Category — General

Run away the ray-gun is coming : We test US army’s new secret weapon | the Daily Mail:
This machine has the ability to inflict limitless, unbearable pain.

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this is not OK, this is not OK at all. this is at best a device to dispurse crowds, and at worse a torture device. it is a device of unlimited potential as a torture device. unlimited, unbearable pain? that is just wrong.

Spikning – Wikipedia, den fria encyklopedin:
Spikning är en akademisk ritual i samband med framläggandet av en doktorsavhandling. Tre veckor före disputationen skall avhandlingen offentliggöras, från denna tidpunkt skall lärosätet tillhandahålla avhandlingen så att den som önskar kan läsa den för att kunna komma med kritik under disputationen.

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a brilliant way of making your doctoral work public from Torill

Medieval Manuscripts in Dutch Collections — Koninklijke Bibliotheek:
This database contains descriptions of all medieval western manuscripts written in Latin script and produced up to c. 1550 now preserved in public and semi-public collections in the Netherlands. These include the collections of libraries, museums and archives, as well as the collections of monastic orders and some other private institutions that are open to researchers.

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this is really handy for a wide variety of scholars. it has quite a few things by erasmus, which is one of those people that i like to read.

Humtalks: Smart people on cool topics:

this site has humanities talk, there are also business, politics and science. free online videos…

The argument against Creative Commons is apparently that the poster of the picture of the teenage girl was not adequately informed that he could be impinging on the rights of others based on the information provided by creative commons.

Larry and Joi both comment on the suit but neither can comment on its merits given their respective positions. What they both bring up is the question as to whether Creative Commons should address questions of privacy. This comes up in this current case because the poster to Flickr posted allowing commercial usage, much like I do (and I had my first commercial use last week).

I don’t think that CC needs to head down that road. What they do need to say is that their work only applies in the realm of property and copyrightable materials. I think any judge worth their salt will see that immediately. Rights of the subject of photography are not really dealt with under this license and other laws cover those rights.

So my argument is that the CC license only covers some of the rights involved in photography, that it is clear about that, and any other rights or responsibilities of the photographer and his or her subject are not implied under the license. I suspect this suit will be dismissed on that basis, but we’ll see. I expect that the suit against flickr will go a bit farther.

here is a picture of the commercial use of the image, note the ‘virgin’ trademark plays a significant part as almost a double entendre. Thanks to Jonl for this link.

following pa^2

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well i guess that’s pretty true.

She’s Geeky – HomePage
:
What is She’s Geeky?
The She’s Geeky (un)conference will provide an agenda-free and friendly environment for women who not only care about building technology that is useful for people, but who also want to encourage more women to get involved.
It is designed to provide women who self-identify as geeky and who are engaged in various technology-focused disciplines with a gathering space in which they can exchange skills and discuss ideas and form community across and within disciplines.
Our goal is to create an open space forum for women in tech to come together to:

Exchange skills and learning from women from diverse fields of technology.
Discuss topics about women and technology.
Connect the diverse range of women in technology, computing, entrepreneurship, funding, hardware, open source, nonprofit and any other technical geeky field.

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I think this is an interesting idea.

CRACKED.com – The 10 Best Animated Movies for (Traumatizing) Kids:
The 10 Best Animated Movies for (Traumatizing) Kids

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magical….

raccoon….

testicles…..

you can say it 3 times fast… magical raccoon testicles, magical raccoon testicles, magical raccoon testicles… yet no raccoons appear. That has to one of the world’s greatest tragedies against possible surrealism.

Happy Software Freedom Day! :
Today is Software Freedom Day. Take a moment to celebrate your favorite free/open source software, or to thank one of those hard-working, freedom-fighting developers.
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well that came and went.

Why engineers yawn less than psychologists | Science | The Guardian:
Why engineers yawn less than psychologists

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well… ‘empathy’ and ’social awareness’ only matter when you are with other people i suspect.