Topic: MUSIK - on May 14, 2010 at 10:38:00 AM CEST
Ahh… It’s Bootsy's University Baby!
On July 1 classes will commence at the Funk University, the online bass guitar school created and curated by Bootsy Collins - you may have heard of him. If not, pull out a random James Brown, Parliament or Funkadelic record and take a refresher course. Then sign up for the bass courses at TheFunkUniversity.com. "The best day of my life was when I graduated from P.U.," said Collins, in a statement. "The next best day of my life will be to see students graduate from F.U." As for the motivation of launching The Funk University at this point in his career, Collins remarks, "Funk don't funk around for nobody, so get funked up while you can."
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Topic: SECURITY - on May 14, 2010 at 10:36:00 AM CEST
Israeli Government Urged Not To Jail Nuclear Whistleblower Again
Amnesty International has urged the Israeli government not to imprison nuclear whistleblower Mordechai Vanunu, who is facing a return to jail within days.
The Israeli Supreme Court ruled on 11 May that Vanunu, who served 18 years in prison for revealing information about Israel’s nuclear programme, must serve a further three months for meeting a foreign national, a violation of the restrictions imposed on him by the military since his release.
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Topic: STRANGE - on May 14, 2010 at 10:34:00 AM CEST
UK stops selling 500 euro banknotes
British money exchange offices have stopped selling 500 euro banknotes after police discovered the notes were being used almost exclusively by criminals, officials said on Thursday.
The Serious Organised Crime Agency (SOCA) said more than 90 percent of the banknotes' use had been by criminal gangs, drug dealers and money launderers.
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Topic: POLICE REPORT - on May 14, 2010 at 10:33:00 AM CEST
Milford cop suspended for sex with mayor
A police officer began serving a 15-day unpaid suspension this week after Milford’s police chief determined the officer had a sexual relationship while on duty with the mayor of this Clermont County city Milford Police Chief Mark
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Topic: JOEOEOEORG - on May 14, 2010 at 10:31:00 AM CEST
Haiders Sex wieder vor Gericht
Schweizer Zeitung "Blick" droht Verurteilung in Graz - Haiders Witwe hatte eine einstweilige Verfügung beantragt
Hat sich der verstorbene Kärntner Landeshauptmann Jörg Haider als homosexuell geoutet? Und: Welche Rolle spielt seine Sexualität für die Öffentlichkeit und Gerüchte um seinen Unfalltod. Diese Fragen erörterten am Mittwoch im Grazer Landesgericht für Zivilrechtssachen die Anwälte Claudia Haiders und der Schweizer Boulevardzeitung "Blick".
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Topic: POLICE REPORT - on May 12, 2010 at 11:20:00 AM CEST
FBI To Cut Up Unabomber Papers
X-Acto knives in hand, FBI employees are poised to manually redact a mountain of documents--20,000 pages of which are handwritten--that were seized from the Montana cabin of Ted Kaczynski, the convicted Unabomber. In August 2006, a federal judge ordered that the killer's papers be auctioned, with the proceeds being used to pay restitution to victims of the deadly bombing spree. That online sale was stayed while Kaczynski appealed Judge Garland Burrell, Jr.'s ruling, which was affirmed last year by the Court of Appeals. Since then, FBI officials have been processing Kaczynski's documents in advance of forwarding them to an auctioneer selected by the United States Marshals Service. However, before the Kaczynski material can be sold, FBI workers will have to manually cut out portions of the documents containing material that Burrell has ordered removed from the documents (such as the names of victims and their families, and bomb-making instructions).
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Topic: born rich - on May 12, 2010 at 11:17:00 AM CEST
Rare 64-year-old Glenfiddich bottle up for grabs at Bonhams
Whisky may not be everyone's idea of a sound financial investment, but as we have reported previously, as long as you choose wisely and resist drinking it, IT IS! With that in mind, you may wish to consider an exceptionally rare bottle of Glenfiddich coming up for auction next month. It is one of only 61 bottles produced by the distillery in 1937 and is the first to appear at auction. Having matured for 64 years it is also one of the oldest whiskies ever released and is expected to fetch between GBP15,000 - 20,000 (US$22,250 – 29,670).
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Topic: health - on May 12, 2010 at 11:16:00 AM CEST
Strafsteuer für kalorienreiche Leckereien
Leere Haushaltssäckel aller Orten. Da werden die Finanzverantwortlichen kreativ: In Großbritannien soll demnächst eine Fettsteuer Geld in die Kasse spülen. Auf den Steuerplan soll all das kommen, was kalorienreich und damit ungesund ist.
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Topic: COMPUTER - on May 11, 2010 at 10:46:00 AM CEST
13 Open Source Hardware Companies Making $1 Million or More (video)
Selling products whose design anyone can access, edit, or use on their own is pretty crazy. It’s also good business. At the annual hacker conference Foo Camp East this year, Phillip Torrone and Limor Fried from Adafruit Industries gave a rapid fire five minute presentation on thirteen companies with million dollar revenues from open source hardware (OSHW). Companies providing OSHW allow all designs of the products to be shared through an open license, meaning that everyone is free to download, modify, and share all the schematics and associated software. You’re encouraged to make, refine, or even sell your own versions of these products. While this business model is counter-intuitive for those used to our patent and copyright loving system, Torrone and Fried estimate that the industry will reach a billion dollars by 2015. Check out their talk in the video below.
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Topic: MUSIK - on May 11, 2010 at 10:43:00 AM CEST
The Bay City Rollers are back! But why?
In a 1973 interview, Leo Sayer told the NME that he was a blues singer. He may have imagined himself, three decades later, venerated as Sussex's own BB King. Instead, this summer he'll be sharing a stage with David Essex, the Osmonds and the Bay City Rollers in the Once in a Lifetime 2010 tour, kicking off in Manchester next month, and ending in Cardiff in July. This is an astonishing teen dream line-up – you only need add David Cassidy (and subtract little Leo) and you account for pretty much all the sales of Blu-Tack in the mid seventies.
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Topic: COMPUTER - on May 11, 2010 at 10:42:00 AM CEST
US prosecution of McKinnon 'spiteful', says ex-top cop
The senior former policeman in charge of the National Hi-Tech Crime Unit squad which first arrested Gary McKinnon has described the ongoing US prosecution of the Pentagon hacker as "spiteful".
Marc Kirby, retired former detective inspector at the NHTCU, was in charge of the team which first arrested McKinnon for cybercrime offences in 2002. US attempts to extradite McKinnon only started three years later in 2005, after the signature of a controversial extradition treaty between the US and UK.
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Topic: STRANGE - on May 11, 2010 at 10:40:00 AM CEST
Scroogle has been blocked
We regret to announce that our Google scraper may have to be permanently retired, thanks to a change at Google. It depends on whether Google is willing to restore the simple interface that we've been scraping since Scroogle started five years ago. Actually, we've been using that interface for scraping since Google-Watch.org began in 2002.
This interface (here's a sample from years ago) was remarkably stable all that time. During those eight years there were only about five changes that required some programming adjustments. Also, this interface was available at every Google data center in exactly the same form, which allowed us to use 700 IP addresses for Google.
That interface was at www.google.com/ie but on May 10, 2010 they took it down and inserted a redirect to /toolbar/ie8/sidebar.html. It used to have a search box, and the results it showed were generic during that entire time. It didn't show the snippets unless you moused-over the links it produced (they were there for our program, so that was okay), and it has never had any ads. Our impression was that these results were from Google's basic algorithms, and that extra features and ads were added on top of these generic results. Three years ago Google launched "Universal Search," which meant that they added results from other Google services on their pages. But this simple interface we were using was not affected at all.
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