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Submission + - US Issues 30-Year Eagle-Killing Permits To Wind Industry

Submitted by Hugh Pickens DOT Com
Hugh Pickens DOT Com writes: Lindsay Abrams reports at Salon that in an attempt to encourage the growth of wind power, the Obama administration has announced that it is offering wind farms 30 years of leeway to kill and harm bald and golden eagles. The new regulations, which were requested by the wind industry, will provide companies that seek a permit with legal protection, preventing them from having to pay penalties for eagle deaths. An investigation by the Associated Press earlier this year documented the illegal killing of eagles around wind farms, the Obama administration's reluctance to prosecute such cases and its willingness to help keep the scope of the eagle deaths secret. President Obama has championed the pollution-free energy, nearly doubling America's wind power in his first term as a way to tackle global warming. Scientists say wind farms in 10 states have killed at least 85 eagles since 1997, with most deaths occurring between 2008 and 2012, as the industry was greatly expanding. Most deaths — 79 — were golden eagles that struck wind turbines. However the scientists said their figure is likely to be "substantially" underestimated, since companies report eagle deaths voluntarily and only a fraction of those included in their total were discovered during searches for dead birds by wind-energy companies. The National Audubon Society said it would challenge the decision. ”Instead of balancing the need for conservation and renewable energy, Interior wrote the wind industry a blank check,” says Audubon President and CEO David Yarnold. "It’s outrageous that the government is sanctioning the killing of America’s symbol, the Bald Eagle."

Submission + - Lice Stick Around On Your Head Much Longer than Thought (sciencemag.org)

Submitted by sciencehabit
sciencehabit writes: Lice eggs can take 2 weeks to hatch in human hair, making standard 7-day delousing treatments ineffective in some cases. New research shows that if conditions are right, the eggs, called nits, can sit dormant during treatment, only to pop later and reinfest the scalp. A third application may be necessary after 14 days to eliminate any slow-hatching nits, they say. Location and hairstyle matters, too: Lice develop faster at warmer temperatures, so they will hatch more quickly when laid on the warm, thick hair at the nape of the neck than on the thinner hair on top and in front of the scalp.

Submission + - Ikea France Executives Arrested Over Claims They Spied On Customers And Staff (indiatimes.com)

Submitted by cold fjord
cold fjord writes: The Economic Times reports, "Two executives at IKEA France were being questioned by police Monday as part of a probe into allegations the company illegally used police files to spy on staff and customers ... IKEA France's CEO, and CFO ... were formally detained for questioning by police in Versailles ... prosecutors launched a criminal probe in April 2012 following allegations that IKEA paid for illegal access to secret police files to gain information about employees and clients. ... IKEA France subsequently fired four employees, launched an internal inquiry and established a code of conduct ... Four civilian police employees have also been charged and are suspected of having been paid by IKEA in exchange for confidential police files."

Submission + - Give Your Child the Gift of an Alzheimer's Diagnosis 1

Submitted by theodp
theodp writes: "There's a lot you can do for your child with 99 dollars," explains Fast Company's Elizabeth Murphy, who opted to get her adopted 5-year-old daughter's genes tested by 23andMe, a startup founded by Anne Wojcicki that's been funded to the tune of $126 million by Google, Sergey Brin (Wojcicki's now-separated spouse), Yuri Milner, and others. So, how'd that work out? "My daughter," writes Murphy, "who is learning to read and tie her shoes, has two copies of the APOE-4 variant, the strongest genetic risk factor for Alzheimer's. According to her 23andMe results, she has a 55% chance of contracting the disease between the ages of 65 and 79." So, what is 23andMe's advice for the worried Mom? "You have this potential now to engage her in all kinds of activities," said Wojcicki. "Do you get her focused on her exercise and what she's eating, and doing brain games and more math?" Duke associate professor of public policy Don Taylor had more comforting advice for Murphy. "It's possible the best thing you can do is burn that damn report and never think of it again," he said. "I'm just talking now as a parent. Do not wreck yourself about your 5-year-old getting Alzheimer's. Worry more about the fact that when she's a teenager she might be driving around in cars with drunk boys."

Comment Re:Turning in my Eagle Scout badge (Score 1) 289

by Artifex (#44955399) Attached to: Boy Scouts Bully Hacker Scouts Into Submission

I can remember a day when Boy Scouts of America would have been approving of something like hackerscouts.org because they would have shared a central theme; curiosity, experimentation, education, science -- all good things to interest young people. It's disappointing to see the BSA stooping to such douchenozzly levels. The have apparently lost enough positive virutue I would not want to be associated with them today.

So you held onto your badge while they were actively booting kids and scoutmasters for being gay and/or atheist, and during the child abuse scandals. But them trying to enforce their trademark gets you mad enough to do something?

Comment fact check? (Score 5, Informative) 668

by Artifex (#43705077) Attached to: How Colleges Are Pushing Out the Poor To Court the Rich

The study notes that, according to the Department of Education's most recent study, 19 percent of undergrads at four-year colleges received merit aid despite scoring under 700 on the SAT. Their only merit, in some cases, might well have been mom and dad's bank account.

The study doesn't actually say that, at least not according to the chart on page 4. It says that 18.8% of the students in college who had scores of 0-699 got merit aid. Not that 18.8% of all the students in college received aid with such low scores.

Comment Personal page or not, it was published (Score 1) 2

I don't have a problem with this ruling. If you publish such a declaration on your page for your friends, enemies, and/or other family members to see, I think you've intended and made a real threat, and as such, should be subject to the consequences.

Clam666, please explain why you disagree. Am I wrong to think people should be held accountable for this?
Also, what sorts of other rulings are you worried might follow from this?

Submission + - Threats Posted On Your Own Facebook Page Are Crimes, Florida Court Rules 2

Submitted by clam666
clam666 writes: In an apparent first in Florida law, a state appeals court ruled this week that posting threats on one’s personal Facebook page can be prosecuted under state law.

The 1st District Court of Appeal decided in a criminal case that a Facebook post could be considered a “sending” for the purposes of the “sending written threats to kill or do bodily harm” law, a second-degree felony. In the ruling "When a person composes a statement of thought, and then displays the composition in such a way that someone else can see it, that person has completed the first step in the Wise court’s definition of 'sending'."

The pertinent quote in question:

“FUCK my [relative] for choosin to be a lesbian and fuck [the partner] cuz you’re an ugly ass bitch . . . if you ever talk to me like you got a set of nuts between your legs again . . . I’m gonna fuck you up and bury your bitch ass. U wanna act like a man. I’ll tear the concrete up with your face and drag you back to your doorstep. U better watch how the fuck you talk to people. You were born a woman and you better stay one.”

Even though the Appellant didn't directly send anything to the person directly, because it was posted on his own page, then therefore the thought appears to be sent. As if THIS won't be a stepping stone to more fun rulings.
Businesses

Submission + - Steve Jobs' First Boss: 'Very few companies would hire Steve, even today'

Submitted by
Hugh Pickens writes
Hugh Pickens writes writes: "The Mercury News reports that Nolan Bushnell, who ran video game pioneer Atari in the early 1970s, says he always saw something special in Steve Jobs, and that Atari's refusal to be corralled by the status quo was one of the reasons Jobs went to work there in 1974 as an unkempt, contemptuous 19-year-old. "The truth is that very few companies would hire Steve, even today," says Bushnell. "Why? Because he was an outlier. To most potential employers, he'd just seem like a jerk in bad clothing." While at Atari, Bushnell broke the corporate mold, creating a template that is now common through much of Silicon Valley. He allowed employees to turn Atari's lobby into a cross between a video game arcade and the Amazon jungle. He started holding keg parties and hiring live bands to play for his employees after work. He encouraged workers to nap during their shifts, reasoning that a short rest would stimulate more creativity when they were awake. He also promised a summer sabbatical every seven years. Bushnell's newly released book, "Finding The Next Steve Jobs: How to Find, Hire, Keep and Nurture Creative Talent," serves as a primer on how to ensure a company doesn't turn into a mind-numbing bureaucracy that smothers existing employees and scares off rule-bending innovators such as Jobs. The basics: Make work fun; weed out the naysayers; celebrate failure, and then learn from it; allow employees to take short naps during the day; and don't shy away from hiring talented people just because they look sloppy or lack college credentials. Bushnell is convinced that there are all sorts of creative and unconventional people out there working at companies today. The problem is that corporate managers don't recognize them. Or when they do, they push them to conform rather than create. "Some of the best projects to ever come out of Atari or Chuck E. Cheese's were from high school dropouts, college dropouts," says Bushnell, "One guy had been in jail.""
Security

Submission + - Password hacking 101 (arstechnica.com) 1

Submitted by RNLockwood
RNLockwood writes: Ars Technica published an article about password hackingin which the author explained how he learned to hack passwords using the most simple tools available to a neophyte. Hacker who do this for profit use lists of hashed passwords and user name that have been 'liberated' from companies and sold or posted at certain websites. Longer passwords grow exponentially harder to crack than short ones(it takes much, much, longer) but computing power increases much more slowly. At my work we have several passwords and the one with the most stringent requirements must be exactly 12 characters long, have upper and lower case, etc., must be changed every two months, and can't be repeated for a 24 password cycle. It's difficult to create acceptable passwords that both meet the requirements and can be remembered.
Privacy

Submission + - The new menace: the LinkedIn-Flood (linkedin.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: This morning I received an invite from a group of people through my e-mail, and from LinkedIn. At login, I was asked to allow LinkedIn to check my e-mail addresses with Gmail, and I must have been dumb enough to allow for it. Not because of the 100+ proposed people that were all ticked, and there was a tick box labelled 'tick all' and none to untick all, but since it is a public holiday here I took the time to select 7 — no, actually I took the time to deselect a good more than 100 — and then 'continue ..' or likewise. In any case, a short and non-persistent sentence flushed by informing me of 587 invites having been sent out. I cannot guarantee for that number, it was just too brief. And immediately some 20 bounces came in, from people who had retired, some 'no-reply' mailboxes, and so forth.
The misery is that I can barely remember all people; honestly, for some I don't remember at all. And overall it is an embarrassment that seemingly I send invites to people with whom I had but problems (former landlord), people who rejected my job application like two years ago, whatnot.
No, I am not aware of allowing anything but that one access to my mail accounts. And I can guarantee that I deselected the large majority, effectively graying out the details, and a double-check before I continued by scrolling through all those gray boxes with only a few clearly visible. But wait, while searching the LinkedIn site for a way to revoke this nonsense, I found that I am not the only one. It seems others were hit by the same snag. There is a long thread on this topic: http://community.linkedin.com/questions/14456/how-to-stop-automatic-invitations-to-random-people.html
I have a distinct feeling that this happens intentionally. Reason: I received a couple of mails in the last hours from people who were curious how come they get an invite and yet don't even have a LinkedIn account!? And why is there a box to tick all contacts and — at least at first sight — none to untick all? And when I untick a good hundred, why and where and when did LinkedIn take the liberty to send out an invite to all?

I know, most of all I have to blame myself for permitting a site like LinkedIn to access my contacts. And yet ... .

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