Month: May 2010

UK School Wants To Fingerprint Kids Who Take Out Library Books

Posted by Nexus – 31/05/2010

[via consumerist.com]

What’s your children’s privacy worth? Should they be subjected to fingerprinting just to take out a library book? That’s the question parents at a school in the UK are grappling with.

From the Telegraph:

Under the scheme, pupils swipe a bar code inside the book they want borrow then press their thumb on to a scanner to authorise the loan. Books are returned in the same way.The scheme is being trialled on junior classes at Higher Lane Primary in Whitefield, Bury, Greater Manchester.

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Google Vs Apple: The Same, But Different.

Posted by Nexus – 31/05/2010

[via makeuseof.com]

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Scenes From The Drug War

Posted by Nexus – 05/05/2010

[via andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com]

Above is video from a February raid in Missouri. Balko captions:

SWAT team breaks into home, fires seven rounds at family’s pit bull and corgi (?!) as a seven-year-old looks on. They found a “small amount” of marijuana, enough for a misdemeanor charge. The parents were then charged with child endangerment.

And advocates:

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Wall Streeters’ Chain Email Reveals They’re Even Worse People Than We Thought

Posted by Nexus – 05/05/2010

[via disinfo.com]

Think that the financial crash has left investment banking hotshots humbler and wiser? Not likely. The National Review blog The Corner has a defiant email that has been circulating over the last couple days among discontented Wall Streeters. Seriously, these people are as douche-y as you imagined:

We are Wall Street. It’s our job to make money. Whether it’s a commodity, stock, bond, or some hypothetical piece of fake paper, it doesn’t matter. We would trade baseball cards if it were profitable. I didn’t hear America complaining when the market was roaring to 14,000 and everyone’s 401k doubled every 3 years. Just like gambling, its not a problem until you lose. I’ve never heard of anyone going to Gamblers Anonymous because they won too much in Vegas.

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Apollo 11 Launch at 500 Frames per Second

Posted by Nexus – 05/05/2010

[via petapixel.com]

This amazing video by Spacecraft Films shows the July 16, 1969 launch of the Apollo 11 mission that landed the first humans on the moon. The camera was rolling at a whopping 500 frames per second, allowing the first 30 seconds of the launch to be slowed down into this 8-minute narrated video of pure awesomeness.

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Music industry spokesman loves child porn

Posted by Nexus – 05/05/2010

[via boingboing.net]

A music-industry speaker at an American Chamber of Commerce event in Stockholm waxed enthusiastic about child porn, because it serves as the perfect excuse for network censorship, and once you’ve got a child-porn filter, you can censor anything:

“Child pornography is great,” the speaker at the podium declared enthusiastically. “It is great because politicians understand child pornography. By playing that card, we can get them to act, and start blocking sites. And once they have done that, we can get them to start blocking file sharing sites”.The venue was a seminar organized by the American Chamber of Commerce in Stockholm on May 27, 2007, under the title “Sweden — A Safe Haven for Pirates?”. The speaker was Johan Schlüter from the Danish Anti-Piracy Group, a lobby organization for the music and film industry associations, like IFPI and others…

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Canadian DMCA Bill Within Six Weeks

Posted by Nexus – 05/05/2010

[via michaelgeist.ca]

Months of public debate over the future of Canadian copyright law were quietly decided earlier this week, when sources say the Prime Minister’s Office reached a verdict over the direction of the next copyright bill.  The PMO was forced to make the call after Canadian Heritage Minister James Moore and Industry Minister Tony Clement were unable to reach consensus on the broad framework of a new bill. 

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LEGO dumped Brown – and apologised

Posted by Nexus – 05/05/2010

[via politiken.dk]

LEGOLAND in Britain let Clegg and Cameron chuck Brown out of 10 Downing Street.

LEGO has apologised for a somewhat premature staging of Prime Minister Gordon Brown being evicted from 10 Downing Street by Messrs. Cameron and Clegg.

Irrespective of the outcome of tomorrow’s UK election, the company, which privately staged the ‘event’ at LEGOLAND Windsor for a Press Association photographer, says it should not have done so.

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The People vs Murdoch

Posted by Nexus – 02/05/2010

In just a few days, Britain could elect an unprecedented coalition with a mandate for urgently-needed reform and the support of most voters – it’s democracy in action!

But a few partisan hacks want to hang onto politics as usual — and some of them own powerful tabloids. Hacks like billionaire Rupert Murdoch, whose Sun is pushing nasty hysteria about coalition government threatening Biblical disasters — working to ensure that Murdoch, not we voters, is the “kingmaker” in our country.

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