29518667
submission
cstacy writes:
The Smithsonian is honoring V.A. Shiva Ayyadurai, who invented email. The museum is launching an online exhibit of documentary materials showing how, as a 14 year old in 1978, he invented email and wrote the first software (including features such as the header lines To, From, CC, and BCC)
Numerous people have contacted the Washington Post, which ran the story last Friday, to inform them that email already existed before this. The paper has clarified that in addition to his story of being the inventor, "Ayyadurai holds the copyright to the computer program called 'email', establishing him as the creator of the 'computer program for [an] electronic mail system' with that name. (However, the Smithsonian itself still appears to be clueless.)
26689160
submission
cstacy writes:
The United States Postal Service will be closing half of its processing centers this spring. Currently, 42% of first-class mail is delivered the following day for nearby residential and business customers. But that overnight mail will be a thing of the past, with delivery guaranteed only for 2-3 days. About 51% will be delivered in 2 days. Periodicals may take up to nine days. (Additional delays beyond this may come into play when Congress also authorizes USPS to close operations for some days each week.) Stamp prices will be going up in a few weeks. How long before the post office is a footnote in the history books?
26215992
submission
cstacy writes:
The head of security and his aide at Électricité de France, whose 66 nuclear power stations produces 22% of the electricity for the European Union, have been sentenced to prison for three years for spying on Greenpeace using trojan malware. Also, EDF is being hit one of the largest fines ever imposed by a court on a French corporation for any reason, 1.5 million euros.
In 2006, the power company employed Kargus Consultants to steal 1,400 documents from the computer of Yannick Jadot, the head of Greenpeace campaigns against nuclear power in France.
Meanwhile, the head of Kargus, Thierry Lorho, was also sentenced to three years in jail, while his technical expert and former secret service man, Alain Quiros, was given two years suspended. Earlier this week, Quiros was sentenced to six months in prison in a separate case for using the same malware, involving a French anti-doping lab, Floyd Landis, and the Tour De France in 2006.
24982464
submission
cstacy writes:
John McCarthy, who coined the term "Artificial Intelligence" and helped found the field, invented LISP, garbage collection, time-sharing, and made other seminal contributions to computing, has died at age 84.
7112488
submission
cstacy writes:
In the present economic jobless "recovery" with rising unemployment, and many unemployed professionals no longer even being counted in the gloomy statistics, are more people turning to social networking to make job connections? Personal networking has always been the best way to find good jobs. This Mashable article http://mashable.com/2009/10/14/linkedin-50-millon/ cites a huge recent growth spurt in social networking, and this McKinsey article http://www.mckinseyquarterly.com/Organization/Talent/When_job_seekers_invade_Facebook_2317 also notices the trend. In the last few months I've had more people connecting to me on LinkedIn and Facebook, and a lot of them are recently unemployed. Do you see more people using SN for job seeking? And does it work? Or is it just more people giving away their personal info so that they can play Mafia Wars and Farmville?
7112250
submission
cstacy writes:
In the present economic jobless "recovery" with rising unemployment estimated at 10-17%, and many unemployed professionals no longer even being counted in the gloomy statistics, are more people turning to social networking to make job connections? Personal networking has always been the best way to find good jobs. This Mashable article http://mashable.com/2009/10/14/linkedin-50-millon/ cites a huge recent growth spurt in social networking. In the last few months I've had more people connecting to me on LinkedIn and Facebook, and a lot of them are recently unemployed. Do you see more people using SN for job seeking? And does it work? Or is it just more people giving away their personal info so that they can play Mafia Wars and Farmville?
5393021
submission
cstacy writes:
The United States has been trying to extradite Gary McKinnon from the United Kingdom. He admits hacking into 97 military and NASA computers in 2001 and 2002. He insists he was looking for evidence of UFOs. Prosecuters say he committed the "biggest military computer hack of all time" and faces up to 70 years in prison. Today the High Court agrees he should be extradited, calling it "a lawful and proportionate response to his offending". His latest bud comes after unsuccessful appeals with House of Lords and the European Court of Human Rights. He can still appeal to the UK Supreme Court. His lawyer argues that the extradition treaty is for terrorists, and "Gary McKinnon is no terrorist." However, McKinnon did leave a rant on one of the computers he hacked: "US foreign policy is akin to government-sponsored terrorism these days? It was not a mistake that there was a huge security stand-down on September 11 last year...I am SOLO. I will continue to disrupt at the highest levels."
