Become a fan of Slashdot on Facebook

 



Forgot your password?
typodupeerror
×
Crime

Student Googles Himself, Finds He's Accused of Murder 184

University of Florida student Zachary Garcia was more than a little surprised to find out he was wanted for murder after Googling his name. It turns out the police were looking for a different man but had mistakenly used Garcia's photo. From the article: "Investigators originally released a driver's license photo of Zachary Garcia — spelled with an 'A' — but it was Zachery Garcia — spelled with an 'E'— who was charged in connection with the crime."

Comment Re:Overtaxed Senior Citizens (Score 1) 377

We already gave, to our country, and to yours, in the cause of peace and freedom, by the sacrifice of our bodies, in wounds and injuries racked up in wars and conflicts most civilians have not even learned of, because they are still classified. My taxes add up to a rate of 38%. That is a really high sacrifice for someone living close to the poverty line.

Comment Re:Overtaxed Senior Citizens (Score 1) 377

we each lived in 2BR small townhouses, that we couldn't sell in this economy, when we bought a short sale that was big enough for us. This economy really killed it for selling at prices near the mortgages... I drive a 1993 F150. Paid for. You have no self-respect, nor any integrity, to judge others by your own pathetic low self-esteem. That is why no one gives a fuck about you, sorry @sshole! Now, you may go collect your kharma, bad as it is, you miserable idiot fuckface! Hit the dirt and give me twenty! Oh, your fat belly in the way? Veterans including we disabled Vets, fought, some died, and many of us carry our lifetime wounds that have not healed, so that you can denigrate others? Why don't you, and your sick leftists, just find a hole and go die in it!

Comment Re:Blame the thief, government! (Score 1) 377

You have NOT read the U.S. Constitution, Article 1, Section 8! "The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States; but all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States; To borrow money on the credit of the United States;" States may also be creative in imposing on the citizens to provide support. But, all have a duty to govern wisely, spend with thrift! We all have the power to purchase across state lines, where States may NOT interfere, such as in interstate commerce!

Comment Overtaxed Senior Citizens (Score 0, Offtopic) 377

Both retired military veterans, now 60+, we own 3 homes, and the taxes exceed $5,000 per year, in Florida! Then, we have a 7.5% local and state sales tax!!! The government (State, Federal, & Local) are sloppy wealthy, sucking taxes from our pensions, and our work, and wants more??? Let's stop them spending likd a drunken sailor! It is well past time to throw all the scoundrels out, impose the FAIRTAX that repeals the illegal 16th Amendment to the Constitution, which has NEVER been ratified! Eliminate the huge army of goons that comprise the IRS! Fairtax fully funds Medicare, Social Security, the Federal government, PLUS, makes the Criminal Mafia and drug dealers pay over $1.5 trillion into the tax system! You must be corrupt to want to keep the current system that criminalizes little old ladies, buys votes, supports the 100,000 lobbyists, with corruption, bribes, and promotes voter fraud!
Patents

Tandberg Attempts To Patent Open Source Code 187

An anonymous reader writes "As if the current situation with software patents wasn't bad enough, it appears a new phenomenon is emerging: companies are watching the commit logs of open source projects for ideas to patent. In this case, Tandberg filed a patent that was step-by-step identical to an algorithm developed by the x264 project — a mere two months after the original commit. The particular algorithm is a useful performance optimization in a wide variety of video encoders, including Theora."
IBM

Coder Accuses IBM of Patenting His Work 249

ttsiod writes "Back in 2001, I coded HeapCheck, a GPL library for Windows (inspired by ElectricFence) that detected invalid read/write accesses on any heap allocations at runtime — thus greatly helping my debugging sessions. I published it on my site, and got a few users who were kind enough to thank me — a Serbian programmer even sent me $250 as a thank you (I still have his mails). After a few years, Microsoft included very similar technology in the operating system itself, calling it PageHeap. I had more or less forgotten this stuff, since for the last 7 years I've been coding for UNIX/Linux, where valgrind superseded Efence/dmalloc/etc. Imagine my surprise when yesterday, Googling for references to my site, I found out that the technology I implemented, of runtime detection of invalid heap accesses, has been patented in the States, and to add insult to injury, even mentions my site (via a non-working link to an old version of my page) in the patent references! After the necessary 'WTFs' and 'bloody hells' I thought this merits (a) a Slashdotting, and (b) a set of honest questions: what should I do about this? I am not an American citizen, but the 'inventors' of this technology (see their names in the top of the patent) have apparently succeeded in passing this ludicrous patent in the States. If my code doesn't count as prior art, Bruce Perens's Efence (which I clearly state my code was inspired from) is at least 12 years prior! Suggestions/cursing patent trolls most welcome."
Music

RIAA Now Blames Journalists For Its Piracy Trouble 367

adeelarshad82 writes "RIAA executives have written a letter to PCMag expressing 'deep disappointment' for publishing an article on Limewire Alternatives. While the article includes a disclaimer from PCMag that it does not condone the download of copyrighted or illegal material, RIAA executives believe that 'PCMag is slyly encouraging people to steal more music.' The letter goes on to ask PCMag to retract the article from their website. PCMag's Editor in Chief has responded to the letter by stating that music industry's charges remain groundless and that it reeks of desperation. He points out that PCMag covers all aspects of technology, which includes the products, services and activities that some groups and individuals might deem objectionable. He defends publishing the article by saying 'We covered these Limewire alternatives because we knew they would be of interest to our readers. We understand that some might use them to illegally download content. We cannot encourage that action, but also cannot stop it. Reporting on the existence of these services does neither.' PCMag has also refused to retract the article."
The Media

Righthaven To Explain Why Reposting Isn't Fair Use 169

Ponca City, We love you writes "TechDirt reports that a judge has asked Righthaven to explain why a non-profit organization reposting an entire article isn't fair use. The case involves the Center for Intercultural Organizing of Portland, Oregon, which was sued by Righthaven in August after an entire 33-paragraph Review-Journal story about Las Vegas immigrants was posted on the center's website, crediting the Review-Journal. The nonprofit says it was founded by Portland-area immigrants and refugees to combat widespread anti-Muslim sentiment after 9/11 and it works to strengthen immigrant and refugee communities through education, civic engagement, organizing and mobilization and does not charge subscription fees or derive any income from its website. The interesting thing is that the defendant in this case didn't even raise the fair use issue. It was the judge who brought it up, suggesting that the Nevada judges are being inundated with hundreds of Righthaven cases, and that Righthaven has already lost once in a case that was found to be fair use so judges may want to set a precedent to clear their dockets."
Transportation

Bruce Schneier vs. the TSA 741

An anonymous reader writes "Bruce Schneier has posted a huge recap of the controversy over TSA body scanners, including more information about the lawsuit he joined to ban them. There's too much news to summarize, but it covers everything from Penn Jillette's and Dave Barry's grope stories, to Israeli experts who say this isn't needed and hasn't ever stopped a bomb, to the three-year-old girl who was traumatized by being groped and much, much more." Another reader passed along a related article, which says, "Congressman Ron Paul lashed out at the TSA yesterday and introduced a bill aimed at stopping federal abuse of passengers. Paul’s proposed legislation would pave the way for TSA employees to be sued for feeling up Americans and putting them through unsafe naked body scanners."
Red Hat Software

Red Hat Releases RHEL 6 228

alphadogg writes "Red Hat on Wednesday released version 6 of its Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) distribution. 'RHEL 6 is the culmination of 10 years of learning and partnering,' said Paul Cormier, Red Hat's president of products and technologies, in a webcast announcing the launch. Cormier positioned the OS both as a foundation for cloud deployments and a potential replacement for Windows Server. 'We want to drive Linux deeper into every single IT organization. It is a great product to erode the Microsoft Server ecosystem,' he said. Overall, RHEL 6 has more than 2,000 packages, and an 85 percent increase in the amount of code from the previous version, said Jim Totton, vice president of Red Hat's platform business unit. The company has added 1,800 features to the OS and resolved more than 14,000 bug issues."
Input Devices

Kinect Hacked, Adafruit Bounty Won 262

scharkalvin writes "Adafruit has announced a winner to their bounty for an open source driver for the MS Kinect. From the article: 'We have verified that it works and have a screenshot from another member in the hacking community (thanks qdot!) who was also able to use the code. Congrats to Hector! He's running all this on a Linux laptop (his code works with OpenGL) and doesn't even have an Xbox!'" We talked about Adafruit's bounty yesterday.

Slashdot Top Deals

There is no distinction between any AI program and some existent game.

Working...