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Submission + - "Evolution = Satan" part of Atlanta Public Schools' Biology Curriculum (thesoutherneronline.com)

McGruber writes: The young journalists at The Southerner (http://thesoutherneronline.com), the student newspaper at Grady High School in Atlanta, Georgia, recently broke the news that creationism and other Christian religious views are incorporated into the Biology curriculum used by the City of Atlanta Public Schools. As the newspaper put it (http://thesoutherneronline.com/frontpage/?p=29658):

A PowerPoint shown to a freshman biology class featured a cartoon depicting dueling castles, one labeled “Creation (Christ)” and the other labeled “Evolution (Satan).” Balloons attached to the evolution castle were labeled euthanasia, homosexuality, pornography, divorce, racism and abortion...... The PowerPoint, which has more than 50 slides largely consisting of material about evolution, was downloaded from SharePoint, an APS file-sharing database for teachers. It was uploaded by Mary E. King, a project manager at APS who has also uploaded more than 2,000 other documents. Phone calls and emails to King have not been returned. Tommy Molden, science coordinator for APS, also did not respond to requests for comment.

Students were offended by the cartoon:

“[I] have gay parents, and [the cartoon] said that evolution caused homosexuality and it implied that to be negative, so I was pretty offended by it,” [freshman Seraphina Cooley] said.

Cooley said that another student emailed the administration complaining about the PowerPoint.

Freshman Griffin Ricker, who is also in Jones’ class, said [Biology class teacher Anquinette Jones] got angry with the class when she found out students had notified the administration.

“She had a 10-minute rant,” Ricker said. “She yelled and said, ‘This is on the APS website, and it was certified.’”

In case of slashdotting, the student reporting is also posted on a local newspaper's blog (http://www.ajc.com/weblogs/get-schooled/2014/jul/03/evolution-vs-creationism-why-still-issue-grady-or-/).

Facebook

Worker Rights Extend To Facebook, Says NLRB 340

wjousts writes "American Medical Response of Connecticut had a policy that barred employees from depicting the company 'in any way' on Facebook or other social media. The National Labor Relations Board has ruled that this policy runs afoul of the National Labor Relations Act, which gives employees the right to form unions and prohibits employers from punishing workers for discussing working conditions."
Medicine

Americans Less Healthy, But Outlive Brits 521

An anonymous reader writes with this intriguing snippet: "Older Americans are less healthy than their English counterparts, but they live as long or even longer than their English peers, according to a new study by researchers from the RAND Corporation and the Institute for Fiscal Studies in London. Researchers found that while Americans aged 55 to 64 have higher rates of chronic diseases than their peers in England, they died at about the same rate. And Americans age 65 and older — while still sicker than their English peers — had a lower death rate than similar people in England, according to findings published in the journal Demography."

Comment Re:Geese and golden eggs (Score 1) 406

If Microsoft is to be an "incorporated person" then it should pay taxes at the same rate you do. 9.5%, right?

It is absolutely absurd to suggest that Microsoft and its shareholders should profit from their employees use of the public infrastructure (not to mention the direct business uses of the roads; shipping CDs, etc.) without paying for it's upkeep.

Comment Re:So what? (Score 5, Interesting) 174

Except that Amazon has nothing even near a monopoly on books, whether electronic, paper, or audio. There are many other online vendors that would jump at the chance to have a major product line Amazon doesn't.

Regardless, Amazon is absolutely right to negotiate with the price-gouging publishers any way they see fit, using any leverage they can. The publishers are trying to use their exclusive rights to the books; why shouldn't Amazon use their exclusive rights to their store? They are not harming the market, or keeping anything from being sold.
The Internet

Submission + - Israeli ISPs caught interfering P2P traffic (ynetnews.com)

Fuzzzy writes: For a long time, many people have suspected that Israeli ISPs are blocking or delaying P2P traffic. However, no hard evidence was provided, and the ISPs denied any interference. Today Ynetnews published a comprehensive research which for the first time proves those suspicions. Using Glasnost and switzerland, evidences for deliberate delays and DPI were found. From TFA:

Since 2007 Ynet has received complaints according to which Israeli ISPs block P2P traffic. Those were brought to the media and were dismissed by the ISPs.
Our findings were that there is direct and deliberate interference in P2P traffic by at least two out of the three major ISPs and that this interference exists by both P2P caching and P2P blocking.


Science

Submission + - New Reaction Found to Form C-N Bonds Directly (sciencenews.org)

I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property writes: "Paul Chirik of Cornell University and his colleagues have found a new reaction that forms a carbon-nitrogen bond directly from diatomic nitrogen. Usually, the Haber–Bosch process is used to create ammonia and then that is used to synthesize whatever other chemical is desired. This new reaction uses a complex of hafnium and N2 in solution, to which they add carbon monoxide. While it is less efficient than Haber-Bosch if you just want ammonia, it's also more direct, because you don't have to form a nitrogen-hydrogen bond just to replace the hydrogen with carbon later. The full paper can be found in the December 13th issue of Nature Chemistry."
Mozilla

Submission + - French Military Donated Code to Thunderbird (pcmag.com) 1

An anonymous reader writes: A new email client unveiled by Mozilla last week contains code from an unusual source, the French military, which decided the open source product was more secure than Microsoft's rival Outlook. The French government is beginning to move to other open source software, including Linux instead of Windows and OpenOffice instead of Microsoft Office. Thunderbird 3 used some of the code from TrustedBird, generalized version of Thunderbird with security extensions built by the french military.
Microsoft

Submission + - Office 2003 Bug Locks Owners Out (techflash.com)

I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property writes: "A Microsoft Office 2003 bug is locking people out of their own files, specifically those protected with Microsoft's Rights Management Service. Microsoft has a TechNet bulletin on the issue with a fix. It looks like they screwed up and let a certificate expire. There's no information on when the replacement certificate will expire, though, or what will happen then."
Encryption

Submission + - How to encrypt all internet traffic?

bondiblueos9 writes: Is there a way to anonymize and/or encrypt all of my internet traffic? I am really only concerned about it being so out to at least my cable modem, preferably through it.

I live in an apartment with several people and we all use one cable internet connection through one wireless router (using WPA2) to access the internet. They all depend on me to keep it running. We were having some connectivity/bandwidth issues, and in the process of tracking down the problem I realized that I could use available tools to capture all of their wireless traffic, and in the worst case, I could tap the line from the router to the cable modem to capture all traffic. If I can do it, then that means someone else could, and with the right equipment someone could even tap the cable box outside and grab all my traffic.

I don't mean to be paranoid, but how can I avoid this? I know Tor does this for some applications, but only ones that can be set up to use a proxy, not for all traffic. I had the idea to set up a box between all of my computers and our router, and somehow configure it to redirect all of my traffic through tor, but I do know if this is possible or what tools I need to set up the forwarding. How can I set this up, or what other suggestions/solutions does anyone have?

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