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City of Boston pays $170,000 to settle landmark case involving man arrested for -> 1

Submitted by
Ian Lamont
Ian Lamont writes "The City of Boston has reached a $170,000 settlement with Simon Glik who was arrested by Boston Police in 2007 after using his mobile phone to record police arresting another man on Boston Common. Police claimed that Glik had violated state wiretapping laws, but later dropped the charges and admitted the officers were wrong to arrest him. Glik had brought a lawsuit against the city (aided by the ACLU) because he claimed his civil rights were violated. According to today's ACLU statement:

As part of the settlement, Glik agreed to withdraw his appeal to the Community Ombudsman Oversight Panel. He had complained about the Internal Affairs Division's investigation of his complaint and the way they treated him. IAD officers made fun of Glik for filing the complaint, telling him his only remedy was filing a civil lawsuit. After the City spent years in court defending the officers' arrest of Glik as constitutional and reasonable, IAD reversed course after the First Circuit ruling and disciplined two of the officers for using "unreasonable judgment" in arresting Glik.

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Programming

Don't Call Yourself A Programmer, And Other Career->

Submitted by
Ian Lamont
Ian Lamont writes "Patrick McKenzie has written about the do's and don't's of working as a software engineer, and some solid (and often amusing) advice on how to get ahead. One of the first pieces of advice:

Don't call yourself a programmer: "Programmer" sounds like "anomalously high-cost peon who types some mumbo-jumbo into some other mumbo-jumbo." If you call yourself a programmer, someone is already working on a way to get you fired.

Although he runs his own company, he is a cold realist about the possibilities for new college grads in the startup world: "The high-percentage outcome is you work really hard for the next couple of years, fail ingloriously, and then be jobless and looking to get into another startup""
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AI

MIT-designed game used to train an AI system->

Submitted by
Ian Lamont
Ian Lamont writes "MIT Media Lab and the Singapore-MIT Gambit Game Lab have just released Improviso, an online game that is part of a research project to create a more realistic game AI. Improviso requires two players, a Lead Actor and Director, who pretend to shoot a low-budget science fiction movie about a government cover-up of aliens at Area 51. The goal of the project is to gather recorded improv from thousands of games, which can be used to train an AI system that will be able to play the role of NPCs. Jeff Orkin, the MIT researcher who led game development, says that the best time to play Improviso is between 7 pm and 10 pm. Orkin is also the creator of a game AI called goal oriented action programming, first used in F.E.A.R. in 2005 and later employed in F.E.A.R. 2 and Fallout 3."
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Censorship

Scientology Tries To Block German Documentary 565

Posted by timothy
from the piece-of-blue-sky dept.
eldavojohn writes "The Guardian is reporting on the strained relationship that Scientology is having with the German government and the airing of a pesky documentary on Southwest Broadcasting. Until Nothing Remains, a $2.3 million documentary, is slotted to air on German television at the end of this month. It recounts the true story of Heiner von Rönn and his family's suffering when he tried to leave the Church of Scientology. A Scientology spokesperson called the film false and intolerant and also said they are investigating legal means to stop the film from being aired. More details on the film can be gleaned here."
Biotech

Wood Eating Gribbles May Hold Key to Biofuels->

Submitted by MikeChino
MikeChino writes "What’s a Gribble? It’s a tiny marine shrimp found on the southern coast of Britain — and its ability to digest wood may provide a breakthrough in efficient biofuel production. Researchers are studying the gribble’s digestion process at a new UK bioenergy centee in order to synthetically copy the process so that grasses, husk, straw and willow can be converted more efficiently into biofuels. The scientists reckon that information learned from the gribble could increase the efficiency of biofuel conversion by a factor of 6, making biofuels even more cost effective while utilizing non-food crops."
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Apple

EFF dubs Apple a 'jealous feudal lord' over iPhone->

Submitted by Ian Lamont
Ian Lamont writes "The Electronic Frontier Foundation has attacked the agreement Apple has with iPhone developers after obtaining a copy of the agreement the company has with NASA through a FOIA request. In a message on the EFF website, it called Apple Inc. a "jealous and arbitrary feudal lord" and singled out several clauses in the agreement as "troubling," including the requirement for secrecy and the arbitrary ability of Apple to reject or remove apps from the App Store. It's not the first time the EFF has attacked Apple's iPhone ecosystem. Last year, it tangled with Apple in court over the company's claim that jailbreaking constitutes a copyright violation. Later in the year, EFF again filed suit against Apple over its lawyers' assertions that discussions on Bluewiki about using software other than iTunes with iPods and iPhones constituted copyright infringement."
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Government

Microsoft VP suggests 'Net tax to clean computers->

Submitted by Ian Lamont
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."
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Security

Microsoft: Don't press F1 key in Windows XP-> 2

Submitted by Ian Lamont
Ian Lamont writes "Microsoft has issued a security advisory that warns users not to press the F1 key in Windows XP owing to an unpatched bug in VBScript discovered by Polish researcher Maurycy Prodeus. The security advisory says that the vulnerability relates to the way VBScript interacts with Windows Help files when using Internet Explorer, and could be triggered by a user pressing the F1 key after visiting a malicious Web site using a specially crafted dialog box."
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"That boy's about as sharp as a pound of wet liver" -- Foghorn Leghorn