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Comment Re:On vacations I sail (Score 1) 140

by Zontar The Mindless (#45812673) Attached to: What computing device do you use most while on vacation?

You equate a couple of things that I don't, it seems.

I've been off for about 10 days, and today's the first day of it that my wife and I have had to ourselves.

*Now* we might be starting to have a vacation.

Back to the subject: I take my smartphone for communication and navigation (and sometimes translation, depending on where we go), and my tablet for reading the news and listening to music. I have my laptop along to burn some CDs with wedding photos for various relatives, and because one dev team at work just couldn't stand not scheduling a release during my time off, so I'll have to spend one day working, but I've not yet so much as taken it out of my bag, and won't do so until 3 or 4 January, after which it'll get put away again until I go back to work on the 15th.

Being connected can be entertaining and/or useful while on holiday. Being connected to work while on holiday is right out, unless it absolutely cannot be avoided.
The Courts

Judge: NSA Phone Program Likely Unconstitutional 345

Posted by samzenpus from the stop-listening dept.
schwit1 writes in with the latest on an U.S. District Court ruling over NSA spying. "A federal judge ruled Monday that the National Security Agency's phone surveillance program is likely unconstitutional, Politico reports. U.S. District Court Judge Richard Leon said that the agency's controversial program, first unveiled by former government contractor Edward Snowden earlier this year, appears to violate the Constitution's Fourth Amendment, which states that the 'right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated.' 'I cannot imagine a more "indiscriminate" and "arbitrary invasion" than this systematic and high-tech collection and retention of personal data on virtually every single citizen for purposes of querying it and analyzing it without judicial approval,' Leon wrote in the ruling. The federal ruling came down after activist Larry Klayman filed a lawsuit in June over the program. The suit claimed that the NSA's surveillance 'violates the U.S. Constitution and also federal laws, including, but not limited to, the outrageous breach of privacy, freedom of speech, freedom of association, and the due process rights of American citizens.'"
Programming

More Students Learn CS In 3 Days Than Past 100 Years 287

Posted by Soulskill from the go-forth-and-write-half-of-a-hangman-clone dept.
theodp writes "Code.org, backed by Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg, boasts in a blog post that thanks to this week's Hour of Code, which featured a Blockly tutorial narrated by Gates and Zuckerberg, 'More students have participated in computer science in U.S. schools in the last three days than in the last 100 years.' Taking note of the impressive numbers being put up on the Hour of Code Leaderboards ('12,522,015 students have done the Hour of Code and written 406,022,512 lines of code'), the Seattle Times adds that 'More African American and Hispanic kids learned about the subject in two days than in the entire history of computer science,' and reports that the cities of Chicago and New York have engaged Code.org to offer CS classes in their schools. So, isn't it a tad hyperbolic to get so excited over kids programming with blocks? 'Yes, we can all agree that this week's big Hour of Code initiative is a publicity stunt,' writes the Mercury News' Mike Cassidy, 'but you know what? A publicity stunt is exactly what we need.'"

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