time they make change. They go by feel and location. It will cost businesses money to adapt to new coins: They will have to change their cash drawers, coin counting and dispensing devices and eat the costs of mistaking dollar coins for quarters.

The brilliant political decision to make the newdollar the same (or closely similar) size as the quarter is real-world moronic and because it is such a brilliant political move we're stuck with it regardless of the real-world consequences. If the size were different and it were clearly distinguishable from every other coin it may have a better chance of being adopted. Until then don't expect businesses to readily accept them even if the dollar bill goes away.

Law enforcement will look for evidence to win a case. They will NOT look for evidence that may lose their case. It will not be considered. In this context, anything goes, even cached stuff that you might not even have ever seen, which put there by malicious links or by prefetch. You are presumed guilty by law enforcement and it's their job to create evidence to support that presumption.

Evidence extraction can be destructive or, at best, may only alter the original evidence. There have been plenty of cases where collecting evidence has altered the original data or destroyed it. In some cases, the evidence did not exist until it was created by buggy or amateurishly designed analysis or forensics software, or by incompetent or just plain malicious people. Too often, law enforcement believes that "an exact copy or image" of the original data is all that is necessary. There is only their word that it is an "exact copy or image" of the original. That means that the defendant, or victim in such a case, has no way to refute the "evidence" collected.

It is too easy to plant stuff on any PC. Absolutely no password or login of any kind is required and it can be done easily without leaving any trace. People are too naive to imagine that it's possible for anyone to have access to your PC or put crap on it without your knowledge. Fortunately, the vast majority of people are also far too naive to think about planting stuff on someone's PC. That will change as such cases become more frequent, more public, and more people become more savvy about computers.

By the way, with regard to "creating evidence", there are training programs and seminars for law enforcement, forensics people and prosecutors that are all about creating evidence and selling it to a court and jury. "Evidence Creation". Scary, no?

Rendered down to it's essence, this story is: "It's OK to spy on other people but not on me."

so is that really news?

Yes?

Amazing.

The article begins with "Paul Ockenden calls for Tele Atlas to use Street View to take a look at the mapping errors he's reported - and then fix them"

But I've noticed that even Street View is in error. A certain address may be close to where it really is one day but off by a half mile or more the next. So what good is it to correct errors in Tele Atlas maps with errors in Street View?

Both systems have bizarre numbering methods it seems: Since when does the 3600 block sit between the 2600 block and the 2700 block of some road which ends at 3520?

Where I am, I have the dubious privilege of directing people to the correct destinations when their GPS and Google Maps directions get them lost. Every day a lot of truckers also get lost, given the wrong directions by their GPS and are forced to make u-turns in the middle of the barely-wide-enough highway to get back on the correct route. Luckily they have their CB radios to get sorted out.

If Tele Atlas and Google Maps are depending on each other and if one's data is bad, then it propagates to the other, with obvious results. And I don't get why addresses drift around from day to day. Stuff that! A Thomas Guide remains one of the most accurate street level maps available (here in the US). It's far more reliable and it costs less than a GPS.

What with all the business lost by Microsoft to the legit open source and free software vendors, it's a sure bet that Microsoft will again send out it's pushers to pass out free candy and dope (copies of windoze and developer tools/suites/whatever) to all the young kids, get them hooked on windoze stuff then start charging them for it. That's what happened years ago during the Win3.xx dayz. Ruined a lot of lives, left a lot of programmers with bitter and broken spirits, a lot of good apps went bad, a lot of people suffered with crapware, standards and users were violated, and a lot of money was wasted.

As a recovered, former Windoze programmer, I say that the youth of today should save their health and sanity, and Just Say No!

And perhaps they will reinforce the rule about such brainfarts not being patentable, as well.