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Comment jQuery is widely used for client-side Javascript (Score 1) 109

by Webapprentice (#36322710) Attached to: Book Review -- JavaScript: the Definitive Guide, 6th Edition

If you can believe this metric, http://trends.builtwith.com/javascript, jQuery is used in over 40% of the top websites. It has a strong developer community and is well-documented for the most part.

The book does not devote too many pages on jQuery, but it makes a few mentions.
Earth

Ant Mega-Colony Covers the World 359

Posted by samzenpus from the ant-lords-demand-more-sugar dept.
Deag writes "A mega colony of one family of ants has spread all over the world. Previous mega colonies in California, Europe and Japan have been shown to be in fact one global colony. Ants from the smaller super-colonies were always aggressive to one another. So ants from the west coast of Japan fought their rivals from Kobe, while ants from the European super-colony didn't get on with those from the Iberian colony. But whenever ants from the main European and Californian super-colonies and those from the largest colony in Japan came into contact, they acted as if they were old friends."

Feed Court Realizes Lifetime Internet Ban Is Unreasonable (techdirt.com)

From feed by techdirtfeed
We've discussed how ridiculous it is for courts to ban people from the internet entirely just because the crime they committed took place on the internet. You don't see people getting banned from using the telephone because their crime involved a phone. However, judges keep putting such a ban in place. An appeals court has now overturned such a ban, pointing out how excessive it appeared to be. In this case, the guy was "prohibited from accessing any computer equipment or any 'online' computer service at any location, including employment or education. This includes, but is not limited to, any Internet service provider, bulletin board system, or any other public or private computer network." As the article notes, that would mean he basically couldn't use a mobile phone (or VoIP phone) these days. And, it's getting increasingly difficult to find a job or class that doesn't involve computers and the internet in some manner. To ban it completely, for the rest of this guy's life, was clearly extreme -- and it's good that the appeals court has agreed. As for the lower court, it sounds like they just were so interested in the "internet" angle to the case, they didn't quite realize the consequences of a complete ban for life.

Feed Amazon and Netflix deny rampant acquisition rumors (engadget.com)

From feed by engfeed

Filed under: Home Entertainment, Portable Video

Wouldn't these two be a pair, teamed up against Blockbuster's video rental service and the iTunes gorilla? Wall Street seems to think so, and rumors today of Amazon having plans for acquiring Netflix sent shares of the former to heights not seen since 2004. Unfortunately, the fun didn't last long, with Netflix quickly calling it "rumors or speculation," and Amazon defining it as "speculation and rumor." But, like Silicon Valley analyst Rob Enderle states: "If they're not talking, they probably should be."

[Via El Reg]

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Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!
Google

Submission + - Google search by employer not illegal, say judges

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: A court of appeals for the federal circuit has upheld a ruling (PDF) against a man who sued his former employer for Googling his name before firing him. He had accused his former employer of participating in "ex parte" communications — off-the-record communications that are used to play a part in the final outcome of a decision — that ultimately affected the decision to fire him from his job. However, the three-judge panel ruled that an ex parte communication did not occur in the case when the employer used Google.

The man in question, David Mullins, was a government employee at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Weather Forecast Office in Indianapolis, IN. Through a series of events, Mullins' employer found that he had misused his government vehicle and government funds for his own purposes — such as sleeping in his car and falsifying hotel documents to receive reimbursements, withdrawing unauthorized amounts of cash from the company card, traveling to destinations sometimes hundreds of miles away from where he was supposed to be (and using his company card to fill up on gas there), and spending company time to visit friends and/or his children. Mullins' supervisor provided a 23-page document listing 102 separate instances of misconduct.

Mullins took issue with a Google search that Capell performed just before authorizing his firing. During this Google search, Capell found that Mullins had been fired from his previous job at the Smithsonian Institution and had been removed from Federal Service by the Air Force. Mullins argued that his right to fundamental fairness was violated when Capell performed the search and that she committed perjury when she stated that the search did not influence her decision to fire him.

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070510-goog le-search-by-employer-not-illegal-say-judges.html

Feed Breakdown Of Myelin Implicated In Alzheimer's (sciencedaily.com)

From feed by sdfeed
Wisdom comes with age (doesn't it?), but not without a process that takes place in the brain called myelination. Myelin is the fatty sheath that coats the axons of the nerves, allowing for efficient conduction of nerve impulses. It is key to the fast processing speeds that underlie our higher cognitive functioning, including, yes, wisdom.

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