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Education

Submission + - GameStop manager suspended after 'games for grades (kvue.com)

Submitted by
mikesd81
mikesd81 writes: "A local Austin, Texas ABC affiliate, KVUE, reports about a manager at a GameStop that was suspended for instituting a "games for grades" policy. From the article: " Brandon Scott says he started a unique new policy in his store to promote good grades in school but now his employer has sent him to detention for speaking out of turn. Scott says he's been suspended by GameStop in the wake of his unconventional "games for grades" policy at an Oak Cliff store. " Apparently, on his own, Scott decided to stop selling video games to any school-age customer unless an adult would vouch for the student's good grades."
The Courts

Submission + - RIAA Tries to Stop RICO Class Action 1

Submitted by
NewYorkCountryLawyer
NewYorkCountryLawyer writes: "Last month an Oregon woman, victimized by the RIAA for two years, retaliated by bringing a class action for fraud, RICO, malicious prosecution, violation of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, misuse of copyright law, civil conspiracy, and other assorted wrongs, against the record companies, the RIAA, their investigators, and their 'enforcers', in Andersen v. Atlantic. The opening gambit of the record companies, the RIAA, and the enforcers (Settlement Support Center LLC), all of whom are being represented by the same law firm, has been to file a motion to dismiss Ms. Andersen's complaint. The RIAA's unlicensed "investigators", MediaSentry/Safenet, presumably represented by separate counsel, have yet to respond to the amended complaint. Ms. Andersen is the disabled single mother, who together with her 10 year old daughter, had been pursued by the RIAA for two (2) years, despite the fact that neither of them had ever engaged in file sharing."
United States

Submission + - DashCam Catches Officer Threatening Motorist

Submitted by januth
januth writes: I just finished reading about this incident, in which a St. George, Missouri police officer was caught on a motorist's personal dashcam threatening to invent charges to arrest him even though the motorist had done nothing wrong.

"The incident began at around 2am. Darrow [the motorist] was to meet a friend who was working late and was going to pick him up. Darrow headed toward a 24-hour commuter parking lot in an unincorporated part of Saint Louis County in his 1997 Nissan Maxima. He put on his turn signal and entered the lot which, aside from Kuehnlein's cruiser, was essentially vacant. After stopping the car, the police officer approached and began questioning Darrow about what he was doing. When Darrow declined to discuss his personal business, the police sergeant exploded. Although the video clearly shows Darrow driving properly and using his turn signal, the police officer insisted that Darrow had broken the law."

Had Darrow not had his own video camera running it would have been his word against the police officer's. He has had another interesting run-in with the police that he captured on video as well. In both cases he's merely asking the questions any citizen should be able to ask of a police officer. In both cases, the police do not respond well.
Education

Busy Lives Prompt Speedier Board Games 153

Posted by Zonk from the play-faster-dangit dept.
BusylikeBum writes "Michelle Hastings admits she's sometimes cheated to get through a game of Candy Land with her 5-year-old daughter, Campbell. The board game can take just too long, she said. Disney Monopoly is another big offender. 'A game like that, it could literally take you days,' said Hastings, of Holliston, Mass. 'A lot of times, you don't play games because they take so long.' Board game makers are heeding pleas of parents like Hastings and introducing games tailored to busy lives and shorter attention spans that take only about 20 minutes to play." This is especially interesting to me, given the US adoption of more serious, lengthy German board games in the last few years.
Security

Submission + - Hackers offer subscription, support for malware

Submitted by Stony Stevenson
Stony Stevenson writes: Organised gangs are taking a page out of security vendors' books and setting up their own websites that offer support and subscriptions for malware and spyware.

From the article: "For subscriptions starting as low as $20 per month, enterprises can sell "fully managed exploit engines" that spyware distributors and spammers can use to infiltrate systems worldwide, said Gunter Ollmann, director of security strategies at IBM's ISS X-Force team.

Many exploit providers simply wait for Microsoft's monthly patches, which they then reverse engineer to develop new exploit code against the disclosed vulnerabilities, Ollmann said. "Then all you've got to do is just subscribe to them on a monthly basis."
Science

Harvesting Energy in the Sky 261

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the pie-in-the-sky dept.
withoutfeathers writes "The Economist magazine has an article on Flying wind farms. Mind you, we're not talking about ordinary, terrestrial windmills here. We're talking about actual airborne — up to 10km in the sky — wind farms intended to harvest the immense supply of energy in the jet stream. On the surface, the idea seems a little eccentric but, in fact, San Diego (California, US) based Sky WindPower has, apparently, thought their concept through pretty thoroughly and believes they can not only make this work, but do so profitably. The article discusses several other ideas for high-flying wind farming including a Dutch proposal to use pairs of kites to drive a generator."
Microsoft

Submission + - Microsoft asks UK to petition for OpenXML

Submitted by
nevali
nevali writes: "Microsoft UK has put up a petition to urge the British Standards Institute to support the ISO fast track process for Microsoft's OpenXML format. The only problem with this is that, being a petition, there's no easy way to tell them you'd really prefer OpenXML not being an ISO standard."

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