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Submission + - Astronaut Sues Dido For Album Cover (techdirt.com) 2

An anonymous reader writes: Astronaut Bruce McCandless is suing Dido for her album cover that uses a famous NASA photograph of a tiny, tiny, tiny McCandless floating in space. McCandless doesn't own the copyright on the photo, so he's claiming it's a violation of his publicity rights... except that he's so tiny in the photo, it's not like anyone's going to recognize him.

Comment Meh... (Score 1) 1

Or you could always buy some hardware that isn't an underpowered keyboardless netbook with an inflated price and an orwellian Big Brother company that sells it to you but retains control over "your" device.
Linux

Submission + - Torvalds becomes an American citizen (networkworld.com)

netbuzz writes: Having brought his open-source work and family to the United States from Finland some time ago, Linus Torvalds has marked an important personal milestone by attaining U.S. citizenship. A casual remark on the Linux kernel mailing list about registering to vote led to the community being in on the news. Torvalds has acknowledged being a bit of a procrastinator on this move, writing in a 2008 blog post: “Yeah, yeah, we should probably have done the citizenship thing a long time ago, since we've been here long enough (and two of the kids are US citizens by virtue of being born here), but anybody who has had dealings with the INS will likely want to avoid any more of them, and maybe things have gotten better with a new name and changes, but nothing has really made me feel like I really need that paperwork headache again.” In that post he also expresses dislike for the American style of politics in which he will now be able to participate directly.

Comment No (Score 1) 1

"Commodore USA" owns neither the rights to Commodore nor Amiga, and as far as anyone can tell, their major products are periodic press releases.

Comment Re:Self-education (Score 1) 3

That's BS. I've never once been asked about degrees, and the only certs I have are some minor things past jobs sent me to get, all of which are long out of date. If you know how to do the job and can back that up with some experience, the other stuff isn't that important. If you can't afford school, look for some work, even if the pay isn't so great. Get the experience and then the school won't be as much of an issue (and you'll have some money to pay for it if you really want).

Comment Self-education (Score 1) 3

That's how most of us geeks did it back in the day. I'm a community college drop-out with a partial psychology degree, and no formal IT education... but here I am, 15 years into a highly paid career as software developer and *nix systems architect. All it cost me was the price of a few O'Reilly books, hours of practice, and the balls to go for it in spite of no formal computer education. All the most talented geeks I've ever met are self-educated anyway. Having a computer science degree is almost a flag for a crappy geek who knows lots of buzzwords and maybe some theory but has no real world practical knowledge.
Idle

Submission + - Scientists: Sperm Whale Poop Fights Global Warming (inhabitat.com)

Boy Wunda writes: Scientists at Flinders University in South Australia found that in an awesome example of design by Mother Nature, Southern Ocean sperm whales offset their carbon footprint by simply defecating – an action that releases tons of iron a year and stimulates the growth of phytoplankton which absorb and trap carbon dioxide. If only we humans could say the same for our poop, which really doesn’t do much more than just sit there.

Comment "Encyclopedic" (Score 1) 7

In their attempt to be "more serious" Wikipedia has lost a lot of what made it so fantastic in the beginning. Bullshido, or some obscure band, or whatever may not be something Encyclopaedia Britannica covers, but as long as the article is factual I think many of the things Wikipedia deletes really ought to be left in place. When it comes to things that are well known to non-English people but not known to many English speakers, the editors can be ridiculous at deleting things - even when there are well fleshed out articles in other language Wikipedias.

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