Comment Re:Really? (Score 1) 262
Yes probably Italian names are not very common there, although here Michele is a very common name.
Comment Re:Really? (Score 1) 262
In Italian very few names end in consonant (I cannot recall any that is not of foreign origins). I thought it was mostly the ch cause that way it would sound like Michelle, while with 'k' is way more like Mike.
Comment Re:Really? (Score 2, Interesting) 262
My name, Michele when read with non-italian rules (ch = k in Italian) is considered a female name and you cannot even image how many people (almost exclusively Americans I must say) at first think I am a girl, yet nobody had problems looking at my code. And yes, is an awkward situation anyways.
Comment Re:At least they know their priorities (Score 1) 153
But they have been prosecuted. Google execs have not been judged guilty either and the news made a big story out of nothing. Because of how the legal system works here, every reported case must be investigated and prosecuted, independently from the prosecutor opinion of the matter. The judge can of course dismiss the case, which is what will likely happen.
Comment Re:Why Not Just Ignore Italy? (Score 1) 153
I guess Google Italia is an Italian company.
Comment Re:At least they know their priorities (Score 4, Informative) 153
The boys who harred and attacked the child were already prosecuted in 2006.
Italy Wants to Restrict Blogs 242
nx writes "Italy wants to restrict bloggers' rights by forcing everyone to register their blogs, pay a tax and have a journalist as a "responsible director". This law is clearly designed to curb critical voices and free speech, although it has yet to be approved by parliament."
Feed Engadget: Greenpeace dismantles iPhone, discovers "hazardous chemicals" (engadget.com)
Filed under: Cellphones
Apple's no stranger to being slammed by Greenpeace, and while Steve certainly spoke of a "Greener Apple," it seems that the iPhone wasn't included. According to tests arranged by the entity, it was found that the iPhone contained "toxic brominated compounds (indicating the presence of brominated flame retardants) and hazardous PVC," which are said to be disallowed across the pond due to RoHS requirements. More specifically, the independent testing found "brominated compounds in half the samples, including in the phone's antenna, in which they made up 10-percent of the total weight of the flexible circuit board." As expected, Greenpeace wasted no time pointing to rival firms that have received pats on the back for their green efforts, and subsequently shook a finger at Apple while murmuring "tsk tsk" -- but we'll leave the actual politicking to you all in comments, cool?[Via Switched, thanks Laura]
Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments
Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!
Submission + - Terrorists are like Starfish (?) (washingtontimes.com)
Mark D. Drapeau writes: "Could biological metaphors about networking and systems shed light on one of the most difficult issues of our time — terrorism? According to a new op-ed in the 31 July 2007 Washington Times, and a new book entitled The Starfish and the Spider, the answer is a resounding "Yes". An excerpt from the op-ed reads:
*** Most large institutions are organized hierarchically with centralized leadership. Corporations have CEOs, armies have generals, countries have presidents. When competing against centralized organizations, promoting diffusion and disrupting cohesion are considered progressive.
However, al Qaeda has a constantly mutating, horizontal structure composed of an inspirational catalyst in the form of Osama bin Laden and other central figures joined with numerous small groups brought together not by orders but ideology. Here, lack of structure is a strength. Little thought is given, however, to how such a decentralized terrorist network structure affects the strategy for combating it.
"The Starfish and the Spider," a new book about corporate strategy written for a business audience, has a wider application — combating terrorism — and sheds light on this issue.***
Read more here:
http://washingtontimes.com/article/20070731/COMMEN TARY/107310009/1012
And here:
http://www.starfishandspider.com/"
Submission + - Plastic artificial bone (rutgers.edu)
pnosker writes: "Researchers at Rutgers University have found a way to create artificial bone using a blend of usually immiscible plastics, both bio-compatible, where one plastic is dissolved and excreted creating an empty sponge-like region for natural bone to grow and a lattice of PMMA plastic for the growth to occur. The new material is undergoing further study and testing."
Bookmark Sony to Recall more than 400,000 Digital Cameras | Cheapshooter.com (cheapshooter.com)
Submission + - AMD 690 Chipset Updated, Performance Boost (hothardware.com)
MojoKid writes: "Earlier this year, AMD launched its 690 series motherboard chipset and it was
relatively well accepted for its affordability, power efficiency, and
performance versus competitive chipsets. AMD has since
taken the 690 series chipset and optimized it further through BIOS and
software level enhancements that result in marked performance gains in a number
of situations and also introduces new features.
This article showcases a motherboard from Gigabyte that features the latest
updates and compares its performance to the unaltered board from when the
chipset was first introduced, to see just how much the platform's performance
has matured. The majority of the performance enhancements were
targeted toward better HD DVD and Blu-ray playback at 1080p."
Submission + - Moonfall: Lua + CSS (moonfalll.org)
An anonymous reader writes: CSS Purist might hate this: Simple to use CSS with variables, combining LUA and CSS. A simple LUA domain specific language that generates CSS dynamically as a cgi script or statically for maximum performance.
Feed Engadget: Video game addiction "not a mental disorder" (engadget.com)
Filed under: Gaming
If you've been thinking lately that your video game habit is getting a bit excessive, don't worry. According to reports this week, doctors backed away from a proposal that would have designated certain types of video gaming as a mental disorder (similar to alcoholism or gambling addiction) -- so you can rest easy knowing that whatever it is that you're doing to yourself probably isn't that big of a deal. We attempted to speak to two avid gamers concerning the decision, but one was busy fighting Razorgore the Untamed in WoW, and the other claimed that he didn't have a problem and could quit whenever he wanted.Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments
Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!
Submission + - Xerox Debuts Semantic Search Engine (xerox.com)
* * Beatles-Beatles writes: "Surpassing Search: New Xerox Text Mining Software Goes Beyond "Keywords" To Deliver More Relevant Information
http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/06/24/xerox-enters- search-market/
http://www.xerox.com/go/xrx/template/inv_rel_newsr oom.jsp?app=Newsroom&ed_name=NR_2007June20_FactSpo tter_XeroxInnovation&format=article&view=newsrelea se&Xcntry=USA&Xlang=en_US"
http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/06/24/xerox-enters
http://www.xerox.com/go/xrx/template/inv_rel_news
