Comment He owns a coal company? (Score 1) 6
Presidents do not create jobs.
California Classes LED Component Gallium Arsenide a Carcinogen 495
Reader LM741N, pointing to a report released this month by California's Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment, writes "Gallium Arsenide has now been listed as a carcinogen. Given the increasing usage of gallium arsenide, the main constituent in LEDs, and their recent championing as more efficient light sources in recent news stories and Slashdot, there may be significant environmental concerns as related to their disposal. Morover, workers in industries using the substance may be at risk of cancer as well."
Vinyl Gets Its Groove Back 751
theodp writes "Time reports that vinyl records are suddenly cool again. Vinyl has a warmer, more nuanced sound than CDs or MP3s; records feature large album covers with imaginative graphics, pullout photos, and liner notes. 'Bad sound on an iPod has had an impact on a lot of people going back to vinyl,' says 15-year-old David MacRunnel, who owns more than 1,000 records."
National ID Cards Mandated in the US, If You're Under 50 869
charleste writes "CNN is reporting that the US Homeland Security Department has mandated Real ID for drivers licenses. According to the article, this will not include a 'chip', but a list of options by state. Despite legislation passed in various states and objections by groups such as ACLU, this appears to be a done deal. Without one of the new IDs you will be unable to board a plane after 2014 if you are under 50."
Linux To Be Installed In Every Russian School 293
J_Omega writes "According to an article from last week at the Russian IT site CNews, Linux is slated to be installed in every Russian school by 2009. The article makes it appear that it will be going by the (unimaginative) name 'Russian OS.' As stated in the article: 'The main aim of the given work is to reduce dependence on foreign commercial software and provide education institutions with the possibility to choose whether to pay for commercial items or to use the software, provided by the government.' Initial testing installations are supposed to begin next year in select districts. Is 2008/09 the year of Linux on the (Russian) desktop?"
Aids For Communicating With Hospitalized People? 160
charliezcc writes "My grandmother recently fell and broke two vertebrae (among other things) and is in the hospital while she recovers. Thankfully, she was not paralyzed and retains the use of her limbs. However, they have placed her on a respirator and she is virtually unable to communicate with us, so while we try to keep her company during her recovery, our company is reduced to mainly one-sided conversations. Asking her questions, even yes/no questions, is hard because of the neck brace — it turns into a guessing game and very quickly becomes frustrating for both parties. I'm a firm believer in the power of positive mental attitudes and to make her recovery a little better and I'd like to be able to facilitate two-sided conversations with her so she can keep positive. Keeping in mind that she does not have much technology experience, what would you suggest I utilize to ease the communication barrier? I remember seeing devices with a number of buttons that say whatever you program it to say, but I can't find these anymore. What other kind of devices are available?"
Submission + - Delete 'em all and let god sort it out (arstechnica.com) 2
An anonymous reader writes: Exetel, an Australian ISP, has a novel approach to the possibility that copyright material might be hosted on its servers.
It just runs a cron job every night to silently delete all media files.
Yes, you read that right, all .avi, .mp3, .wmv, and .mov files, plus files on another sekrit list of extensions which you're not allowed to know about. "All formats are fair game", warn their admins.
And users don't even get notified it's happened. You wake up in the morning, the files are gone. Then I guess you have to find your way to "Why do my media files keep getting deleted from my free web space?" in their FAQ and take it from there.
Talk about a chilling effect. You can be exempted from their Kafaesque cron job if you sign a kind of Loyalty Oath swearing you own the copyright or have the permission of the owner. So, no fair use then?
They say they're doing it to avoid legal problems, quoting universal v cooper where an Aussie ISP was found liable for encouraging piracy. Only thing is, that case involved a commercial website called mp3s4free which did nothing but offer copyrighted material, and the hosting indisputably company knew all about it, choosing to fight the case on the basis that they didn't host the files, just linked to them.
Copyright law and the internet is a complex subject, but hell, this is using a sledgehammer to crack a nut.
It just runs a cron job every night to silently delete all media files.
Yes, you read that right, all
And users don't even get notified it's happened. You wake up in the morning, the files are gone. Then I guess you have to find your way to "Why do my media files keep getting deleted from my free web space?" in their FAQ and take it from there.
Talk about a chilling effect. You can be exempted from their Kafaesque cron job if you sign a kind of Loyalty Oath swearing you own the copyright or have the permission of the owner. So, no fair use then?
They say they're doing it to avoid legal problems, quoting universal v cooper where an Aussie ISP was found liable for encouraging piracy. Only thing is, that case involved a commercial website called mp3s4free which did nothing but offer copyrighted material, and the hosting indisputably company knew all about it, choosing to fight the case on the basis that they didn't host the files, just linked to them.
Copyright law and the internet is a complex subject, but hell, this is using a sledgehammer to crack a nut.
Fight Spam With Nolisting 410
An anonymous reader writes with the technique of Nolisting, which fights spam by specifying a primary MX that is always unavailable. The page is an extensive FAQ and how-to guide that addressed the objections I immediately came up with. From the article: "It has been observed that when a domain has both a primary (high priority, low number) and a secondary (low priority, high number) MX record configured in DNS, overall SMTP connections will decrease when the primary MX is unavailable. This decrease is unexpected because RFC 2821 (Simple Mail Transfer Protocol) specifies that a client MUST try and retry each MX address in order, and SHOULD try at least two addresses. It turns out that nearly all violators of this specification exist for the purpose of sending spam or viruses. Nolisting takes advantage of this behavior by configuring a domain's primary MX record to use an IP address that does not have an active service listening on SMTP port 25. RFC-compliant clients will retry delivery to the secondary MX, which is configured to serve the role normally performed by the primary MX)."
The Need For A Tagging Standard 200
John Carmichael writes "Tags are everywhere now. Not just blogs, but famous news sites, corporate press bulletins, forums, and even Slashdot. That's why it's such a shame that they're rendered almost entirely useless by the lack of a tagging standard with which tags from various sites and tag aggregators like Technorati and Del.icio.us can compare and relate tags to one another.
Depending on where you go and who you ask, tags are implemented differently, and even defined in their own unique way. Even more importantly, tags were meant to be universal and compatible: a medium of sharing and conveying info across the blogosphere — the very embodiment of a semantic web. Unfortunately, they're not. Far from it, tags create more discord and confusion than they do minimize it.
I have to say, it would be nice to just learn one way of tagging content and using it everywhere.""
Google Earth and "Collateral Damage" 541
netbuzz writes "British news reports say insurgents are using Google Earth to pinpoint vulnerable targets within bases in Iraq. Could Google be doing more to prevent this? Should they be doing more? They certainly could explain more."
