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Comment Re:Tyranny (Score 1) 252

I'm not sure about this, but as little as it makes sense, my guess is that the Finnish police somehow interprets Wikipedia's donation drive as being organised on Finnish soil although the legal entity is in California. Which sort of is the case, assuming that the copy for the donation banner is translated and/or the markup for the banner is included to codebase of the Finnish Wikipedia version by volunteers physically located in Finland.

This is the kind of knee-jerk bureaucracy we have to deal with in this country.

Submission + - Finnish Police Board Takes Issue With Wikipedia's Fundraising (blogspot.fi) 3

Submitted by linjaaho
linjaaho writes: Yesterday, the admin list of Finnish language Wikipedia received a request for comment from National Police Board of Finland. The Police board claims that the fundraising message appearing on the top of the Wikipedia pages is illegal fundraising and is punishable by criminal law. The Police Board asks how much money have they raised and ask for justification for the campaign.

This is not the first time the Police Board attacks fundraising. In 2012, a crowdfunded textbook Kickstarter project was delayed because a similar request of comment.
Google

Submission + - Google open sources Etherpad, Piratepad launches (piratepad.net) 1

Submitted by
Thomas Nybergh
Thomas Nybergh writes: "The Etherpad code was released by Google under the Apache license a few hours ago. Google's initial plan, after acquiring the service, was to use Etherpad's tech with its new Wave collaboration platform and to shut down the original service entirely. Soon after the Etherpad code was released, the Swedish Pirate Party launched their instance of the service at piratepad.net. An announcement, which also mentions a new Tor node, is published here here (Google translation).

The original Etherpad service had in a short time become a killer application for collaborative work within at least the Swedish, and according to my personal experience, in the Finnish Pirate Party as well. The Etherpad open source project is available at Google Code."

Comment Re:I still dont see the point (Score 1) 376

by livingdeadline (#29674177) Attached to: Debian Elevates KFreeBSD Port to First-Class Status

You'd get a dpkg/apt-based distro with awesomeness that can't be ported to Linux due to GPL constraints (DTrace, ZFS). These two tools alone bring an insane amount of features any sysadmin would love.

An apt-based system with some of the modifications and default configurations Debian provides is in lots of situations just that much simpler to maintain than a BSD userland. It's way easy to use a rolling release in a Debian environment or upgrade between stable releases with a couple of commands.
The Internet

The Chinese (Web Servers) Are Coming 231

Posted by timothy from the maoism-taoism-i-ching-and-chess dept.
Glyn Moody writes "The February 2009 Netcraft survey is not the usual 'Apache continues to trounce Microsoft IIS' story: there's a new entrant — from China. 'This majority of this month's growth is down to the appearance of 20 million Chinese sites served by QZHTTP. This web server is used by QQ to serve millions of Qzone sites beneath the qq.com domain.' What exactly is this QZHTTP, and what does it all mean for the world of Web servers?"
The Internet

ICANN Responds To gTLD Plan Comments 119

Posted by kdawson from the didn't-like-it-huh dept.
angry tapir writes "ICANN has delayed its plans to sell new generic top-level domains while responding to public comments about the controversial proposal. The organization has released a 154-page document detailing and analyzing the hundreds of comments (PDF) it has received about its gTLD plan. In response to several concerns brought up by the public and companies in the Internet industry, ICANN has moved out the projected timeline for taking applications for new gTLDs from September to December."
Earth

Earth May Harbor a Shadow Biosphere of Alien Life 267

Posted by kdawson from the but-not-as-we-know-it dept.
An anonymous reader sends us to Cosmos Magazine for a speculative article arguing that a 'shadow biosphere' may exist on Earth, unrelated to life as we know it. If such non-carbon-based life were found here at home, it would alter the odds for how common life is elsewhere in the universe, astrobiologists say. "The tools and experiments researchers use to look for new forms of life — such as those on missions to Mars — would not detect biochemistries different from our own, making it easy for scientists to miss alien life, even if [it] was under their noses. ... Scientists are looking in places where life isn't expected — for example, in areas of extreme heat, cold, salt, radiation, dryness, or contaminated streams and rivers. [One researcher] is particularly interested in places that are heavily contaminated with arsenic, which, he suggests, might support forms of life that use arsenic the way life as we know it uses phosphorus."
Microsoft

The Secret Origins of Microsoft Office's Clippy 263

Posted by kdawson from the melinda-has-a-lot-to-answer-for dept.
Harry writes "Most folks think that Microsoft Office's Clippy, Microsoft Bob, and Windows XP's Search Assistant dog were perverse jokes — but a dozen years' worth of patent filings shows that Microsoft took the concept of animated software 'helpers' really, really seriously, even long after everyone else realized it was a bad idea. And the drawings those patents contain are weirdly fascinating." The article, a slide show really, spreads over 15 pages.
The Internet

French "Three Strikes" Law Gets New Life 193

Posted by kdawson from the batter-batter-batter dept.
Kjella writes "A little over a week ago we discussed the EU's forbidding of disconnecting users from the Internet. But even after having passed with an 88% approval in the European Parliament, and passing through the European Commission, it was all undone last week. The European Council, led by French President Nicolas Sarkozy, removed the amendment before passing the Telecom package. This means that there's now nothing stopping France's controversial 'three strikes' law from going into effect. What hope is there for a 'parliament' where near-unanimous agreement can be completely undone so easily?"
Image

US Officials Flunk Test On Civic Knowledge 334

Posted by samzenpus from the you-are-what-you-elect dept.
A test on civic knowledge given to elected officials proved that they are slightly less knowledgeable than the uninformed people who voted them into office. Elected officials scored a 44 percent while ordinary citizens managed an amazing 49 percent on the 33 questions compiled by the Intercollegiate Studies Institute. "It is disturbing enough that the general public failed ISI's civic literacy test, but when you consider the even more dismal scores of elected officials, you have to be concerned," said Josiah Bunting, chairman of the National Civic Literacy Board at ISI. The three branches of government aren't the Nina, the Pinta, and the Santa Maria?
Math

Fun Things To Do With a Math Or Science Degree? 564

Posted by kdawson from the its-own-sweet-sake dept.
bxwatso writes "My niece just took the ACT and got a perfect score on the math section. 25 years ago, when I took the test, the kids who aced the math section were pretty special. Her score, combined with straight A's so far in high school, suggest to me that she might be able to go to a top university (MIT?) based on her math aptitude. The rub is that she doesn't like math or science, even though she finds them easy. She doesn't want to be an engineer or scientist. I thought the folks here would be a great group to ask: What are some creative, not too nerdy professions that nonetheless require a talent for math, engineering, or science?"
Microsoft

Microsoft Working On Its Own App Store 195

Posted by timothy from the goes-around-comes-around dept.
CWmike writes "Microsoft is working on a software distribution scheme along the lines of Apple's iPhone App Store, CEO Steve Ballmer said yesterday at a developer's conference in Sydney, Australia. 'There's not much money being made, but the general concept of giving developers a way not only to get their code distributed, but to really get visibility for the code, is a good idea,' Ballmer said. Ballmer hinted that something similar would be coming soon from Microsoft. While he said Micrsoft was not ready to detail the works in progress, he said '... fear not, we're hard at work, and you'll see some of the benefits [of that] with some of the concepts, particularly Facebook's.'"

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