Comment Re:BigInt (Score 1) 529
Ask them if their slashdot UID is prime. If they know without having to look then move on to the next programmer and repeat.
Submission + - FBI Doesn't Tell Courts About Bogus Evidence
dprovine writes: According to a joint investigation by series of articles in The Washington Post and
60 Minutes, a forensic test used by the FBI for decades is known to be invalid. The National Academy of Science issued a report in
2004 that FBI investigators had given "problematic" testimony to juries. The FBI later
stopped using "bullet lead analysis", but sent a letter to law enforcement officials
saying that they still fully supported the science behind it. Hundreds of criminal
defendants — some already convicted in part on the testimony of FBI experts — were
not informed about the problems with the evidence used against them in court.
Does anyone at the Justice Department even care about what effect this will have on
how the public in general (and juries in particular) regards the trustworthiness of
FBI testimony?
Warner Music CEO Says War With Consumers Was Wrong 258
l2718 writes "Edgar Bronfman, CEO of the Warner Music Group, has publicly framed the music industry's failure to accommodate file-sharing as an 'inadvertent' war on consumers. I'm left wondering how you can file a series of lawsuits inadvertently. 'We expected our business would remain blissfully unaffected even as the world of interactivity, constant connection and file sharing was exploding ... By ... moving at a glacial pace, we inadvertently went to war with consumers by denying them what they wanted and could otherwise find and as a result of course, consumers won.'"
Submission + - Rowling Sues Harry Potter Lexicon (arstechnica.com)
Snape kills Trinity with Rosebud writes: "Apparently famous authors don't like it if you try to make a buck using their Imaginary Property because J.K. Rowling is suing the publishers of the Harry Potter Lexicon for infringement. This should prove an interesting test case for fair use given that the lexicon contains mostly factual information about the series, not copies of the books' text. Of course, both sides seem a bit touchy about imaginary property rights, with Rowling's lawyers being miffed after being told to print it themselves when they asked for a paper copy of the lexicon's website, and the lexicon website itself using one of those insipid right click disabling scripts."
Journal Journal: How do you think the world will be different in 50 years? 20
Alright, so I'm working on a writing project with a few other people where we're creating a science-fiction universe with the intention of allowing it to be used in others' fiction projects, such as stories, books, webcomics, etc. (It's licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution license)
