US Adults Fail Basic Science Literacy
TaeKwonDood writes “Do you want the bad news first or the good news? The good news is that about 80% of Americans think science knowledge is ‘very important’ to our future. The bad news is most of those people think it’s up to someone else to get knowledgeable. Only 15% actually know how much of the planet is covered in water (47% if you accept a rough approximation of the exact number) and over 40% think dinosaurs and humans cavorted together like in some sort of ‘Land Of The Lost’ episode. What to do? Pres. Obama thinks merit pay for teachers makes sense. Yes, it will enrage the teachers’ union, but it might inspire better people to go into science teaching. It’s either that or accept that almost 50% of Americans won’t know how long it takes the earth to go around the sun.”
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FBI Is the Worst FOIA Performer
krou writes “The National Security Archive at George Washington University has awarded its 2009 Rosemary Award to the FBI for worst freedom of information performance (PDF of the award). Previous winners have been the CIA and the Treasury. The NSA notes that ‘The FBI’s reports to Congress show that the Bureau is unable to find any records in response to two-thirds of its incoming FOIA requests on average over the past four years, when the other major government agencies averaged only a 13% “no records” response to public requests.’ The FBI’s explanation, according to the NSA, is that ‘files are indexed only by reference terms that have to be manually applied by individual agents,’ and even then, ‘agents don’t always index all relevant terms.’ Furthermore, ‘unless a requester specifically asks for a broader search, the FBI will only look in a central database of electronic file names at FBI headquarters in Washington.’ Any search will therefore ‘miss any internal or cross-references to people who are not the subject of an investigation, any records stored at other FBI offices around the country, and any records created before 1970.'”
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MacBook Modded With Second Monitor Inside Logo
An anonymous reader from the Macmod forum wrote in with this appealing hack: “This is one of the coolest mods I’ve seen all year. Mac Moder EdsJunk submitted this mod to our forums late Thursday night. By cracking open a MacBook he was able to put a second monitor inside of the screen. The end result is sweet. The second monitor can make the Apple logo have any kind of background, like the clown fish, or the flurry screen saver.”
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Beyond Firewalls — Internet Militarization
angry tapir writes “One of the discussions at the Source Boston Security Showcase has been the militarization of the Internet. Governments looking to silence critics and stymie opposition have added DDOS attacks to their censoring methods, according to Jose Nazario, senior security researcher at Arbor Networks, with international political situations spawning DDOS attacks.”
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Ubuntu 9.04 "Jaunty Jackalope" Alpha 6 Released
isoHunt Takes on the CRIA in Court
Chinese Subvert Censorship With a Popular Pun
Anonymusing writes “In spoken Chinese, ‘grass-mud horse’ sounds virtually identical to an obscenity (hint: it begins with “mother-“) — and as a cartoon character, it has become an amazing phenomenon. Meant as a subversive attack on censors, the alpaca-like mythical creature has led to a cuddly stuffed animal — selling over 180,000 in a few weeks — and a wildly popular YouTube video with children’s voices singing words that are either completely benign or incredibly offensive, depending on how you listen.” Update: 03/13 09:29 GMT by T : Since this story was set up, the originally linked video seems to have been pulled. Searching YouTube reveals that there are some alternatives available, at least for now.
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Web App Directory Go2Web20 Gets a Major Upgrade
If you like to research web apps, one of the original directories of Web 20 apps just got a whole lot better. Go2Web20 just launched a major redesign in beta. It is an information aggregator for Websites and apps, collecting data from as many open sources as possible, akin to what you find at Quarkbase and the more recently launched Dataopedia.