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Government

New Documents Detail FBI, Bank Crack Down On Occupy Wall Street 584

Posted by samzenpus from the papers-please dept.
jvillain writes "The Guardian has up a story detailing the crack down on Occupy Wall Street (OWS). It goes on to show how the FBI, DHS, Terrorist Fusion Centers and the banks all worked together to stifle dissent. From the article: 'This production [of documents], which we believe is just the tip of the iceberg, is a window into the nationwide scope of the FBI's surveillance, monitoring, and reporting on peaceful protesters organizing with the Occupy movement These documents also show these federal agencies functioning as a de facto intelligence arm of Wall Street and Corporate America.' The next question is how many Americans are now listed as part of a 'terrorist group' by the government for their support of OWS?"
Businesses

Ask Slashdot: How To Make a DVD-Rental Store More Relevant? 547

Posted by timothy from the information-kiosks-and-great-snacks dept.
smi.james.th writes "Here on Slashdot, the concept that older models of business need to be updated to keep with the times is often mentioned. A friend of mine owns a DVD rental store, and he often listens to potential customers walk out, saying that they'd rather download the movie, and not because his prices are unreasonable. With the local telco on a project to boost internet speeds, my friend feels as though the end is near for his livelihood. So, Slashdotters, I put it to you: What can a DVD store owner do to make his store more relevant? What services would you pay for at a DVD store?"

Comment Re:If there was a Bad at Math Map... (Score 2) 1163

by StarWreck (#41962619) Attached to: Secession Petitions Flood White House Website
Sir! Sir! I wholly contest your adoption of the word 'insolvent'. You should appreciate we're dealing with a body politic that barely apprehends at an intermediate level. I henceforth substitute 'insolvent' with 'bankrupt' to appease the proletariat.

case:

No "Mitt Romney would have allowed General Motors to become insolvent."
Yes "Mitt Romney would have allowed General Motors to go bankrupt."

Kindly ignore that General Motors did go bankrupt and was renamed Motors Liquidation Company. Pay no mind that a Motors Liquidation Co. then sold its healthy assets to a newly created entity that then renamed itself General Motors. Finally, flush down the memory hole that the same end game would have been achieved had Motors Liquidation Co., at the time still named General Motors, never received its much vaunted and extolled "bail outs".

Its for the betterment of the nation. I'm sure you'll agree.
Politics

Secession Petitions Flood White House Website 1163

Posted by samzenpus from the we're-leaving dept.
First time accepted submitter RNLockwood writes "Political.com reports that several petitions to secede from the Union have been created at the White House site, We The People, for many states; all since Obama's re-election. Texas and Louisiana lead the list with Texas needing only 7,000 more signatures to qualify for a White House response, probably less now as more Americans have become aware of the petitions. It would be interesting to see a comparison done of these petitions and the Post Election Racist Tweets Map."
Social Networks

Geomapping Racism With Twitter 409

Posted by samzenpus from the following-the-trail dept.
Hugh Pickens writes "Megan Garber writes that in the age of the quantified self, biases are just one more thing that can be measured, analyzed, and publicized. The day after Barack Obama won a second term as president of the United States, a group of geography academics took advantage of the fact that many tweets are geocoded to search Twitter for racism-revealing terms that appeared in the context of tweets that mentioned 'Obama,' 're-elected,' or 'won,' sorting the tweets according to the state they were sent from and comparing the racist tweets to the total number of geocoded tweets coming from that state during the same time period. Their findings? Alabama and Mississippi have the highest measures followed closely by Georgia, Louisiana, and Tennessee forming a fairly distinctive cluster in the southeast. Beyond that cluster North Dakota and Utah both had relatively high scores (3.5 each), as did Missouri, Oregon, and Minnesota. 'These findings support the idea that there are some fairly strong clustering of hate tweets centered in southeastern U.S. which has a much higher rate than the national average,' writes Matthew Zook. 'But lest anyone elsewhere become too complacent, the unfortunate fact is that most states are not immune from this kind of activity. Racist behavior, particularly directed at African Americans in the U.S., is all too easy to find both offline and in information space.'"

Comment Touchscreen Calibration (Score 2) 398

by StarWreck (#41860291) Attached to: Why Does a Voting Machine Need Calibration?
A lot of these voting machines still run on Windows CE, similar to Siemens WinCC Flex HMI. They typically come with calibration software built in, once you launch the calibration you have to tap on several cross hairs that appear one after the other. The touchscreen is measuring resistance, when you run the calibration software it adjusts the amount of resistance it looks for to determine where you're tapping on the screen.
Power

Volcano Power Plan Gets US Go-Ahead 114

Posted by samzenpus from the lets-get-cooking dept.
cylonlover writes "Having successfully negotiated the challenging regulatory slopes of the U.S. Bureau of Land Management, the U.S. Forest Service, the U.S. Department of Energy, and a host of Oregon state agencies, the Newberry Enhanced Geothermal Systems (EGS) demonstration project is in the process of creating a new geothermal reservoir in central Oregon. The core of the new reservoir is a two mile (3.2 km) deep well drilled about four miles (6.4 km) from the center of Newberry Volcano. The rock surrounding the wellbore reaches temperatures in the order of 600 F (300 C), and is nearly impermeable to water. That, however, is about to change. Newberry Volcano is one of the largest and youngest volcanoes in the United States. Having last erupted about 1,300 years ago, it consists of over 400 individual volcanic vents, which, when combined, form a broad mounded landform referred to as a shield volcano. The Newberry EGS Demonstration geothermal reservoir is being formed in the high-temperature, low-permeability deep lava of the volcano's northwest flank."

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