Want to read Slashdot from your mobile device? Point it at m.slashdot.org and keep reading!

 



Forgot your password?
typodupeerror
×

Comment Re:No Law Against Manufacture: PERIOD (Score 1) 632

Being able to fight a "tyrannical government" != everyone being able to print a gun on demand. Given your argument that there must be parity of weapon scale, do you support everyone being able to have a dirty bomb in their backyard as well? By your logic, to successfully mount a defense of the free state, we all must have the right to own everything from hand guns to tanks to jet fighters to nukes.

This is a pretty dangerous stance. If I have all these implements of destruction at my hand and feel that a "tyrannical" government is persecuting me, and there's no explicit litmus test other than I "feel threatened", should I not use them to strike at that government? How is this, then, any different from an act of domestic terrorism?

As interesting as this rabbit hole is, it is hardly the issue at hand. The issue is if I, in a capitalist society, have a right to determine the usage limitations of my own rental property pursuant with any legally recognized contract or lease agreement. Even if it was enshrined in the Second Amendment that people have the right to print guns or whatever, in a free society I have a right to say, "Not on my machinery, you don't," just as you, in a free society, have a right to say, "Fine, then, I'll find someone who will let me," and take your trade elsewhere. So to frame this as some sort of Second Amendment case is a stretch at best and, at worse, a direct attack on the freedoms the Second Amendment is supposed to help guard, namely a government run amok with regulation.

Comment Re:No Law Against Manufacture: PERIOD (Score 1) 632

You're reading a lot into that interpretation of the Second Amendment. It is questionable that the framers of the Bill of Rights had any notion of 3D-printing or the potential ability of any citizen at any time to be able to rent time on a 3D printer and create any type of firearm with relative ease (not yet, of course, but give it time)1. Thus it is a pretty big stretch to say that this is clearly infringement on a Federal level, where the primary concern is banning of militias.

Ideally, as it's not explicitly stated in the Constitution one way or the other, the power to regulate this probably should fall to the States.

Comment Re:Overreaction. (Score 2) 632

Actually, that's not strictly true. Depending upon the lease agreement you signed and whatever clauses the rental agency or owner put in there, you could potentially be kicked out for being gay or having gay sex and only a handful of states include sexual orientation in their fair housing statutes.

http://civilrights.findlaw.com/discrimination/fair-housing-laws-renters-protection-from-sexual-orientation.html

The point is, though, just like in your comparison, a lot of how legal this is depends on what was originally signed. Without having access to that signed agreement, everything else is speculation at best.

Comment Re:Well... (Score 1) 218

Recognized by who, though? While the lawsuit claims that this is a series, as many have pointed out it is not being labeled as such by Marr, Harper Collins or really anywhere else. Even if it is the first book in a series, it is individually named "Carnival of Souls" and there is now real evidence to be found that the series itself is being branded with that name. Regardless, his beef is with Harper Collins, not the various book blogs that reviewed the book.

A wiser approach would have been to go after HC first, get a judgment in his favor and then contact the book blogs and inform them of the judicial decision, asking them to either change or remove their reviews to be in compliance. Then, if they refused, send out the official C&Ds in preparation for legal action against those specific blogs that refused. Going the route he did, shotgunning out C&Ds, makes him look like he's just trolling for attention for his series (even if he's really not), rather than appropriately defending his trademark.
Hardware

Submission + - Self-sustaining solar reactor creates clean hydrogen (geek.com)

An anonymous reader writes: A mechanical engineer working out of the University of Delaware has come up with a way to produce hydrogen without any undesirable emissions such as carbon dioxide.

The solar reactor is capable of using sunlight to increase the heat inside its cylindrical structure above 3,000 degrees Fahrenheit. Zinc oxide powder is then gravity fed through 15 hoppers into the ceramic interior where it converts to a zinc vapor. At that point the vapor is reacted with water separately, which in turn produces hydrogen. If the prototype gets through 6 weeks of testing at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology located in Zurich, we could see it scaled up to industrial size, producing emission-free hydrogen.

China

Submission + - Anonymous Hacks Hundreds Of Chinese Government Sites (zdnet.com)

An anonymous reader writes: Hundreds of Chinese government websites have been hacked and defaced in the span of a few days. A handful have also had their administrator accounts, phone numbers, and e-mail addresses posted publicly. On the hacked sites, the group even posted tips for how to circumvent the Great Firewall of China.
Science

Submission + - High-tech laser guns will zap targets in Olympic pentathlon event (networkworld.com)

coondoggie writes: "Laser guns and electronic targets for the first time will replace traditional air guns in the modern pentathlon event at the 2012 London Olympics. The modern pentathlon consists of five events: pistol shooting, fencing, 200 m freestyle swimming, show jumping, and a 3 km cross-country run and has been part of the Olympic Games since 1912."
NASA

Submission + - Want to See the Last Moment of a Stars Life? (scienceworldreport.com)

An anonymous reader writes: Researchers using NASA's Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy (SOFIA) have captured infrared images of the last exhalations of a dying sun-like star.

The object observed by SOFIA, planetary nebula Minkowski 2-9, or M2-9 for short, is seen in this three-color composite image. The SOFIA observations were made at the mid-infrared wavelengths of 20, 24, and 37 microns. The 37-micron wavelength band detects the strongest emissions from the nebula and is impossible to observe from ground-based telescopes.

Comment Re:From TFA (Score 1) 669

The school checked, found the claims to be baseless and simply a fit of pique by the children in question. Did the school have the right to force the children to log into their Facebook accounts on school property to see the messages? Debatable, but again, the teacher in this case has done nothing wrong. So saying that "everyone failed" and lumping the teacher in is wrong-headed ridiculousness.

Comment Re:From TFA (Score 4, Insightful) 669

Wait, how did the teacher fail in this case? The students clearly failed because at age 12 and 13 you should know enough to not tell lies about people just because you're angry.

School district may have failed by actioning on a Facebook post not made on their computers. That's up for debate, but it is perhaps understandable that they acted to both protect the teacher and their reputations and send a message to other students that this level of name calling is not acceptable.

Parents definitely failed in not monitoring their children or teaching them appropriate impulse control. If you're going to turn control over your children to a school, then you can't act shocked when the school disciplines your child. It's great that some of the parents are considering getting lawyers and giving their children a chance to experience how the legal system works, but perhaps had the parents shown this level of interest in their children to begin with, it wouldn't have happened.

But the teacher here was just doing his job teaching students. Call a teacher stupid? Well, I suppose, although even that shows a distressing lack of respect for an authority figure who, by all accounts, hasn't done anything to warrant it. Call them a rapist, a pedophile and accuse them of mental illness? All of those are career enders for teachers (again, generally because of parents who are only involved in their children's lives when they smell a payday with a lawsuit) and, unless the student has a legitimate accusation, should require consequence.

So I see student fail, school fail and parent fail, but how the hell did the teacher fail? The teacher was maliciously and slanderously attacked for doing his job. Seriously, we've gotta stop treating teachers as second class citizens. Just lumping everyone into the blame game to seem fair or even handed is bad critical thinking and neither fair nor even handed.

Image

4chan Declares War On Snow 201

With all the recent hacktivism in the news, Anonymous has decided to take on a new and powerful enemy: snow. On Sunday the group announced that it will "do everything in its power to shut snow down by attacking the Weather Channel and North Face websites, boycotting outerwear, and voting for the sun as Time’s 2010 Person Of The Year." I'm sure there are a lot of people in Minneapolis right now that would wish them luck.

Comment Re:Radio (Score 1) 662

Or every John Hughes film ever made....IF THEY WERE SET IN SPACE. But don't worry. Our uniquely rebellious planet will learn that it has an inner strength and doesn't need that bitchy exoplanet's approval. As a sign, Earth will take two perfectly good prom dresses and rip them apart only to reassemble them in a Frankenstein's Monster creation resembling a cross between a potato sack and a straightjacket for Rainbow Bright. Then, after prom, Earth will bang Andrew McCarthy and this will somehow force Jon Cryer to star in a sitcom with the Sheen that didn't marry Paula Abdul. Yeah. That'll show 'em.
Image

Woman Trademarks Name and Threatens Sites Using It 273

An anonymous reader writes "Be careful mentioning Dr. Ann De Wees Allen. She's made it clear that she's trademarked her name and using it is 'illegal... without prior written permission.' She even lists out the names of offenders and shows you the cease-and-desist letter she sends them. And, especially don't copy any of the text on her website, because she's using a bit of javascript that will warn you 'Copyright Protect!' if you right click on a link."

Comment So when are the other evaluations being published? (Score 1) 629

More than any other job, teaching depends on a multitude of parties "doing the right thing" in order to be successful. Teachers are definitely one of those, but the best teacher in the world can't overcome parents who aren't involved with their children, a home environment and surroundings that don't value education, children themselves who may have been taught that teachers are "bad" and the public education system is "bad" so they want none of it and school administrations which are more interested in CYA than supporting their teachers. One, maybe two, of these can break down or be sub-par and a child still might get an education. But in many systems, you've got massive cascading breakdowns in all of them. Trying to then point out the faults in just one of them is then little more than blame shifting and finger pointing. Further, because of their intertwined nature, how can you fix one of them without fixing all of them? Any improvement in one area will slowly be ground down by the interference coming from the others. Are there bad teachers? You bet there are. Maybe more than anyone would like to admit because having the desire to work with kids and education doesn't mean having the ability to navigate the current learning environment. But unless this evaluation takes into account the whole picture (kids, parents, administration, teachers and environment), it's just another bandwagon "Let's blame teachers!" torches-and-pitchforks battlecry. Even worse, its just bad journalism. It also means the teachers who the evaluation call "good" are about to get all sorts of hell unleashed on them as parents read these things and then fight, sometimes quite viciously, to have Little Billy put into the top teacher's classroom or, upon seeing Little Sally is in a "bad" teacher's classroom, well, what's the point?

Comment So, Julian, there's this thing called the internet (Score 2, Interesting) 578

SETI@home can get over 3 million volunteers to scan the sky, but Julian Assange, in an Internet positively filled with people who would love to be a part of something like this, can't find a thousand people to help review documents and redact names that aren't needed and somehow this is Amnesty International's fault? Climb off the cross, Julian, the Taliban needs the wood to build fires and burn alive those you named.

Slashdot Top Deals

Lots of folks confuse bad management with destiny. -- Frank Hubbard

Working...