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Republicans

Submission + - Democracy Now: Illegal Police Arrest in Minnesota

Submitted by
AZhun
AZhun writes: "Under
Yep-a-change-we-can-believe-in
Heard via Air America's Tom Hartman Show on Sept 2nd, about report of police raids by authorities around the Republican National Convention sweeping up 280. Amy Goodman gave brief guest interview about one raid that morning of August 31st.Democracy Now was witness to a raid on a known video documentary group. It later turned out police raiders were using a warrant issued for a different location. The Democracy Now team members in covering were roughed up and arrested while attempting to interview the property owner who initially was also being detained along with the renting visitors.

See stories related to:
Update: Democracy Now!'s Amy Goodman, Sharif Abdel Kouddous and Nicole Salazar Released After Illegal Arrest at RNC
dated: 1-Sept-2008 at Democracy Now website
See the video of Amy Goodman's Arrest:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oYjyvkR0bGQ"
The Almighty Buck

Stealing From Banks One Cent at a Time 313

Posted by CmdrTaco from the not-like-atm-fees-steal-from-you dept.
JRHelgeson writes "In a story strangely reminiscent of Superman 3, a 'hacker' allegedly stole over $50,000 from PayPal, Google Checkout as well as several unnamed online brokerage firms. When opening an online brokering account it is common practice for companies such as E-trade and Schwab to send a tiny payment — ranging from only a few cents to a couple of dollars — to verify that the user has access to the bank account listed. According to the story, the attacker wrote a script that opened thousands of accounts at dozens of these providers. He was arrested not for taking the money, but for using false names in order to get it."
Government

NASA Employee Suspended For Blogging At Work 211

Posted by CmdrTaco from the but-i-wanna-blog-now dept.
BobJacobsen writes "FCW has an article about a NASA employee that was suspended for blogging on government time. Seems the unnamed employee's 'politically partisan' blog entries were a violation of the Hatch Act. The article ends with a chilling quote from the government's Special Counsel in the case: 'Today, modern office technology multiplies the opportunities for employees to abuse their positions and — as in this serious case — to be penalized, even removed from their job, with just a few clicks of a mouse.'" Thing is, he was soliciting campaign donations and writing partisan stuff.
Mars

Phoenix Mars Lander Updates 138

Posted by CmdrTaco from the still-no-water-yet dept.
spandex_panda writes "There are a few pictures of the Mars Lander on the ground — you can see its parachute and its heat shield a few kilometers away, too. There's a very cool looking picture of it floating down, actually captured while it's in the air with its parachute out!" We also have a YouTube video all about the robot arm that will dig down and probably find a groundhog who we all hope will see his shadow.
Microsoft

Submission + - Steve Ballmer Gets Egged in Budapest

Submitted by
AZhun
AZhun writes: "The Budapest Sun Staff has a short English write up and the video of Microsoft CEO getting egged at a lecture at Budapest's Corvinus University. The demonstrator leaves without a major hassle and Ballmer sans suite coat recovers with apparent good humor. My Magyarul is not up to catch all of the comments, but the paper seems to think it might be aimed as protest to champion domestic software.

See article at http://www.budapestsun.com/cikk.php?id=28257# "
Biotech

Ancestry Surprises From New Genetics Analysis Method 223

Posted by kdawson from the who's-your-daddy dept.
An anonymous reader commends a recently published study involving a new way to analyze genetic variation in human populations (full article published in PLOS Genetics): "[S]cientists from Ireland, the UK and the US analysed 2,540 genetic markers in the DNA of almost 1,000 people from around the world whose genetic material had been collected by the Human Genome Diversity Project. The results include a number of surprises... the Yakut people of northern Siberia were found to have received a significant genetic contribution from the population of the Orkney Islands, which lie off the coast of Scotland... there must have been a period of gene flow from northern Europe to east Asia. The study also shed light on the peopling of the Americas, as the results suggest that the native populations of north and south America have different origins."
Microsoft

Submission + - IIT Bombay, Microsoft at loggerheads over OOXML (rediff.com)

Submitted by
heytal
heytal writes: "Microsoft has courted a major controversy in India by complaining to the government of India that those who voted against OOXML were working against "national interests". Prof. D. B. Phatak from IIT Bombay has raised his voice against this complaint and has demanded an apology from Microsoft. He says "... the complaints have painted these organisations and their representatives, including the Indian delegation which attended the Ballot Resolution Meeting (BRM in Geneva this February), as acting against Indian national interests. This is the most derogatory accusation to any Indian...," The letter adds: "I have a special word of thanks to the officials of Microsoft, some of whom have been personal friends for years... I, of course, still await the action from Microsoft which I have requested, viz., formal withdrawal of all complaints, and a formal apology to my institute." More details at Rediff.com"
Wine

Submission + - Is wine ready for prime time? (winehq.org)

Submitted by
linhares
linhares writes: "Wine is now on v.1.0rc2. From what is available at their application database page, most effort is conducted in games; but wouldn't it be more appealing, from the perspective of ordinary computer users (and hardware providers), if it were concentrating on the most used windows applications (besides office and Adobe)? The 1.0 release will eventually trigger massive attention to Linux, with the obvious, perhaps naive, mentions that it now "runs windows". I wonder whether /. users think it is ready for prime time, and whether that kind of attention might eventually backlash?"
Linux Business

Submission + - Phoenix Landing - Open Source makes it to Mars! (ostatic.com) 1

Submitted by ruphus13
ruphus13 writes: With the landing of Phoenix on Mars, OSS made its way to Mars too. From the article, "the amount of software coordination and lack of commercial software geared to the aerospace industry continues to make custom software necessary for almost every mission. Linux, the gcc compiler, visualization libraries and more have allowed NASA to expand the capabilities of their missions beyond their greatest expectations." The OSS community should be proud!
Education

Journal Journal: Autistic Child Forced Out of Kindergarten By "Popular Vote"

Journal by Rachel Lucid
Just when you thought Florida could be trusted to elect ANYTHING again, a Kindergarten Teacher in Port St. Lucie has had a 5-year old child in the process of being diagnosed with Asperger's Syndrome voted out of the class after ordering every other student to tell the boy what they hate about him while he stood up at the front of the class. Since the vote, the child has not returned to the sc
It's funny. Laugh.

Submission + - Happy Towel Day! (wikipedia.org)

Submitted by xvjau
xvjau writes: Towel Day is celebrated every May 25 as a tribute by fans of the late author Douglas Adams. The commemoration was first held in 2001, two weeks after his death on May 11, 2001. On this day, fans carry a towel with them during the day to demonstrate their participation and mourning of the author. The towel is a reference to Adams's popular science fiction comedy series The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

Comment Re:Governments and outsourcing? (Score 5, Interesting) 148

by garett_spencley (#23530008) Attached to: Patriot Act Dampening Cloud Computing?
Not everyone agrees that a free market is what's best for society. There are always going to be political lobbyists, politicians and voting citizens who opt for more regulation. In fact, I'm personally surprised by how many of my peers seem to favour more communist-like systems.

The other day a friend of mine was watching a Youtube video of a speech given by one of the founding members of the Canadian Action Party and he, not being canadian, asked me who this guy was. I explained to him what the CAP was all about. Said that while I agree with their Canadian Nationalist views they feel that globalization is a big conspiracy by the corporations in order to rule the world and make everyone their slaves. His response was "well isn't that already true ?"

It seems that a large portion of the public feels that corporations have far too much power and that free market has failed. They want government to further regulate the markets because they would rather have the government control their lives than corporations (they refuse to see that the public gives the corporations their power just as we give the government it's power).

Since I've failed to remain neutral I might as well just add that I am a pro-free-market libertarian and I think it will take a couple of wars before we can claim that the corporations enslave people. I do agree, however, that they get away with too much, but not because of a lack of regulation. It's because money buys justice and politicians. THAT is what that needs to be fixed. Yet many people don't look that deep into it. I can say with assertion that most people that I know in person certainly don't. They see that money = corporations = free market = evil and thus want more regulation.

Oh and it doesn't help matters when every single case of deregulation has resulted in short term economic upheaval while things balance out. Forget about selling long term advantages if it's going to cost people jobs and higher prices in the short term.
United States

Submission + - Media cartels are attacking America and winning!

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Some very disturbing news from ZDNet: A person faces 5 years in federal prison for..."copyright infringement"! The fact the verdict was handed down on a Friday without any media grand standing by prosecutors is not surprising given the severity of the penalty. I am not American, but it saddens me to no end that laws allowing such a travesty can not only be proposed, but actually exist in your code of law. Draconian measures like these are something you'd expect coming out of China or countries under dictatorship, but 5 years incarceration for copyright infringement? The vast majority of media cartels having lobbied these ridiculous laws are not even American! Please wake up, drop partisan politics and take back your country before it exports it to mine.
Software

Submission + - Why is Firehose so hostile? 15

Submitted by
NewYorkCountryLawyer
NewYorkCountryLawyer writes: "Can anyone explain to me why Slashdot's Firehose is made to be so unfriendly? It's a great idea, but in practice it's infuriating. If you see a submitted article, and click on one of the links, you can't go back to the story. You have to start all over again. If you set the filters to what you're interested in, you have to re-set them all over again. Even if you just RTFA you are punished by losing your settings. Why shouldn't Slashdot encourage people to participate in the Firehose. For a busy person, it's almost impossible to be involved. And this bizarre lack of 'stickiness' makes everything take 10 times as much times as it needs to."

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