Rising from the dirty waters of old font formats comes a new, fresh Fountain. Our talented friends in Malmö, Sweden have updated their entire collection to OpenType for cross-platform compatibility and easier access to extras like small caps, alternates, and ligatures.
The Wall Street Journal revealed April 24 that current National Security Agency (NSA) director Lt. General Keith Alexander will "head the Pentagon's new Cyber Command."
MaulerOfEmotards sends along an in-depth followup, from the Swedish press, of our discussion the other day about the biased trial judge in the Pirate Bay case. "The turmoil concerns Tomas Norström, the presiding judge of The Pirate Bay trial, who is suspected of bias after reports surfaced of affiliation with copyright protection organizations. For this he has been reported to the appeals court (in Swedish; translation here). The circus around the judge is currently focused on three points. First, his personal affiliation with at least four copyright protection organizations, a state the potential bias of which he himself fails to see and refuses to admit. Secondly, Swedish trials use a system of several lay assessors to supervise the presiding judge. One of these, a member of an artists' interest organization, was forced by Mr. Norström to resign from the trial for potential bias. The judge's failure to see the obvious contradiction in this (translation) casts doubts on his suitability and competence. Thirdly, according to professor of judicial sociology Håkan Hydén (translation), the judge has inappropriately 'duped and influenced the lay assessors' during the trial: 'a judge that has decided that "this is something we can't allow" has little problem finding legal arguments that are difficult for assisting lay assessors to counter.'" Click the link below to read further on Professor Hydén's enumeration of "at least three strange things in a strange trial." On a related note, reader Siker adds the factoid that membership in the Pirate Party exploded 150% in the week following the verdict. The Pirate Party now surpasses in size four smaller parties in Sweden, and is closing in on a fifth. Political fallout could ensue as soon as June, when an election for EU parliament will be held.
After an embarrassing legislative defeat, the French government has reintroduced its controversial three-strikes law to disconnect repeat Internet copyright infringers. As consumer groups protest, the European Parliament looks for ways to limit the entire process.
Glenn Greenwald, New York Times bestselling author and former constitutional law and civil rights litigator, shares opinions through his political blog.
The Sysinternals web site was created in 1996 by Mark Russinovich and Bryce Cogswell to host their advanced system utilities and technical information. Microsoft acquired Sysinternals in July, 2006. Whether you’re an IT Pro or a developer, you’ll find Sysinternals utilities to help you manage, troubleshoot and diagnose your Windows systems and applications. If you have a question about a tool or how to use them, please visit the Sysinternals Forum for answers and help from other users and our moderators.
Wall Street's mantra is that markets move randomly and reflect the collective wisdom of investors. The truth is quite opposite. The government's visible hand and insiders control markets and manipulate them up or down for profit - all of them, including stocks, bonds, commodities and currencies.
Microsoft is attempting to re-brand its Live Search, also known as Kumo. Bing, as it's known, is another attempt by Microsoft to lure consumers away from Internet search leaders such as Google. Microsoft has posted a quarterly loss in its online advertising business, compared to Google's sales, $4.7 billion in the first quarter. According to the Live Search blog, Bing goes 'beyond the traditional search engines to help you make faster, more informed decisions' by combining a 'great search engine' with organized results. It also adds unique tools to help the user make important decisions. It is being touted as a 'decision engine.'
I’ve already responded in another forum to Nick Carr’s essay, which I thought was very thought-provoking, if not entirely on target; I won’t repeat here what I said there. But in it you can see that I would disagree almost perfectly with Clay Shirky, who I want to respond to separately here.
My name is Lawrence Eng, and, as a product analyst for Opera Software, my job is to understand our users and what they need, so we can serve them better. Today, I will share my thoughts on Opera Unite, a new Opera technology that I’m extremely excited about. I’ve been an avid Opera user since 2001 and have seen the numerous innovations Opera has introduced to dramatically improve the experience of Web browsing. Of all the new features we’ve introduced over the years, none of them have filled me with as much anticipation as Opera Unite. This technology is a radical first step towards addressing what I call “the Internet’s unfulfilled promise”, which is about our ability to connect with each other and participate meaningfully online—on our own terms, and without losing control of our data
Groklaw brings us news of Microsoft holding the smoking gun in regards to the death of Linux on netbooks. You see, the question of Linux on netbooks in Taiwan was put forth to the Taiwan Trade Authority director, who replied, 'In our association we operate as a consortium, like the open source consortium. They want to promote open source and Linux. But if you begin from the PC you are afraid of Microsoft. They try to go to the smart phone or PDA to start again.' It's simple; fear will keep them in line. PJ points out, 'So next time you hear Microsoft bragging that people prefer their software to Linux on netbooks, you'll know better. If they really believed that, they'd let the market speak, on a level playing field. If I say my horse is faster than yours, and you says yours is faster, and we let our horses race around the track, that establishes the point. But if you shoot my horse, that leaves questions in the air. Is your horse really faster? If so, why shoot my horse?
Lars Sobiraj submitted an interview with Daniel Schmitt of WikiLeaks. "He encourages all readers and warns his opponents — WikiLeaks has the means to make our society better, to create a world which stands united and strong against abuse — locally and nationally as well as globally. Modern, fast, world-wide technology makes it possible. In the interview, Daniel explains in detail how this will be done, with the help of WikiLeaks and all its supporters."
While there is much talk of a recovery on the horizon, commentators are forgetting some crucial aspects of the financial crisis. The crisis is not simply composed of one bubble, the housing real estate bubble, which has already burst. The crisis has many bubbles, all of which dwarf the housing bubble burst of 2008. Indicators show that the next possible burst is the commercial real estate bubble. However, the main event on the horizon is the “bailout bubble” and the general world debt bubble, which will plunge the world into a Great Depression the likes of which have never before been seen.
Nietzsche wrote that a philosophy is always the biography of the philosopher. Maybe a biography of the philosopher by the philosopher himself is a piece of philosophy. So I shall tell you nine stories taken of my private life, with their philosophical morality... The first story is the story of the father and the mother.
As a simple online platform for conversation, Twitter is an ideal an ecological system through which we can understand the relationship between users and their environments on the Web. Especially compared to other social networks, Twitter simplifies most of the extraneous features and boils down its environment to people and content. The unusual simplicity of Twitter, though, continues to warp perception of how the relationship between user and platform operates. Many of the popularized studies examining influence on Twitter fail to identify the nuances of social interaction in the system. While attempts have been made (eg., http://twinfluence.com/about.php), the analyses tend to focus on the connections between users rather than the relationship of users, content, and platform. This report therefore aims to supplement previous investigations of the Twitter environment with more comprehensive data sets to enhance new approaches to understanding the concept of “influence” on social networks.
IBM is researching an exaflop machine with the processing power of about one billion PCs. The machine will be used to help process the Exabyte of data per day expected to flow off the Square Kilometre Array (SKA) telescope project. The company is also researching solid state storage technology called 'racetrack memory' which is much faster and denser than flash and may hold the secret to storing the data from the SKA. The story also says that the SKA is unlikely to use grid computing or a cloud-based approach to processing the telescope data due to challenge in transferring so much data (about one thousand million 1Gb memory sticks each day).
In a blatant campaign devoid of any subtlety, the RIAA is fighting for the hearts and minds of our children with its Music Rules, a collection of education materials on how to respect copyright. The curriculum includes vocabulary such as 'counterfeit recordings, DMCA notice, "Grokster" ruling, legal downloading, online piracy, peer-to-peer file sharing, pirate recordings, songlifting, and US copyright law.' There is no mention whatsoever of fair use. Compounding the bias, it includes insights such as that taking music without paying for it is 'songlifting,' and that making copies for personal use and then playing them while your friends come over is illegal. On the bright side, it includes math showing that the total damages from copyright infringement by children in the US amount to a measly $7.8 million
Lord Peter Mandelson has carefully ignored the Gowers Report and the Carter Report, instead taking the advice of his good friend David Geffen and announcing that 'three strikes and you're out' will become law in Britain. The Open Rights Group has, of course, hit the roof. Oh, and never mind MI5 and the police pointing out that widespread encryption will become normal, hampering their efforts to keep up with little things like impending terrorist atrocities. Still, worth it to stop a few Lily Allen tracks being shared, right?
In a speech at the Sydney Opera House to mark his award of Australia's human rights prize, the Sydney Peace Prize, John Pilger describes the "unique features" of a political silence in Australia: how it affects the national life of his homeland and the way Australians see the world and are manipulated by great power "which speaks through an invisible government of propaganda that subdues and limits our political imagination and ensures we are always at war -- against our own first people and those seeking refuge, or in someone else's country".
Splitting the Sky, indigenous activist, seized by security forces in Canada last year when he attempted to make a citizen's arrest of George W. Bush will have his day in court on Monday, March 8th. According to Professor Anthony J. Hall, this case will demonstrate whether Canada is ruled by law or fear and highlight the need for new principles, the Calgary Principles to amend the victor's justice of the Nuremberg Principles, in light of the new impunities for high level crimes against humanity and the Earth in this era, and the need to protect and honor civil resistance to those high crimes.
With the 2010 UK general election fast approaching, the Pirate Party of the United Kingdom will be fielding elections for the first time. The Digital Economy bill and ACTA are hot topics for UK geeks, and the Pirate Party is looking to pick up some votes. Their leader, Andrew Robinson, has agreed to answer your questions. Normal Slashdot interview rules apply.
In addition to offering faster, desktop-like performance, better imported document fidelity, and more features found in standard Office apps, Google's new infrastructure for its web-based office suite will enable the company to more easily update the apps. A side effect (or benefit, depending on where you sit) is that the new platform will ditch Gears in favor of HTML 5
Bob Baer has a column out stating that he can’t figure out why the torture tapes were destroyed–and repeating CIA spin claiming the torture depicted in the tapes should not, itself, be a legal problem, since it was approved by DOJ. (h/t cs)
Get real. Keep your head screwed on. What result do you want? I will assume, dear Guardian reader, that like me you have two prime purposes. One is to prevent Cameron walking into Downing Street on 7 May. Equal first is to secure electoral reform so that we are never again presented with such a disgraceful voting choice. If that's not your view, you can save time, stop reading here and push off to some Murdoch organ that will amply satisfy your needs.
The NY Times writes about Henry S. Heine, a former Army microbiologist who worked for years with Bruce E. Ivins, whom the FBI has blamed for the anthrax letter attacks that killed five people in 2001. Heine told a 16-member National Academy of Sciences panel reviewing the FBI's scientific work on the investigation that he believes it is impossible that the deadly spores could have been produced undetected in Ivins's laboratory, as the FBI asserts. Heine told the panel that producing the quantity of spores in the letters would have taken at least a year of intensive work using the equipment at the army lab, an effort that would not have escaped colleagues' notice. Lab technicians who worked closely with Ivins have told Heine they saw no such work. Heine adds that, in addition, the biological containment measures where Ivins worked were inadequate to prevent the spores from floating out of the laboratory into animal cages and offices. 'You'd have had dead animals or dead people.' Asked why he is speaking out now, almost two years after Ivins's suicide, Heine says that Army officials had prohibited comment on the case, silencing him until he left the government laboratory. Although Heine does not dispute that there was a genetic link between the spores in the letters and the anthrax in Ivins's flask, Heine says samples from the flask were widely shared. 'Whoever did this is still running around out there. I truly believe that.'
“When we worry too much about protecting privacy, we risk losing the benefits of publicness that the internet brings us. Ill argue that we, the public, must protect whats public.”
Enter your Diaspora “seed,” a personal web server that stores all of your information and shares it with your friends. Diaspora knows how to securely share (using GPG) your pictures, videos, and more. When you have a Diaspora seed of your own, you own your social graph, you have access to your information however you want, whenever you want, and you have full control of your online identity. Once we have built a solid foundation, we will make Diaspora easy to extend to facilitate any type of communication, and the possibilities will be endless.
Last week, I had an email out of the blue from Jeremy Varon, a Professor of History at the New School for Social Research in NYC and a member of Witness Against Torture, the campaigning organization that screened the new documentary film, “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo” (directed by Polly Nash and myself) at the start of an 11-day fast and vigil outside the White House in January this year, to mark the eighth anniversary of the prison’s opening. Jeremy had just shown the film to a group of students, and I thought his comments — and those of his students — were worth posting below ..
The Great Repeal Bill is intended to abolish many restrictive laws and regulations believed to hamper individual freedoms, society, and businesses in the United Kingdom [1]. Members of the public are able to add to the list of laws and rules to be repealed in the draft of the Bill below. You are also highly encouraged to join the debate about why certain legislation should be included (or excluded) from the Great Repeal Bill.
Slate’s Emily Yoffe wins the “Quote of the Week” award with her answer to a gay man who asked whether he and his boyfriend should refrain from non-salacious, “welcome-home” kisses in front of the neighbor’s children, after the neighbor said it would “confuse” the kids
An anonymous reader writes "The new Hungarian government chose to replace the home pages with a 'disclaimer' page on several governmental websites such as ministries or the Foreign Office. The title and the main message is 'OMG,' which is followed by an explanation that the inherited websites 'lack ...
The house on Grettisgata Street, in Reykjavik, is a century old, small and white, situated just a few streets from the North Atlantic. The shifting northerly winds can suddenly bring ice and snow to the city, even in springtime, and when they do a certain kind of silence sets in.
“Net neutrality” means that internet traffic is all treated equally. On a non-neutral internet, some webpages will download faster if the host of those pages has paid a special fee to your internet service provider.
The Codex Leicester (also briefly known as Codex Hammer) is a collection of largely scientific writings by Leonardo da Vinci. The codex is named after Thomas Coke, later created Earl of Leicester, who purchased it in 1717. Of Leonardo's 30 scientific journals, the Codex may be the most famous of all.
Make your voice heard by responding to the European Commission's public consultation on Net neutrality! The more citizens and NGOs submit their own responses to the questionnaire, the more chance we have to collectively weigh in the EU policy-making process to ensure that the Internet remains a free and open communications architecture. You have until September 30th to send your submission and tell the Commission to protect the Internet.
An ancient bristlecone pine against the Milky Way as a meteor streaks across the sky in the White mountains, California, was the winning entry in this year’s astronomy photographer of the year competition
On Monday, 10/18, don't miss Sugarland as they perform live in New York City at www.youtube.com/sugarlandvevo.And for more Sugarland videos, pictures and tour information, visitwww.sugarlandmusic.com
The Royal Society is a Fellowship of 1400 outstanding individuals who represent all areas of science, engineering and medicine and who form a global scientific network of the highest calibre. It exists to expand knowledge, support science and guide policy in the UK, the Commonwealth and all over the world.
Following a short film about the omnipresence of math in our everyday lives, whether we notice it or not, four men who eat and breathe mathematics discussed their passion: how they got into math,...
If the Trans Pacific Partnership agreement (TPP) is signed at the end of this year, it may rewrite the rules of the global economy for the foreseeable future. That's because the TPP, currently being negotiated between the U.S. and eight Pacific rim countries, will likely remain open for other countries to join—as Canada, Mexico and Japan have already expressed interest in doing, even though they will not be permitted input into the agreement. Negotiating further bilateral trade agreements, a process that draws intense public scrutiny, could become altogether unnecessary for Washington. But as negotiators resumed TPP talks in San Diego yesterday, they were met by a coalition of labor, environmental and Occupy groups intent on stopping the mega-deal, glossed by its critics as “NAFTA on steroids.”
The French newspaper Le Monde called them “timid and partial.” The British newspaper The Guardian referred to them as “sleight of hand.” The German newspaper Frankfurter Rundschau simply noted in a headline: “Obama disappoints the world.”