Comment Re:RIAA Tax (Score 3, Insightful) 526
There is, but little-to-none of it takes the form of kickbacks to US Senators, which is why he's all up in arms.
Comment I don't understand. (Score 0) 274
Why beam power all the way from orbit? Wouldn't an army of sharks with frickin' laser beams on their heads be more effective?
Comment Re:Cool? (Score 1) 328
How does that make it cool? It sounds more like desperation.
It's also what got us into the whole Java School mess.
Comment Re:Noscript (Score 1) 188
You keep your noscript plugin, and I'll keep intuitive webUI.
'Intuitive' web UI doesn't need JavaScript -- it can be done purely with CSS.
Comment Re:Too bad "being an asshole" is not a crime (Score 2, Insightful) 498
It's not about PERSONAL harm. It's about professional ethics and legal implications. If you were fired from a company, and subsequently went and posted every password you knew on a forum or email list, you'd be sued or charged in a heartbeat.
This is no different in the least -- even if he was already barred from accessing the system, it was still a random group of people whose authority over him and/or the systems was nonexistent, or questionable at best. If he HAD divulged the passwords in those circumstances, he should have been charged, not the other way around.
Comment Re:Too bad "being an asshole" is not a crime (Score 2, Insightful) 498
No one in the room was in Childs' chain of command. His boss wasn't there, nor was his boss' boss, etc. It was a group of random city employees (city police, HR) and random, unknown people on the other end of a phone.
What authority did anyone there have to order him to divulge passwords?
If someone from HR or Finance, even if they're a VP or C*O, came to me and said "Hand over all the network passwords now.", I'd tell them to fuck off too until someone to whom I report said otherwise.
Comment Re:Wow, they are lucky. (Score 2, Informative) 369
The Rogers overage charges stop at $25. So whether you use 150GB or 1TB per month, your bill will only be $54.95 + $25.00 + taxes.
My bandwidth is regularly several hundred gigs a month on Rogers Extreme. I've done 1TB+ in a month before.
U of MI Produces Strongest Laser Ever 244
eldavojohn writes "Weighing in at a mere 20 billion trillion watts per square centimeter and containing a measly 300 terawatts of power, the University of Michigan has broken a record with a 1.3-micron speck wide laser. It's about two orders of magnitude higher than any other laser in the world and can perform for 30 femtoseconds once every ten seconds — some of the researchers speculate it is the most powerful laser in the universe. 'If you could hold a giant magnifying glass in space and focus all the sunlight shining toward Earth onto one grain of sand, that concentrated ray would approach the intensity of a new laser beam made in a University of Michigan laboratory ... To achieve this beam, the research team added another amplifier to the HERCULES laser system, which previously operated at 50 terawatts. HERCULES is a titanium-sapphire laser that takes up several rooms at U-M's Center for Ultrafast Optical Science. Light fed into it bounces like a pinball off a series of mirrors and other optical elements. It gets stretched, energized, squeezed and focused along the way.'" And ... cue the evil chortling.
Submission + - Origin of Antimatter Cloud Discovered
Active Seti writes: "Scientists have proposed a wide range of explanations for the origin of antimatter, which is exceedingly rare in the cosmos. For years, many theories centered around radioactive elements produced in supernovae. Now four years of observations from the European Space Agency's Integral satellite may have cleared up one of the most vexing mysteries in our Milky Way: the origin of a giant cloud of antimatter surrounding the galactic center. Integral found that the cloud extends farther on the western side of the galactic center than it does on the eastern side. This imbalance matches the distribution of a population of binary star systems that contain black holes or neutron stars, strongly suggesting that these binaries are churning out at least half of the antimatter, and perhaps all of it. The antimatter is probably produced in a region near the neutron stars and black holes, where powerful magnetic fields launch jets of particles that rip through space at near-light speed. "We expected something unexpected, but we did not expect this," says Gerry Skinner, co-investigator for Integral's Spectrometer which made the discovery."
Submission + - Senate Approves Immunity for Illegal Wiretapping (yahoo.com)
An anonymous reader writes: Senate just passed a bill with an overwhelming majority that will grant immunity to all the telephone companies that participated in the illegal wiretapping. Senate contends that "(Telephone) companies should be thanked, not punished, for helping defend the United States (by helping with illegal wiretapping)". From the article "The Senate bill would provide new protections of civil liberties, such as requiring tougher congressional and judicial oversight." With a congress and judiciary like this say goodbye to our liberties.
Submission + - Myths and Truths, Proposed Canada's Copyright Act 1
CdnCopyLeft writes: An article from the Alliance of Canadian Cinema, Television and Radio Artists (ACTRA) that represents performers in Canada on the proposed changes to the Canadian Copyright Act.
Submission + - Time Warner Cable Wins State-Wide Cable Franchise (state.oh.us) 1
An anonymous reader writes: Time Warner Cable has received the second state-wide franchise agreement, covering 260 communities, in 60 of Ohio's 88 counties, for 10 years. AT&T was the first to earn a state-wide franchise contract, after a law was passed in September that allowed operators to negotiate a single state-wide agreement.
Normally operators negotiate franchise agreements at the local level.
Submission + - Should Wikipedia Allow Mathematical Proofs? (wikipedia.org) 4
Beetle B. writes: "An argument has arisen over whether Wikipedia should allow pages that provide proofs for mathematical theorems (such as this one).
On the one hand, Wikipedia is a useful source of information and people can benefit from these proofs. On the other hand, how does one choose which proofs to include and which not to? Should Wikipedia just become a textbook that teaches mathematics? Should it just state the bare results of theorems and not provide proofs (except as external links)? Or should they take an intermediate approach and formulate a criterion for which proofs to include and which to exclude?"
On the one hand, Wikipedia is a useful source of information and people can benefit from these proofs. On the other hand, how does one choose which proofs to include and which not to? Should Wikipedia just become a textbook that teaches mathematics? Should it just state the bare results of theorems and not provide proofs (except as external links)? Or should they take an intermediate approach and formulate a criterion for which proofs to include and which to exclude?"
Submission + - Canadian DMCA protest (boingboing.net) 1
ThePurpleBuffalo writes: Cory Doctorow has announced that Jim Prentice will be in Calgary, Alberta, Canada tomorrow (Saturday, 2007-12-10) and that this might be the best chance to fight the Canadian DMCA. From the article: "If you're a Canadian and you want to talk to Industry Minister Jim Prentice about his proposal for a Canadian DMCA, a copyright law that's even worse than the ten-year-old American legislation that resulted in lawsuits against 20,000+ Americans without stopping infringement or paying artists, now's your chance!"
Submission + - KDE 4.0 Beta 1 Released 1
mernil writes: "The KDE Community is happy to announce the immediate availability of the first Beta release for KDE 4.0. This release marks the beginning of the integration process which will bring the powerful new technologies included in the now frozen KDE 4 libraries to the applications."
