Forgot your password?

Close
typodupeerror

+ - High school student faces Federal charges for scientific curiosity

Submitted by SemperCogito
SemperCogito writes "This petition at Whitehouase.gov (http://wh.gov/zx1m) explains:

Kiera Wilmot is a Florida high school student with a perfect behavior record and good grades. She was recently arrested, hauled from school in handcuffs, expelled, and now faces Federal charges — all because of shameful over-reaction by school officials and law enforcement.

Out of curiosity and the scientific spirit, she mixed some common household chemicals together, creating a vigorous reaction that blew the top off the container she used. No one was hurt — no damage was done. But instead of appluading her boldness of spirit and connecting her to a science teacher that could mentor it, she is being treated like a criminal!

This travesty of justice and education must be stopped. Reinstate her, and wipe her records clean. Then celebrate her!

More on the story: http://blogs.miaminewtimes.com/riptide/2013/04/florida_teen_girl_charged_with.php Her principal's email address: Ronald.Pritchard@polk-fl.net"

+ - Canada Rushes "Anti-Terrorism Bill" Through House of Commons->

Submitted by FuzzNugget
FuzzNugget writes "After Canada's anti-terrorism provisions were "sunsetted" five years after their ammendment in 2001, Bill S-7, which seeks to reinstate them, was hastily passed through the House of Commons in a landslide 183-93 vote.

It includes extremely creepy provisions such as "preventative detention", where suspects can be detained, questioned and threatened with up to 12 months imprisonment if they fail to comply with arbitrary probational conditions — all without charge. In another, "investigative hearing", anyone suspected of having knowledge of terrorist activity can be threatened with the same penalty for refusing to supply information.

It's obvious that this is in direct response to the recent attack in Boston and, closer to home, the thwarted attempt on VIA Rail and it all begs the question: why does anyone think it's necessary?

The successful halting of the VIA Rail attempt was the result of vigilant Canadians and respectul carraige of RCMP duties without violating anyone's rights. Furthermore, if we accept the premise that "terrorists hate our freedom", why are we letting them win by dissolving those very freedoms?"
Link to Original Source

+ - Federal Magistrate rules in favor of accused in decryption issue.->

Submitted by Virtucon
Virtucon writes "U.S. Magistrate William Callahan Jr. of Wisconsin has ruled in favor of the accused in that he should not have to decrypt his storage device. The US Government had sought to compel Feldman to provide his password to obtain access to the data. Presumably the FBI has had no success in getting the data and had sought to have the judge compel Feldman to provide the decrypted contents of what they had seized.

The Judge ruled:

This is a close call, but I conclude that Feldman’s act of production, which would necessarily require his using a password of some type to decrypt the storage device, would be tantamount to telling the government something it does not already know with ‘reasonably particularity’—namely, that Feldman has personal access to and control over the encrypted storage devices. Accordingly, in my opinion, Fifth Amendment protection is available to Feldman. Stated another way, ordering Feldman to decrypt the storage devices would be in violation of his Fifth Amendment right against compelled self-incrimination.

"
Link to Original Source

+ - FAA on travel delays: Get used to it ->

Submitted by coondoggie
coondoggie writes "The term sequestration has certainly become a four-letter word for many across the country — and now you can count business and regular traveling public among those hating its impact.

[25 crazy and scary things the TSA has found on travelers]

The Federal Aviation administration today issued a blunt statement on the impact of sequestration on the nation's air traffic control system which this week begain furloughing about 10% of air traffic controllers for 2 days or so per month. It reads an s follows:
As a result of employee furloughs due to sequestration, the FAA is implementing traffic management initiatives at airports and facilities around the country. Travelers can expect to see a wide range of delays...."
Link to Original Source
Technology

+ - Higgs boson-like particle discovery claimed at LHC!-> 1

Submitted by
packetspike
packetspike writes "Cern scientists reporting from the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) have claimed the discovery of a new particle consistent with the Higgs boson.

The particle has been the subject of a 45-year hunt to explain how matter attains its mass.

Both of the Higgs boson-hunting experiments at the LHC see a level of certainty in their data worthy of a "discovery".

More work will be needed to be certain that what they see is a Higgs, however.

The results announced at Cern (European Organization for Nuclear Research), home of the LHC in Geneva, were met with loud applause and cheering.

Read more: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-18702455"
Link to Original Source

Comment: Nvidia - CUDA, Support for Linux Kernels is awful (Score 1) 663

by packetspike (#40352033) Attached to: Torvalds Slams NVIDIA's Linux Support
The new CUDA libraries are only for specific versions of Linux and unless you have a whistle clean install you can never get the *&#^$ Drivers to work. I have had a really tough time getting the GPU interface drivers working for data intensive processing. I do think they are really amazing chips - but the support is very narrow. my 2 cents
Politics

+ - How one man escaped from a North Korean prison camp-> 2

Submitted by
TheNextCorner
TheNextCorner writes "Incredible to read this sad story:

"There was torture, starvation, betrayals and executions, but to Shin In Geun, Camp 14 – a prison for the political enemies of North Korea – was home. Then one day came the chance to flee

His first memory is an execution. Shin In Geun was four years old, too young to understand the speech that came before that killing.... ...The teacher ordered the girl to the front of the class and told her to kneel. Swinging his wooden pointer, he struck her on the head again and again. As Shin and his classmates watched in silence, lumps puffed up on her skull, blood leaked from her nose and she toppled over on to the concrete floor. Shin and his classmates carried her home. Later that night, she died...."
Link to Original Source
Data Storage

+ - Major Amazon Outage->

Submitted by
packetspike
packetspike writes "In April a major outage of Amazon EC2 affected services in the US.

"The issues affecting EC2 customers last week primarily involved a subset of the Amazon Elastic Block Store (“EBS”) volumes in a single Availability Zone within the US East Region that became unable to service read and write operations. In this document, we will refer to these as “stuck” volumes. This caused instances trying to use these affected volumes to also get “stuck” when they attempted to read or write to them. In order to restore these volumes and stabilize the EBS cluster in that Availability Zone, we disabled all control APIs (e.g. Create Volume, Attach Volume, Detach Volume, and Create Snapshot) for EBS in the affected Availability Zone for much of the duration of the event. For two periods during the first day of the issue, the degraded EBS cluster affected the EBS APIs and caused high error rates and latencies for EBS calls to these APIs across the entire US East Region. As with any complicated operational issue, this one was caused by several root causes interacting with one another and therefore gives us many opportunities to protect the service against any similar event reoccurring. ""
Link to Original Source

+ - CIBC First Canadian Bank with Visa & Mastercar->

Submitted by packetspike
packetspike writes "Today, CIBC is launching three new CIBC MasterCard credit cards, broadening the choice for consumers within CIBC’s industry leading credit card lineup and offering strong client value.

CIBC is the largest Visa credit card issuer in Canada. Through the launch of our new MasterCard products today we can now offer consumers more rewards, more features and more choice in credit cards.

The new cards available today from CIBC include:

CIBC Aventura World MasterCard, a premium card offering travel flexibility and strong rewards earning potential.
CIBC Aventura MasterCard, which offers travel flexibility and travel protection for a low annual fee.
CIBC Dividend Unlimited World MasterCard, a premium cash back card that earns up to 2% cash back with no limit on what can be earned in rewards.

All three of CIBC’s new cards come with CIBC MasterCard PayPass – a no fee, fast, safe and convenient alternative to paying with cash for purchases under $50 at participating stores. All clients have to do is “Tap & Go”, saving time and making everyday purchases easier.

MasterCard is a globally recognized brand and the new cards are broadly accepted at more than 30 million merchants locally and internationally.

Applications for these new CIBC cards are available online at cibc.com or at any CIBC branch effective today."
Link to Original Source
PC Games (Games)

EA Shutting Down Video Game Servers Prematurely 341

Posted by Soulskill
from the sixty-dollar-yearly-fee dept.
Spacezilla writes "EA is dropping the bomb on a number of their video game servers, shutting down the online fun for many of their Xbox 360, PC and PlayStation 3 games. Not only is the inclusion of PS3 and Xbox 360 titles odd, the date the games were released is even more surprising. Yes, Madden 07 and 08 are included in the shutdown... but Madden 09 on all consoles as well?"

The brain is a wonderful organ; it starts working the moment you get up in the morning, and does not stop until you get to work.

Close