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Comment Dear Government: You can't win. (Score 1) 242

by psykocrime (#38169762) Attached to: Police Encrypt Radios To Tune Out Public

Dear government:

Don't waste your time. We will crack your codes, root your servers, publish your secret documents, and ensure the transparency that is prerequisite to a free and open society.

No matter what steps you take to attempt to hide the corruption and cronyism that dominate this country, we will defeat you. We, the cyberpunks, cypherpunks, crypto-anarchists, techno-libertarians and hackers, will not only evade and defeat any technological measure that you attempt to use against us, but we will actively subvert any such mechanism and use it to further the cause of freedom and liberty.

If you listen to us, we will listen to you. if you track our whereabouts, we will track yours. If you attempt to destroy our systems, we will destroy yours. We will not allow you to control the free flow of information and use secrecy and fear as tools to oppress the people.

#cryptoanarchism #technolibertarian #cyberpunk #cypherpunk #fuckthepolice
Government

Income Tax Quashed, Ballmer To Cash In Billions 650

Posted by Soulskill from the all-about-the-benjamins dept.
theodp writes "Washington's proposed state income tax not only prompted Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer to spend $425,000 of his own money to help crush the measure at the polls, it also inspired Microsoft to launch a FUD campaign aimed at torpedoing the initiative. 'As an employer, we're concerned that I-1098 will make it harder to attract talent and create additional jobs in Washington state,' explained Microsoft general counsel Brad Smith. 'We strongly support public education, but we're concerned by key details in I-1098. This initiative would give Washington one of the top five highest state income tax rates in the country. I-1098 would apply this tax rate to all income, including capital gains and dividends, and would not permit any deductions for charitable contributions.' Nice to see a company take a principled stand, backed by a CEO who's not afraid to put his money where his company's mouth is, right? Well, maybe not. Just three days after the measure went down in flames, Ballmer said in a statement that he plans to sell up to 75 million of his Microsoft shares by the end of the year to 'gain financial diversification and to assist in tax planning.' Based on Friday's closing price of $26.85, the 75M shares would be valued at approximately $2 billion. All of which might make a cynic question what was really important to Microsoft — public education, or a $2B state income tax-free payday for its CEO?"

Submission + - "The Social Enterprise Movement's Next Big Deal" (socentex.com)

Submitted by Roozt
Roozt writes: Awesome article on the Social Enterprise movement / Social Entrepreneurship industry and where they're headed. The article outlines a couple companies and evaluates consumer spending habits and future trends
Red Hat Software

Submission + - Red Hat gets closer to releasing RHEL 6 (networkworld.com)

Submitted by Julie188
Julie188 writes: Red Hat released the second beta of its Enterprise Linux 6 on Wednesday and declared it on track for an unspecified release date. (October?) A number of features are going to make enterprise users happy. But the spotlight is fully on KVM virtualization, now that Xen won't be an included hypervisor option. One Linux developer says that Red Hat ditched Xen because the project leaders (i.e. Citrix) were creating too much work for the distro makers by not including Xen in the kernel. If so, wouldn't the solution be rather simple, for Xen.org to submit Xen for inclusion in the Linux kernel? Xen creator Ian Pratt says no. Looks like he wants to be the VMware of Linux virtualization, making KVM equivalent to Hyper-V.

Comment Allowed??? (Score 1) 451

by psykocrime (#32623484) Attached to: Stem Cell Tourist Dies From Treatment In Thailand

about whether patients should be allowed to take the risks that come with untested treatments

That begs of the question of whether or not somebody else has the authority to make that decision for the patient. I contend that the answer is no, and that the original question is moot. An individual can choose whatever treatment they want, and if they die, well... they die. As long as no force or coercion is involved, it's fine.
Privacy

Yale Law Student Wants Government To Have Everybody's DNA 544

Posted by Soulskill from the just-the-junk dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Michael Seringhaus, a Yale Law School student, writes in the NY Times, 'To Stop Crime, Share Your Genes.' In order to prevent discrimination when it comes to collecting DNA samples from criminals (and even people who are simply arrested), he proposes that the government collect a DNA profile from everybody, perhaps at birth (yes, you heard that right)." Regarding the obvious issue of genetic privacy, Seringhaus makes this argument: "Your sensitive genetic information would be safe. A DNA profile distills a person’s complex genomic information down to a set of 26 numerical values, each characterizing the length of a certain repeated sequence of 'junk' DNA that differs from person to person. Although these genetic differences are biologically meaningless — they don’t correlate with any observable characteristics — tabulating the number of repeats creates a unique identifier, a DNA 'fingerprint.' The genetic privacy risk from such profiling is virtually nil, because these records include none of the health and biological data present in one’s genome as a whole."
Programming

"Mythical Man-Month" Supposedly Busted By MIT Startup 231

Posted by samzenpus from the many-eyes-and-fingers dept.
An anonymous reader writes "We all know about the Mythical Man-Month, the argument that adding more programmers to a software project just makes it later and later. A Linux startup out of MIT claims to have busted the myth, using an MIT holiday month to hire 20 college student interns to get all their work done and quadrupling its productivity."
Government

Microsoft VP Suggests 'Net Tax To Clean Computers 577

Posted by kdawson from the sure-to-go-over-well dept.
Ian Lamont writes "Microsoft's Vice President for Trustworthy Computing, Scott Charney, speaking at the RSA conference in San Francisco, has floated an interesting proposal to deal with infected computers: Approach the problem of dealing with malware infections like the healthcare industry, and consider using 'general taxation' to pay for inspection and quarantine. Using taxes to deal with online criminal activity is not a new idea, as demonstrated by last year's Louisiana House vote to levy a monthly surcharge on Internet access to deal with online baddies."
Sun Microsystems

A Reflection On Sun Executive Payouts For Failure 316

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the lavishly-rewarded-for-failure dept.
With the Oracle/Sun merger finally completing at the end of January, one former Sun worker has taken the time to reflect a bit on the extravagant compensation and golden parachutes that the former executives at Sun are receiving for failing at their jobs. "I think it's fair to say that, for all the miscues that eventually led to its demise, the company created many products and technologies of value along the way, enough so that Oracle thought it was worth it to acquire them and try to keep them going. However, I think that it's equally fair to conclude that, after years of running losses, including about $2 billion in fiscal 2009, so that a buyout was necessary to avoid looming bankruptcy, Sun's executives did nothing to deserve lavish rewards, by any conceivable meaning of the word 'deserve.' But what actually happened is by now a familiar story. [...] And here's a prediction that I feel quite certain of: if, against expectations and my hopes, Ellison drops the ball and things start going south for Oracle, it's the employees who will suffer for it, and he'll be doing just fine."
Social Networks

How To Spread Word About My FOSS Project? 244

Posted by timothy from the luck-plays-a-role dept.
An anonymous reader writes "I'm in a bit of a bind with an open source web software project of mine. It's a very small project that I've been developing for over three years. By now it's got a promising feature set, but very few users and virtually no community around it. The problem is that people I have asked to try it refuse to do so because it doesn't have a thriving community. It's an infinite loop: without users, we won't have a community, and without a community, users aren't coming. So, Slashdot, my question is: how can I build a community and help get the word out about a project led by 2 people and with only 5-6 regulars on our forum and IRC?"
Space

India Developing Vehicle To Knock Enemy Satellites 178

Posted by CmdrTaco from the start-humming-the-music dept.
Frankie70 writes "Star Wars are back in fashion. With perennial (and nuclear armed) foe Pakistan always teetering on the brink of political collapse and neighboring regional superpower China taking greater strides into space technology, India has announced that it is developing an exo-atmospheric 'kill vehicle' that will knock enemy satellites out of orbit."
America Online

Does a Lame E-Mail Address Really Matter? 1049

Posted by kdawson from the america's-oldest-luddites dept.
theodp writes "Over at the Chicago Tribune, freelance writer Nancy Anderson makes an embarrassing confession. It's 2010 and she still has an AOL e-mail address. 'You've got to get rid of that AOL address,' her publicist sister told her five years ago. 'It's bad for your image.' Image, shmimage, Anderson thought. 'If I do good work,' she asks, 'does my e-mail address really matter?' Good question. Would an AOL e-mail address — or another 'toxic' e-mail address — influence your decision to hire someone?"

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