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Canada

+ - 212 Against enhanced electronic surveillance? You must be 'for' child pornography->

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
NASA

+ - 169 Congress Warns NASA About Shortchanging SLS/Orion for Commercial Crew-> 1

Submitted by FleaPlus
FleaPlus writes "NASA and the White House have officially released their FY2013 budget proposal, the first step of the Congressional budget process. As mentioned previously on Slashdot, the proposal decreases Mars science funding (including robotic Mars missions) down to $361M, arguably due in part to cost overruns by the Webb telescope. The proposal also lowers funding for the in-house SLS rocket and Orion capsule to $2.8B, while doubling funding for the ongoing competitive development of commercial crew rockets/vehicles to $830M. Ranking member of the Senate science committee, Sen. Hutchison (R-TX), expressed her frustration with 'cutting SLS and Orion to pay for commercial crew,' as it would allegedly make it impossible for SLS to act as a backup for the commercial vehicles."
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Politics

+ - 186 Obama Budget Asks for 1% Boost in Research->

Submitted by sciencehabit
sciencehabit writes "One of the big three research agencies appears to be lagging behind its doubling peers in the president's 2013 budget request released this morning. The $4.9 billion budget of the Department of Energy's Office of Science would rise by 2.4%, to $5 billion. In contrast, the National Science Foundation would receive a nearly 5% boost, to $7.37 billion, and the National Institute of Standards and Technology a hike of 13%, to $860 million. These three agencies were originally singled by President George W. Bush in 2006 for a 10-year budget doubling, a promise that President Barack Obama and Congress have repeatedly endorsed despite the current tough economic times."
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Google

+ - 229 Is Santorum's 'Google Problem' a Google Problem?

Submitted by theodp
theodp writes "Fortune contributor Dan Mitchell argues that GOP presidential candidate Rick Santorum's 'Google problem' isn't Google's problem at all. 'The fact that searching for 'santorum' puts the profane, anti-Rick Santorum site SpreadingSantorum.com (NSFW) at the top of Google's search results,' insists Mitchell, 'is not an example of a 'Google bomb,' despite the widespread use of that term to describe the result.' In the same camp is Search Engine Land's Danny Sullivan, who also says that Santorum has a search engine problem, not a Google problem. 'It’s just that everyone fixates on Google,' Sullivan adds. Which is perhaps to be expected, since Google is the King of Search and also has ties to SpreadingSantorum creator Dan Savage, having featured the sex-advice columnist in Google's the-web-is-what-you-make-of-it Chrome ad campaign (for Savage's admirable It Gets Better Project, not SpreadingSantorum). So, considering Google's vaunted search quality guidelines, is some kind of change in order? Sullivan, while making it clear he opposes Santorum's views, nonetheless suggests Google is long overdue to implement a disclaimer for the 'Santorum' search results. 'They are going to confuse some people,' he explains, 'who will assume Google’s trying to advance a political agenda with its search results.'"
Censorship

+ - 196 Republican challenger to SOPA's author: Richard Mack->

Submitted by
SonicSpike
SonicSpike writes "Rep. Lamar Smith could pay a steep political price for authoring two bills, the Stop Online Piracy Act and an online surveillance measure, that have become loathed by millions of Internet users. He's facing an unexpected primary challenge from an ex-lawman who believes Smith has little regard for the U.S. Constitution--and who plans to use those bills as a lever to pry his opponent out of a congressional seat he's occupied since 1987. Richard Mack, the retired sheriff and constitutional conservative who's aiming to unseat SOPA author Rep. Lamar Smith. Richard Mack, an Arizona sheriff who retired to Fredericksburg, Texas, is a self-described "constitutional conservative" with a long history of supporting causes close to the hearts of Republican primary voters, including states' rights, individual rights, and Second Amendment rights."
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Security

+ - 217 Law Would Put DHS in Charge of IT Security->

Submitted by
CelticWhisper
CelticWhisper writes "H.R. 3674, the Promoting and Enhancing Cybersecurity and Information Sharing Effectiveness Act (PRECISE Act), would allow the US Department of Homeland Security to require improved security practices from those businesses managing systems whose disruption could prove detrimental to critical life-sustaining or national-security initiatives."
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Privacy

+ - 192 Yes We Can (Profile You): A Brief Primer on Campaigns and Political Data->

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes "In the Stanford Law Review Online, Professor Daniel Kreiss discusses 'the history of political data, focusing on the recent proliferation in voter data and development of new voter-modeling techniques. I conclude with a discussion of the ways these data practices undermine privacy and democratic practice, even as they increase participation and voter turnout.' He writes:

'Underlying all of this is a vast data infrastructure that has made targeted online advertising and marketing possible, and has contributed to a revival of field campaigning over the last decade. Online advertising and field campaigning rely on voter modeling based on hundreds of data points culled from surveys, public records, and commercial information sources such as credit histories. This data details the location, demographics, political affiliations, social networks, behavior, and interests of citizens.'"
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Politics

+ - 318 How the GOP (and the Tea Party) Helped Kill SOPA

Submitted by
Hugh Pickens writes
Hugh Pickens writes writes "Strengthening intellectual property enforcement has been a bipartisan issue for the past 25 years, but Stewart Baker writes in the Hollywood Reporter that when the fight went from the committees to the floor and Wikipedia went down, the Democratic and Republican parties reacted very differently to SOPA. "Despite widespread opposition to SOPA from bloggers on the left, Democrats in Congress (and the administration) were reluctant to oppose the bill outright," writes Baker. "The MPAA was not shy about reminding them that Hollywood has been a reliable source of funding for Democratic candidates, and that it would not tolerate defections." That very public message from the MPAA also reached another audience — Tea Party conservatives. Most of them had never given a second thought to intellectual property enforcement, but many had drawn support from conservative bloggers and they began to ask why they should risk the ire of their internet supporters to rescue an industry that was happily advertising how much it hated them. Pretty soon, far more Republicans than Democrats had bailed on SOPA, the Republican presidential candidates had all come out for what they called "Internet freedom," and now for Republicans, opposition to new intellectual property enforcement is starting to look like a political winner. "It pleases conservative bloggers, appeals to young swing voters, stokes the culture wars and drives a wedge between two Democratic constituencies, Hollywood and Silicon Valley," concludes Baker adding that unfortunately for Hollywood, as its customers migrate to the Internet, it is losing not just their money but their hearts and minds as well. "SOPA has pushed a generation of Republicans into choosing sides between Hollywood and the Internet. They might never look back.""
Politics

+ - 162 Mitt Romney, Robotics, and the Uncanny Valley

Submitted by
Hugh Pickens writes
Hugh Pickens writes writes "Brian Fung writes in the Atlantic that one of Romney's electoral problems is that he occupies a kind of uncanny valley for politicians, inexplicably turning voters off despite looking like the textbook image of an American president. Just as people who interact with lifelike robots often develop a strange feeling due to something they can't quite name, something about Romney leaves voters unsettled and as with the robotic version of the uncanny valley, the closer Romney gets to becoming real to a voter, the more his likeability declines. "The effect is almost involuntary, considering the substantial advantages Romney enjoys from appearance alone," writes Fung. "But in person, his polished persona gives way to what appears a surprisingly forced and inauthentic character." Political commentator Dana Milbanks adds that although Romney is confident and competent, in casual moments his weirdness comes through — equal parts “Leave It to Beaver” corniness and social awkwardness. "Romney's task now is to work his way out of the uncanny valley toward a more compelling style of humanity," concludes Fung. "But every day he lingers in it, the hill grows steeper.""
EU

+ - 100 ACTA protests continue; summary of situation in Po->

Submitted by
rysiek
rysiek writes "Few days ago, Poland (along with many other European countries) signed ACTA, which sparked paneuropean protests (map).

All this commotion started last week in Poland, after Polish NGOs shared the news about the date of signing. According to some estimates, about 1 million people protested against ACTA in all major (and many smaller) Polish cities during the last week. There finally is a comprehensive English summary (mirror) of what happened in Poland and where it stands for now."
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Politics

+ - 216 Romney invokes fair use in dispute with NBC over c->

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes "Mitt Romney's campaign is airing an ad that is basically 30 seconds lifted from and NBC News broadcast and NBC is trying to stop them from using the ad. I found it interesting that the Romney campaign is invoking fair use to defend the ad. Romney adviser Eric Fehrnstrom said "we believe it falls within fair use. We didn't take the entire broadcast; we just took the first 30 seconds.""
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Moon

+ - 153 Lunar Base Foe Romney Endorsement by Lunar Base Su->

Submitted by
MarkWhittington
MarkWhittington writes "Mitt Romney has infamously suggested that the idea of lunar colonies is "zany" and his ridiculed Newt Gingrich's idea of building a lunar base by 2020. However Romney has been endorsed by a group of aerospace heavyweights, including Apollo moonwalker Gene Cernan and former NASA administrator Mike Griffin, many of whom have previously supported the idea of lunar bases."
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Space

+ - 241 Deathmatch on Mars: An Interview with Warren Ellis->

Submitted by
pigrabbitbear
pigrabbitbear writes "Iconic comic book writer (Transmetropolitan, Planetary, Red), cult novelist (Crooked Little Vein), futurist intellectual, and beloved Internet curmudgeon, Warren Ellis, known for his impassioned arguments for space travel, talks to Motherboard about Newt Gingrich's presidential plans for lunar colonies and conquering Mars."
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Piracy

+ - 123 Pirate Party releases book of Pirate Politics->

Submitted by
ktetch-pirate
ktetch-pirate writes "If the SOPA/PIPA blackouts were a wakeup call to many people, then the US Pirate Party has released a book under a Creative Commons license that might help explain some of the issues. The book covers issues such as Corporate Personhood, the 4th Amendment, the history of copyright, and how DRM laws are made, as well as the UN Declaration of Human Rights. There are even cartoons from Nina Paley throughout to add a bit of humor.
DRM-free eBook versions are available to download from the book's site, or you can buy a paperback edition from Amazon for $9.99"
Link to Original Source
Politics

+ - 232 MPAA-Dodd Investigation petition reaches goal->

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes "The petition on "We the people" website petitioning the administration to investigate Chris Dodd for corruption has reached the required 25,000 votes in two days — now the government has to officially respond to the petition. The petition was covered earlier by slashdot and stemmed from Chris Dodd's statement that tried to portray campaign donations as quid-pro-quos for SOPA/PIPA votes."
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