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Submission + - TSA Got Everything It Wanted For Christmas (hstoday.us) 1

OverTheGeicoE writes: It looks like Congress' recent jabs at TSA were just posturing after all. Last Friday, President Obama signed a spending act passed by both houses of Congress. The act gives TSA a $7.85 billion budget increase for 2012 and includes funding for 12 additional multi-modal Visible Intermodal Prevention and Response (VIPR) teams and 140 new behavior detection officers. It even includes funding for 250 shiny new body scanners, which was originally cut from the funding bill last May.

Submission + - Ebert:I'll tell you why movie revenue is dropping (rogerebert.com)

schwit1 writes: And it ain't illegal downloads.
  1. No blockbusters like Avatar
  2. Ticket prices are too high.
  3. The theater experience.
  4. Refreshment prices.
  5. Competition from other forms of delivery.
  6. Lack of choice.

The message I get is that Americans love the movies as much as ever. It's the theaters that are losing their charm. Proof: theaters thrive that police their audiences, show a variety of titles and emphasize value-added features. The rest of the industry can't depend forever on blockbusters to bail it out.

Piracy

Submission + - Members of congress caught pirating via bittorrent (dailytech.com)

Dega704 writes: TorrentFreak used Hurricane Electric's handy list of assigned IP blocks to track down which IP addresses belong to the offices of members of Congress. And lo and behold, when those addresses were compared to results on YouHaveDownloaded, a torrent tracking site, they yielded over 800 hits.

Now to put this in context. YouHaveDownloaded tracks only a tiny portion of torrent traffic, so it appears that Congress — even as they look to punish lesser mortals for file sharing — are themselves gleefully committing a "smash and grab" as Vice President Joe Biden (D) once put it.

The Almighty Buck

Submission + - Bloomberg's Chief Advisor Spins an H-1B Success St 1

theodp writes: Over at U.S. News & World Report's Debate Club, NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg's chief policy adviser John Feinblatt seems to be playing a little loose with the facts as he argues for Congress to make more temporary visas available for foreign tech workers. Feinblatt writes: 'Cris Conde came from Chile to study astronomy and physics at Yale. Instead of going home after he graduated in 1981, he stayed in this country because he was able to obtain an H-1B visa with relative ease. That was lucky for us, because SunGard, the company he founded and later led as CEO, grew into one of the world's leading technology and software companies and now employs more than 21,000 people.' Sounds good, except SunGard, according to the company's own website, was not founded by Cris Conde, but was formed in 1982 as a spin-off of a division of Sun Oil Company, and attributes its growth to a strategy of acquisitions ("more than 160 acquisitions since 1986'). SunGard's 2011 Media Book notes that Conde joined SunGard through the acquisition of Devon Systems International, Inc. in 1987, was appointed President in 2000, and named CEO in 2002, when SunGard revenue already stood at $2.6B. Also, not to get picky, but according to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services' website, the H-1B classification was created by Public Law 101-238 in 1989, eight years after Conde’s 1981 graduation.

Comment Re:Lesson learned. (Score 1) 418

I agree with you 100% except for the idiot part.

You're talking about a password escrow policy, a damned good thing to have in any case. He's talking about the actual risk you only briefly mention. How would what you're talking about here prevent or minimize the risk that he's talking about here? Answer: it wouldn't.

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