Comment staggering? (Score 1) 342
> 626,638 SMS messages, a figure described by a federal judge as 'staggering.'
The judge obviously doesn't have teenage daughters. Thank god they don't charge me by the message these days.
Comment Re:Like Obama? (Score 1) 430
Well, other than that... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ExWfh6sGyso
Comment Re:Yeah! (Score 4, Funny) 530
In fact, the greatest damage moderates and left-wing could do to the right wing extremists is to invite them to freely speak their minds. The resulting spew of homophobic, sexist, and racist non-sequiturs would likely shift most people just a bit to the left.
And somewhere in suburban Missouri, Todd Akin gets as the strange feeling that someone on slashdot is talking about him.
Petraeus Case Illustrates FBI Authority To Read Email 228
An anonymous reader writes "Back in April, we discussed how the 1986 Electronic Communications Privacy Act says email that has resided on a server for more than six months can be considered abandoned. The recent investigation of General Petraeus brings this issue to light again, and perhaps to a broader audience. Under current U.S. law, federal authorities need only a subpoena approved by a federal prosecutor — not a judge — to obtain electronic messages that are six months old or older. Do you know anyone these days who doesn't have IMAP accounts with 6+-month-old mail on them?"
Disney to Acquire Lucasfilm, Star Wars Episode 7 Due In 2015 816
Jason Levine writes "Disney will acquire Lucasfilm, including the Star Wars trilogy. Additionally, Star Wars: Episode 7 is due to be released in 2015, with more feature films on the way. George Lucas said, 'For the past 35 years, one of my greatest pleasures has been to see Star Wars passed from one generation to the next. It's now time for me to pass Star Wars on to a new generation of filmmakers. I've always believed that Star Wars could live beyond me, and I thought it was important to set up the transition during my lifetime. I'm confident that with Lucasfilm under the leadership of Kathleen Kennedy, and having a new home within the Disney organization, Star Wars will certainly live on and flourish for many generations to come.'"
Comment Re:This is not new (Score 1) 128
I'd like to see that in court. "Your honor, 'Unce, tice, fee tynes a maybe' is clearly a derivitive work and violates my clients copyright"
Comment Re:I recall... (Score 1) 533
"sexing each other"?
Yeah, that sort of sounds like how some 105 year old would describe them having sex. Of course I meant "Sexting" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexting
Comment Re:I recall... (Score 3, Interesting) 533
(Assuming it's a state where 18 is the legal age, I know it varies)
The laws start being even more inconsistent in states with lower legal ages. Here the age of consent is 17. So that 22 is fine having sex with that 17 year old. If they start sexing each other instead/also - then it's child pornography.
Comment Re:STEM Visas being held hostage (Score 5, Insightful) 133
I agree than any additional 'supply' will lower the average wage. But I'd rather be competing against 55,000 green card holders, who can negotiate fairly with their employers for a competitive wage than completing against 55,000 H1B workers who are (mostly) tied to a single employer and have a significant disadvantage in any salary/etc. negotiation.
So does one of the parties want to eliminate/reduce the H1B visas and replace them with green cards? Because if so, then I support them on this.
Comment Re:Reading the summary (Score 5, Funny) 371
Maybe they are teaching the Art History majors their most important lesson "You have wasted your money."
Normally it takes them 4 years of college and then a year or more working at Starbucks to learn that.
Comment Re:I treat my books like i treat my bed... (Score 4, Funny) 171
I assign different value to different groups of books, and treat them accordingly, with anything from near-reverence to near-contempt.
This reminded me of a scene in "The Day After Tomorrow" where they are trapped in a library and several characters are debating which of several classic books they were going to burn to keep warm. Then someone else walks in: "Uh... 'scuse me? You guys? Yeah... there's a whole section on tax law down here that we can burn." *problem solved*
Scientists Say Organic Food May Not Be Healthier For You 497
Hugh Pickens writes "NPR reports that although organic fruits and vegetables, grown without synthetic pesticides or fertilizer, comprise a $29 billion industry that is still growing, a new analysis of 200 peer-reviewed studies that examined differences between organic and conventional food finds scant evidence of health benefits from organic foods. 'When we began this project, we thought that there would likely be some findings that would support the superiority of organics over conventional food,' says Dr. Dena Bravata, a senior affiliate with Stanford's Center for Health Policy and co-author of the study published in the Annals of Internal Medicine. 'I think we were definitely surprised.' Some previous studies have looked at specific organic foods and found that they contain higher levels of important nutrients, such as vitamins and minerals. For example, researchers found in one study that tomatoes raised in the organic plots contained significantly higher levels of certain antioxidant compounds. But this is one study of one vegetable in one field; when the Stanford researchers looked at their broad array of studies, which included lots of different crops in different situations, they found no such broad pattern. Here's the basic reason: When it comes to their nutritional quality, vegetables vary enormously, and that's true whether they are organic or conventional. One carrot in the grocery store, for instance, may have two or three times more beta carotene than its neighbor. But that's due to all kinds of things: differences in the genetic makeup of different varieties, the ripeness of the produce when it was picked, even the weather. Variables like ripeness have a greater influence on nutrient content, so a lush peach grown with the use of pesticides could easily contain more vitamins than an unripe organic one."
Calorie Restriction May Not Extend Lifespan 251
sciencehabit writes "Slash your food intake and you can live dramatically longer — at least if you're a mouse or a nematode. But a major study designed to determine whether this regimen, known as caloric restriction, works in primates suggests that it improves monkeys' health but doesn't extend their lives. Researchers not involved with the new paper say the results are still encouraging. Although the monkeys didn't evince an increase in life span, both studies show a major improvement in 'health span,' or the amount of time before age-related diseases set in. 'I certainly wouldn't give up on calorie restriction as a health promoter' based on these findings, says molecular biologist Leonard Guarente of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge."
Comment Re:Unless it's in the United States (Score 1) 387
They need to adjust 20$ for inflation though.
I can't believe those n00b founding fathers hard-coded that value...
Even with inflation, I'm pretty sure $20 in 1789 is still less than $1,000,000,000+ in 2012. (Agree with you on the hard-coding - unless their intent was to have it effectively approach zero over time.)
Comment Re:Hmmm... (Score 2) 459
I was thinking we work with the Unicode people to get one or more of the 'smiley face' characters renamed to 'The Prophet Mohammed'. And then we try to register 4chan.(that)
While they are busy freaking out over that, we proceed with all of the gTLDs we were really planning on creating.
