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Submission + - Magician suing for copyright over magic trick (arstechnica.com) 1

Fluffeh writes: "Teller, the silent half of the well-known magic duo Penn and Teller, has sued a rival magician for copying one of his most famous illusions. The case promises to test the boundaries of copyright law as it applies to magic tricks. A Dutch magician with the stage name Gerard Bakardy (real name: Gerard Dogge) saw Teller perform the trick in Las Vegas and developed his own version — then started selling a kit — including a fake rose, instructions, and a DVD — for about $3,000. Teller had Bakardy's video removed with a DMCA takedown notice, then called Bakardy to demand that the magician stop using his routine. Teller offered to buy Bakardy out, but they were unable to agree on a price. So Teller sued Bakardy last week in a Nevada federal court."

Submission + - Ellison doesn't know if Java is free (cnet.com)

Emacs.Cmode writes: Among the highlights emanating from U.S. District Court in San Francisco courtroom 8 today was Oracle CEO Larry Ellison's response to a question regarding the status of the Java programming language, which his company acquired when it bought Sun Microsystems in 2010.
Asked by Google's lead attorney, Robert Van Nest, if the Java language is free, Ellison was slow to respond. Judge William Alsup pushed Ellison to answer with a yes or no. As ZDNet reporter Rachel King observed in the courtroom, Ellison resisted and huffed, "I don't know."

Comment Lies my Teacher Told Me... (Score 1) 1252

James Loewen's books, are some of the best that I ever read. Lies my Teacher Told Me starts off with the story of him and a few school districts suing to get his book on the history of Miss. adopted. Fascinating and disheartening stuff.

It is amazing the damage that a few phuqtards with ignorant beliefs can have. I always shake may head in amazement at the evolutionary naysayers. I have found that asking them how antibiotic resistant strains of bacteria have come about so quickly usually shuts them up.

Comment Re:Be Careful what you wish for! (Score 1) 599

If it weren't for the fact that they say that the genetic test are normal I would have a theory. My theory is that she may not have the proper receptors. For example, in the case of testicular feminisation, a person has a genetic defect in where there are no testosterone receptors. As a result, what little estrogen is in their system works like gang-busters, because there is nothing to counteract it. Because of this, the general medical recommendation is to have the undeveloped male genitalia removed and have them grow up to be women.

It is fascinating stuff though.

Comment Nobel Prize winning physicists from a valley... (Score 2, Interesting) 357

In the book "The making of the Atomic Bomb" the author, Richard Rhodes, points out something very much like this.
 
One might think that the distribution of Nobel Prize winning physicists might have a normal distribution, but there is a valley in Hungary (if I remember the book correctly) that has an inordinate amount of Nobel Prize winners.
 
  He makes the case that their elementary level education had a role in this. Students were doing inventive things on their own in math and science at a very early age. As a result, a more natural and internal approach to these subjects followed them through life and put them in a better position to do ground-breaking research.

By the way, if you have not read "The Making of the Atomic Bomb" I highly recommend it. Not just because of its account of the events of the Manhattan Project, but also because it goes into the philosophy of the 1800's which resulted in the pursuit of bigger, better weapons to rage "Total War". The chemical weapons of WWI were a result of this as well.

Comment excellents tools from sysinternals.com (Score 1) 835

Mark Russinovich, runs a website called sysinternals.com, which is now hosted by Microsoft. You might remember him as the person who discovered the Sony Rootkit.

He has a bevy of cool tools, though I think the best are:
procmon
regmon
filemon

Homeboy Russinovich is not afraid of a little assembler. These tools kick ass. The show you every process and their parent child relationship, every file, and every registry key that is being accessed.
 
As you can imagine filemon and regmon can generate a butt-load of output, and it may take a while to go through, but whenever I have had a problem that required this amount of horsepower I am always happy to sift through the output for the needed gems.

The Military

Researchers To Build Underwater Airplane 263

coondoggie writes to tell us that DARPA seems to still be having fun with their funding and continues to aim for the "far out." The latest program, a submersible airplane, seems to have been pulled directly from science fiction. Hopefully this voyage to the bottom of the sea is of the non-permanent variety. "According to DARPA: 'The difficulty with developing such a craft come from the diametrically opposed requirements that exist for an airplane and a submarine. While the primary goal for airplane designers is to try and minimize weight, a submarine must be extremely heavy in order to submerge underwater. In addition, the flow conditions and the systems designed to control a submarine and an airplane are radically different, due to the order of magnitude difference in the densities of air and water.'"

Comment Re:research to application life cycle (Score 1) 1007

Along those lines, I have often wondered if this could be part of the reason the Russians and Chinese are so dominant in much of the mathematics journals.
 
I would think that until the last decade or so, their access to computers was no where near the level that the west enjoys...

It's funny.  Laugh.

Submission + - how to give your kids a resume stain for life...

lyapunov writes: I have stumbled across some funny, strange, and sad things in my days, but this takes the cake. Never once did it cross my mind to name a child "Talula Does the Hula From Hawaii". This was a little gem that I stumbled across this morning on CNN this morning. There were some references to other names changes that were accepted and rejected here in the US.

I am sure the slashdot community will have some interesting anecdotes of real names that they have come across during their days. Nothing like a little levity to start the day.

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