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Best Man Rigs Newlyweds' Bed To Tweet During Sex 272

Posted by samzenpus from the nice-feed dept.
When an UK man was asked to be the best man at a friend's wedding he agreed that he would not pull any pranks before or during the ceremony. Now the groom wishes he had extended the agreement to after the blessed occasion as well. The best man snuck into the newlyweds' house while they were away on their honeymoon and placed a pressure-sensitive device under their mattress. The device now automatically tweets when the couple have sex. The updates include the length of activity and how vigorous the act was on a scale of 1-10.
Role Playing (Games)

New Fable II DLC Coming May 12th 26

Posted by Soulskill from the more-and-better dept.
Lionhead Studios today announced that their next section of downloadable content for Fable II, called See the Future, will be available on May 12th. The new content will include new quests, monsters and items, a Colosseum, and alter egos for the player's dog. Peter Molyneux also hinted at a connection to the next Fable game, saying, "... it would be pretty poor to say See the Future if it didn't have some connection." Further details are available in the latest in Lionhead's series of developer diaries.

Comment Re:Fix it at home (Score 1) 949

by Noah Adler (#24378371) Attached to: How Do You Fix Education?

You say school should be like a 9-5 job, but how about turning the problem on its face? End the 40-hour standard work week. Stop drilling into peoples' heads that life is about getting a good job and working at it. Stop teaching depth-first and try breadth. Let parents spend more time with their children, and let children spend more time with their parents, and spend time being alive. Of course, this won't happen any time soon, since our societal overlords dictate that we must keep our economy strong in order to maintain (at the root of it) military superiority.

Bertrand Russell provides a much more elegant discourse than I could hope to: In Praise of Idleness.
Microsoft

Windows in Brazil Costs 20% of Per Capita Business Income 236

Posted by CmdrTaco from the hate-when-that-happens dept.
mjasay writes "Ever wonder why open source is so popular in Brazil and other BRIC nations? As one study suggests, one big reason may well be Microsoft's punitive pricing, which exceeds 20 percent of Gross National Income for businesses in Brazil (and 7.8 percent of consumer GNI). This leads to a second, related reason: At those prices, there's little hope that Brazil can build a home-grown software economy on the foundation of proprietary software. This factor is exacerbated by Brazil's widespread disdain for the United States, which also tends to favor software that is not perceived as American. Of late the free and open-source Brazilian dream may be fading a little but its importance to the long-term growth prospects of the Brazilian economy shouldn't be understated."
Space

People Believe NASA Funded As Well As US Military 320

Posted by Zonk from the nasa-engineers-crying-into-their-keyboards-right-now dept.
QuantumG writes "An essay on the Space Review site is reporting that a just-completed study indicates the average citizen has no idea how much funding NASA gets. Respondents generally estimated NASA's allocation of the national budget to be approximately 24% (it's actually closer to 0.58%) and the Department of Defense budget to be approximately 33% (it's actually closer to 21%). In other words, respondents believed NASA's budget approaches that of the Department of Defense, which receives almost 38 times more money. Once informed of the actual allocations, they were almost uniformly surprised. One of the more vocal participants exclaimed, 'No wonder we haven't gone anywhere!'"
Power

EPA Sends Data Center Power Study to Congress 127

Posted by CmdrTaco from the turns-out-we-use-a-lot-of-juice dept.
BDPrime writes "We've all been hearing ad nauseum about power and cooling issues in the data center. Now the EPA has issued a final report to Congress detailing the problem and what might be done to fix it. Most likely what will happen is the EPA will add servers and data centers into its Energy Star program. If you don't feel like reading the entire 133-page report, the 14-page executive summary is a little easier to get through."

Netcraft Says IIS Gaining on Apache 666

Posted by CmdrTaco from the trolls-rejoice-in-netcraft-story dept.
benjymouse quotes this month's netcraft survey "In the August 2007 survey we received responses from 127,961,479 sites, an increase of 2.3 million sites from last month. Microsoft continues to increase its web server market share, adding 2.6 million sites this month as Apache loses 991K hostnames. As a result, Windows improves its market share by 1.4% to 34.2%, while Apache slips by 1.7% to 48.4%. Microsoft's recent gains raise the prospect that Windows may soon challenge Apache's leadership position."
Google

Google Protects Healthcare From Michael Moore 1153

Posted by kdawson from the take-two-ads-and-call-me-in-the-morning dept.
An anonymous reader suggests we stop over to ZDNet for a case where Google may be stepping on the wrong side of that famous Don't Be Evil line. A Google staffer is offering to help the healthcare industry contain the damage that Michael Moore's film is about to do. (Here is the original Google Health Advertisement blog post by Lauren Turner; in case it disappears, it is reproduced in full in the ZDNet post.) Quoting from the Google post: "Many of our clients face these issues; companies come to us hoping we can help them better manage their reputations through 'Get the Facts' or issue management campaigns. Your brand or corporate site may already have these informational assets, but can users easily find them? We can place text ads, video ads, and rich media ads in paid search results or in relevant websites within our ever-expanding content network. Whatever the problem, Google can act as a platform for educating the public and promoting your message. We help you connect your company's assets while helping users find the information they seek."
Security

CIA Declassifies the "Family Jewels" 356

Posted by kdawson from the in-case-you-were-inclined-to-trust-the-government dept.
An anonymous reader informs us that the CIA has recently declassified for your reading pleasure some records relating to illegal spying, assassination attempts, and other goodies. These are available from the CIA's FOIA portal. From the BBC article: " Last week, CIA chief Michael Hayden announced the decision to declassify the records, saying the documents were 'unflattering but part of CIA history.' The documents detail assassination plots, domestic spying, wiretapping, and kidnapping... Among the documents is a request in 1972 for someone 'who was accomplished at picking locks' who might be retiring or resigning from the agency."

Comment I am a law student who has completed contracts. (Score 1) 756

by tomphaedrus (#18028668) Attached to: Amazon Adjusts Prices After Sales Error
I'm probably posting too late but:
There seem to be a lot of outrage and confident assertions over 'what the law is' in this thread, so I'd like to give my opinion (I am a 2 year law student)...

1. Courts frequently allow the recission in these clerical error type cases because it does not serve recognized contract law social policy to enforce them.
2. In each case where the customer knew of the mistake, black letter law (See Restatement of Contracts, section 153 'When Mistake of One Party Makes a Contract Voidable') indicates a slam dunk case in Amazon's favor. (Often mistake can be inferred from the price stated in the Contract offer, so it is certainly possible a court would decide this even in the few cases where the customer honestly thought he or she was getting free DVDs).
3. Neither of the above makes it correct for Amazon to pursue 'vigilante' measures of collecting (in this case, charging customer's credit cards). Amazon should look to a court to rescind the contract.

Communications

Verizon Rejected iPhone Deal 290

Posted by kdawson from the just-saying-no dept.
SnowDog74 writes "According to an article in USA Today, Verizon Wireless rejected an Apple deal over the iPhone. The article says that Verizon wasn't happy with the strict terms Apple demanded — a Verizon Wireless VP is quoted saying that Apple wanted a cut of monthly revenues and control of the customer relationship. What's perhaps equally interesting, however, is the implication from sources that say Cingular's exclusive 5-year deal with Apple applies within the United States only. If this is true, it undermines some of the criticism Apple has been receiving for their business strategy surrounding the iPhone, given the size of the cell-phone market outside the US."

First Swede Convicted For File-Sharing Now Cleared 278

Posted by kdawson from the search-me dept.
Caine writes, "A 29-year old Swede, who was the first to be convicted under last year's new file-sharing laws, has been cleared on appeal. The court of appeal did not consider the screen dumps provided by the Antipiracy Bureau enough evidence to be able to convict the man. Since the crime does not carry a high enough punishment under Swedish law to allow for a search of the defendant's house, this means it will be virtually impossible to prove file-sharing crimes in the future."

Spirit Rover Reaches Safety 147

Posted by Zonk from the go-little-buddy-go dept.
dylanduck writes "Good news for rover fans - Spirit is safe for the winter. It had been heading for a north-tilting spot to make sure its solar panels got enough sunlight during the imminent winter to survive, when a sand trap appeared. But, despite its busted wheel, it scooted round and is now sitting pretty. From the article: 'We've got a safe rover,' says principal investigator Steve Squyres. 'That's huge news for us.'"

Warcraft III on a Table-Top 42

Posted by Zonk
ParadyNexus writes "IGN recently posted an interesting article featuringWarcraft III on an interactive digital table. From the article 'Possible uses of the technology range from tactical map manipulation and business collaboration to parlor games, but we see a real future in gaming. An intern at MERL was able to get WarCraft III running on one of the prototypes and shot a video of the DiamondTouch and a voice recognition system in action.' Photos and answers to commonly asked questions and a video showing multi user interaction can be found online."

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