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The Courts

Student Satirist Gets 3 Months; the Judge, Likely More 689

Posted by timothy from the but-everyone-else-in-pa-is-clean dept.
ponraul writes "When Judge Mark A. Ciavarella Jr., 58, sentenced Hillary Transue, 17, on a harassment charge stemming from a MySpace parody of her high school's assistant principal, Hillary expected to be let off with a stern lecture; instead, the Wilkes-Barre, PA area teen got three months in a commercially operated juvenile detention center. In a reversal of fortune, Ciavarella and his colleague, Judge Conahan, 56, find themselves trying to plea-bargain an 87-month sentence in Federal correctional facilities relating to a kick-back scheme that netted the pair $2.6 Million and PA Child Care 5000 inmates." True poetic justice would be for these corrupt, callous judges to serve their sentences in the same kind of environment to which they were happy to dispatch juvenile defendants.
Mozilla

Submission + - Linux Firefox Crunched by Windows Version (tuxradar.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Linux is often touted as being faster and slimmer than Windows, and given the bloat-fest that is Vista, it's hard to argue that point. But what about for web performance? These benchmarks don't make for happy reading if you're a Linux fan: Firefox on Windows is considerably faster than the Linux version. They're the stock versions of the browser, reflecting the out-of-the-box experience that users will have. Maybe GCC needs some more work on the optimization front...
First Person Shooters (Games)

First Doom 4 Production Shots Revealed 136

Posted by Soulskill from the bring-a-flashlight dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Actor Brad Hawkins has been tapped to do motion-capture work for Doom 4, and revealed that the game features the military and civilians fighting side by side. Does this mean the game is set on Earth for sure? GGL Wire has an interview with Hawkins and a selection of production shots. '[Filmmaker Mark Bristol] was very specific on the civilians having a certain personality and the military characters having a separate one as well. The body language of the civilians is less, well, "trained." They carry their guns in a looser fashion and are a little sloppier when they run, a little more freestyle. The military characters are sharp as razors, with very swift moves, exact hand positioning and can turn on a dime.'" This follows news from last month that British novelist Graham Joyce was brought in to develop the story for the game.

Comment Re:And... (Score 1) 781

by pejyel (#26745807) Attached to: Ubuntu Wipes Windows 7 In Benchmarks

Has it occurred to you that when Microsoft bundles those applications they get sued to pieces and end up paying billions in fines to the European antitrust extortionists^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H regulators? If you approve of those verdicts and fines, then you cannot simultaneously criticize Microsoft for forcing you to install all those things. Approving of these fines means simply that we accept (or rather demand) the inconveniences they inflict.

Then let them at least provide a way to install and update those programs easily or efficiently - fetching them one by one is certainly not.
I definitely do not miss the days where I had to keep backups of basic softwares and drivers.
Space

Sizzling Weather On a Dive-Bombing Planet 57

Posted by timothy from the much-sexier-after-computer-enhancement dept.
The Bad Astronomer writes "A massive planet orbiting the star HD 80606 is on a roller-coaster orbit: it dive bombs the star, in just 55 days dropping from over 120 million km to just 4 million km from the star's surface! Astronomers used the Spitzer Space Telescope to observe the heat from the planet as it gets blasted by its star, and used that data to make a beautiful computer-modeled image of what the planet must look like. Their results: an ube-rviolent storm that acts as if a bomb were exploded in the planet's atmosphere."
Music

Report Claims 95% of Music Downloads Are Illegal 331

Posted by Soulskill from the seems-low dept.
Un pobre guey writes "The International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) press release claims that 95% of music file downloads in 2008, an estimated 40 billion files, were illegal. Oddly enough, digital music sales are up: 'The digital music business internationally saw a sixth year of expansion in 2008, growing by an estimated 25 per cent to US$3.7 billion in trade value. Digital platforms now account for around 20 per cent of recorded music sales, up from 15 per cent in 2007. Recorded music is at the forefront of the online and mobile revolution, generating more revenue in percentage terms through digital platforms than the newspaper (4%), magazine (1%) and film industries (4%) combined... Despite these developments, the music sector is still overshadowed by the huge amount of unlicensed music distributed online. Collating separate studies in 16 countries over a three-year period, IFPI estimates over 40 billion files were illegally file-shared in 2008, giving a piracy rate of around 95 per cent.'"

Comment Re:Switching to Windows (Score 5, Insightful) 290

by pejyel (#26479589) Attached to: Virus Infection Hits UK's Ministry of Defense, Including Warships
Actually the article you're linking to only refers to the nuclear submarines
and the article doesn't tell whether this infection affected them as well.

Still, I hope this gives second thoughts to any people in charge
who considering to "spare money" by installing Windows on such sensitive systems...

Comment Re:Switching to Windows (Score 5, Interesting) 290

by pejyel (#26479565) Attached to: Virus Infection Hits UK's Ministry of Defense, Including Warships
And it took hardly a month till they got infected...
FTA:

Since 6 Jan 09 the performance of the MOD IT systems in a number of areas was affected by a virus. Immediate action was taken to isolate the problem to stop the virus from spreading. This meant that some people were without regular IT access (i.e. email, internet). There have been no infections detected on any networks with sensitive information.

Privacy

Wiretapping Program Ruled Legal 575

Posted by CmdrTaco from the can-we-rule-the-ruling-illegal dept.
BuhDuh writes "The New York Times is carrying a story concerning that well known bastion of legal authority, the 'Foreign Intelligence Surveillance' court, which has ruled that the National Security Agency's warrantless eavesdropping program was perfectly legal. It says, 'A federal intelligence court, in a rare public opinion, is expected to issue a major ruling validating the power of the president and Congress to wiretap international phone calls and intercept e-mail messages without a court order, even when Americans' private communications may be involved, according to a person with knowledge of the opinion.'"
The Internet

Germany Legislates For Mandatory Web Filters 309

Posted by CmdrTaco from the i-got-a-finger-you-can-filter dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Germany's Minister for Families has announced a legislative initiative to force ISPs to implement a government-mandated block list (in English), which will be updated daily. The BKA (Germany's equivalent of the FBI) will be in charge of generating and maintaining the list. As usual, this is being brought in under the 'fight child porn' guise. The minister is quoted as saying: 'We must not water down the problem' in reply to being challenged that this law and technology could be used to censor other content. She then went on to say: 'I can't know what wishes and plans future governments will develop.' She has agreed the principle of the legislation with the interior minister and the technology minister, which in German coalition government terms means it's pretty much a done deal."
Medicine

Why Climbers Die On Mount Everest 417

Posted by timothy from the failure-to-be-born-sherpas dept.
Science Daily reports that researchers have conducted the first detailed analysis of deaths during expeditions to the summit of Mt. Everest. They found that most deaths occur during descents from the summit in the so-called "death zone" above 8,000 meters, and also identified factors that appear to be associated with a greater risk of death, particularly symptoms of high-altitude cerebral edema. The big surprise that the data indicate those deaths aren't primarily from avalanches or falling ice, as had long been believed.

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