The Elephant - Slashdot User

Submission + - Subpoenas Issued over NSA Warrantless Wiretapping (lawbean.com)

Submitted by

Spamicles

on Thursday June 21, 2007 @08:04PM

Spamicles writes: "The Senate Judiciary Committee voted Thursday to subpoena documents from the Bush Administration related to the government's admitted eavesdropping on Americans' overseas emails and phone calls without getting court approval. In a 13-3 vote, the Committee decided to authorize chairman Patrick Leahy (D-VT) to issue subpoenas for documents related to the NSA warrantless surveillance program. Nearly any request is going to be met with tough resistance from the White House, and the confrontation over the documents "could set the stage for a constitutional showdown over the separation of powers.""

Submission + - EU Examines Search Engines and Privacy Issues (pcworld.com)

Submitted by

Raver32

on Thursday June 21, 2007 @07:55PM

Raver32 writes: "European data protection officials are expanding their examination of the impact search engines have on privacy, after initially targeting Google Inc. last month, European Data Protection Supervisor Peter Hustinx said in an interview late Wednesday. A panel of European data protection officials called the Article 29 Working Group decided Wednesday to request information from Google's rivals amid concerns that search engines are holding onto information about the people who use them for too long, Hustinx said. Hustinx, a senior member of the working group, declined to name the companies. However, they are believed to include Yahoo Inc., Lycos Inc. and Microsoft Corp.'s Windows Live.com."

Submission + - Congress subpoenas NSA wiretap documents (pressesc.com)

Submitted by

amigoro

on Thursday June 21, 2007 @07:49PM

amigoro writes: "In the latest round of the ongoing battle between the Congress and the President the Senate Judicial Committee today authorized subpoenas in connection with the investigation into the legality of NSA's warrantless wiretap program ordered by Bush. The subpoenas demand that the Bush Administration hand over legal documents it has withheld despite at least eight requests by the Congress."

Submission + - Why is Slashdot search bar so imprecise ??

Submitted by

Anonymous Coward

on Thursday June 21, 2007 @07:45PM

Anonymous Coward writes: "I've tried to find previous topics lots of times using Slashdot's search bar, and I NEVER have found what I was looking for. Even if I use phrases in double quotes, it seems to search for the first letter of the damn phrase!!. That's pretty useless."

Submission + - Bush twins burn cd for Presidential Father (boingboing.net)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 21, 2007 @07:43PM

An anonymous reader writes: Will the RIAA be so quick to jump after the President of the United States daughters for a supposed copyright infringement? Can they argue fair use? Or will this fall to the wayside like oh so many other high profile cases?

Submission + - Crackers Cause Pentagon to Put Computers Offline (time.com)

Submitted by

Anarchysoft

on Thursday June 21, 2007 @07:34PM

Anarchysoft writes: "As many as 1500 pentagon computers were brought offline on Wednesday in response to a cyber attack. Defense Secretary Robert Gates reported of the fallout both that the attack had 'no adverse impact on department operations' and that 'there will be some administrative disruptions and personal inconveniences.' When asked whether his own e-mail had been compromised, Gates responded, 'I don't do e-mail. I'm a very low-tech person.' There was no word whether the pony express was affected by the 'cyberattackers.'"

Submission + - Court Ruling Limits Copyright Claims (lawbean.com)

Submitted by Spamicles on Thursday June 21, 2007 @07:20PM

Spamicles writes: A federal appellate panel in Atlanta has reversed its circuit's 6-year-old opinion in a major copyright case, declaring the ruling's mandate on behalf of freelance photographers to be "moot." Until now, publishers could be forced to share with freelancers whenever they reproduce and sell those freelancers' previously published works in merchandise designed for computer access. The new ruling says that reproduction on a CD or other media is not a new use of formerly published issues. The full court decision can be read here (pdf).

8 Reasons Not To Use MySQL (And 5 To Adopt It) 288

Posted by Zonk on Friday May 25, 2007 @04:48PM from the for-every-product-turn-turn-turn dept.

Esther Schindler writes "Database decisions are never easy, even — or maybe especially — when one choice is extremely popular. To highlight the advantages and disadvantages of the open-source MySQL DBMS, CIO.com asked two open-source experts to enumerate the reasons to choose MySQL and to pick something else. Tina Gasperson takes the 5 reasons to use MySQL side, and Brent Toderash discusses 8 reasons not to. Note that this isn't an 'open source vs proprietary databases' comparison; it's about MySQL's suitability in enterprise situations."

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