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Crime

Ukrainian Arrested In India For TJX Data Theft 40

Posted by kdawson from the long-long-arm dept.
ComputerWorld reports "A Ukrainian national has been arrested in India in connection with the most notorious hacking incident in US history." "Sergey Valeryevich Storchark was one of 11 men charged in August 2008 with hacking into nine US retailers and selling tens of millions of credit card numbers. He was arrested in India earlier this week, according to a spokesman with India's Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI). In a statement, the CBI said they'd arrested Storchark in New Delhi on the night of May 8, as he deplaned from a flight from Goa, for layover before a flight to Turkey. US authorities had asked for his extradition via diplomatic channels. ... 'His extradition and prosecution would have been very unlikely had he reached his final destination of Ukraine,' the CBI said."
Censorship

Venezuela's Last Opposition TV Owner Arrested 433

Posted by timothy from the or-in-this-case-on-air dept.
WrongSizeGlass writes "AP is reporting the owner of Venezuela's only remaining TV channel that takes a critical line against President Hugo Chavez was arrested Thursday. 'Guillermo Zuloaga, owner of Globovision, was arrested on a warrant for remarks that were deemed "offensive" to the president,' Attorney General Luisa Ortega said. This comes on the heels of last week's story titled Venezuela's Chavez To Limit Internet Freedom."
Image

Police Called Over 11-Year-Old's Science Project 687

Posted by samzenpus from the duck-and-cover dept.
garg0yle writes "Police in San Diego were called to investigate an 11-year-old's science project, consisting of 'a motion detector made out of an empty Gatorade bottle and some electronics,' after the vice-principal came to the conclusion that it was a bomb. Charges aren't being laid against the youth, but it's being recommended that he and his family 'get counseling.' Apparently, the student violated school policies — I'm assuming these are policies against having any kind of independent thought?"
Image

Own Your Own Fighter Jet 222

Posted by samzenpus from the only-one-on-the-block dept.
gimmebeer writes "The Russian Sukhoi SU-27 has a top speed of Mach 1.8 (more than 1,300 mph) and has a thrust to weight ratio greater than 1 to 1. That means it can accelerate while climbing straight up. It was designed to fight against the best the US had to offer, and now it can be yours for the price of a mediocre used business jet."

Comment 1st Question (Score 1) 803

by mwallis (#28257753) Attached to: How Do You Greet an Extraterrestrial?

Ever since I was a boy (back in the 1960's when space was exciting) I've wondered what I would say if encountering a non-terrestrial intelligence. I still go with my answer then ...

"How do you finance your space program??"

--
"I gotta get off this rock!"
Space

Soyuz With Richard Garriott Successfully Launched 56

Posted by Soulskill from the lord-british-in-space dept.
Toren Altair writes "Soyuz TMA-13 with ISS Expedition Crew 18 and Richard Garriott successfully launched from Baikonur Cosmodrome at 7:01 UT (3:01 EDT). The Soyuz capsule will dock to the ISS in two days. Garriott will return to Earth with Expedition 17 crew members, Commander Sergei Volkov and Flight Engineer Oleg Kononenko on October 23." With the extra attention on this launch, the Russians have gone out of their way to say that the return of the Soyuz vehicle will be safe, after a couple of different malfunctions in the past year. Garriott is in space partly for recreation, and partly as a promotion for his latest MMO, Tabula Rasa. He took with him a hard drive filled with information about humanity, as well as DNA sequences from Tabula Rasa players and various celebrities (including Stephen Colbert and Stephen Hawking) to 'preserve' that data in case of a disaster on Earth. Garriott will also spend time running and participating in experiments. Coverage of the Soyuz mission is ongoing at NASATV.
Moon

Unbelievably Large Telescopes On the Moon? 292

Posted by CmdrTaco from the thats-no-moon dept.
Matt_dk writes "A team of internationally renowned astronomers and opticians may have found a way to make "unbelievably large" telescopes on the Moon. 'It's so simple,' says Ermanno F. Borra, physics professor at the Optics Laboratory of Laval University in Quebec, Canada. 'Isaac Newton knew that any liquid, if put into a shallow container and set spinning, naturally assumes a parabolic shape, the same shape needed by a telescope mirror to bring starlight to a focus. This could be the key to making a giant lunar observatory.'"

Comment Removing "Winner Take All" (Score 1) 922

by mwallis (#15785171) Attached to: Proposal to Update the Electoral College
Unfortunately, getting the states to agree to throw their EC votes behind the candidate with the most number of popular votes requires that all 50 states agree and I'm not sure that's ever happened.

What would be a much more practical solution to the EC challenge is to remove the "winner take all" option - EC seats and votes should be distributed according to the plurality the party/candidate received in that state. This simple change would preserve representative constitutional election of the President and force candidates to address the issues of all the states, not just the biggest 5 "winner take all" states.

Unfortunately ... this change would have to come from the state level for each state as there is no Federal authority to force such a change, and again, getting all 50 states to agree is unlikely.

Changing the constitution to require representational distribution in the EC is also unlikely as it would require a Constitutional Convention, and that would mean the WHOLE constitution would be examined and could be rewritten - a very dangerous idea.

So ... what are the options going forward? My suggestion would be to encourage everyone to vote. Not force, not require, just encourage. The more people who vote of their own free will, the less likely it is that a bad choice would be made.

But then ... that assumes there are good candidates to choose from ... and fixing THAT problem is a whole other question that would not be relevent to the current topic.

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