Sir Patrick Stewart 324
david.emery was one of a few folks who noted that Patrick Stewart can now be referred to as Sir Captain as he will be knighted by the Queen. This should bring balance to any future X-Men movies.
Microsoft Applies For Patent On Tufte's Sparklines 175
jenkin sear writes "Data visualization guru Edward Tufte developed Sparklines, a great way to display condensed data as an inline graphic. Excel's new version has incorporated the design element — and Microsoft has applied for a patent on them — without so much as a by-your-leave from Tufte."
Microsoft Denies It Built Backdoor Into Windows 7 450
CWmike writes "Microsoft has denied that it has built a backdoor into Windows 7, a concern that surfaced yesterday after a senior National Security Agency (NSA) official testified before Congress that the agency had worked on the operating system. 'Microsoft has not and will not put "backdoors" into Windows,' a company spokeswoman said, reacting to a Computerworld story Wednesday. On Monday, Richard Schaeffer, the NSA's information assurance director, told the Senate's Subcommittee on Terrorism and Homeland Security that the agency had partnered with the developer during the creation of Windows 7 'to enhance Microsoft's operating system security guide.' Thursday's categorical denial by Microsoft was accompanied by further explanation of exactly how the NSA participated in the making of Windows 7. 'The work being discussed here is purely in conjunction with our Security Compliance Management Toolkit,' said the spokeswoman. The company rolled out the Windows 7 version of the toolkit late last month, shortly after it officially launched the operating system."
AU Senator Calls Scientology a "Criminal Organization" 511
An anonymous reader passes along news that an Australian senator, Nick Xenophon, has denounced the Church of Scientology as "a criminal organization" from the floor of Parliament. "Senator Xenophon used a speech in Parliament last night to raise allegations of widespread criminal conduct within the church, saying he had received letters from former followers detailing claims of abuse, false imprisonment, and forced abortion. He says he has passed on the letters to the police and is calling for a Senate inquiry into the religion and its tax-exempt status." It wasn't that long ago that the CoS was calling for Net censorship in Australia; a month later the organization was convicted of fraud in France.
T-Mobile UK Employees Sold Customers' Information 65
angry tapir writes "Workers at T-Mobile UK have been selling customer data to brokers who worked for the competition, according to T-Mobile and the UK's Information Commissioner's Office. Criminal charges are being prepared. 'Many thousands' of customers' account details, millions of records, were sold to several brokers for substantial amounts of money, the ICO said. In an announcement (PDF) from the ICO, the agency does not name the operator involved, but T-Mobile acknowledged that it had alerted ICO about the data breach. The BBC reports that after the other mobile operators said they were not the subject of the investigation, T-Mobile confirmed its involvement."
NVIDIA Ships Decent DX10 Graphics Card For Under $100 208
MojoKid writes "NVIDIA is launching a new mainstream graphics card today, aimed at consumers in the market for a relatively low-cost upgrade from an integrated graphics solution or older entry-level GPU. The new GeForce GT 240 features a GPU with 96 processor cores, 8 ROP units, and 32 texture filtering units. The GPU is manufactured using a 40nm process, features a GDDR5 memory controller (that's also compatible with GDDR3), and unlike NVIDIA's current high-end GPUs, the GT 240 is DirectX 10.1 compatible. For $100 or less, what's perhaps most interesting is that this graphics card actually puts up respectable frame rates with AA turned on and no external power needed beyond what a standard PCIe slot provides."
CERN Physicist Warns About Uranium Shortage 581
eldavojohn writes "Uranium mines provide us with 40,000 tons of uranium each year. Sounds like that ought to be enough for anyone, but it comes up about 25,000 tons short of what we consume yearly in our nuclear power plants. The difference is made up by stockpiles, reprocessed fuel and re-enriched uranium — which should be completely used up by 2013. And the problem with just opening more uranium mines is that nobody really knows where to go for the next big uranium lode. Dr. Michael Dittmar has been warning us for some time about the coming shortage (PDF) and has recently uploaded a four-part comprehensive report on the future of nuclear energy and how socioeconomic change is exacerbating the effect this coming shortage will have on our power consumption. Although not quite on par with zombie apocalypse, Dr. Dittmar's final conclusions paint a dire picture, stating that options like large-scale commercial fission breeder reactors are not an option by 2013 and 'no matter how far into the future we may look, nuclear fusion as an energy source is even less probable than large-scale breeder reactors, for the accumulated knowledge on this subject is already sufficient to say that commercial fusion power will never become a reality.'"
Murderer With "Aggression Genes" Gets Reduced Sentence 507
Noiser writes "New Scientist reports: 'In 2007, Abdelmalek Bayout admitted to stabbing and killing a man and received a sentence of 9 years and 2 months. An appeal court judge in Trieste, Italy, cut Bayout's sentence by a year after finding out he has gene variants linked to aggression.'"
Secret Copyright Treaty Leaks. It's Bad. Very Bad. 775
Jamie found a Boing Boing story that will probably get your blood to at least a simmer. It says "The internet chapter of the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, a secret copyright treaty whose text Obama's administration refused to disclose due to 'national security' concerns, has leaked. It's bad." You can read the original leaked document or the summary. If passed, the internet will never be the same. Thank goodness it's hidden from public scrutiny for National Security.
Comment Re:Smoking crater (Score 1) 177
They can BILL me!
Submission + - SPAM: China Makes Positive Steps Toward Environmental
davidfirstvisa writes: Ahead of a United Nations summit on climate change,
representatives of the Chinese government are expected to make a "very big announcement",
with regard to the organization of a major environmental project.
Link to Original Source
representatives of the Chinese government are expected to make a "very big announcement",
with regard to the organization of a major environmental project.
Link to Original Source
Submission + - Should a new technology change the patent system? (baltimoresun.com)
linuxizer writes: Congress seems poised to turn an effort to create a pathway for generic biotech drugs such as Remicade into the exact opposite. Instead of the 5-year protection that traditional pharmaceuticals get, or the 0-year protection that the FTC recommends, the bill offers 12-year exclusivity with renewability for minor changes. The issue is highly charged, with activists waging a campaign to change the bill. Yet it also raises interesting questions for other technologies. To what extent do the traditional contours of patent law need to change in response to new technologies with a different set of market realities (biotech drugs are 22 times more expensive on average, and development costs for generics will be substantially higher) and in what direction? Need every new technological category get its own patent rules, and how do those rules get decided?
Submission + - 3 Years Prison in CA For Covering Laptop (ca.gov) 7
mrcaseyj writes: California penal code section 537e makes it a felony punishable by up to 3 years in prison to be in possession of an integrated computer panel where the serial number or any other distinguishing number or identification mark has been covered. It's also a crime punishable by 6 months or a year to cover or obliterate the serial number or identification mark of just about any other personal property, from tools to CDs and much more. While a district attorney might have a hard time prosecuting you for such a crime, it appears a police officer could still take you to jail without having to worry about getting in trouble, because covering is apparently illegal by the letter of the law.
Comment Re:Here's a thought... (Score 1) 856
I too am from Australia, and as a cyclist I've already coughed up: besides riding a bike I have two cars and a motorbike on which I pay all relevant taxes. I do more kilometres per year on my bikes than the powered vehicles combined (tho' they do around 5000km per year all up), so not only am I subsidizing driver's fat arses thru' my tax and fuel levies, I'm causing less wear and tear on the roads, not taking up your precious car park spaces, and spending less time twiddling my thumbs burning juice whilst going nowhere.
The vast majority of cyclists I know who ride chiefly on the road (and I've known quite a few having been a cyclist for some 35 years) own and use motor vehicles, so give that rotting carcass of an argument up.
What apparently sticks in your gullet is that cyclists are LEGAL road users who unbelievably may at times exercise some road position to protect themselves, and in so doing add 10 seconds to your journey. And don't give me that 'cyclists are a law unto themselves' crap - get out there on a bike and see how many boofheads in cars routinely make up their own rules as they go along. You'll get no argument from me that there's definitely wankers in both camps, but I've never been run off the road by a wanker on a bike who thought it was a great laugh to buzz me, or had some deadshit on a bike hurl a half full beer can at me as he passed going the other way.
The vast majority of cyclists I know who ride chiefly on the road (and I've known quite a few having been a cyclist for some 35 years) own and use motor vehicles, so give that rotting carcass of an argument up.
What apparently sticks in your gullet is that cyclists are LEGAL road users who unbelievably may at times exercise some road position to protect themselves, and in so doing add 10 seconds to your journey. And don't give me that 'cyclists are a law unto themselves' crap - get out there on a bike and see how many boofheads in cars routinely make up their own rules as they go along. You'll get no argument from me that there's definitely wankers in both camps, but I've never been run off the road by a wanker on a bike who thought it was a great laugh to buzz me, or had some deadshit on a bike hurl a half full beer can at me as he passed going the other way.
Comment Re:Hell yeah - R2-45 (Score 0, Flamebait) 890
as "a child who had to go to church", parent has a good chance of having being filled with something else...
