×
Government

United States Loses S&P AAA Credit Rating 1239

Posted by timothy from the don't-worry-the-next-19-generations-won't-mind dept.
oxide7 writes with this excerpt from the International Business Times: "The United States lost its top-notch AAA credit rating from Standard & Poor's on Friday in an unprecedented reversal of fortune for the world's largest economy. S&P cut the long-term U.S. credit rating by one notch to AA-plus on concerns about the government's budget deficits and rising debt burden. The move is likely to raise borrowing costs eventually for the American government, companies and consumers."
Censorship

Belarus Cracks Down On VKontakte 111

Posted by timothy from the nice-firm-clapping dept.
decora writes "On several recent Wednesdays, Russian language social networking site Vkontakte has been blocked by the government of Belarus. The blocks are partly to prevent the organization of 'Silent Protests,' in which citizens gather in city squares, and clap in protest against president Alexander Lukashenko. The government has designated the people involved as "social network revolutionaries" and charged many with disorderly conduct. One VKontakte user, Mikhail Karatkevich, is to be put on trial August 10 for 'organizing a mass rally' after he posted a meeting notice onto his page. According to Charter 97, the regime has even set up fake proxy servers to capture the unwitting; Tor is the suggested solution."
Government

New Federal CIO Is Former Microsoft, FCC Exec 59

Posted by timothy from the maybe-he's-just-civic-minded dept.
msmoriarty writes "The second-ever federal CIO (the first, Vivek Kundra, resigned in June) will be Steven VanRoekel, who worked with Microsoft for 15 years, running the company's Web Services and Platform Strategy and Windows Server Solutions groups. He went to the FCC in 2009, where he then advocated for open government and open platforms. VanRoekel's title on his twitter feed has already been changed to 'United States Chief Information Officer.'" According to reader dcblogs, VanRoekel is also a hefty political donor, having given $50,000 toward Obama's inauguration festivities.
Patents

The Story Behind Recent Patent Reform 102

Posted by timothy from the ain't-pretty-ain't-sufficient dept.
rmstar writes "In an article titled 'The Spoilsmen: How Congress Corrupted Patent Reform,' Huffington Post reporter Zach Carter takes a look at the story behind the recent patent reform effort. It is an interesting and scary account of just how broken the legislative process is when it comes to intellectual property."
Australia

Low Violence Red Orchestra 2 For Australia 42

Posted by Soulskill from the i-like-low-violins-in-orchestras dept.
dotarray writes "Even though an adult rating for video games has been approved in theory for Australia, it's still a little ways off – and will not come soon enough for Red Orchestra 2: Heroes of Stalingrad. Alan Wilison, VP with the company producing the game, said, 'We are hoping that they will take the same view as PEGI/BBFC and not go all silly on us. However, until we're sure, we putting LV up to be safe.'"
Cloud

Missouri Law Says Students, Teachers Can't Be Facebook Friends 415

Posted by CmdrTaco from the behind-the-times dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Teachers can be friendly with their students, but they can't be their friends, at least when it comes to social networks such as Facebook. State Governor Jay Nixon has signed Senate Bill 54, which goes into effect on August 28, 2011 in the state of Missouri. In other words, later this month it will be illegal for students and teachers to be friends online."
Electronic Frontier Foundation

Prosecuted For Critical Twittering 334

Posted by Soulskill from the tweets-are-for-jailbirds dept.
lee1 writes "The Electronic Frontier Foundation is trying to urge a federal court (PDF) to block what they claim is the unconstitutional use of the federal anti-stalking law to prosecute a man for posting criticism of a public figure to Twitter. The law was originally targeted against crossing state lines for the purpose of stalking, but was modified in 2005 to make the 'intentional infliction of emotional distress' by the use of 'any interactive computer service' a crime. The prosecution's theory in this case is that using Twitter to criticize a public figure can be a criminal act if the person's feelings are hurt."
Government

Seigniorage Hack Could Resolve Debt Limit Crisis 696

Posted by Soulskill from the or-we-could-just-argue-more dept.
UltraOne writes "With the US Senate voting to table the Boehner debt limit bill, the US is only a few days away from running out of cash to pay for all its obligations. Slate is reporting on a fascinating legal hack that could come in handy, described by blogger 'beowulf' back in January 2011. Seigniorage is the extra value added when a government mints a coin with a face value greater than the value of the precious metal contained in the coin. The statute governing the minting of coins contains a section (31 USC 5112(k) ) that authorizes the Secretary of the Treasury to mint and issue platinum coins in any denomination or quantity. To keep the government from running out of money, Timothy Geithner could order a $5 trillion platinum coin struck and deposited at the Federal Reserve. The money could then be used to fund Federal Government operations (blog post contains legal details)."
Government

House Panel Approves Bill Forcing ISPs To Log Users 277

Posted by Soulskill from the uncle-sam-wants-to-know-you-better dept.
skids writes "Under the guise of fighting child pornography, the House Judiciary Committee approved legislation on Thursday that would require internet service providers to collect and retain records about Internet users' activity. The 19 to 10 vote represents a victory for conservative Republicans, who made data retention their first major technology initiative after last fall's elections. A last-minute rewrite of the bill expands the information that commercial Internet providers are required to store to include customers' names, addresses, phone numbers, credit card numbers, bank account numbers, and temporarily-assigned IP addresses. Per dissenting Rep. John Conyers (D-MI): 'The bill is mislabeled... This is not protecting children from Internet pornography. It's creating a database for everybody in this country for a lot of other purposes.'"
Earth

Followup: Anti-Global Warming Story Itself Flawed 536

Posted by Soulskill from the science-plus-politics-equals-news dept.
The Bad Astronomer writes "As posted earlier on Slashdot, a Forbes Op/Ed claims there is a 'gaping hole in global warming' theories, based on a recent paper. However, both the Forbes article and the paper on which it's based are themselves seriously flawed. The paper has been excoriated by climate scientists, saying the model used is 'unrealistic' and 'incorrect,' and the author has a track record of using bad models to make incorrect conclusions."
Communications

Senators Want Secret Warrantless Wiretap Renewal 198

Posted by timothy from the hey-who-can-blame-'em? dept.
An anonymous reader writes "A group of Senators are meeting in secret today, while most people are focused on the 'debt ceiling' issue, in order to try to rush through a renewal of the FISA Amendments Act, which expressly allowed warrantless wiretapping in the U.S. The law isn't set to expire until next year, but some feel that the debt ceiling crisis is a good distraction to pass the extension without having to debate the issue in public. The meeting is being held in secret, but it's not classified, so people can demand to know how their Senator voted."
Image

McCain Decries "Hobbits," Accused of Ringbearing Screenshot-sm 722

Posted by samzenpus from the 7-rings-for-the-legislative-branch dept.
Oxford_Comma_Lover writes "Senator McCain decried Tea Party 'Hobbits' on Wednesday for their failure to support the GOP's debt deal, at times reading from a WSJ editorial that began the analogy. The Tea Party fired back, with a prominent member noting on CNN that McCain had been corrupted by the ring of power. The full text of his floor remarks should be in the Congressional Record later today."
Earth

Climate Unit Releases Virtually All Remaining Data 507

Posted by samzenpus from the here's-the-rest-of-it dept.
mutube writes "The BBC is reporting that the University of East Anglia Climatic Research Unit, target of 'ClimateGate,' has released nearly all its remaining data on temperature measurements following a freedom of information bid. Most temperature data was already available, but critics of climate science want everything public. Following the latest release, raw data from virtually all of the world's 5,000-plus weather stations is freely available. Release of this dataset required The Met Office to secure approval from more than 1,500 weather stations around the world. The article notes that while Trinidad and Tobago refused permission, the Information Commissioner ruled that public interest in disclosure outweighed those considerations."
NASA

A Congressman and an Astronaut Propose a New Plan For NASA 221

Posted by timothy from the can't-we-involve-bruce-willis-somehow? dept.
MarkWhittington writes "Reflecting a rising discontent with the state of the U.S. space program in the wake of the last space shuttle mission, Rep. Pete Olson, R-Texas, and Apollo astronaut Walt Cunningham have proposed a new space plan that addresses space exploration, the role of commercial space, and reform of NASA."
Books

For Texas Textbooks, a Victory For Evolution 626

Posted by timothy from the evolving-attitude dept.
An anonymous reader writes "The Texas Board of Education has unanimously come down on the side of evolution. In an 8-0 vote, the board today approved scientifically accurate high school biology textbook supplements from established mainstream publishers — and did not approve the creationist-backed supplements from International Databases, LLC."
Government

Internet-Based Political Party Opens Doors 291

Posted by timothy from the until-pudge-starts-voting dept.
AlamedaStone writes "New York Times Op-Ed Columnist Thomas L. Friedman writes (edited for brevity): 'If [...] idiocy by elected officials [...] leaves you wishing that we had more options today [...] not only are you not alone, but help may be on the way. Thanks to a quiet political start-up that is now ready to show its hand, a viable, centrist, third presidential ticket, elected by an Internet convention, is going to emerge in 2012.' Currently it looks like more liberal-inclined individuals are registering, but it would make for a healthier system if more viewpoints were represented."
Censorship

Online Call To Shoot President Ruled Free Speech 395

Posted by timothy from the just-a-few-words-in-a-certain-order dept.
Hugh Pickens writes "USA Today reports that the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has reversed the conviction of a man who threatened to shoot President Obama, saying his Internet message board comments amounted to free speech and ruled that prosecutors 'failed to present sufficient evidence to establish beyond a reasonable doubt' that the man 'had the subjective intent to threaten a presidential candidate.' Walter Bagdasarian was found guilty two years ago of making threats against the presidential candidate in comments he posted on a Yahoo.com financial website after 1 am on Oct. 22, 2008, as Obama's impending victory in the race for the White House was becoming apparent. Bagdasarian told investigators he was drunk at the time. The observation that Obama 'will have a 50 cal in the head soon' and a call to 'shoot the [racist slur]' weren't violations of the law under which Bagdasarian was convicted because the statute doesn't criminalize 'predictions or exhortations to others to injure or kill the president,' said the majority opinion, written by Judge Stephen Reinhardt."
Security

Anonymous Releases Restricted NATO Document 187

Posted by timothy from the more-where-that-came-from dept.
angry tapir writes "Anonymous has released a document marked 'restricted' from the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). The 36-page document, which is dated Aug. 27, 2007, appears to be budget and equipment outlays for what was termed a new 'HQ ISAF JOINT CIS CONTROL CENTRE.' NATO's press office could not be immediately reached. Anonymous claimed on its 'AnonymousIRC' Twitter handle that it has 1GB of material from NATO but said that most would not be published because it would be 'irresponsible.'"
Australia

Australian Attys General Agree in Principle on R18+ 32

Posted by timothy from the by-default-gentlemen-let's-censor dept.
dotarray writes "In Adelaide today, the Standing Committee of Attorneys-General was again unable to reach a unanimous decision on the topic of whether or not Australia should have an R18+ rating for video games." Nonetheless, the committee has reached a decision in principle to allow such a rating, with only one Attorney General having abstained from today's vote.

Slashdot Top Deals