josech - Slashdot User

Chile First To Approve Net Neutrality Law 293

Posted by kdawson on Tuesday July 13, 2010 @06:18PM from the pathbreaker dept.

Sir Mal Fet writes "Chile has become the first country in the world to approve, by 100 votes in favor and one abstention, a law guaranteeing net neutrality (Google translation; Spanish original). The law states [submitter's translation]: 'No [ISP] can block, interfere with, discriminate, hinder, nor restrict the right of any Internet user of using, send, receive or offer any content, application, or legitimate service through the Internet, as well as any activity or legitimate use conducted through the Internet.' The law also has articles that force ISPs to provide parental control tools, clarify contracts, guarantee users' privacy and safety when surfing, and forbids them to restrict any liberty whatsoever. This is a major advance in the legislation of the country regarding the Web, when until last year almost anything that was performed online was considered illegal."

Black Hole Emits a 1,000-Light-Year-Wide Gas Bubble 145

Posted by Soulskill on Friday July 09, 2010 @05:59PM from the reminds-me-of-a-buddy-of-mine dept.

PhrostyMcByte writes "12 million light-years away, in the outer spiral of galaxy NGC 7793, a bubble of hot gas approximately 1,000 light-years in diameter can be found shooting out of a black hole — one of the most powerful jets of energy ever seen. (Abstract available at Nature.) The bubble has been growing for approximately 200,000 years, and is expanding at around 1,000,000 kilometers per hour."

Facebook, Friend of Divorce Lawyers 494

Posted by kdawson on Tuesday June 29, 2010 @08:03AM from the data-honey-pot dept.

crimeandpunishment writes "A lot of Facebook users going through divorces have learned a very costly lesson about their privacy settings. In fact, for many of them their Facebook pages helped lead to the divorce in the first place. More than 80% of the members of the American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers say they've used or run into evidence gathered from Facebook and other social networking sites over the last five years — and some of them have some very entertaining stories to tell. 'Facebook is the unrivaled leader for turning virtual reality into real-life divorce drama,' said AAML's president."

Best OSS CFD Package For High School Physics? 105

Posted by timothy on Wednesday June 23, 2010 @02:51PM from the why-not-stop-at-algebra-I? dept.

RobHart writes "I am teaching a 'physics of flight' unit to grade 11 Physics students. Part of the unit will have the students running tests on several aerofoils in a wind tunnel. I also want to expose them to a Computational Fluid Dynamics package which will allow them to contrast experimental results with those produced by the CFD package. There are a number of open source CFDs available (Windows- or Linux-based are both fine), but I don't have much time to evaluate which are the simplest to use in terms of setting up the mesh, initial conditions, etc. — a very important issue as students do not have much time in this unit." Can anyone offer insight about ease of use for programs in this niche?

Giant Planet Nine Times the Mass of Jupiter Found 73

Posted by Soulskill on Friday June 11, 2010 @04:05PM from the fat-planets dept.

cremeglace writes "In the late 1990s, astronomers noticed a distinct warp in the disk of dust and gas orbiting a young star some 60 light-years from Earth. Now, using new analytical tools, researchers have discovered a giant planet lurking within the dusty haze. About nine times as massive as Jupiter and composed mainly of gas, the planet is only a few million years old, proving that such enormous planetary bodies can form rapidly." What's amazing about this is that the images taken of the star clearly show the planet first on one side of the star, and then the other, several years later.

Comment Re:A link to the original page? (Score 1) 3

by josech on Thursday June 10, 2010 @07:02PM (#32529674) Attached to: Mexican Lawmaker withdraws Copying Levy, 3 Strikes

Yeah. That was my first thought but the IP Address made me change my mind.

Submission + - Mexican Lawmaker withdraws Copying Levy, 3 Strikes (twitter.com) 3

Submitted by josech on Thursday June 10, 2010 @05:18PM

josech writes: Mexican Deputy, Armando Baez Pinal retired two Copyright Law modification initiatives which pretended to impose a private copying levy and a 3 strikes policy heavily lobbied by the copyright collection society, Coalicion para el Acceso Legal de la Cultura (CALC). The private copy levy would be charged as an overprice for several media and electronic devices just as the infamous "Canon Digital" does in Spain. These initiatives caused rage amid mexican copyright activists which used twitter to spread the word using the #canonmx and #3strikes hashtags. #canonmx quickly became the most important trending topic in Mexico by June 4th. After a huge opposite reaction even from fellow Deputies from Baez's own Party (PRI), Baez finally withdrew both initiatives,announcing it first on twitter (June 8th) and then publishing an official communicate (June 10th). The reaction against these modifications to the Mexican Copyright Law is part of a series of protests against the ACTA negotiations, in which Mexico is participating.

Google Introduces, Then Scraps, Bing-Style Background Images 466

Posted by timothy on Thursday June 10, 2010 @03:58PM from the go-beyond-your-imitations dept.

NIN1385 writes "Google has scrapped the now infamous background image option on its homepage. After 14 hours of a scheduled 24-hour experiment to see how people liked (or disliked) the new homepage layout, the company must have found out it was very disliked. I guess the fact that 'remove Google background' was the seventh most searched for phrase today might have had something to do with it."

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