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Comment Does it also apply to homes? (Score 5, Interesting) 461

by EmagGeek (#46822553) Attached to: Supreme Court OKs Stop and Search Based On Anonymous 911 Tips

If someone who doesn't like me makes an "anonymous" call to 911 to report that I'm running meth lab in my garage, does that also give the cops the right to ransack my house looking for a meth lab?

It's sad that "probable cause" has been diluted to the point that it has.

Hasn't this already been going on with "anonymous" tips from the DEA and DHS leading to traffic stops where "parallel construction" is used to fabricate grounds for probable cause after the fact? I guess this ruling removes the need to do the whole "parallel construction" thing?
Education

Supreme Court Upholds Michigan's Ban On Affirmative Action In College Admissions 410

Posted by Soulskill from the sensitive-subjects dept.
Hugh Pickens DOT Com writes: "The Supreme Court, by a vote of 6 — 2, has upheld a Michigan law banning the use of racial criteria in college admissions, finding that a lower court did not have the authority to set aside the measure approved in a 2006 referendum supported by 58% of voters. 'This case is not about how the debate about racial preferences should be resolved. It is about who may resolve it,' wrote Justice Anthony Kennedy. 'Michigan voters used the initiative system to bypass public officials who were deemed not responsive to the concerns of a majority of the voters with respect to a policy of granting race-based preferences that raises difficult and delicate issues.' Kennedy's core opinion in the Michigan case seems to exalt referenda as a kind of direct democracy that the courts should be particularly reluctant to disturb. This might be a problem for same-sex marriage opponents if a future Supreme Court challenge involves a state law or constitutional amendment enacted by voters.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor reacted sharply in disagreeing with the decision in a 58 page dissent. 'For members of historically marginalized groups, which rely on the federal courts to protect their constitutional rights, the decision can hardly bolster hope for a vision of democracy (PDF) that preserves for all the right to participate meaningfully and equally in self-government.' The decision was the latest step in a legal and political battle over whether state colleges can use race and gender as a factor in choosing what students to admit. Michigan has said minority enrollment at its flagship university, the University of Michigan, has not gone down since the measure was passed. Civil rights groups dispute those figures and say other states have seen fewer African-American and Hispanic students attending highly competitive schools, especially in graduate level fields like law, medicine, and science."
Businesses

GitHub Founder Resigns Following Harassment Investigation 182

Posted by Unknown Lamer from the don't-be-mean dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Late Yesterday, GitHub concluded its investigation regarding sexual harassment within its work force, and although it found no evidence of 'legal wrongdoing,' Tom Preston-Werner, one of its founding members implicated in the investigation resigned. In its statement, GitHub vows to implement 'a number of new HR and employee-led initiatives as well as training opportunities to make sure employee concerns and conflicts are taken seriously and dealt with appropriately.' Julie Ann Horvath, the former GitHub employee whose public resignation last month inspired the sexual harassment investigation, found the company's findings to be gratuitous and just plain wrong."
Transportation

Experts Say Hitching a Ride In an Airliner's Wheel Well Is Not a Good Idea 239

Posted by Unknown Lamer from the don't-forget-your-jacket dept.
Hugh Pickens DOT Com (2995471) writes "Hasani Gittens reports that as miraculous as it was that a 16-year-old California boy was able to hitch a ride from San Jose to Hawaii and survive, it isn't the first time a wheel-well stowaway has lived to tell about it. The FAA says that since 1947 there have been 105 people who have tried to surreptitiously travel in plane landing gear — with a survival rate of about 25 percent. But agency adds that the actual numbers are probably higher, as some survivors may have escaped unnoticed, and bodies could fall into the ocean undetected. Except for the occasional happy ending, hiding in the landing gear of a aircraft as it soars miles above the Earth is generally a losing proposition. According to an FAA/Wright State University study titled 'Survival at High Altitudes: Wheel-Well Passengers,' at 20,000 feet the temperature experienced by a stowaway would be -13 F, at 30,000 it would be -45 in the wheel well — and at 40,000 feet, the mercury plunges to a deadly -85 F (PDF). 'You're dealing with an incredibly harsh environment,' says aviation and security expert Anthony Roman. 'Temperatures can reach -50 F, and oxygen levels there are barely sustainable for life.' Even if a strong-bodied individual is lucky enough to stand the cold and the lack of oxygen, there's still the issue of falling out of the plane. 'It's almost impossible not to get thrown out when the gear opens,' says Roman.

So how do the lucky one-in-four survive? The answer, surprisingly, is that a few factors of human physiology are at play: As the aircraft climbs, the body enters a state of hypoxia—that is, it lacks oxygen—and the person passes out. At the same time, the frigid temperatures cause a state of hypothermia, which preserves the nervous system. 'It's similar to a young kid who falls to the bottom of an icy lake," says Roman. "and two hours later he survives, because he was so cold.'"

Comment Re:Expensive Middle Class Sport Losing Patrons (Score 2) 405

by EmagGeek (#46804059) Attached to: In a Hole, Golf Courses Experiment With 15-inch Holes

Cycling is a lot more expensive than golf, and seems to be the new wealthy middle-class beer belly sport.

I've been riding a bike for more than 30 years, and I can't tell how how different it looks at the parking lot today - middle-aged men, 20lbs or more overweight, showing up in $100,000 cars with $25,000 bikes that they haven't ridden since last week's group ride, and every kind of electronic bike gadget you can imagine dangling off of them. They're there to show off their affluence and to compete with each other over who has the most expensive bike.

They never ride except at the weekly ride. They suck wheels like a baby at its mother's teat. They refuse to do the work when it is their turn - because they can't. Their solution to not being committed enough to the sport to be good at it is to buy a more expensive bike, because a more expensive bike will make them a better rider. Nevermind the fact that these people are DANGEROUS because they have no idea how to ride alone let alone in groups.

A couple of times a year I get up the courage to show up at one of these things in a distant hope that things have changed. But, it only seems to get worse.

Horseback riding and flying are also both more expensive than cycling. Golf is actually pretty cheap to get into. You can get a decent used set of clubs pretty cheap, usually from someone who took up the sport thinking they could be Tiger Woods after a week, bought he most expensive clubs out there, and then discovered that becoming proficient in a skill take a lot of hard work and effort, and gave up to do something easier.

Comment Why is Lowering the Bar always the Solution? (Score -1, Troll) 405

by EmagGeek (#46803953) Attached to: In a Hole, Golf Courses Experiment With 15-inch Holes

In my lifetime alone, I've seen so many cases of "loweing the bar" to compensate for society's general lack of interest in becoming proficient at things.

In the 1990's and 2000's, the FCC seriously dumbed-down the Amateur Radio licensing material and requirements, eventually completely eliminating the morse code requirement - and an Extra exam today is nothing like the Extra exam I took in 1998.

Not long after that, the FAA created the "sport pilot" class that does not even require a medical exam, so people on life support can fly around in 2000 pound, high-velocity projectiles and put them into random peoples' houses when they have their in-flight hypoxia-induced heart attack.

Now we're going to FIFTEEN INCH golf holes? Are they serious? Let's go down to six bowling pins while we're at it, and drop the 1st down requirement in football to 7 1/2 yards. Oh wait, we can't do fractions anymore, so just make it 5 yards.

While they're add it they may as well add a stroke to each par as well, just to attract more mediocre players and discourage them getting any better at the skill.

People need to stop being such fucking assholes and try to be good at things. Everyone wants a goddamn trophy for simply showing up. This, right here, is why America is failing. The rest of the world is BETTER than us at shit because most Americans are lazy assholes who just want to consume and don't give a damn about proficiency, skill, or ambition. Yes, everyone wants to be rich, but they want to do it by simply taking it from people who ARE good at things, and who have earned their wealth by using those skills.

Fuck you all. Every last goddamn one of you entitled little brats.
Encryption

OpenSSL Cleanup: Hundreds of Commits In a Week 379

Posted by timothy from the the-good-kind-of-competition dept.
A new submitter writes with this news snipped from BSD news stalwart undeadly.org: "After the news of heartbleed broke early last week, the OpenBSD team dove in and started axing it up into shape. Leading this effort are Ted Unangst (tedu@) and Miod Vallat (miod@), who are head-to-head on a pure commit count basis with both having around 50 commits in this part of the tree in the week since Ted's first commit in this area. They are followed closely by Joel Sing (jsing@) who is systematically going through every nook and cranny and applying some basic KNF. Next in line are Theo de Raadt (deraadt@) and Bob Beck (beck@) who've been both doing a lot of cleanup, ripping out weird layers of abstraction for standard system or library calls. ... All combined, there've been over 250 commits cleaning up OpenSSL. In one week.'" You can check out the stats, in progress.

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