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  1. Re:VTech just kicked in, yo! on Student Expelled For Facebook Photo Description · · Score: 1

    The best part is that I'm sure he has absolutely no recourse because they're free to expel any student at any time per the handbook.

    As with EULA, utility contracts, etc what matters is the "law on the land". Universities are not independent nation states, dispite what they might think.

  2. Re:Its just criminals on Proposal for UK Prisoners to be Given RFID Implants · · Score: 1

    Or they could stop throwing people in jail for victimless crimes, such as drug offenses... for which 16% of prisoners are there for.

    Most likely drug prohibition is actually responsible for a higher proportion of prisoners. Since prohibition tends to have lots of non "victimless" crimes assocciated with it. e.g. people in the "black economy" can't use the courts so they tend to use violence to deal with "business disputes".

  3. Re:My wife is a high school teacher... on Facebook Photos Land Eden Prairie Kids in Trouble · · Score: 1

    She scans her students myspace pages all the time. It's pretty incredible what kind of information they put up.

    Would it be acceptable for her to drive around peering into her student's bedrooms using a telescope?

  4. Re:More to it than that... on Facebook Photos Land Eden Prairie Kids in Trouble · · Score: 1

    The photo was at least on 2 other devices before being posted to the site...the camera taking the photo, and the computer that uploaded it. If your friend took the picture, are you sure they deleted it after posting?

    If they used the school's property then it is the school's business if they didn't then it isn't.
    In the former case it might well be more appropriate to ask questions about teachers failing to supervise students properly and why "social networking sites" were not blocked.

  5. Re:Isn't it easy? on Facebook Photos Land Eden Prairie Kids in Trouble · · Score: 1

    I don;t use Facebook, but don't they have a feature to group people by what school they attend? An administrator would just have to sign up for his own school then just browse profiles while filling out detention slips.

    Except that they probably shouldn't be able to do this when they were at work. AFAIK these sites cannot be accessed "read only". Thus anyone who can access the site can alter it.
    About the only sensible thing for any school can do is to block these kind of sites for everyone.

  6. Re:Hah. [[ Supposedly pics were delivered on Facebook Photos Land Eden Prairie Kids in Trouble · · Score: 1

    Supposedly the pics were delivered on a CD (maybe a DVD) to school administrators. The person who delivered it is either unknown or not being identified. (disclosure/source: My sister-in-law attends EPHS. I'm anonymous for her sake.)

    Should they treat this any differently from regular "postal spam"? It's very easy for photographs to be faked and can require considerable forensic examination to identify if this is the case or not.

  7. Re:Hah. on Facebook Photos Land Eden Prairie Kids in Trouble · · Score: 1

    I worked at a high school for a while and we monitored all traffic looking for keywords. Also, any AIM traffic was logged, and any traffic to/from myspace was logged. We caught a bunch of kids doing some really stupid shit because they updated their myspace pages from school. I believe some of them lost scholarships over it.

    Why were these websites not completly barred to everyone in the school? Unless you mean that the students were enguaging in hacking.

  8. Re:How many are actually running XP? on Vista Shipped On 39% of PCs In 2007 · · Score: 1

    I work for the University of Washington. This past summer, we ordered around 200 new Dells, that came preloaded with Vista (we had no choice in the matter). As soon as we got them, we used our site license to replace Vista with XP on all of our computers. I wouldn't be surprised if the same thing happens in other corporate environments.

    I'd be very suprised if there are any corporate environments (other than "mom and pop") which would run OEM preloads at all. Though the likes of Dell just don't get this.

  9. Re:What is wrong with America & American Airli on Anti-Missile Technology To Be Tested on Commercial Jets · · Score: 1

    Smaller transport aircraft have been downed in Iraq (three C-130s),

    These are military aircraft. AFAIK there isn't a civil version of these aircraft.

  10. Re:Doesn't make sense on Scientists Recycle CO2 with Sunlight to Make Fuel · · Score: 1

    I know this sounds ridiculous, but here in Australia, there is a very large hue-and-cry from the environmentalists whenever we want to build a new dam, and that is just for drinking and irrigation (we are in very severe drought, and are down to 20% water capacity, and still the greenies are bitching about building new dams)

    Is there anything they don't kick up a fuss about? Quite a few of these "greenies" appear to have nothing else to do with their lives...

  11. Re:Doesn't make sense on Scientists Recycle CO2 with Sunlight to Make Fuel · · Score: 1

    Pressurised air container is essentially a bomb with explosive power equal to stored energy.

    This is an issue with any pressurised container.

    Difference to a tank of gasoline is, that gasoline must be mixed with air (oxygen) in just the right concentration to get an explosion.

    Which, outside of Hollywood, is very unlikely to happen. A fire is a far more likely outcome of a vehicle accident.

  12. Re:Doesn't make sense on Scientists Recycle CO2 with Sunlight to Make Fuel · · Score: 1

    Hydrogen (as in hydrogen cars) functions only as an energy STORAGE method.

    Hydrogen isn't even an especially good chemical storage method for the conditions you find on Earth. Hydrocarbons (together with alcohols and esters) are considerably easier to store and transport.

  13. Re:Terrorism cannot be avoided with these measures on Anti-Missile Technology To Be Tested on Commercial Jets · · Score: 1

    Agreed, what for example London's excessive CCTV's and monitoring help against is rarely the crime, but more about catching the right guys when the deed is done. Of course, if the guys blow themselves up in the process, there's less use for those too.

    Assuming that the system is actually working at the time. All too often faults appear with the cameras nearest to both "terrorists" and out of control police...

  14. Re:What is wrong with America & American Airli on Anti-Missile Technology To Be Tested on Commercial Jets · · Score: 1

    On 9/10, you could have said that about hijackers flying a plane into a building and killing 3000 people. What would be your point?

    Actually plenty of people had come up with the idea of using an airliner as an improvised cruise missile. The pilot of "The Lone Gunmen", even got the target and political fallout more or less correct.

  15. Re:What is wrong with America & American Airli on Anti-Missile Technology To Be Tested on Commercial Jets · · Score: 1

    True, but it's only a matter of time (or semantics). Look at what happened in Baghdad to a DHL A300: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2003_Baghdad_DHL_attempted_shootdown_incident It could have just have easily been carrying passengers (vice a cargo variant) elsewhere in the world,

    There arn't that many "passengers" who fly in warzones. Especially once you eliminate those who are legitimate military targets and the suicidally stupid.

  16. Re:What is wrong with America & American Airli on Anti-Missile Technology To Be Tested on Commercial Jets · · Score: 1

    You may want to reconsider that statement, Iran Air Flight 655.

    The system in question is about man portable anti aircraft missiles. Anti aircraft missiles carried by warships are much more destructive and have considerably longer range. Also warships can easily fire multiple missiles at the same target.

  17. Re:What is wrong with America & American Airli on Anti-Missile Technology To Be Tested on Commercial Jets · · Score: 1

    Not a single passenger jet has been downed from the type of missiles these "high power lasers" are supposed to be able to prevent. Not a single one.

    Hence the whole thing is probably "corporate welfare". Otherwise it would be more likely to be first provided to DHL planes flying in warzones...

  18. Re:I don't get it... on Boeing 787 May Be Vulnerable to Hacker Attack · · Score: 1

    The remote control was a planned for long ago. But it was sped up post 9/11. Think about it. If we can obtain some codes from Boeing, and then put the plane on the ground, what AQ hijacker is going to use it?

    On the other hand which is easier to get hold of? Some fool who dosn't want to live, but can fly a plane or some codes from Boeing...

  19. Re:The vicious last bites of a wounded animal on Investors, "Beware" of Record Companies · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I'm not convinced there's any way to die gracefully when your business becomes outmoded (SCO, too).

    Of course there is. It's known as "voluntary liquidation"... If it's timed right the business owners might even still have made a profit.

  20. Re:Ummm. on US Government To Release Electronic Passport · · Score: 1

    Originally, the concept was that a bus load of people could simply drive across the border and their passports would be read from the roadside as they passed. Sounds simple enough, but there was no assessment of the security. No handshake, no encryption.

    There's also the problem of the machine even knowing if the number of passports equals the number of people on the bus. Never mind anything as complex as working out which passport belongs to which person.

  21. Re:No air travel?! on US Government To Release Electronic Passport · · Score: 1

    It takes 2-3 hours to get everyone off one of those big cruise ships because of the need to get 2000 people through customs at once. This sounds like it could speed that process up.

    Or rather the advocates of the system claim that it would speed things up. Of course even if it did actually mean that one official could process more people per hour what's to say that the result wouldn't be to cut the number of people (hence entry points) thus making things no quicker, possibly even slower.

  22. Re:Who the hell is on What's Wrong With the TV News · · Score: 1

    The problems is I just can't bring myself to care what celebrity is sleeping with who (or what). Who is in rehab this week or who is getting a divorce from whome.

    Maybe there needs to be a special "celebrity news" channel for this kind of stuff.

  23. Re:Nice vacations? on The Rising Barcode Security Threat · · Score: 1

    The secret code is: Hug the landing gear. Remember to wear a parka, it gets a bit fresh up there.

    Apparently being a Russian teenager can help too.

  24. Re:It's the DRIVERS stupid... on Microsoft's Biggest Threat - Google or Open Source? · · Score: 1

    The only reason you need special 'drivers' for hardware is becuase the hardware makers (probably often in collusion with MS, or at the very least to their delight) instead of just releasing specs for hardware so anyone can use it, either make secret proprietary code, or releasing the specs only to MS, and in advance, so only MS knows how it works.

    There's also the situation where the "driver" consists of an actual driver plus a userspace application. The application being critical to the hardware working at all, performing tasks such as uploading firmware, self test, initialisation, etc. In some cases the application quite possibly is the actual driver.
    Not only can this approach be difficult to reverse engineer for another OS it can also be a poor way drive hardware under Windows. Especially when some joker decides that the application dosn't need to be started until after login. Of course nobody would ever need a working wireless network card in order to be able to log into a machine in the first place...

  25. Re:It's the DRIVERS stupid... on Microsoft's Biggest Threat - Google or Open Source? · · Score: 1

    MS is still the clear winner when it comes to drivers. If I install even the latest Linux I still have issues with hunting down drivers, especially for wireless cards.

    In actual fact the exact hardware matters a lot. Whilst this can happen it is also perfectly possible to have a piece of hardware which "just works" with Linux but not with Windows.
    It's also possible to get a situation of Windows device manager stating only "unknown device". When booting the same machine with a Knoppix disk at least enables you to identify what the piece of hardware actually is.

    Vendors only want to have to write and maintain one set of drivers so they write drivers for windows. If there was an open standard for drivers that worked across all platforms then Microsoft would not have an advantage over OSS.

    Actually there is an open standard for drivers. It involves documenting how the hardware works... But it dosn't involve actually writing or maintaining any actual drivers. The people who should be producing Windows drivers are Microsoft, not hardware vendors.