Comment Most racist Slashdot post/comments thread ever (Score 1) 608
Bonus points for homophobia, linking to the Daily Mail, and the phrase "politically correct".
Things white people like: white comic book super heroes.
Spiderman's Politically Correct Replacement 608
jbarr writes "In the latest Marvel Comic series 'Ultimate Fallout,' Miles Morales replaces Peter Parker who has been killed off by the Green Goblin. Morales is a half-black, half-Latino teen, and the creators haven't ruled out that he might be gay. From the article: 'Marvel's editor in chief Axel Alonso denied that having a black Spider Man was a publicity stunt. 'What you have is a Spider-Man for the 21st century who's reflective of our culture and diversity. As someone who grew up on a steady diet of Luke Cage, Hero For Hire and Shang Chi, Master of Kung Fu, I am personally invested,' he said. "
Geocaching Shuts Down British Town 282
DaveAtWorkAnnoyingly writes "Many geocachers will be thinking twice when planting their treasure in an urban space as one geocacher found out in England after the police cordoned off the center of a small West Yorkshire town and the Bomb Squad was called in. From the article: 'It was a normal busy Friday morning in the small West Yorkshire market town of Wetherby when someone working in a café spotted a man acting a bit suspiciously on the street. He appeared to have a small plastic box in his hand and after fiddling with the container he bent down and hid it under a flower box standing on the pavement. He then walked off, talking to somebody on his phone.'"
Comment Re:Columbus (Score 1) 277
To say he was the first to discover the Americas, means we end up assuming he was a better sailor than all those who came before him. And that feeds into the heroic image many people have of him now (which I think a lot of people have issue with - once they learn the facts).
To turn Columbus into a hero is inherently racist. And by talking about the positive things Columbus did (and to embellish them), and ignore the rest of what he did is turning him into a hero.
Comment Re:Columbus (Score 1) 277
Could that be because the US didn't exist until the Constitution was ratified? Or perhaps the Articles of Confederation? Or at least the unified statements of the DoI made by the representatives of the various colonies?
I should have been clearer: Columbus never set foot on any land which is now nor has ever been a part of the US. Maybe the mock Facebook page should have started at the Declaration of Independence or ratification of the Constitution.
Did Columbus discover the Americas? Yes (from a European perspective, anyway). Did he land in the United States of America? No.
He wasn't the first European to arrive at the Americas. There were several before him.
He certainly popularised the area - he was an innovator in the exploitation of land and peoples, which people for centuries to come imitated:
Christopher Columbus introduced two phenomena that revolutionized race relations and transformed the modern world: the taking of land, wealth, and labor from indigenous people in the Western Hemisphere, leading to their near extermination, and the transatlantic slave trade, which created a racial underclass. (James W. Loewen, "Lies My Teacher Told Me")
Comment Columbus (Score 1) 277
Columbus never landed on US soil - I even knew that before I read a single book on US history. I won't bother reading TFA since it's obviously a load of crap.
Comment Whoosh (Score 1) 143
I think somebody's missed the joke. 30 times.
Comment Taste of your own medicine (Score 1) 145
Just followed the link and clicked "Report Page". You have a right to your opinions, but if you will go ahead and get people with opposing viewpoints' Facebook pages deleted, then I'm very glad yours got deleted too. I'm only disappointed a) nobody else got theirs back and b) you got yours back.
Comment TFA completely wrong on age requirement (Score 2) 192
There are obvious reasons why there are federal age requirements for Internet use: sexual predators, cyberbullying, adult content and explicit language.
Those are the obvious reasons. But none of those are correct.
[U.S. Congress] wanted to make certain that corporations could not collect or sell data about children under the age of 13 without parental permission, so they created a requirement to check age and get parental permission for those under 13. Most companies took one look at COPPA and decided that the process of getting parental consent was far too onerous so they simply required all participants to be at least 13 years of age.
http://www.zephoria.org/thoughts/archives/2010/06/10/how-coppa-fails-parents-educators-youth.html
Submission + - Swedish Hackerspace raided by the police (forskningsavd.se) 4
intedinmamma writes: At 20.45 on Saturday the 28th of November the police raided the social centre Utkanten in Malmö, where the hackerspace Forskningsavdelningen is housed. Twenty officers in full riot gear and ski masks broke into the space, using crowbars. The official reason for the raid was to do a “pub check” because of the suspicion that there was illegal selling of alcohol going on at a punk concert. After the raid the cops confiscated a lot of stuff, being indiscriminate as to whose effects were removed. A lot of equipment from Forskningsavdelningen were taken, and also some personal belongings, even though the hackerspace was unaffiliated with the group arranging the concert downstairs.
Submission + - Postcode crusaders snuffed out by legal threats (bbc.co.uk)
holizz writes: ErnestMarples.com has been shut down by legal action from the Royal Mail, leading to the closure of numerous not-for-profit websites that do useful things.
Comment Re:Or in other words... (Score 1) 203
Viewing images accidentally is legal. But if you were told such-and-such URL contained illegal content, and you went there with the intention of reporting it, you have broken the law.
UK Gov. Clueless About Own Internet Blacklist 203
spge writes "Computer Shopper magazine has interviewed the UK Home Office about its relationship with the Internet Watch Foundation and discovered that the government doesn't actually know what the IWF does, although it still plans to force UK ISPs to subscribe to the IWF's blacklist. The main story makes for interesting reading, but the best bit is the full transcript of the interview. Short version: the IWF investigates suspected child porn websites and adds any it finds to a list that ISPs can use to block these sites; uk.gov wants ISPs to use this list; however, the IWF is not an official government organization, does not appear to have legal permission to view child pornography, and quite possibly is breaking the law by doing so."
Comment Botnets: a cheap legal alternative to server farms (Score 1) 457
Instead of buying or renting a server farm (or using cloud-computing services), why not buy a botnet or build your own?
Chimp Found Plotting Against Zoo Guests
435
rjshirts writes "In further proof that Planet of the Apes is coming to pass, researchers in Stockholm, Sweden have proof that primates can plan ahead.
From the article:
'Santino the chimpanzee's anti-social behavior stunned both visitors and keepers at the Furuvik Zoo but fascinated researchers because it was so carefully prepared.
According to a report in the journal Current Biology, the 31-year-old alpha male started building his weapons cache in the morning before the zoo opened, collecting rocks and knocking out disks from concrete boulders inside his enclosure. He waited until around midday before he unleashed a "hailstorm" of rocks against visitors, the study said.'"
