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Comment We dont have anyone else to talk to.... (Score 1) 785

Finding a non-human intelligence to converse with on our own planet....priceless. I cant think of anything more important that we could do with dolphins then learn to communicate with them. Chimps to. We have a whole planet to screw up. Surely we can spare a couple of species for conversation......
NASA

Can the Ares Program Be Salvaged? 245

MarkWhittington writes "The Augustine Commission has not officially presented its findings to the White House, but already a push back is starting to occur over the possibility that the Ares 1 rocket will be canceled after three billion dollars and over four years of development. According to a story in the Orlando Sentinel contractors involved in the development of the Ares 1 have started a quiet but persistent public relations campaign to save the Ares 1, criticized in some quarters because of cost and technical problems."

Comment Why do you think it's Netflix? Maybe it's you ISP (Score 1) 207

Why do you think it's Netflix? Maybe it's you ISP? This problem started for me when Comcast took over my local ISP. At the same time as the switch over there was a rush of people who brought in their computer for repair or upgrade because their internet connection was acting funny. When i finally complained enough they sent out a technition who told me they had installed allot of new software. Is /. trolling?

Comment not a good idea even for fighting terrorism (Score 1) 597

This would allow a clever terrorist to find any number of targets very quickly. And if they were silly enough to do something like add unique identifiers to what they blur based on value(like an increased bluryness or size of blur) it would be even more helpful in mapping out high value targets and maximum damage scenarios. But this is a politician so by default his motive feels suspect.

Comment moving back from Japan (Score 1) 884

I knew the American consumer was being screwed when I got a 5 year old model cellphone at 4 times the price plus an exorbident 2 year contract after coming back from Japan. It's a scam and one that is hurting us as a nation.

Comment Golden Goose (Score 1) 485

I am reminded of the story about the goose that laid the golden egg. Setting any kind of state wide per bit tax would drive companies away that use the internet to deliver a product witch the states already tax unless all of the states got together and did this at once. In which case the heart of the internet would be driven further from U.S.

Comment Yes (Score 1) 338

It would be terrible to loose all these papers that reprint Associated Press stories and push the agenda of the rulers on their readership. death to any system that relies on controlling the distribution system rather then offering a better product.
Google

Submission + - Google search by employer not illegal, say judges

An anonymous reader writes: A court of appeals for the federal circuit has upheld a ruling (PDF) against a man who sued his former employer for Googling his name before firing him. He had accused his former employer of participating in "ex parte" communications — off-the-record communications that are used to play a part in the final outcome of a decision — that ultimately affected the decision to fire him from his job. However, the three-judge panel ruled that an ex parte communication did not occur in the case when the employer used Google.

The man in question, David Mullins, was a government employee at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Weather Forecast Office in Indianapolis, IN. Through a series of events, Mullins' employer found that he had misused his government vehicle and government funds for his own purposes — such as sleeping in his car and falsifying hotel documents to receive reimbursements, withdrawing unauthorized amounts of cash from the company card, traveling to destinations sometimes hundreds of miles away from where he was supposed to be (and using his company card to fill up on gas there), and spending company time to visit friends and/or his children. Mullins' supervisor provided a 23-page document listing 102 separate instances of misconduct.

Mullins took issue with a Google search that Capell performed just before authorizing his firing. During this Google search, Capell found that Mullins had been fired from his previous job at the Smithsonian Institution and had been removed from Federal Service by the Air Force. Mullins argued that his right to fundamental fairness was violated when Capell performed the search and that she committed perjury when she stated that the search did not influence her decision to fire him.

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070510-goog le-search-by-employer-not-illegal-say-judges.html

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