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Microsoft funding of security report decried
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Two researchers surprised the audience at a computer-security convention last month with their finding that a version of Microsoft Windows was more secure than a competing Linux operating system.
This week, the researchers released their finished report, and it included another surprise: Microsoft was funding the project all along.
This is harder to do than it looks
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The Transparent Screens group on Flickr has a lot of these amazing trompe d’oeils on them. On the Couch is great too, and this one includes some advice of how to do it in the description.
Thank you homophobes!
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A judge has ruled that Ohio’s new constitutional ban on same-sex marriage prohibits unmarried people from being able to file domestic violence charges, a decision that has prompted an immediate appeal by prosecutors.
Judges and others across the country have been waiting for a ruling on how Ohio’s ban on same-sex marriage, among the nation’s broadest, would affect the state’s 25-year-old domestic violence law, which previously wasn’t limited to married people.
Wednesday’s ruling by Cuyahoga County common pleas judge Stuart Friedman changed a felony domestic violence charge against Frederick Burk to a misdemeanor assault charge.
Burk, 42, is accused of slapping and pushing his live-in girlfriend during a January argument over a pack of cigarettes.
His public defender, David Magee, had asked the judge to throw out the charge because of the new wording in Ohio’s constitution that prohibits any state or local government from enforcing a law that would “create or recognize a legal status for relationships of unmarried individuals.”
Prior to the amendment’s approval, courts applied the domestic violence law by defining a family as including an unmarried couple living together as would a husband and wife, the judge said. The new amendment banning same-sex marriage no longer allows that.
1+1=2, I think…
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ity education officials were forced to recall test preparation materials for math exams late Wednesday after discovering that they were rife with errors, including basic arithmetic mistakes.
The materials were intended for math students in grades 3 through 7, but the faulty information – at least 18 errors – was found before it reached classrooms. The testing guides were e-mailed late Wednesday to regional instructional specialists, math coaches and local instructional superintendents and recalled a few hours later.
Some answers in the guide were wrong. Other questions suffered from odd wording, the incorrect notation of exponents and sloppy diagrams. Besides the math mistakes, there were problems with grammar and spelling. For instance, the word “fourth” was misspelled on the cover of the fourth-grade manual.
According to school officials, a fact-checker within the department failed to do a proper job.
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“They should not be allowed to make all kinds of excuses,” said Jane Hirschmann, co-chairwoman of a parents’ organization called Time Out From Testing. “The fact is, if third- or fifth-grade students made the mistakes made in the test prep materials, they would be flunked and no one would be asking them for an explanation.”
Unrealised Moscow
The Palace of Soviets was planned to be the largest building in the world. Its height was to reach 415 metres – higher than the tallest buildings of the time, the Eiffel Tower and the Empire State Building, The building-postament was to be topped by a 100 metre statue of Lenin. The constuction of the Palace of Soviets developed into an independent economic and scientific field. This system included special laboratories dealing with optics and acoustics, for the development of special construction materials such as “D.S. steel” and “D.S. brick”, mechanical and ceramic-concrete works, The building site was serviced by its own railway branch. By special decrees of the Soviet of People’s Commissars and the Council for Labour and Defence, the construction of the Palace of Soviets was designate a priority project in 1934, and by 1939 the foundations of the upper part were completed. Construction was suspended in 1941 because of the war and never resumed.
The mind reels. How can the domestic violence statutes be written to apply exclusively to married couples? Abuse is abuse. You can’t assault a random stranger in the street. I’m missing something here.