Shinsei - Slashdot User

Submission + - Grad student suspended after pro-gun-rights e-mail

Submitted by fredklein on Thursday October 11, 2007 @11:51PM

fredklein writes: A Minnesota university has suspended one of its graduate students who sent two e-mail messages to school officials supporting gun rights.
"Hamline University also said that master's student Troy Scheffler, who owns a firearm, would be barred from campus and must receive a mandatory "mental health evaluation" after he sent an e-mail message arguing that law-abiding students should be able to carry firearms on campus for self-defense."
When informed that suspending him violated the school's freedom of expression policy, the University changed their tune: Now they claim he's being suspended because of "anonymous allegations" they received, and they can't tell him (or the press) what those allegations are, or who his accusers are. With all the talk of 'Big Brother' throwing people into detention centers without knowing the charges, are we overlooking 'Little Brothers' closer to home?

Submission + - Second Life Seeks Sensitive Data About Residents

Submitted by deviantphil on Saturday May 05, 2007 @11:43PM

deviantphil writes: Linden Labs, the company that runs Second Life, is seeking to roll out a new age verification mechanism which among others things may require residents to turn over their Social Security Number, government ID, or other sensitive personally identifying data in order to access content which is "explicitly sexual or excessively violent in nature". This would be equivalent to requiring a person to give out their Social Security Number before purchasing a game rated "M".

Submission + - New version of X

Submitted by

virtualthinker

on Thursday February 15, 2007 @05:05PM

virtualthinker writes: "There is a press release on http://wiki.x.org/wiki/PressReleases/X11R72Release d which details the third modular release of X11. Well those of us still tinkering with X Think this is fairly great news — just hope I can get it to actually build and work."

Submission + - Patenting Life

Submitted by Archangel_Azazel on Tuesday February 13, 2007 @07:33PM

Archangel_Azazel writes: The New York Times is running a story here : http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/13/opinion/13cricht on.html?_r=1&oref=slogin about an opinion that Michael Crichton wrote about patenting genes and the harm to innovation and lives that gene patents cause.

There's also information about a bill being sponsered that may offer a solution, from TFA:

"Fortunately, two congressmen want to make the full benefit of the decoded genome available to us all. Last Friday, Xavier Becerra, a Democrat of California, and Dave Weldon, a Republican of Florida, sponsored the Genomic Research and Accessibility Act, to ban the practice of patenting genes found in nature."

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