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Comment Re: Yay for "zero tolerance" (Score 1) 591

by mpbrede (#48961739) Attached to: Texas Boy Suspended For "Threatening" Classmate With the One Ring

Honor role students are facing jail time for truancy for god sakes.

Living in Texas, but not having been educated here, I'd like to perhaps call your attention to two grammatical errors in one sentence. "Honor roll" and "for God's sake" Now you can see where the problem with Texas education arise. The teachers and principals were raised in Texas.

Comment Re:Pathetic (Score 2) 196

by mpbrede (#45384701) Attached to: Mark Shuttleworth Apologizes for Trademark Action Against Fix Ubuntu
By this, I assume you mean that once someone has taken a wrong course, they should not try to correct once they realize their mistake? I think I have a job for you piloting huge oil tankers... There is not, in my reading any attempt to hide, it's short and sweet. "Our new guy made a mistake, I made a mistake, and we're sorry." The part about the new guy, is perhaps a bit of smole and mirrors, so I'm thinking they should name him and put him in public pillory. (NOT)

Submission + - NSA Monitored Calls of 35 World Leaders 1

Submitted by Hugh Pickens DOT Com
Hugh Pickens DOT Com writes: The Guardian reports that the NSA monitored the phone conversations of 35 world leaders after being given the numbers by an official in another US government department and according to a classified document provided by whistleblower Edward Snowden the NSA encourages senior officials in its "customer" departments, such the White House, State and the Pentagon, to share their "Rolodexes" so the agency can add the phone numbers of leading foreign politicians to their surveillance systems. The NSA memo dated October 2006 that was obtained by the Guardian suggests that such surveillance was not isolated, as the agency routinely monitors the phone numbers of world leaders – and even asks for the assistance of other US officials to do so. However the memo acknowledges that eavesdropping on the numbers had produced "little reportable intelligence". At the daily briefing on Thursday, White House press secretary Jay Carney again refused to answer repeated questions about whether the US had spied on German Chancellor Angela Merkel's calls in the past although he previously issued a statement that said the US "is not monitoring and will not monitor" the German chancellor's communications. But that failed to quell the row, as officials in Berlin quickly pointed out that the US did not deny monitoring the phone in the past. "The [NSA] revelations have clearly caused tension in our relationships with some countries," said Carney, "and we are dealing with that through diplomatic channels."

Submission + - Citizen eavesdrops on former NSA director Michael Hayden's phone call (washingtonpost.com) 1

Submitted by McGruber
McGruber writes: The Washington Post has the news (http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/wp/2013/10/24/this-dude-just-eavesdropped-on-former-nsa-director-michael-hayden-and-hes-tweeting-about-it/) that former head of the NSA Michael Hayden took a call while on the Acela train between D.C. and Boston. Hayden was talking to a journalist "on background", which means the reporter that Hayden was talking to is not allowed to cite Hayden by name.

Unfortunately for Hayden, another train passenger overhead the call and live-tweeted it.

Submission + - Avast, me hearties! Antigua to legally pirate US copyrighted works (networkworld.com) 1

Submitted by Mark Gibbs
Mark Gibbs writes: Shiver me timbers: Antigua and Barbuda’s “WTO Remedies Implementation Committee”, is said to be recommending the establishment by the Government of Antigua & Barbuda of a statutory body to own, manage and operate the ultimate platform to be created for the monetisation or other exploitation of the suspension of American intellectual property rights authorised earlier this year by the WTO ... Additionally, an announcement regarding the opening of tenders for private sector participation in the operating of the platform should be announced shortly. Arghhh ... matey!

Submission + - 87-Year-Old World War II Veteran takes on the TSA (orlandosentinel.com)

Submitted by McGruber
McGruber writes: Orlando Sentinel columnist Lauren Ritchie has written (http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/local/lake/os-lk-lauren-ritchie-tsa-search-elderly-20131025,0,2675395.column) about how Transportation Security Administration (TSA) checkpoints handle her father Sam, an 87-year-old who has a propensity to question authority in a quiet way, and make his target feel stupid.

Sam points to the signs that the TSA posts stating that those above the age of 75 don't have to take off their shoes for screening. Maybe the TSA thinks all old people wear floppy tennies, but Sam's favorite pair have metal. So every time Sam goes through the screening, an alarm goes off, and an officer makes him remove his shoes. And every time he feels compelled to test the TSA. Sometimes, Sam spots them a few points by warning them ahead of time that his shoes have metal.... it got to be a ritual for a while, ending with him throwing his hands up and remarking to the TSA person: "Hey, something's not right here."

Sam also refuses to let TSA separate him from his wallet; he is convinced that it will disappear from the moving belt or that someone will pick it up on the other side if he can't get there quickly enough. His wallet stays buttoned securely into his back pocket. His daughter doesn't even want to know how much money is in his wallet because he never got the memo that America has become a cashless society.

Admittedly, the TSA is right in a way — Sam does know a little bit about planes being used as flying bombs. He was aboard the U.S.S. Idaho battleship during a massive attack on Okinawa on April 11, 1945, when six Japanese kamikazes took aim and dived toward the decks. Anti-aircraft fire took out five of them, but the last one slammed into the port side of the Idaho. The battleship, a veteran of landing after landing in the Pacific, sailed to Guam for repairs and was back in Okinawa four weeks later. Sam still was aboard when she steamed triumphantly into Tokyo Bay on Aug. 27, 1945, and anchored there during the signing of the World War II surrender.

Submission + - Why did dinosaurs grow to giant sizes, while mammals remained relatively small? (insidescience.org)

Submitted by benonemusic
benonemusic writes: A new study in the journal PLOS ONE suggests that dinosaurs reached gigantic proportions relative to mammals because of differences in their cartilage, making their joints squishier and able to sustain greater amounts of force. Other factors contributed to dinosaurs' larger sizes, including their lighter, air-sac-filled skeletons, and some researchers point out that the sizes of some dinosaurs and mammals were approximately equal, so anatomical differences between cartilage in dinosaurs and mammals may not directly explain why some dinosaurs grew to larger sizes.

Submission + - Fighting Paralysis With Electricity (ieee.org)

Submitted by the_newsbeagle
the_newsbeagle writes: In spinal cord injuries, the brain's commands can't reach the lower body — so in a ground-breaking experiment at the University of Louisville, researchers are providing artificial commands via electrodes implanted in the spine. The first paralyzed people to try out the tech have already been able to stand on their own, and have regained some bowel and sexual function. A video that accompanies the article also shows paralyzed rats that were able to walk again with this kind of electrical stimulation.

Submission + - New Android Eyewear Butts Heads with Google Glass (linuxgizmos.com)

Submitted by __aajbyc7391
__aajbyc7391 writes: GlassUp, an Italian startup, has started taking pre-orders on Indiegogo for an Android eyewear display system billed as a simpler, lower-cost alternative to Google Glass. The GlassUp device is a receive-only Bluetooth accessory to a nearby mobile device, providing a monochrome, 320 x 240-pixel augmented reality display of incoming messages and notifications. GlassUp was unveiled at CeBit in March, and is now up for crowdfunding on Indiegogo, where pre-sales opened today ranging from $199 to $399, depending on whether it’s a pre-release, pre-production, or full-production version. This is less than a quarter the price of the $1,500 Google Glass Developer Edition. Already almost two years in development, GlassUp is expected to ship to presales customers in Feb. 2014, around the same time Google Glass is expected to ship in commercial production form.

Submission + - Google storing WLAN passwords in the "clear"

Submitted by husemann
husemann writes: Micah Lee from the EFF filed a bug report (https://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=57560) about Google storing all your WLAN passwords on their application settings backup service without allowing you to encrypt them. So far it's not known whether the passwords are stored encrypted at rest, but just the fact that Google can read them (and disclose them if forced by "law") is a bit surprising, too put it nicely. Already one German university is concerned enough about this "feature" that they issued a warning to their users (http://www.rz.uni-passau.de/rzaktuell/meldung/detail/speicherung-von-zugangsdaten-auf-servern-der-fa-google/).

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