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A Legal Name Change Puts 'None of the Above' On Canadian Ballot (foxnews.com) 171

Posted by timothy from the vote-several-times dept.
PolygamousRanchKid writes: The ballot to fill a legislative seat in Canada next month includes none of the above—and it's a real person. Sheldon Bergson, 46, had his name legally changed to Above Znoneofthe and is now a candidate for the Ontario legislature, the CBC reports. The election is Feb. 11. The ballot lists candidates in alphabetical order by surname so his name will be the 10th of the 10 candidates as Znoneofthe Above, according to CBC. One of his opponents is running on the line of the None of The Above Party. Maybe the American folks can learn from their cousins up north? Shouldn't every election have a line for "None of the above"? I can't wait until Little Bobby Tables hits 35.

Submission + - Candidate's legal name change puts 'none of the above' on ballot in Canada (foxnews.com)

Submitted by PolygamousRanchKid
PolygamousRanchKid writes: The ballot to fill a legislative seat in Canada next month includes none of the above—and it’s a real person. Sheldon Bergson, 46, had his name legally changed to Above Znoneofthe and is now a candidate for the Ontario legislature, the CBC reports. The election is Feb. 11. The ballot lists candidates in alphabetical order by surname so his name will be the 10th of the 10 candidates as Znoneofthe Above, according to CBC.

One of his opponents is running on the line of the None of The Above Party.

Maybe the American folks can learn from their cousins up north . . . ?

Submission + - The Periodic, Somewhat Obligatory "Earth is Flat" Argument Rears It's Head Again

Submitted by mjjochen
mjjochen writes: A little something to make you smile (or cry). NPR reports on astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson calling out rapper B.o.B. in a twitter (& rap) argument over the status of the earth (are we round or flat?), article can be found here: http://www.npr.org/sections/th.... Rapper B.o.B. references the usual conspiracy theories to support his case in his throw down. Neil deGrasse Tyson responds, actually his nephew responds, on why B.o.B.'s points are not very well-informed: https://soundcloud.com/drtyson.... As Tyson puts it, "Duude — to be clear: Being five centuries regressed in your reasoning doesn't mean we all can't still like your music." Shall we start leaching the four humors from the body again to achieve balance? Hrm.

Submission + - Filmmaker successfully forces censors to watch 10-hour paint drying movie (ibtimes.co.uk) 1

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: A British filmmaker has forced the people who decide how to censor films watch a 10-hour movie of paint drying on a wall following a protest fundraising campaign.

Charlie Lyne launched a Kickstarter to help raise the money needed to send his 'documentary' of a single shot of paint drying on a wall for consideration as a protest against the "stronghold" the organisation has on the British film industry.

The BBFC charge an initial fee of $144.88 to view a film and decide what certificate to give it, and then and additional $10.15 for each minute that the film lasts. The idea was the more money Lyne could raise via his fundraiser, the longer his paint-drying film could last.

The campaign eventually nearly £8,500, meaning he was able to send in a 607 minute video which the examiners had to watch in its entirety.

Submission + - Dutch Government Backs Strong Encryption, Condemns Backdoors

Submitted by blottsie
blottsie writes: The Netherlands government issued a strong statement on Monday against weakening encryption for the purposes of law enforcement and intelligence agencies. The move comes as governments in the United Kingdom and China act to legally require companies to give them access to wide swaths of encrypted Internet traffic. U.S. lawmakers are also considering introducing similar legislation.

Submission + - Microsoft has your encryption key if you use Windows 10 (theintercept.com) 1

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The fact that new Windows devices require users to backup their recovery key on Microsoft’s servers is remarkably similar to a key escrow system, but with an important difference. Users can choose to delete recovery keys from their Microsoft accounts (you can skip to the bottom of this article to learn how) – something that people never had the option to do with the Clipper chip system. But they can only delete it after they’ve already uploaded it to the cloud.

and..

As soon as your recovery key leaves your computer, you have no way of knowing its fate. A hacker could have already hacked your Microsoft account and can make a copy of your recovery key before you have time to delete it. Or Microsoft itself could get hacked, or could have hired a rogue employee with access to user data. Or a law enforcement or spy agency could send Microsoft a request for all data in your account, which would legally compel them to hand over your recovery key, which they could do even if the first thing you do after setting up your computer is delete it. As Green puts it, “Your computer is now only as secure as that database of keys held by Microsoft, which means it may be vulnerable to hackers, foreign governments, and people who can extort Microsoft employees.”

Submission + - A Scam of Galactic Proportions (hackaday.com)

Submitted by szczys
szczys writes: What would the Galactic Economy look like following the destruction of two Death Stars? This is the informed Star Wars debate taking shape between to people who know their economics. Elliot Williams, a Ph.D. in Econometrics, has just debunked the work of Zachary Feinstein who claimed that the Rebel Alliance would have been off better had they not destroyed the two Death Stars because what they're left with is a Galactic Economy in ruin.

Feinstein, a professor at Washington University in St. Louis, published a scholarly paper early this month touting financial suicide to destroy both of the giant construction projects. Williams' take on things is that the project was a sunk cost; destroyed or whole the Death Star expenditures already made are gone and not likely to further cost or benefit the new government. Perhaps most interesting in the discussion is how you estimate the cost of the Death Star projects and the GGP — the Galactic Gross Product of the fictional universe.

Submission + - MST3K Breaks Kickstarter record

Submitted by the_Bionic_lemming
the_Bionic_lemming writes: Raising over 6.3 million dollars in just one month MST3K fans helped push the new 14 episode series past the Official Kickstarter Veronica Mars total of $5,702,153 by raising $5,764,229 On Kickstarter. $600,000 + Was added to the total from the Add on store at MST3K.com . And what's more, they did it with only 48,270 backers compared to 91,585 Veronica Mars backers.

sorry, got the total wrong in the previous submission

Submission + - Anonymous Reportedly "RickRolling" Isis (dazeddigital.com)

Submitted by retroworks
retroworks writes: According to a recent tweet from the #OpParis account, Anonymous are delivering on their threat to hack Isis [slashdot http://slashdot.org/?fhfilter=..., and are now flooding all pro-Isis hastags with the grandfather of all 2007 memes — Rick Aston's "Never Gonna Give You Up" (1987) music video, aka “Rick Roll” meme. Whenever a targeted Isis account tries to spread a message, the topic will instead be flooded with countless videos of Rick Astley circa 1987.

Not all are praising Anonymous methods, however. While Metro UK reports that the attacks have been successful, finding and shutting down 5,500 Twitter accounts, the article also indicates that professional security agencies have seen sources they monitor shut down. Rick Aston drowns out intelligence as well as recruitment. http://metro.co.uk/2015/11/22/...

Submission + - Def Con: Hacker Shows How to "Kill" Anyone (securityweek.com) 1

Submitted by wiredmikey
wiredmikey writes: Hackers the Def Con gathering in Las Vegas on Friday got schooled in how to be online killers. A rush to go digital with the process of registering deaths has made it simple for maliciously minded folks to have someone who is alive declared dead by the authorities.

"This is a global problem," Australian computer security specialist Chris Rock said as he launched a presentation titled "I Will Kill You."

Submission + - Subversion project migrates to Git (apache.org)

Submitted by gitficionado
gitficionado writes: The Apache Subversion project has begun migrating its source code from the ASF Subversion repo to git. Last week, the Subversion PMC (project management committee) voted to to migrate, and the migration has already begun.

Although there was strong opposition to the move from the older and more conservative SVN devs, and reportedly a lot of grumbling and ranting when the vote was tallied, a member of the PMC (who asked to remain anonymous) told the author that "this [migration] will finally let us get rid of the current broken design to a decentralized source control model [and we'll get] merge and rename done right after all this time."

Submission + - Installing OpenSource VLC Media Player Voids Your Dell Laptop Warranty

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: VLC is incapable of increasing the actual power past 100%, all that is being done is the waveform is being modified to be louder within the allowed constraints. But, that didn't stop Dell from denying warranty service for speaker damage if the popular VLC Media Player is installed on a Dell laptop. Also we got a report that service was denied because a KMPlayer was installed on a laptop. The warranty remains valid on the other parts of the laptop. VLC player developer denied the issue with VLC and further claimed the the player cannot be used to damage speakers. How can I convince Dell to replace my laptop speaker which is still in warranty? Or class action is only my option?

Submission + - Why are Japanese men refusing to leave their rooms?

Submitted by fantomas
fantomas writes: The BBC reports on the Japanese phenomenon of Hikikomori: young people, mainly men, who are holed up in rooms in their parents' houses, refusing to go out and engage with society. Why is this happening? and is it a global phenomenon or something purely due to Japanese culture? (we're all familiar with the standing slashdot joke of the geek in their mom's basement for example)

Submission + - Remote Island Adopts Dothraki Language (badatlanguage.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The tiny island of Tristan da Cunha is officially the most remote inhabited archipelago in the world with few connections to the outside and access only by sea when the notoriously stormy south atlantic co-operates which is not often. Entertainment options are limited and LARPing in Game of Thrones style has become massively popular, so much so that the islanders have declared Dothraki to be an official language, alongside English.

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