Comment Fantasy exercise (Score 1) 877
It's long past time to face facts: the Earth is getting hotter, and to deny it is an exercise in fantasy.
I much prefer fantasy exercise over actual exercise!
Comment A witch! (Score 1) 243
(Monty Python mode ON)
So, if 4GB weighs the same as a virus, it's therefore...
(Monty Python mode OFF)
Submission + - Wikipedia COO was Convicted Felon
Arthur Dent '99 writes: According to this AP story, Carolyn Bothwell Doran was COO for the Wikimedia Foundation for six months before it was discovered that she was a convicted felon with charges of theft, drunk driving, and shooting her boyfriend in the chest. Of interest to me is her apparent connection to the CIA; her father was a CIA official, and her late husband was a former CIA officer who drowned on their honeymoon in 1999 (providing plenty of good fodder for conspiracy theorists). The Wikimedia Foundation is now performing background checks on its officers.
Submission + - One Lapdance Per Child
Arthur Dent '99 writes: A reporter from the News Agency of Nigeria has discovered that several primary school children are downloading pornography on the laptops donated by the One Laptop Per Child project. AN OLPC official has stated that the laptops will now be fitted with filters.
I believe that children should indeed be protected from the seedier side of the Internet. My question regards how that filtering will be handled. Are the school districts who receive donated equipment responsible themselves to install and maintain filtering software, or is it the responsibility of the manufacturer to pre-install filtering software on laptops destined for schools? If so, does the school district itself have any way to add and/or remove blacklisted sites from the pre-installed filter?
I believe that children should indeed be protected from the seedier side of the Internet. My question regards how that filtering will be handled. Are the school districts who receive donated equipment responsible themselves to install and maintain filtering software, or is it the responsibility of the manufacturer to pre-install filtering software on laptops destined for schools? If so, does the school district itself have any way to add and/or remove blacklisted sites from the pre-installed filter?
Submission + - Bill to store all ISP activity indefinitely
An anonymous reader writes: Once again government uses the boogie man of child pornography to propose the most draconian internet legislation to date. ISP's would be required to store indefinitely all user online data or face prison.
http://www.infowars.com/articles/bb/internet_congr ess_wants_monitor_all_emails_ims.htm
Submission + - Jean Ichbiah, Chief Architect of Ada, Dies
An anonymous reader writes: Jean Ichbiah, the chief architect of the Ada programming language, has died (http://www.adaic.org/news/ichbiah.html). Although Ada is not widely used today outside of DoD, the language introduced a generation of programmers to practical language constructs for what had until then been esoteric features such as overloading, exception handling, and multi-tasking.
Submission + - Affordable Solar Manufacturing Breakthrough
An anonymous reader writes: International Automated Systems, Inc. (IAUS) has announced that they have set a new production record for solar panel manufacturing, both in speed and in cost. They claim to have manufactured nearly 1,000 Kilowatts of IAUS's solar panels in a short 24-hour run. The IAUS system consists of panels which serve as lenses to focus the sun's heat on a heat exchanger that then produce steam or other high-temperature fluid that is then passed through a simple, patented turbine which is connected to a generator to produce electricity. The company says that they have achieved the milestone of producing electricity via solar energy at a price below wholesale grid pricing.
