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Comment Facebook for 99%? Really? (Score 1) 451

by nickberry (#38539606) Attached to: Occupy Protesters Are Building a Facebook for the 99%
I'm guessing the so-called 1% don't use facebook, but they do control it, and if you want your product to succeed without begging for donations on a daily/regular basis like wikipedia does you're stuck getting your funding and financing through the "1%". And the first thing that jumped out at me in the article was the fact they don't like some corporate body controlling their data. Well what do they think their little project is going to do? Use data has to be store somewhere centrally, and there needs to be content control or it will be taken over by spam-bots and porn peddlers like facebook still battles. You want to know more about your users to provide them with the best user experience you have to spy on them, and eventually you or the management will be co-opted by either corporate interests, or government interests. I have been leery of the "occupy" movement since day one. I don't like their philosophy. I work hard, first in the office, and often last out, and by doing so was able to provide my employer a value to the company, we have had tough times when my hours got cut I went out and waited tables to make up the difference. I pay my bills, my mortgage, car payments, and bills are paid every month. We are not guaranteed a house, car, or even a roast in the pot, just the opportunity to gain those things if we work hard enough.

Submission + - New(er) cash based transactions system interruptin (businessinsider.com)

Submitted by
nickberry
nickberry writes: "There's a tiny 12-person startup churning out of Des Moines, Iowa.

Dwolla was founded by 28-year-old Ben Milne; it's an innovative online payment system that sidesteps credit cards completely.

Milne has no finance background, yet his little operation is moving between $30 and $50 million per month; it's on track to move more than $350 million in the next year.

Unlike PayPal, Dwolla doesn't take a percentage of the transaction. It only asks for $0.25 whether it's moving $1 or $1,000."
Education

Submission + - Teachers Don't Like Creative Students (marginalrevolution.com) 5

Submitted by
walterbyrd
walterbyrd writes: "One of the most consistent findings in educational studies of creativity has been that teachers dislike personality traits associated with creativity. Research has indicated that teachers prefer traits that seem to run counter to creativity, such as conformity and unquestioning acceptance of authority (e.g., Bachtold, 1974; Cropley, 1992; Dettmer, 1981; Getzels & Jackson, 1962; Torrance, 1963). The reason for teachers’ preferences is quite clear creative people tend to have traits that some have referred to as obnoxious (Torrance, 1963). Torrance (1963) described creative people as not having the time to be courteous, as refusing to take no for an answer, and as being negativistic and critical of others. Other characteristics, although not deserving the label obnoxious, nonetheless may not be those most highly valued in the classroom"
Privacy

Submission + - ISP drives music label to ditch download action (pcpro.co.uk)

Submitted by nk497
nk497 writes: The Ministry of Sound music label is blaming UK ISP BT for forcing it to hold off on sending letters demanding £350 in payment to those suspected of downloading its music illegally. BT has demanded guarantees that the customer IP data it hands to rights holders under court order for such anti-filesharing action will be kept safe and not used to abuse its own customers. Getting that through approval courts has taken longer than expected, and the ISP deletes all data after 90 days as part of its privacy policy, meaning 20,000 of the 25,000 IP records the label was seeking access to have been deleted. "The safeguards we aim to establish via the court are on the security of data handling, a threshold for providing a customer’s details based on a minimum number of separate incidents, the tone of contact with broadband subscribers and a reasonable approach to financial compensation sought,” BT said in a statement. The move is an indirect win for Anonymous. The hacking group took down the website of law firm ACS: Law, which also sends out such letters using BT customer data, leading to a data breach. That data breach was the impetus behind BT demanding better control of how its customers' data was used, which in turn lead to the delays that saw the MoS-related records deleted.
Censorship

White House Pressuring Registrars To Block Sites 569

Posted by CmdrTaco from the strange-world-we-live-in dept.
An anonymous reader writes "While the Senate is still debating a bill that would force registrars and ISPs to block access to sites deemed 'infringing,' it appears that the White House's IP Czar is already holding meetings with ISPs, registrars and payment processors to start voluntarily blocking access to sites it doesn't like. Initially, they're focused on online pharmacies, but does anyone think it will only be limited to such sites? ICANN apparently has refused to attend the meetings, pointing out that they're 'inappropriate.' Doesn't it seem wrong for the US government to be pushing private companies to censor the Internet without due process?"
Medicine

Look-Alike Tubes Lead To Hospital Deaths 520

Posted by timothy from the no-wait-this-one-goes-in-your-mouth dept.
Hugh Pickens writes "In hospitals around the country, nurses connect and disconnect interchangeable clear plastic tubing sticking out of patients' bodies to deliver or extract medicine, nutrition, fluids, gases or blood — sometimes with deadly consequences. Tubes intended to inflate blood-pressure cuffs have been connected to intravenous lines leading to deadly air embolisms, intravenous fluids have been connected to tubes intended to deliver oxygen, leading to suffocation, and in 2006 a nurse at in Wisconsin mistakenly put a spinal anesthetic into a vein, killing 16-year-old who was giving birth. 'Nurses should not have to work in an environment where it is even possible to make that kind of mistake,' says Nancy Pratt, a vocal advocate for changing the system. Critics say the tubing problem, which has gone on for decades, is an example of how the FDA fails to protect the public. 'FDA could fix this tubing problem tomorrow, but because the agency is so worried about making industry happy, people continue to die,' says Dr. Robert Smith." This reminds me of the sort of problem that Michael Cohen addressed in a slightly different medical context (winning a MacArthur Foundation grant) a few years ago.
Games

More Devs Going Indie, To Gamers' Benefit 137

Posted by Soulskill from the granularization-of-an-industry dept.
Wired is running a feature about how a growing number of game developers are abandoning jobs at major publishers and studios and taking their experience to the indie scene instead. Quoting: "They’re veterans of the triple-A game biz with decades of experience behind them. They’ve worked for the biggest companies and had a hand in some of the industry’s biggest blockbusters. They could work on anything, but they’ve found creative fulfillment splitting off into a tiny crew and doing their own thing. They’re using everything they’ve learned working on big-budget epics and applying it to small, downloadable games. The good news for gamers is that, as the industry’s top talents depart the big studios and go into business for themselves, players are being treated to a new class of indie game. They’re smaller and carry cheaper price tags, but they’re produced by industry veterans instead of thrown together by B teams and interns. Most importantly, unlike big-budget games that need to appeal to the lowest common denominator to turn a profit, these indie gems reveal the undiluted creative vision of their makers."
NASA

The Sun Unleashes Coronal Mass Ejection At Earth 220

Posted by Soulskill from the return-fire dept.
astroengine writes "Yesterday morning, at 08:55 UT, NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory detected a C3-class flare erupt inside a sunspot cluster. 100,000 kilometers away, deep within the solar atmosphere (the corona), an extended magnetic field filled with cool plasma forming a dark ribbon across the face of the sun (a feature known as a 'filament') erupted at the exact same time. It seems very likely that both eruptions were connected after a powerful shock wave produced by the flare destabilized the filament, causing the eruption. A second solar observatory, the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory, then spotted a huge coronal mass ejection blast into space, straight in the direction of Earth. Solar physicists have calculated that this magnetic bubble filled with energetic particles should hit Earth on August 3, so look out for some intense aurorae — a solar storm is coming."
Earth

Nuclear Energy Now More Expensive Than Solar 635

Posted by samzenpus from the sunlight-is-free dept.
js_sebastian writes "According to an article on the New York Times, a historical cross-over has occurred because of the declining costs of solar vs. the increasing costs of nuclear energy: solar, hardly the cheapest of renewable technologies, is now cheaper than nuclear, at around 16 cents per kilowatt hour. Furthermore, the NY Times reports that financial markets will not finance the construction of nuclear power plants unless the risk of default (which is historically as high as 50 percent for the nuclear industry) is externalized to someone else through federal loan guarantees or ratepayer funding. The bottom line seems to be that nuclear is simply not competitive, and the push from the US government to subsidize it seems to be forcing the wrong choice on the market."
Security

100 Million Facebook Pages Leaked On Torrent Site 163

Posted by CmdrTaco from the so-many-pokes dept.
Stoobalou writes "A directory containing personal details about more than 100 million Facebook users has surfaced on an Internet file-sharing site. The 2.8GB torrent was compiled by hacker Ron Bowes of Skull Security, who created a web crawler program that harvested data on users contained in Facebook's open access directory, which lists all users who haven't bothered to change their privacy settings to make their pages unavailable to search engines."

Comment Re:ABSOLUTLY NOTHING (Score 1) 966

by nickberry (#33044798) Attached to: WikiLeaks Publishes Afghan War Secrets
I never once said there isn't a need for a welfare system. I stated that if I want to bust my ass to get ahead I should have that right.... It took me 14 years of hard work, saving, and lots of overtime to get where I am. But those who rely on government assistance to get ahead will never ever understand that.

Comment Re:ABSOLUTLY NOTHING (Score 1) 966

by nickberry (#33029358) Attached to: WikiLeaks Publishes Afghan War Secrets
I could care less if Europe wants to give away healthcare, I don't want anyone besides myself and my doctor determining my best course of action if I'm sick and injured. Having some dipshit bureaucrat telling me I don't really 'need' that cancer treatment...And last time I checked EU couldn't afford all their welfare. If I want to work 80 hours to get ahead, that's up to me...If you and your comrades want to live in squalor and settle for just enough go right ahead.

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