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Brad Jayakody was told he would have to change his shirt if he wanted to catch his flight to Dusseldorf, Germany. The shirt that security at Heathrow got upset about depicts the Transformers character Optimus Prime holding a gun. Brad said, "I was flabbergasted. I thought the supervisor would come over and see sense, but he didn't. After I changed he said if I changed back I would be arrested." I would understand if the guy was wearing a Megatron shirt, after all that guy turns into a gun which could be very dangerous but Prime? There is no way a semi could fit on a passenger plane it's just silly.

Ummm...so you're essentially throwing EVERYTHING that makes you a republican out the window to vote for the most leftist presidential candidate from a major party EVER?

People don't seem to learn from history, which may be obvious. But I'm talking about you. All the intelligent people who think they know what they are doing and think that change is on the way .

I think it would be great if Obama was elected president. It would send a great message to the rest of the world that Americans are a diverse, caring and accepting people. And it would probably greatly inspire a lot of people who have felt oppressed over the past 8 years. But honestly, I don't think he stands a chance. Democratic voters are voting with their hearts and not their heads. From having watched many presidential elections from more of a neutral stance, I can say that to really win, you need to win the votes from both parties, not just your own. Sure, you can win by a narrow margin, but that is hardly marks the beginning of change. Change begins with the populace changing their attitudes. Leaving race out of the issue, how many republicans do you think would vote for someone named Barack Hussein Obama. A name that rings with the sounds of two recent so called enemies.

So Obama supporters have voted with their hearts and aren't realizing how idealistic they are being. Is it really worth the risk of having republican bullshit for the next 4 years? I don't think so. Obama supporters, you have risked too much. So don't come crying to everyone when he loses. I hope he doesn't
though.

Punishment can come later. By closing off entertainment, they have less to watch. In the aftermath, they can take advantage of community spirit to purge dissenters of all stripes.

Erris writes "The New York Times site is running an opinion piece from last weekend which lambasts Yahoo! (and other US ISPs) for cooperating with China and other repressive governments. 'Yahoo's collaboration is appalling, and Yahoo is not the only American company helping the Chinese government repress its people ... Last January, Representative Christopher Smith of New Jersey reintroduced the Global Online Freedom Act in the House. It would fine American companies that hand over information about their customers to foreign governments that suppress online dissent.'"

greenrom writes "I work for a small company as a software developer. While investigating a bug in one of our products, I found source code on a website that was nearly identical to code used in our product. Even the comments were the same. It's obvious that a developer at our company found some useful code on the web and copied it. The original author didn't attach any particular license to the code. It's just 200 lines of code the author posted in a forum. Is it legitimate to use source code that's publicly available but doesn't fall under any particular license? If not, what's the best way to deal with this kind of situation? Since I'm now the only person working on this code, there's no practical way to report the situation confidentially. I'm new to the company, and the developer who copied the code is the project lead. Reporting him to management doesn't seem like a good career move. I could rewrite the copied code without reporting him, but since the product is very close to release it would be difficult to make a significant change without providing some justification."

superglaze writes "The Colossus codecracker contest was a short-lived ordeal. Not only has it been outdone in a cipher-breaking challenge, but — irony of ironies — it was beaten by a German! From the story: 'The winner was Joachim Schüth, from Bonn, who completed the task using software he wrote himself. "[Schüth] cracked the most difficult code yesterday," said the museum's spokesperson on Friday. "We're absolutely delighted. He used specially written software for the challenge. Colossus is still chugging away, as we got the signals late. Yesterday the atmospheric conditions were such that we couldn't get good signals.'"

A number of readers sent word of the hearing by the US House Foreign Affairs Committee in which committee members raked two Yahoo execs over the coals. "While technologically and financially you are giants, morally you are pygmies," the committee chairman Tom Lantos, D-Calif., said angrily after hearing from Jerry Yang and Michael Callahan about Yahoo's actions that resulted in the arrest and imprisonment of a Chinese dissident. In 2004 Yahoo turned over information about journalist Shi Tao's online activities requested by Chinese authorities. In Feb. 2006, Yahoo's General Counsel Callahan testified that he had not known the nature of the investigation the authorities were conducting. He later learned that several employees of Yahoo China were aware at the time that the investigation involved "state secrets," but Callahan did not go back to Congress to amend his testimony. Committee members were withering in their disdain for Yahoo's refusal to help Shi Tao's family after his arrest.

eldavojohn writes "What's the biggest threat to the success of OpenOffice.org? Is it Microsoft Office? Is it the simple fact that Dell doesn't offer it with computers? Not according to some participants in the 'open' source project itself, they say the biggest problem with OO.o is the fact that Sun codes, owns & makes all key decisions for the project when it should be more community oriented. A professor who participates in the project itself said 'enough developers are frustrated by both the technical and the organizational infrastructure at OpenOffice.org' and cites this as 'a real problem that is weighing on the project.' Other members of the community agree like Michael Meeks who asked 'At what fraction of the community will Sun reconsider its demand for ownership of the entirety of OpenOffice.org?' Hopefully with IBM's entrance into OO.o participation we will see the product become more community controlled & accessible. Has anyone else experienced this when developing for OO.o or another 'open' source project? Is it a good idea to criticize a company when they've put so much effort into a project that is technically open source and completely free? Is Sun trying to control OO.o like Java? Do they have good reasons or evil underlying intentions?"

NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "The decision many lawyers had been expecting — that the RIAA's "boilerplate" complaint fails to state a claim for relief under the Copyright Act — has indeed come down, but from an unlikely source. While the legal community has been looking towards a Manhattan case, Elektra v. Barker, for guidance, a case in which amicus briefs had been submitted by various industry groups and the US Department of Justice (see case file, and from Warner v. Cassin, a similar motion in the same Court's Westchester division, the decision instead came from Senior District Court Judge Rudi M. Brewster of the US District Court for the Southern District of California, in a decision denying a default judgment (i.e. the defendant had not even appeared in the action). Judge Brewster not only denied the default judgment motion but dismissed the complaint for failure to state a claim. Echoing the words of Judge Karas at the oral argument in Barker , Judge Brewster held (pdf) that "Plaintiff here must present at least some facts to show the plausibility of their allegations of copyright infringement against the Defendant. However, other than the bare conclusory statement that on "information and belief" Defendant has downloaded, distributed and/or made available for distribution to the public copyrighted works, Plaintiffs have presented no facts that would indicate that this allegation is anything more than speculation. The complaint is simply a boilerplate listing of the elements of copyright infringement without any facts pertaining specifically to the instant Defendant. The Court therefore finds that the complaint fails to sufficiently state a claim upon which relief can be granted and entry of default judgment is not warranted.""

Mikkeles writes "The Royal Society has recently published an article (abstract full article(PDF)) written in response to Channel 4's The Great Global Warming Swindle .

There is considerable evidence for solar influence on the Earth's pre-industrial climate and the Sun may well have been a factor in post-industrial climate change in the first half of the last century. Here we show that over the past 20 years, all the trends in the Sun that could have had an influence on the Earth's climate have been in the opposite direction to that required to explain the observed rise in global mean temperatures.

"
http://www.cbc.ca/technology/story/2007/07/11/global-solar.html

Shouldn't be added as an afterthought

Government needs to make privacy and data protection principles a core component of its IT specifications, according to the assistant information commissioner.

http://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.co.uk/2007/07/10/ico_id_privacy_warning/

And that's the cheap version

Amazon sells empty Vista boxes for $360?

http://go.theregister.com/feed/www.channelregister.co.uk/2007/07/10/amazon_sells_empty_vista_boxes/

No third leg to stand on

Perfect10 is at it again.

http://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.co.uk/2007/07/09/perfect10_creditcard/

http://www.linuxdriver.co.il/kernel_map