Comment Re:Not professional (Score 1) 383
In case people don't know what you're referring to, The Star Trek OPs room Gen. Alexander had contractors make while he was in Army Intelligence
Submission + - Canonical to force Linux Mint to license Ubuntu binary packages? (itworld.com) 1
Dega704 writes: DistroWatch has a very disturbing report about Canonical possibly trying to force Linux Mint to license Ubuntu binary packages.
"Clem claims he has been asked by Canonical's legal department to license the binary packages used by Ubuntu. To me this is a scary thought. Ubuntu is a base distribution for many projects, some of them (such as Mint and Kubuntu) are quite successful.
Clem's statement makes me wonder if Canonical has approached other open source projects about licensing the right to access Ubuntu's package repositories. If so, what might follow? Would derivative distributions need to pay to use Canonical's packages? How would Canonical enforce such a policy, with lawyers, by blocking access to the repositories if a user isn't using Genuine Ubuntu? "
"Clem claims he has been asked by Canonical's legal department to license the binary packages used by Ubuntu. To me this is a scary thought. Ubuntu is a base distribution for many projects, some of them (such as Mint and Kubuntu) are quite successful.
Clem's statement makes me wonder if Canonical has approached other open source projects about licensing the right to access Ubuntu's package repositories. If so, what might follow? Would derivative distributions need to pay to use Canonical's packages? How would Canonical enforce such a policy, with lawyers, by blocking access to the repositories if a user isn't using Genuine Ubuntu? "
Canonical Moving Away From GNOME Control Center 208
jones_supa writes "This announcement comes from the ubuntu-desktop mailing list. Due to GNOME Control Center already being a heavily patched version in Ubuntu, Canonical is planning to found their own fork called Unity Control Center. This would be a fork with a limited lifespan and later on they would move to something called Ubuntu System Settings, an in-house project. For now, a PPA has been set up to test the new fork."
Employee Morale Is Suffering At the NSA 841
Hugh Pickens DOT Com writes "Ellen Nakashima reports at the Washington Post that morale has taken a hit at the National Security Agency in the wake of controversy over the agency's surveillance activities and officials are dismayed that President Obama has not visited the agency to show his support. 'It is not clear whether or when Obama might travel the 23 miles up the Baltimore-Washington Parkway to visit Fort Meade, the NSA's headquarters in Maryland,' writes Nakashima, 'but agency employees are privately voicing frustration at what they perceive as White House ambivalence amid the pounding the agency has taken from critics.' Though Obama has asserted that the NSA's collection of virtually all Americans' phone records is lawful and has saved lives, the administration has not endorsed legislation that would codify it. And his recent statements suggest Obama thinks some of the NSA's activities should be constrained. 'The agency, from top to bottom, leadership to rank and file, feels that it is had no support from the White House even though it's been carrying out publicly approved intelligence missions,' says Joel Brenner, NSA inspector general from 2002 to 2006. 'They feel they've been hung out to dry, and they're right.' Former officials note how President George W. Bush paid a visit to the NSA in January 2006, in the wake of revelations by the New York Times that the agency engaged in a counterterrorism program of warrantless surveillance on U.S. soil beginning after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. 'Bush came out and spoke to the workforce, and the effect on morale was tremendous,' Brenner said. 'There's been nothing like that from this White House.' Morale is 'bad overall' says another former NSA official. 'It's become very public and very personal. Literally, neighbors are asking people, 'Why are you spying on Grandma?'"
Comment Re:Median or Mean is not the Individual (Score 1) 509
You completely missed the point. The example of the soldiers was about staistics. No-one was saying german soldiers are better genetically than Americans. The point is that the superiority of the German soldiers (whatever the cause) was real and substintial, even though the ranges in performance overlapped.
Facebook Patents Inferring Income of Users 129
theodp writes "Among the patents granted to Facebook this week by the USPTO is one for Inferring Household Income for Users of a Social Networking System. 'For example,' Facebook explains, 'an assumption might be made about a user that reads CNN.com and nytimes.com every day that the user is in a higher income bracket than another user that only reads TMZ.com and PerezHilton.com on the theory that a user who reads newspapers might be assumed to make more money than a user who only reads celebrity gossip blogs.' Advertisements such as those for travel packages, cars, and home mortgages, Facebook adds, 'are targeted to users based on income bracket,' which might also be inferred by 'gathering and analyzing different types of information about a user's geographic location.' Hey, what could go wrong?"
German Court Invalidates Microsoft FAT Patent 192
walterbyrd sends this news from Techworld:
"A Microsoft storage patent that was used to get a sales ban on products from Google-owned Motorola Mobility in Germany has been invalidated by the German Federal Patent Court. Microsoft's FAT (File Allocation Table) patent, which concerns a 'common name space for long and short filenames' was invalidated on Thursday, a spokeswoman for the Federal Patent Court said in an email Friday. She could not give the exact reasons for the court's decision before the written judicial decision is released, which will take a few weeks."
Trans-Pacific Partnership Includes Unwanted Elements of SOPA 129
New submitter Error27 writes "Last month Wikileaks leaked a draft of the Trans-Pacific Partnership treaty. Here is Congresswoman Zoe Lofgren's response to the leaked documents. She points out that there several troubling issues with the trade agreement. It locks countries into extremely long copyright terms. It limits fair use. It includes DRM provisions which would make it illegal to unlock your cell phone. These laws come from the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) which Americans already rejected."
Elsevier Going After Authors Sharing Their Own Papers 259
David Gerard writes "Elsevier, in final desperation mode, is going after authors sharing their own papers online. Academia.edu has told several researchers that Elsevier 'is currently upping the ante in its opposition to academics sharing their own papers online.' This is the sounds of a boycott biting."
Comment Re:Path finding. (Score 1) 509
Apparently, if someone disagrees with feminist dogma they must be a misogynist!
Comment Re:The differences between genders... (Score 1) 509
> Lewontin's fallacy
This.
Amid all the wishful thinking and acts of imagination fueled by ideology, a voice of reason.
Comment Re:Median or Mean is not the Individual (Score 2, Insightful) 509
> The difference in genetic makeup between the average male and the average female is LESS than the difference between one individual and another individual.
No that is a myth based on bad statistics. Sure there are outliers but the average differences between the sexes are much greater than within the sexes when you look across the whole range of eg personality dimensions.
An example: in WWII it is universally acknowledged that the German soldiers were abut 40% more effective that those from the US. That is, with the same equipment and tactical advantages, you would need more than 40% more US soldiers than Germans to win a battle. The gap to English, French and Italians was even higher.
Yet, the worst German battalion was worse than the best US battalion. So the extreme of the range within the German army was wider than the average difference between the US and German soldiers. This in spite of the existence of large and consistent differences.
A lot of people in this thread are unhappy with the truth: while there are individual exceptions **there are large and consistent differences between men and women**.
The existence of neuroplasticity does not negate this. We also have muscular plasticity - if you do weightlifting you will get stronger. However men are still on average a lot stronger than women.
Comment Re:The differences between genders... (Score 2, Insightful) 509
This is not true. The differences between the sexes are greater than the average differences between individuals. Some researchers have tried to obfuscate this fact by taking differences one at a time, rather than holistically. When you do a multi-factorial analysis of differences between the sexes versus the average differences between individuals, the sexes are clearly different. This is the case for example with strength and endurance, also with personality traits.
I am perfectly happy that if, eg a woman wants to be a physicist, then all power to her. However it is not realistic to expect that 50% of people in such fields will be women. This recognition is *not* the same thing as "enforc"ing social roles.
Comment Well, it's a start... (Score 1) 104
As I see it, the FSF's biggest problem is that their obsession with "not-proprietary" actually seems to overshadow their focus on "legally free".
However, at least this list has a couple of actual things on it that actually would be generous gifts (Heck, yeah, if somebody bought me that 3D printer, I'd cope with waiting a week or two after christmas to get it, and a nice laptop computer would always be appreciated). I was half-expecting it to be ALL "Give the FSF money and tell then you did it for them!"
Optimist that I am, I actually clicked hoping for a list of hackable routers, toys, phones, etc. Silly me.
Code.org Wants Participating Students' Data For 7 Years 90
theodp writes "As part of its plan to improve computer science education in the U.S., the Mark Zuckerberg and Bill Gates-backed Code.org is asking school districts to sign a contract calling for Code.org to receive 'longitudinal student achievement data' for up to seven academic years in return for course materials, small teacher stipends, and general support. The Gates Foundation is already facing a backlash from the broader academic community over attempts to collect student data as part of its inBloom initiative. The Code.org contract also gives the organization veto power over the district teachers selected to participate in the Code.org program, who are required to commit to teaching in the program for a minimum of two school years."
