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Submission + - Court Says Craigslist Sperm Donor Must Pay Child Support

Submitted by Hugh Pickens DOT Com
Hugh Pickens DOT Com writes: David Stout reports at Time Magazine that what began with a Craigslist ad from a lesbian couple calling for a sperm donor in rural Topeka, Kansas ended in court on Wednesday with a judge ordering the sperm donor to pay child support. The Kansas Department for Children and Families filed the case in October 2012 seeking to have William Marotta declared the father of a child born to Jennifer Schreiner in 2009 so he can be held responsible for about $6,000 in public assistance the state provided, as well as future child support. "In this case, quite simply, the parties failed to perform to statutory requirement of the Kansas Parentage Act in not enlisting a licensed physician at some point in the artificial insemination process, and the parties' self-designation of (Marotta) as a sperm donor is insufficient to relieve (Marotta) of parental right and responsibilities to the child," wrote Judge Mattivi. Marotta opposed that action, saying he had contacted Schreiner and her partner at the time, Angela Bauer, in response to an ad they placed on Craigslist seeking a sperm donor and signed a contract waiving his parental rights and responsibilities. "We stand by that contract," says Defense attorney Swinnen adding that the Kansas statute doesn't specifically require the artificial insemination be carried out by a physician. "The insinuation is offensive, and we are responding vigorously to that. We stand by our story. There was no personal relationship whatsoever between my client and the mother, or the partner of the mother, or the child. Anything the state insinuates is vilifying my client, and I will address it."

Submission + - The final confessions of a Silk Road kingpin (dailydot.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The Daily Dot has an extensive interview with Steven Sadler, aka Nod, one of the most popular cocaine and heroin dealers on the Silk Road—and one of the informants who brought down Silk Road owner Dread Pirate Roberts.

"The conditions of the bond were clear: Sadler wasn't allowed leave the state of Washington. He was also strictly forbidden from dealing or using drugs.

"Hold on,” he cut in at one point. “I have to buy some cocaine, can I call you back?"

Five minutes later, he was back on the line, as chatty as ever.

At the time, there was no clear direction forward. Maybe he'd go to Las Vegas on a wild bender. Maybe he'd try to start his drug empire over in Los Angeles. Maybe he’d visit old friends in his hometown who didn't know about his criminal enterprise.

Sadler talked through each potential scenario, as if working through them in his mind, looking for possibilities and pitfalls. In roughly 10 hours of phone calls over the course of several weeks, Sadler told me almost everything.

Then he dropped off the grid."

Submission + - 'Quiet' Black Holes May Be Lurking Throughout Galaxy (sciencemag.org)

Submitted by sciencehabit
sciencehabit writes: Although black holes emit no light, all those that are several times more massive than the sun came to attention because hot gas falling into them gives off x-rays. Now, for the first time, astronomers have managed to discover a stellar-mass black hole without using x-ray observations. Located 8500 light-years from Earth, the dark object orbits a bright, blue star named MWC 656 that spins so fast it flings gas around itself; additional gas swirls around the black hole but doesn't fall in, explaining the lack of x-rays. By measuring Doppler shifts of the two gaseous disks as they orbit each other every 60.37 days, the scientists deduce that the dark object weighs 3.8 to 6.9 times more than the sun—massive enough to be a black hole, the researchers report. The discovery suggests that many other equally quiescent black holes inhabit the galaxy, unknown to astronomers.

Comment OpenELEC front end, SMB/CIFS/NFS server back-end (Score 1) 420

by chill (#45964141) Attached to: Ask Slashdot: Suggestions For a Simple Media Server?

I have a set-up where all my media files are stored on a generic Linux file server running Samba for CIFS/SMB and exporting NFS shares. This can be any old box you have laying around, and yes, the Raspberry Pi can do this fine.

My televisions have small boxes mounted via VESA-mount adapters on the back of them. 2 are Raspberry Pis, 1 is a Zotac Z-Box. Two are wired, one is wireless, all have power and HDMI cables. All run OpenELEC as a front end and I use Yatse on my Android phone as a remote.

The downsides are you can't integrate Netflix into OpenELEC (which is really just a skinned, slimmed XBMC) because of lack of DRM support on Linux. I haven't checked on Amazon Prime video or Hulu Plus video support lately. I know it was working before with the BlueCop repository of add-ons.

Submission + - NYT: NSA Put 100,000 Radio Pathway "Backdoors" in PCs (nytimes.com)

Submitted by retroworks
retroworks writes: NY Times has an interesting story on how NSA put transistors into the USB input devices of PC, allowing computers unplugged from the internet to still be monitored, via radiowaves, from up to 8 miles away. The article mainly reports NSA's use of the technology to monitor Chinese military, and minor headline reads "No Domestic Use Seen". A link inside the story leads to a Dutch news article which maps placement of the monitoring system in 50,000 PCs. The source of the data was evidently the leak from Edward J. Snowden.

Comment Re:9.1 (Score 2) 1009

by chill (#45943321) Attached to: Windows 9 Already? Apparently, Yes.

1. Windows 98se was able to log in to a Win2000/2003 domain. WinME had the ability to log in to a domain removed. Yes, I know it wasn't intended to work in a business environment, but at the time people were using Win98 on Windows 2000 Small Business Server environments. There was a big price difference between ME and 2000 Workstation.

2. Multitasking older Windows & DOS software ( and there was tons of it out there) often caused ME to choke and blue screen as it gave up some backwards compatibility to implement some of it's features.

3. WinME was hyped like crazy as a truly new Windows OS (vs 98 etc) and it really wasn't. It was more or less a tweak of 98 to fill the time/market gap until XP could be finished.

Comment Re:Egocentrism (Score 2) 517

by chill (#45941207) Attached to: How Weather Influences Global Warming Opinions

Er, what? The Tamil people, quoting Wikipedia for convenience,

Tamils were noted for their martial, religious and mercantile activities beyond their native borders.

and again, further in the article...

Although most Tamils are Hindus, most practice what is considered to be folk Hinduism, venerating a plethora of village deities. A sizable number are Christians and Muslims.

Comment Yes (Score 4, Funny) 388

by chill (#45927805) Attached to: Ask Slashdot: What To Do With Misdirected Email?

Yes, I have this exact same problem. However, I do not keep other people's e-mail.

I have been able to track down the correct people to whom the e-mails belong. In two cases, the people are lawyers and the e-mails contained either personal or confidential information. Another case is a general contractor, and I've received quotes from subcontractors, blueprints and general correspondence. In one case it was a confirmation of tickets for a theme park. (I debated showing up as soon as the park opened and claiming the tickets, but ethics got the better of me.)

These people now reside in my address book. I forward the e-mail in question over to them, and CC a copy to the sender.

One guy kept signing up for things using MY e-mail address instead of his. (name@isp.com vs name@gmail.com) He finally got the hint when *I* got the login information for his match.com account. (Ethics was still distracted by the theme park tickets case and lost.) Considering he was a single lawyer in San Francisco, I think my updates indicating he was gay, submissive, into BDSM and wealthy might've paid off. He seems to be extra careful in which e-mail address he uses now.

Submission + - Red Hat and CentOS Partnership

Submitted by chill
chill writes: CentOS and Red Hat have announced they are forming a partnership. Some of the existing CentOS Core members are moving to take up roles at Red Hat, as a part of their sponsorship of the CentOS Project, allowing these people to work on the Project as their primary job function.

The groups will be working as part of the Open Source and Standards team to foster rapid innovation. The new initiative is going to be overseen by the new CentOS Governing Board.

CenOS has also unveiled a new website design.

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