M&Mâs World Headlines: Jan 30, 2009
FCC Commish: Some want ‘new’ Fairness Doctrine extended to the Internet The Standard
President Obama’s new FCC commissioner has come out harshly against those who might want to bring back the fairness doctrine — the 80’s era law that required broadcasters (on the public airwaves) to air both sides of controversial issues. McDowell said that some wanted to impose the Doctrine to other venues where spectrum concerns don’t exist, such as cable and satellite or even the Internet: “Certain legal commentators have suggested that a new corollary of the Doctrine should be fashioned for the Internet, on the theory that web surfers should be exposed to topics and views that they have not chosen for themselves.” McDowell added, “I am not making this up.”
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Organic computing takes a step closer New Scientist
Computer processors may soon have one fundamental aspect in common with their owners a structure composed largely of carbon, rather than silicon. Graphene, carbon arranged in atom-thick sheets, is already known to be an excellent conductor, but electronics requires the ability to insulate too, as well as electrical properties in between those two extremes. Now research has shown that the material can be easily modified to act as an insulator, paving the way for efficient all-carbon electronics.
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Alaskans brace for volcanic eruption MSNBC
A volcano just 100 miles from Alaska’s largest city has stirred back to life after nearly 20 years of tranquility, sparking a round-the-clock eruption watch, seismologists said Thursday.
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Canadian Tire to reissue 16,000 cards The Star
A widespread security breach disclosed by a U.S. credit card transaction processor has prompted Canadian Tire to cancel and re-issue 16,000 Mastercard credit cards issued by its financial services arm over security concerns, a company spokeswoman said. Late last week, Heartland Payment Systems said it had closed a security hole in its computer network that may have exposed shoppers to one of the biggest data breaches on record. Shortly afterward, Canadian Tire launched an investigation of its own, said spokeswoman Lisa Gibson. “The breach actually happened with Heartland,” Gibson said. “What we started to do was…call the cardholders and actually share the information with them and then cancel their card, and re-issue them a secure card.” Any card that was used in the U.S. during a specific period of time was deemed to be at risk, said Gibson, whose own personal card was affected. “What I was trying to find out is what personal information people may have gotten other than the card,” said Greer, who lives outside Huntsville, Ont., north of Toronto. “They wouldn’t say.” In a statement issued last week, MasterCard said it was monitoring developments related to the breach.
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Alberta sun temple has 5,000-year-old calendar The Star
An academic maverick is challenging conventional wisdom on Canada’s prehistory by claiming an archeological site in southern Alberta is really a vast, open-air sun temple with a precise 5,000-year-old calendar predating England’s Stonehenge and Egypt’s pyramids. Mainstream archeologists consider the rock-encircled cairn to be just another medicine wheel left behind by early aboriginals. But a new book by retired University of Alberta professor Gordon Freeman says it is in fact the centre of a 26-square-kilometre stone “lacework” that marks the changing seasons and the phases of the moon with greater accuracy than our current calendar. “Genius existed on the prairies 5,000 years ago,” says Freeman, the widely published former head of the university’s physical and theoretical chemistry department.
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Chrome [Now] supports Hotmail The Inquirer
GOOGLE has managed to get its latest beta version of Chrome to work with Vole’s hotmail service by lying. Google has added a patch to its latest beta and stable versions of Chrome which tells the Vole that it is actually Apple’s Safari browser.
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Pandora open-source handheld console inching closer to debut Ars Technica
The long-awaited Pandora open-source handheld has inched one step closer to completion, as the OpenPandora team has put on display the nearly finalized case design. We review what we know about Pandora to date, and what the project is hoping to accomplish.
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PeanutGate-Canada sent tainted peanuts back to U.S. The Star
Weeks before the earliest signs of a U.S.-wide salmonella outbreak that now has been traced to peanuts from a Georgia processing plant, peanuts exported by the same company were found to be contaminated and were returned to the United States, The Associated Press has learned. The shipment rejected by Canada was logged by the Food and Drug Administration but never tested by federal inspectors, according to the government’s own records.
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Japanese boys bring WWII bomb to school ABC
Two Japanese boys have brought a World War II bomb to class, flustering teachers on the island of Okinawa, which was the scene of the Pacific conflict’s bloodiest battle. The two 12-year-old boys said they found the bomb last week in a yard near the school in Okinawa, where residents still unearth hundreds of dud explosives six decades after the war.
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From the not-so bright file-Man accused of making drug deal at police station Associated Press
Goetz said the man admitted trying to deal drugs and turned over his stash. He was jailed for investigation of illegal drug possession and intent to sell.
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Court: No right to shout “douchebag” in a crowded blog Ars Technica
A federal court has rejected a former student’s First Amendment suit against school officials who punished her for calling them “douchebags” in a Live Journal post. Administrators are entitled to qualified immunity from suit unless they are clearly violating an established right, the court held; and the scope of student rights to online speech is anything but clear. If Google results are any indication, there are a lot of folks out there calling their teachers “douchebags” on Live Journal. If any of them live in Connecticut, though, they may want to consider taking those journals private in light of a federal court ruling issued earlier this month, which upheld the right of public school administrators to discipline a student for speech on her personal blog.
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The India $10 laptop project Times of India
A $10 laptop (Rs 500) prototype, with 2 GB RAM capacity, would be on display in Tirupati on February 3 when the National Mission on Education through Information and Communication Techology is launched. The $10 laptop project, first reported in TOI three years ago, has come as an answer to the $100 laptop of MIT’s Nicholas Negroponte that he was trying to hardsell to India. The $10 laptop has come out of the drawing board stage due to work put in by students of Vellore Institute of Technology, scientists in Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, IIT-Madras and involvement of PSUs like Semiconductor Complex. At this stage, the price is working out to be $20 but with mass production it is bound to come down, R P Agarwal, secretary, higher education said.
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Police denied free Krispy Kreme doughnuts after run-in AU CourierMail
EVEN the doughnut-loving Chief Wiggum from The Simpsons would have been appalled. Well, maybe.
A Brisbane police officer got into a holey row with Krispy Kreme staff, demanding to be served free doughnuts. Shocked customers looked on as the officer argued with staff for several minutes in a bid to get his freebies, before finally storming off – empty handed and non-cinnamon-fingered. “I couldn’t believe what I was seeing,” a witness said. “He was quite rude, insisting his doughnuts should be free. He was so greedy for the doughnuts. I thought, ‘you swine, get your money out and pay for them like everyone else’.” As the icing on the cake, Krispy Kreme has now decided to stop supplying Brisbane police with leftover doughnuts. The junior constable from the City Beat unit, on Adelaide St, was reprimanded by colleagues after the embarrassing scene.
January , 2009
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January 31st, 2009 at 2:15 pm
@douchebag comment
Why is your teacher looking at you Live Journal? LOL creepy!
@Japanese Boys
What a show and tell!
January 31st, 2009 at 8:20 pm
I never saw an instance of the fairness doctrine being enforced in about the 15,000 media slantings I’ve seen on one particular topic since 1984 or so. This includes all public stations as well.