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Comment My own personal experience (Score 1) 791

by blueadept1 (#25106851) Attached to: Judge Munley is So Out of My Top 8
When I was in high school, we had a power-tripping principle/vice-principle duo that no student liked. They went about treating students as if they were bound to be in class at all times, and at no time act out of the ordinary. Frequently their bounds of control reached beyond the simple school setting. I started a petition online that accused them to something of this effect (simply nothing against the law or accusing them of any crime - simply dislike for them) asking for them to be removed from their positions.

Low and behold, they found out about the petition and pulled me out of class during an *exam*. They basically told me that it was libel and that they could sue me for it. Absolutely ridiculous power tripping coercive bastards. If I knew then what I know now (5 years later) about the law, I would have taken them as far as they wanted to go!
The Almighty Buck

Dell Abandons Its Customization Roots 372

Posted by Zonk from the off-the-factory-line dept.
LiveFreeOrDieInTheGo writes "Dell intends to scale back its build-to-order service model, while increasing sales of prepackaged systems. The goal: $3B USD savings by 2011. The downside: customers expect Dell to build-to-order. The deeper downside: Dell will outsource more production and assembly."
Biotech

Genetically Modified Maize Is Toxic — Greenpeace 655

Posted by kdawson from the here's-to-your-liver dept.
gandracu writes "It appears that a variety of genetically modified maize produced by Monsanto is toxic for the liver and kidneys. What's worse, Monsanto knew about it and tried to conceal the facts in its own publications. Greenpeace fought in court to obtain the data and had it analyzed by a team of experts. MON863, the variety of GM maze in question, has been authorized for markets in the US, EU, Australia, Canada, China, Japan, Mexico, and the Philippines. Here are Greenpeace's brief on the study and their account of how the story was unearthed (both PDFs)."
Education

Kansas Adopts New Science Standards 868

Posted by Zonk from the in-line-with-the-rest-of-us dept.
porcupine8 writes "The Kansas State Board of Education has changed the state science standards once again, this time to take out language questioning evolution. This turnaround comes fast on the heels of the ouster given this past election to the ultra-conservative Board members who originally introduced the language. 'Science' has also been re-redefined as 'a human activity of systematically seeking natural explanations' (the word 'natural' had been previously stricken from the definition). If you'd like to see the new standards, a version showing all additions and deletions is available from the KS DOE's website (PDF)."
Education

The Hidden Engineering Gender Gap 807

Posted by kdawson from the tech-needs-women dept.
ifindkarma writes "Joyce Park, CTO of invitation site Renkoo.com, has written a two-part essay exploring why there is no pipeline of self-taught female engineers entering the tech industry via Open Source or other individual efforts. In The Hidden Engineering Gap, she asks why there are so many self-taught male software engineers in startups, but no similar pool of women. In A Modest Proposal, she discusses a potential short-term fix to the problem: a one-year, co-op, certificate-granting program for women set up and sponsored by Silicon Valley companies."
Education

Global Warming Only a Theory, Says School Board 1089

Posted by Zonk from the i'd-think-seattle-would-know-about-rain dept.
BendingSpoons writes "A Seattle school board has placed a moratorium on screenings of 'An Inconvenient Truth', having found its subject matter too controversial. Echoing the language of the evolution debate, the school board found that students must be told that global warming is only a theory and presented with an opposing viewpoint. The ban was prompted by the complaints of a parent: '"Condoms don't belong in school, and neither does Al Gore. He's not a schoolteacher," said Frosty Hardison, a parent of seven who also said that he believes the Earth is 14,000 years old. "The information that's being presented is a very cockeyed view of what the truth is ... The Bible says that in the end times everything will burn up, but that perspective isn't in the DVD."'"
The Internet

U.S. Warns of Possible Cyber Biz Attack 179

Posted by Zonk from the rather-that-not-happen dept.
mikesd81 writes "The AP has an article about a possible attack against the New York Stock Exchange via the internet by a radical muslim group. The notice was issued to the U.S. cybersecurity industry after officials saw a posting on a 'Jihadist Web site' calling for an attack on U.S. Internet-based stock market and banking sites in December, said Homeland Security Department spokesman Russ Knocke. Knocke has said: 'There is no information corroborating the threat and that the alert was issued as a routine matter and out of an abundance of caution.' There is no immediate threat to our homeland at this time. The attacks were to be conducted in December, 'until the infidel new year,' the site said, according to a U.S. government translation. It called for attackers to use viruses that can penetrate Internet sites and destroy data stored there. Spokespeople for the New York Stock Exchange and Nasdaq declined to comment on the cyber-terror threat."

Want To Know About the New Apple MacBook Pro? 310

Posted by kdawson from the timely-benchmarks dept.
An anonymous reader writes to tell us about an extremely helpful user who is answering questions from all comers about the new MacBook Pro. "A few days ago, a user by the name 'bcavanau' posted on the macrumors.com forums that he had just picked up a new MacBook Pro. Forum members started asking him about features, specifications, and benchmarks. He was happy to oblige, posting responses to everyone's questions. Eventually the forum thread got out of hand, and he set up a website devoted to answering the questions. If you have a question that hasn't already been answered, email him at the address on the site. He is responding daily and sometimes within minutes. This guy is dedicated. Thanks 'bcavanau', you get two thumbs up." The link to the site is cached via the Coral Content Distribution Network.

AMD Launches Counterstrike Against Core 2 Duo 277

Posted by Zonk from the back-and-forth dept.
DigitalDame2 writes to mention a PC Magazine article about the AMD 4x4 enthusiast platform, which is meant to counter Core 2 Duo. The article observes that AMD is now facing many of the same business practices it used in its war against Intel. From the article: "While imitation may be the sincerest form of flattery, improvement can often be a slap in the face. Intel's C2D was designed with both low power and performance per watt in mind, two key design metrics that helped AMD cut into Intel's market share with the Athlon 64 and Athlon 64 X2. And, as preliminary numbers have indicated and final performance reviews now show, the C2D has learned its lesson well: its performance now tops AMD's Athlon 64 architecture by a substantial margin."

Music Downloads = Expensive Concerts? 698

Posted by Zonk from the shaft-the-listener dept.
melonman writes "According to an article at BBC News, $250 tickets for the latest Madonna tour are the fault of P2P file sharing. 'Before the advent of illegal downloads, artists had an incentive to underprice their concerts, because bigger audiences translated into higher record sales, Professor Krueger argues. But now, he says, the link between the two products has been severed, meaning that artists and their managers need to make more money from concerts and feel less constrained in setting ticket prices.' And it seems David Bowie agrees. Is 'the fans always get fleeced' the rock industry's equivalent to Moore's Law?"

On Apple vs Apple 324

Posted by CmdrTaco from the ridiculous-court-cases dept.
Since nothing else really interesting is happening, here is a CNN story about Apple vs Apple where you can read about the latest developments in the latest round of the never ending court battles as two bazillion dollar companies fight over who gets to use the word 'Apple' to sell music.

Windows Vista Capable Machines Coming 340

Posted by Zonk from the stop-being-an-enabler dept.
An anonymous reader writes "PC World's Techlog has a short piece talking about the upcoming emergence of 'Windows Vista Capable' PCs." From the article: "The Vista Capable designation doesn't promise that a PC will provide a great Vista experience, or even that it'll support all Vista features or features...just that it'll be able to run Windows Vista Home Basic in some not-very-well-defined-but-apparently-adequate way. At the moment, there are still new PCs on store shelves that don't meet the Vista Capable guidelines--for instance, low-end systems still sport 256MB of RAM in some cases. Wonder if that means that that A) we'll see some cheap systems that still have XP even after Vista ships; or B) the specs on even the cheapest machines will be beefed up; or C) we'll see machines that have Vista preloaded but which don't qualify as Vista capable?"

Super-ATMs Being Rolled Out 270

Posted by Zonk from the more-than-just-money-machines dept.
News.com has an article up looking at something I find interesting and somewhat confusing. The Vcom ATM is an attempt to make people's lives more convenient by adding unexpected functionality to the standard Teller Machine. Besides dispensing cash, new ATMs can fulfull the roles of PayPal (by sending money to people), bank (by cashing checks on the spot), and cellphone store (by selling Verizon services). From the article: "The Circle K and Exxon Mobil machines are far more basic than 7-Eleven's Vcoms, which have been called overengineered. Several dozen customers polled informally outside a 7-Eleven in Winter Springs, Fla., recently said that they had never used the Vcom inside, and one woman who said she did use it once to withdraw cash complained that it was 'confusing' and 'complicated,' and added that she would not use it again. 'There were just too many steps,' said the woman, Peggy Baker, who teaches French in Winter Springs. 'And the $1.75 transaction fee was too much--it was painful.' She said she was not interested in the other Vcom features, which require users to enroll and enter a Social Security number on a touch screen."

Swedish Study Finds Cell Phone Cancer Risk 282

Posted by Zonk from the i-call-my-tumor-tummy dept.
dtjohnson writes "A new Swedish study has found that heavy users of cell phones had a 240 percent increase in brain tumors on the side of their head that the phone was used on. The study defined 'heavy' use as more than 2,000 total hours, or approximately one hour of use per workday for 10 years. An earlier British study was previously discussed here that didn't find an increased risk, although that study covered fewer subjects and only followed one type of brain tumor for a shorter period of time. Or course, the biggest epidemiological study of all is the one we are all participating in whenever we use our cell phone. The results from that study won't be available for a while."

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