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Comment Re:Whoa.. stop! (Score 1) 1021

I nominate two Heinlein stories that may be of interest to teens:

The Rolling Stones
link
"The Stones, a family of "Loonies" (residents of the Moon), buy a used spaceship (which by this time is less complicated than a car), overhaul it, and go sightseeing around the solar system."

And for the more advanced class, discuss the political layer of The Moon is a Harsh Mistress
Link
"...a 1966 science fiction novel by American writer Robert A. Heinlein, about a lunar colony's revolt against rule from Earth. The novel expresses and discusses libertarian ideals in a speculative context, yet portrays the need for a powerful governing computer to control many aspects of the society."

Comment NIST Guidelines (Score 1) 260

The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), a nonregulatory federal agency in the U.S. Department of Commerce, is putting final touches on a guide designed to help small businesses and organizations implement the fundamentals of an effective information security program. The NIST standards should also prove useful for the remote offices of larger companies, where IT staffs are often small or nonexistent and it's important that employees bear more responsibility for information security. http://csrc.nist.gov/publications/drafts/ir-7621/draft-nistir-7621.pdf

Comment Re:Not quite Scopes level (Score 1) 1100

Opponents of global warming have successfully framed it as a debate over weather (a local phenomenon) rather than climate (a global phenomenon). They point to a cold snap in Buffalo NY in January, and ask "what global warming?" They ignore evidence that the average temperature in Antarctica has been rising for decades, and that ice is melting faster than it's forming at both poles.

Comment Wait Till Someone Sues the Church (Score 1) 1100

It's probably only a matter of time before someone sues the church over the existence of God.

The goal of the chamber, which represents 3 million large and small businesses, is to fend off potential emissions regulations by undercutting the scientific consensus over climate change.

Using the same approach, atheists can sue the government to prove the existence of God, and use that to undermine "In God We Trust" on our currency, swearing oaths on the Bible, and the tax-free status of churches.

Comment CK-12 Foundation (Score 1) 178

CK-12 Foundation is a non-profit organization with a mission to reduce the cost of textbook materials for the K-12 market both in the U.S. and worldwide. Using an open-content, web-based collaborative model termed the "FlexBook," CK-12 intends to pioneer the generation and distribution of high quality educational content that will serve both as core text as well as provide an adaptive environment for learning.

Comment Re:Ridiculous (Score 2, Interesting) 229

The vendor in question is likely Microsoft:

"The presentation focused on exploiting vulnerabilities in devices running the Windows CE operating system, including some ATMs. The decision to cancel was made to give the vendor concerned time to patch the problem, although the company was notified 8 months ago."

My guess is that Microsoft is not excited about fixing bugs in CE, and would rather just extend their "security through obscurity" strategy to include censoring researchers.

Comment OpenSource Animal Shelter Manager (Score 1) 655

Animal Shelter Manager is a free computer package, covered by the terms of the GNU General Public License. It is designed to take most (if not all) of the paperwork away from running an animal shelter/sanctuary. The system can also be used to manage a veterinary surgery or clinic.
It runs on any computer platform, utilizes other open source components and does not require a modern computer to run. http://sheltermanager.sourceforge.net/home.php

Comment Re:First thing I want to get data on (Score 1) 111

First thing you should do is take off the tinfoil hat:

"Therefore, I as Director of Health for the State of Hawaii, along with the Registrar of Vital Statistics who has statutory authority to oversee and maintain these type of vital records, have personally seen and verified that the Hawaii State Department of Health has Sen. Obamaâ(TM)s original birth certificate on record in accordance with state policies and procedures," Fukino said. http://www.kitv.com/politics/17860890/detail.html?rss=hon&psp=news

"As things turned out, when the Obama campaign made a copy of his Certificate of Live Birth from the State of Hawaii available on the internet in June 2008, it validated none of these rumors: The certificate shows his full name to be "Barack Hussein Obama II," it lists is father's race as "African" and his mother's as "Caucasian,", it contains no information about religion, and it reports his birthplace as being Honolulu, Hawaii."
Morover, both of Honolulu's major newspapers (the Advertiser and the Star-Bulletin) published announcements in August 1961 documenting the birth, in Honolulu, of a son to "Mr. and Mrs. Barack H. Obama" on August 4, 1961." http://www.snopes.com/politics/obama/birthcertificate.asp

Comment Linux Response (Score 1) 858

I'm waiting for the Linux crowd to put out an ad with the same actress and same laptop, saying that Vista just didn't work for her and Office was too expensive, and telling how she downloaded Ubuntu (or Fedora, or...) and installed that on her laptop in place of Vista. "And now it's even faster and easier to use, with free OpenOffice!"

Comment If the DoD Says It's Secure... (Score 1) 674

Who are you going to believe? The monopolist who sells the most insecure operating system on the planet, or the US Department of Defense, which has some of the highest security requirements anywhere?

DOD launches site to develop open-source software
By Doug Beizer, Jan 30, 2009
link
Defense Department officials have launched a new Web site where developers can work on open-source software projects specifically for DOD, David Mihelcic, the chief technology officer for the Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA), said today.
The new site, named Forge.mil, is based on the public site SourceForge.net which hosts thousands of open-source projects, Mihelcic said at an AFCEA Washington chapter lunch in Arlington, Va.
âoeIt is really is SourceForge.net upgraded to meet DOD security requirements,â Mihelcic said.

Comment Mentoring (Score 1) 252

My son's high school has an IT club; it had been loosely organized, with no real goal other than to allow protogeeks to get together and talk geek. I volunteered to be their mentor, and have them working towards learning how to build a network, with a firewall, DNS server, email server, file server, Linux and Windows client PCs, etc. We're signed up for an IT competition sponsored by a state University: http://www.it-adventures.org/itolympics.html
I don't know if any of these kids will go on to a career in IT, but they're having fun...and so am I.

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