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Government

Submission + - Church of Scientology violates Federal Law (rapidshare.com) 5

Submitted by
FreedomToThink
FreedomToThink writes: "This is a very long story I'm sure the editors will have fun with, but I couldn't see how to cut it down at all.

On the eve of the Ides of March protest, from the source of the recent 'Anonymous' submitted CCHR leak on wikileaks, comes this message

"Dear $cientology,You attempt injunctions.I respond.Shall we continue the game? Much Love, DEEP CLAM"

Included was yet another PDF this time including yet more emails leaked from a Church of Scientology front group.

Vote Rigging?

From: "Mike Kaplan" <mkaplan@tampabay.rr.com>
To: <Undisclosed-Recipient:;>
Subject: Fw: RE-ELECT FRANK HIBBARD, MAYOR OF CLEARWATER
Date: Sun, 6 Jan 2008 11:53:07 -0400

See below. Everyone in Clearwater MUST vote. Every vote will be needed to be
sure Hibbard gets re-elected. The alternative is Rita Garvey who is an SP.

— Original Message —
From: Shelly <mailto:shelly.bauer@Earthlink.net> Bauer
To: Shelly Bauer <mailto:shelly.bauer@earthlink.net>
Sent: Sunday, January 06, 2008 8:09 AM
Subject: RE-ELECT FRANK HIBBARD, MAYOR OF CLEARWATER

DO YOUR PART
RE-ELECT FRANK HIBBARD
MAYOR OF CLEARWATER
VOTE!!!
JANUARY 29TH
TAKE NOTHING FOR GRANTED!

Lunch with your preferred Presidential candidates for a high price?

ONE SEAT LEFT

I have arranged a private one-hour luncheon with Ron Paul on 11/28 in St.
Pete when he will be in town for the CNN/YouTube Republican debate.

This luncheon is reserved for $1000+ donors to Ron Paul's presidential
campaign. 19 people so far have paid and confirmed and will have the honor
and pleasure of having lunch and communicating with Ron Paul directly.


From the head of the "Non Proffit" CCHR Bruce Wiseman

Go the the HELP committee website. The link is here.
http://help.senate.gov/About.html
Here you will see the names of the Committee members on the left hand
side
of the page. Please go to the individual websites of the Republican =
members
(this will take just a bit of leg work on your part by putting their =
name
into Google) and calling their office or sending a fax to them (email is =
the
least effective) stating your opposition to S. 1375 The Mother's Act.


Currently, the law prohibits political campaign activity by charities and churches by defining a 501(c)(3) organization as one "which does not participate in, or intervene in (including the publishing or distributing of statements), any political campaign on behalf of (or in opposition to) any candidate for public office."

An OCMB (Operation Clambake Message Board)regular adds :

I downloaded myself a copy and started looking through them. I found an interesting one on pages 47-48.
http://rapidshare.com/files/99292051/CCHRLeak3.pdf.html

Karin Pouw of OSA of CofS writes a message.
It's forwarded by Michael Genung. He's the guy who runs ACSR, Association for Citizens Sociel Reform. http://www.citizensforsocialreform.org/ ["CSR Background and Philosopy: CSR was founded in 2001 by a group of Scientologists and other like-minded individuals concerned with the escalating social ills in society. CSR's purpose is to work with in the field of public policy to bring about more effective and humane solutions to these social ills of illiteracy, criminality substance abuse and general decay of character."]

Then it's forwarded by Doyle Mills, of LEAF fame (Letters to the Editor Attack Force).
Then it's forwarded by Mary C. (possibly one of two Mary C's I'm thinking of, but unsure).
Then it's forwarded by Mike Kaplan, another person who runs an email list and forwards CCHR type stuff to CofS members.

If that ain't stringing a line from the CofS to CCHR and the CofS front group ("grassroots") movements, then I don't know what is!


Apologies in advance as the Enturbulation servers will not be up to a slashdotting so the Coral Cache link is here Enturbulation Discussion (already cached for you)

ANYONE CAN REPORT TAX FRAUD DIRECTLY TO THE IRS : http://www.irs.gov/compliance/enforcement/article/0,,id=106778,00.html It does require that you print out and mail in an actual hardcopy, but it does not require you to identify yourself.

Just a casual user passing on a message from the Enturbulation forum, this is already out there, there's no reason to attack the messenger."

How Open Source Has Influenced Windows Server 2008 145

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the everyone-learning-from-everyone-else dept.
willdavid writes to tell us that Sam Ramji over at Port25 has a nice succinct list of the major open source principles that have been used while developing Windows Server 2008. "Overall, we've learned and continue to learn from open source development principles. These are making their way into the mindset, development practices, and ultimately into the products we bring to market. I've focused here on 'what Microsoft has learned from Open Source' - and ironically, I've agreed to do a panel at OSBC on 3/25 with Jim Zemlin of the Linux Foundation on 'what Open Source can learn from Microsoft'. As all of the different organizations in IT continue to evolve, we'll learn from each others' best practices and make increasingly better software. As in science, this incremental improvement will move all of us forward."
Enlightenment

Submission + - Arctic Summer Melting in 2007 Set New Records (techluver.com)

Submitted by
Tech.Luver
Tech.Luver writes: "Arctic sea ice shrank drastically this summer, reaching a record low, largely because warm ocean currents ate away at the base of the ice sheet, new research says. The arctic ice cap melted at an unprecedented rate in mid-2007, losing an area of ice the size of the state of Alaska, US scientists said at a conference this week. "The average rate of loss of sea ice every summer year to year up to 2006 was equal to an area the size of West Virginia," or about 62,800 square kilometers (24,250 square miles), said Michael Steele, the senior oceanographer at the University of Washington in Seattle. However the decrease in ice between 2006 and 2007 "was almost equivalent to the area of Alaska," or some 1.7 million kilometers (more than 663,000 square miles), Steele further said. ( http://techluver.com/2007/12/16/arctic-summer-melting-in-2007-set-new-records/ )"
Censorship

Submission + - Wikipedia COO was Convicted Felon (theregister.co.uk) 4

Submitted by
An anonymous reader writes: From the Register:

"For more than six months, beginning in January of this year, Wikipedia's million-dollar check book was balanced by a convicted felon. When Carolyn Bothwell Doran was hired as the Chief Operating Officer (COO) of the Florida-based Wikimedia Foundation, she had a criminal record in three other states — Virginia, Maryland, and Texas — and she was still on parole for a DUI (driving under the influence of alcohol) hit and run that resulted in a fatality. Her record also included convictions for passing bad checks, theft, petty larceny, additional DUIs, and unlawfully wounding her boyfriend with a gun shot to the chest."
Security

Submission + - The IRS Will Fax Your Life to Anyone Who Asks

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Apparently, the IRS is more than happy to fax all your private tax information to anyone who calls up and knows a little bit about you. Identification not required. Really scary with all the identity theft going on. You should have to at least fax in an ID.
Privacy

Submission + - Linux based phonesystem phones home (trixbox.org) 1

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Users of Trixbox, a PBX based on Asterisk, discovered that the software has been calling home with their usage and statistics.
From the article:
"I have just been made aware of a file '/var/adm/bin/registry.pl' that contain the following commented lines describing the program:

# This file is design to be executed regularly by an external controller such as cron.
# It retrieves a list of commands to be executed from the specified URI and executes them, saving the output
# and returning it to the webserver as an encrypted string."

Trixbox is owned by Fonality, which makes customised PBXs (again based on asterisk) for paying customers and this is not the first time that Fonality has been called out for their data collection.

See http://voxilla.com/component/option,...emid,107/p,27/
Software

Submission + - Why Microsoft's Copy-Killing Days are Dead

Submitted by DECS
DECS writes: Microsoft's rapid rise to power and its ability to hold onto control over the PC desktop throughout the 90s has long been revered by pundits as a classic example of copying an existing business model and then defeating all competition through price efficiencies, despite the fact that Microsoft's Windows software has only ever gotten progressively more expensive with the passing of time. This copy-killing strategy, also described as "embrace, extend, and extinguish," is now over. Here's Why Microsoft's Copy-Killing Has Reached a Dead End
Government

Submission + - Guantanamo deleted detainee IDs from Wikipedia (ljsf.org) 1

Submitted by James Hardine
James Hardine writes: The New York Times and The Inquirer are reporting that Wikileaks, the transparency group that published two manuals leaked from the US military prison at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba earlier this month has now caught US armed forces personnel there conducting propaganda attacks over the Internet. The activities uncovered by Wikileaks include deleting Guantanamo detainees' ID numbers from Wikipedia, posting of self-praising comments on news websites in response to negative articles, promoting pro-Guantanamo stories on the Internet news focus website Digg, and even altering Wikipedia's entry on Cuban President Fidel Castro to describe him as "an admitted transexual". Guantanamo spokesman Lt. Col. Bush blasted Wikileaks for identifying one "mass communications officer" by name, who has since received death threats for "simply doing his job — posting positive comments on the Internet about Gitmo". In response Wikileaks has posted independent confirmation of their analysis by security expert Bruce Schneier.
Transportation

Submission + - Electric Cars to Help Utilities Load Balance Grid

Submitted by
Reservoir Hill
Reservoir Hill writes: "A team at the University of Delaware has created a system that enables vehicles to not only run on electricity alone, but also to generate revenue by storing and providing electricity for utilities. The technology, known as V2G, for vehicle-to-grid, lets electricity flow from the car's battery to power lines and back. When the car is in the V2G setting, the battery's charge goes up or down depending on the needs of the grid operator, which sometimes must store surplus power and other times requires extra power to respond to surges in usage. The ability of the V2G car's battery to act like a sponge provides a solution for utilities, which pay millions to generating stations that help balance the grid. Willett Kempton, who began developing the technology more than a decade ago, estimates the value for utilities could be up to $4,000 a year for the service, part of which could be paid to drivers. A car sitting there with a tank of gasoline in it, that's useless," says Kempton. "If it's a battery storing a lot of electricity and a big plug that allows moving power back and forth quickly, then it's valuable.""
Software

Submission + - Russian chatbot passes Turing Test (news.com)

Submitted by
CurtMonash
CurtMonash writes: "According to Ina Fried, a chatbot is making the rounds that successfully emulates an easily-laid woman. As such, it dupes lonely Russian males into divulging personal and financial details at a rate of one every three minutes. All jokes aside — and a lot of them come quickly to mind — that sure sounds like the Turing Test to me. Of course, there are caveats. Reports of scary internet security threats are commonly overblown. There are some pretty obvious ways the chatbot could be designed to lessen its AI challenge by seeking to direct the conversation. And finally, while we are told the bot has fooled a few victims, we don't know its overall success rate at fooling the involuntary Turing "judges.""
Data Storage

New Seagate Drives Have Real Difficulties With Linux 361

Posted by Zonk from the making-the-penguin-crotchety dept.
wtansill writes "Seagate's Free Agent series of drives are not intended to be compatible with the Open Source operating system Linux. The Inquirer reports on the problem: an unhelpful power saving mode. 'The problem is to do with the power-saving systems on Seagate's latest range of drives and the fact that it is shipped already formatted to NTFS. The NTFS is only a slight hurdle to Linux users who have a kernel with NTFS writing enabled or can work mkfs. But the "power saving" timer is a real bugger. It will shut the drive off after several minutes of inactivity and helpfully drop the USB connection. When the connection does come back it returns as USB1 which is apparently as useful as a chocolate teapot.' Via Engadget, though, there is a solution!
Christmas Cheer

Submission + - Hanukkah candles contribute to global warming

Submitted by
An anonymous reader writes: Environmentalists ask for Hanukkia candles not to be burned so they dont contribute to global warming. "If an estimated one million Israeli households light for eight days, they said, it would do significant damage to the atmosphere."

Is this going to far to save the planet?
The Courts

Submission + - RIAA steers clear of colleges that resist 4

Submitted by
NewYorkCountryLawyer
NewYorkCountryLawyer writes: "The Chronicle of Higher Education reports that 22 institutions have been targeted in the RIAA's new round of attacks. I notice that the RIAA continues to steer clear of Harvard. Could it be because of this or this? And I notice it isn't serving any more subpoenas on the University of Oregon... could it be because of this or this? And I don't see any more subpoenas to College of William & Mary or George Washington University or University of South Florida of University of New Mexico. Could that have to do with this or this or this or this? There seems to be a pattern here. The RIAA is staying away from places where it might have a fight on their hands."
Music

Submission + - Is it time to kill the RIAA? Artists think so. (blorge.com)

Submitted by
thefickler
thefickler writes: "On the surface, record labels exist to distribute the music of our favorite artists, but if you look much deeper, their main purpose is to make money, lots of money. There was a time when the label was needed, but today, artists can record and distribute their content much more easily thanks to the Internet on the home computer. Now artists are beginning to agree, in order for the artist and music to prosper, we must kill the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA)."
Television

Submission + - 20/20 airing Hans Reiser interview on eve of trial 1

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: ABCNews 20/20 television magazine will broadcast an interview tonight with Hans Reisier, the author of the Linux ReiserFS filesystem, who is accused of killing his wife, although no body has been found. Jury selection is complete, and the trial is schedule to begin next week.

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HELP!!!! I'm being held prisoner in /usr/games/lib!

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