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Comment Re:From what I've heard, it really is that bad... (Score 2, Insightful) 673

by rozthepimp (#31971392) Attached to: Was Flight Ban Over Ash an Overreaction?
Yes, those jet engines are just big hollow tubes with absolutely no moving parts! No blades, compressors, widgets - it's like magic! And even if there was anything in this jet engine, all parts are undoubtedly coated with Teflon! As an added design bonus, nothing can pit them, especially small bits of glass being sucked in/expelled out at speeds that would remove all traces of flesh from a humanoid! Sorry. could not resist.
Space

A Hyper-Velocity Impact In the Asteroid Belt? 114

Posted by Soulskill from the i-played-that-game dept.
astroengine writes "Astronomers have spotted something rather odd in the asteroid belt. It looks like a comet, but it's got a circular orbit, similar to an asteroid. Whether it's an asteroid or a comet, it has a long, comet-like tail, suggesting something is being vented into space. Some experts think it could be a very rare comet/asteroid hybrid being heated by the sun, but there's an even more exciting possibility: It could be the first ever observation of two asteroids colliding in the asteroid belt."
Space

Super-Earths Discovered Orbiting Nearby, Sun-Like Star 242

Posted by Soulskill from the i-for-one dept.
likuidkewl writes "Two super-earths, 5 and 7.5 times the size of our home, were found to be orbiting 61 Virginis a mere 28 light years away. 'These detections indicate that low-mass planets are quite common around nearby stars. The discovery of potentially habitable nearby worlds may be just a few years away,' said Steven Vogt, a professor of astronomy and astrophysics at UCSC. Among hundreds of our nearest stellar neighbors, 61 Vir stands out as being the most nearly similar to the Sun in terms of age, mass, and other essential properties."

Submission + - Alan Ralsky Gets 51 Months in Prison (washingtonpost.com)

Submitted by tsu doh nimh
tsu doh nimh writes: Alan Ralsky, the 64 year-old dubbed the "Godfather of Spam," was sentenced to 51 months in prison on Monday, The Washington Post's Security Fix reports. According to anti-spam group Spamhaus.org, Ralsky has been spamming since at least 1997, using dozens of aliases and tens of thousands of "zombies" or hacked PCs to relay junk e-mail. Also sentenced — to 40 months in jail — was Ralsky's 48-year-old son-in-law, Scott K. Bradley and two other men named last year in a 41-count indictment for wire fraud, mail fraud, money laundering and violations of the CAN-SPAM Act.
The Courts

Submission + - RIAA Case, Capitol v. Thomas #2, Starts Monday (startribune.com)

Submitted by
NewYorkCountryLawyer
NewYorkCountryLawyer writes: "The RIAA's first trial verdict having been tossed out last year, the RIAA is coming back for a second bite at the apple starting Monday. This time the trial will be in Minneapolis, rather than Duluth, and this time the defendant will have a team of pro bono lawyers on her side. But perhaps the most important new development is that this time the 'technical' evidence garnered by MediaSentry and 'explained' by the RIAA's expert witness Doug Jacobson, will not get the free pass it got the first time around. In the 2007 trial in Capitol Records v. Thomas, no objection was made by defendant's lawyer to the MediaSentry/Doug Jacobson 'evidence' upon which the RIAA relied, and the evidence was admitted without objection. This time there will be no free ride, as defendant's tech-savvy lawyers have already filed a list of objections to the RIAA's proposed exhibits. Most notably they attack the 'technical' materials submitted by MediaSentry and Dr. Doug Jacobson under Rule 702 of the Federal Rules of Evidence, which requires evidence based on 'scientific, technical, or other specialized knowledge' to be based on sufficient facts or data, to be the product of reliable principles and methods, and to be the result of those principles and methods having been applied reliably to the facts of the case. If the evidence fails to meet those standards, it is inadmissible. This judge has already evidenced acute awareness of these principles, in deciding which subjects defendant's expert could and could not address. So this should be interesting."

Comment Re:Wow, the RIAA is bad at this (Score 3, Interesting) 197

by rozthepimp (#28021283) Attached to: Court Rejects RIAA's Proposed Protective Order
Regarding your comments re the filings of RIAA lawyers, the oldest /. expression comes to mind - "You must be new here". The unbelievable filings of HRO, Dwyer & Collora, and their predecessors over the last few years leads to the conclusion that there are a lot more bottom feeder law firms out there than anyone in the practice of law would like to admit. As someone who left the law profession a few years ago, I can say now that IANAL, but the inane motions/filings on behalf of the record company plaintiffs truly stagger the imagination. As far as I can tell, the only qualification to act as a plaintiff lawyer in these cases is that the you must suck it up and write as dictated by Matt Oppemheim. So the law firm must balance their reputation and bad PR against the fees.

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