Dvorak News Blog

Oracle shelling out $7 billion for Sun

By Eideard Monday April 20, 2009

Oracle Corp plans to buy Sun Microsystems Inc for more than $7 billion, after the high-end computer server and software maker’s talks with IBM fell apart.

In a surprise announcement on Monday, Oracle said it will pay $9.50 a share. Sun had previously turned down IBM’s offer to pay up to $9.40 a share, according to sources with knowledge of the matter…

Talks between Sun and Oracle began late on Thursday, according to a source with knowledge of the matter who spoke on condition of anonymity.

The two companies have been partners with more than two decades. Oracle’s Fusion Middleware, its fastest-growing business, is built on Sun’s Java software. Sun’s Solaris operating system is also a main platform for Oracle’s database business…

Sun’s board had unanimously approved the deal, which is subject to shareholder and regulatory approval.

Let the market analysis begin…

Stupid Answers to Snappy Questions

By Joe C Monday April 20, 2009

16 Comments

The best one is the second question, the one garnering all the publicity is the third one.

Susan Boyle Offered $1 Million to Star in Porn

By Joe C Monday April 20, 2009

19 Comments

Susan Boyle

LA based Kick Ass Films has made the Britain’s Got Talent superstar an offer, amounting to £690,000 in British currency, to lose her virginity on camera.

The company has even set up a website giving fans the chance to suggest possible movie titles.

If she accepts the deal, the firm aptly intends to fly out the Scot – who admits she’s never been kissed – on Virgin Airlines.

But there is one condition to the offer – it expires in a week.

Video – Super Slow Motion Sneezing

By Gasparrini Monday April 20, 2009

15 Comments

Gross!

Visit Us At Cage Match

By KD Martin Sunday April 19, 2009

4 Comments

We’re Still Here

For those of you who have missed our link to Cage Match, here it is:

The Cage Match

Don’t forget to visit your favorite topics, like:

Pinup Of The Day

Tech News And Commentary

Humor

Science And Technology

Politics Central

This Day In Space

Cranky Geeks

No Agenda

Bookmark the link and visit the whole gang of editors every day at the Cage Match.

KD Martin….. Managing Editor
H. Hopper….. Editor

Twins rack up “hundreds” of parking tickets, beat the rap by blaming each other

By Eideard Sunday April 19, 2009

15 Comments

Swiss officials say they are powerless to act against identical twins who have run-up hundreds of parking tickets and blamed each other for the offences.

They say they cannot punish Harold and Michael Lengen, 38, for parking offences committed while driving around Winterthur.

Police say that in the last year alone the twins have collected 29 parking tickets on a car which they both share.

But every time they refuse to pay them and tell courts that the other was driving.

Uh.. I guess powerless is as good a word as any.

Thanks, K B

No Agenda #90 – Lost Your Job? Eat More Fiber – Now On Cage Match

By KD Martin Sunday April 19, 2009

14 Comments

Click image to go to No Agenda.

John and Adam discuss the news of the day from an international perspective

Queue / cue / Q the closing credits — We hope you enjoy the show!

No Agenda

Running time: approx. 90 mins.

Muslim dad has daughter killed for wearing mini-skirts

By John C Dvorak Sunday April 19, 2009

35 Comments

Muslim dad has daughter killed for wearing mini-skirts | Say What? — I wonder how many of these stories go unreported. I guess THAT will show her!

A Russian father of the Muslim faith has admitted to hiring hit men to kill his daughter for wearing mini-skirts.

Garfar Kirimov of St. Petersburg told police he paid the gangsters almost $3,000 to shoot his daughter after she refused to wear traditional Muslim attire for women. The 46-year-old man had asked her to stop wearing make-up, tight tops and short skirts.

The 21-year-old girl was shot and killed by the hit men as she left her medical college, according to the Austrian Times. She is said to have told her father before the shooting, “Dad, we live in St. Petersburg, how could I wear those black clothes?”

Obama plans to kill economic bubbles via regulation

By SN Sunday April 19, 2009

99 Comments

Politico.com – April 18, 2009:

As he battles the economic downturn, President Barack Obama is bracing Americans for a recovery different than any in recent memory – not a go-go return to prosperity like the 1990s but a slow, steady climb to stability.

“We know that an economy built on reckless speculation, inflated home prices and maxed-out credit cards does not create lasting wealth. It creates the illusion of prosperity, and it’s endangered us all,” Obama said recently.

But what Obama rarely says about ending the “cycle of bubble and bust” is this: He’s prepared to intervene to make sure that kind of red-hot growth doesn’t occur.

And he’s willing to do it with added government regulation if needed to prevent any one sector of the economy from getting out of balance – the way the dot-com boom did in the 1990s and the real-estate market did earlier this decade.

According to Austan Goolsbee, a key Obama economic adviser, the president plans to focus on stopping bubbles along with preventing busts.

Should we really kill the ups of our economy to get rid of the downs? Do we really want our economy to be like the kiddie ride pictured above? Safe, but with no thrill or chance of solid gains.

DNA databases a growth industry in America

By Eideard Sunday April 19, 2009

12 Comments

Law enforcement officials are vastly expanding their collection of DNA to include millions more people who have been arrested or detained but not yet convicted. The move, intended to help solve more crimes, is raising concerns about the privacy of petty offenders and people who are presumed innocent.

Know any local prosecutors who presume you’re innocent until proven guilty?

Until now, the federal government genetically tracked only convicts. But starting this month, the Federal Bureau of Investigation will join 15 states that collect DNA samples from those awaiting trial and will collect DNA from detained immigrants — the vanguard of a growing class of genetic registrants…

Law enforcement officials say that expanding the DNA databanks to include legally innocent people will help solve more violent crimes. They point out that DNA has helped convict thousands of criminals and has exonerated more than 200 wrongfully convicted people.

But criminal justice experts cite Fourth Amendment privacy concerns and worry that the nation is becoming a genetic surveillance society…

Sixteen states now take DNA from some who have been found guilty of misdemeanors. As more police agencies take DNA for a greater variety of lesser and suspected crimes, civil rights advocates say the government’s power is becoming too broadly applied. “What we object to — and what the Constitution prohibits — is the indiscriminate taking of DNA for things like writing an insufficient funds check, shoplifting, drug convictions,” said Michael Risher, a lawyer for the American Civil Liberties Union.

Just in case you haven’t heard this predictable slogan in a while – Rock Harmon, a former prosecutor for Alameda County, Calif…says, “If you haven’t done anything wrong, you have nothing to fear.”

Those who would toss out the Constitution haven’t come up with a new excuse since the days of Joe McCarthy – or their more recent matinee idol, George W. Bush. We’re supposed to believe they’re doing everyone a favor in the name of protecting us from criminals or communists, terrorists or Tamarisk trees – by limiting our liberty.

Did a California mother really rape and kill her neighbor’s daughter?

By SN Sunday April 19, 2009

13 Comments

Yahoo News – Sat Apr 18, 2009:

Callers have inundated the phone lines of Tracy police, saying it can’t be. Veteran homicide and sex-crime researchers say they cannot recall a case quite like it. Even the investigators themselves looked at the evidence and initially said “no way.”

A woman was accused not only of killing someone else’s child, but of raping her.

Law enforcement officials and other experts say the allegations against Melissa Huckaby in the slaying of 8-year-old Sandra Cantu are remarkably rare over decades of U.S. police work.

The investigators themselves, when first confronted with the evidence that pointed to Huckaby, were inclined to look for another suspect.

“When investigators were first looking at this they went ‘Huh, no way… Who did she work with?'” Sheneman said. “We got that info and said ‘there’s no way, that doesn’t happen.'”

“After this case, I’ll never say never again,” Sheneman said, adding that police remain confident that Huckaby acted alone.

Researchers say the Huckaby case does not match the typical profile of sex crimes by females.

“It’s very, very rare for women to molest children, and when they molest children it’s very unusual for them to molest a child of this age,” Finkelhor said. “It’s unusual for women to kill children who are not their own.”

I thought the same thing when I first heard about this horrendous crime. I naturally assumed it was some guy in the neighborhood and was shocked to find out it wasn’t. Of course we don’t know what evidence the police have, so we can’t really make up our minds at this stage. But I agree with this article, I’m suspicious, especially that she acted alone.

New Site Design

By hhopper Saturday April 18, 2009

158 Comments

Driver Confronts Border Patrol agents 100 Miles Inside The US

By McCullough Saturday April 18, 2009

91 Comments

This is a long video, so here are the highlights:

5:35) Agent whips out his nun chucks in anger
(7:45-8:00) The agent tells me in less than perfect English, “In the Border Patrol Checkpoint, the person’s rights doesn’t matter here.”
(16:50-17:10) I’m told that the police will arrive in less than 10 minutes to arrest me
(19:00-19:40) I’m accused of being a terrorist
(26:20) I’m told that I’m free to go without being searched

Thank God we live in a free country! But how long will our freedom last if we ignore our Bill of Rights?

The highest power in the US government is the Constitution, which is the supreme law of the land…not border patrol agents on a power trip that are about 75 miles from the border.

He is either correct about the law or he isn’t. If he’s wrong, why would the agents let him go? Either way, he’s definitely on the list now…hope it was worth it.

Were Insects used in CIA Interrogation of Children?

By McCullough Saturday April 18, 2009

26 Comments

Bush Administration memos released by the White House on Thursday provide new insight into claims that American agents used insects to torture the young children of alleged 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.

In the memos, released Thursday, the Bush Administration White House Office of Legal Counsel offered its endorsement of CIA torture methods that involved placing an insect in a cramped, confined box with detainees. Jay S. Bybee, then-director of the OLC, wrote that insects could be used to capitalize on detainees’ fears. The memo was dated Aug. 1, 2002. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed’s children were captured and held in Pakistan the following month, according to a report by Human Rights Watch.

While an additional memo released Thursday claims that the torture with insects technique was never utilized by the CIA, the allegations regarding the children would have transpired when the method was authorized by the Bush Administration.

At a military tribunal in 2007, the father of a Guantanamo detainee alleged that Pakistani guards had confessed that American interrogators used ants to coerce the children of alleged 9/11 mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed into revealing their father’s whereabouts. “The Pakistani guards told my son that the boys were kept in a separate area upstairs and were denied food and water by other guards,” the statement read. “They were also mentally tortured by having ants or other creatures put on their legs to scare them and get them to say where their father was hiding.”

McCain campaign manager says GOP should back gay marriage

By Eideard Saturday April 18, 2009

31 Comments

Daylife/Reuters Pictures

A key architect of Republican Sen. John McCain’s 2008 presidential campaign has urged conservatives to drop their opposition to same-sex marriage.

In a speech Friday to Log Cabin Republicans, a conservative gay rights group, Steve Schmidt said allowing same-sex marriage is in line with the conservative credo of keeping government out of people’s private lives.

“There is a sound conservative argument to be made for same-sex marriage,” Schmidt, who was McCain’s campaign manager, told the group. “I believe conservatives, more than liberals, insist that rights come with responsibilities. No other exercise of one’s liberty comes with greater responsibilities than marriage. In a marriage, two people are completely responsible to and for each other.”

He added: “If you are not willing to accept and faithfully discharge those responsibilities, you shouldn’t enter the state of matrimony, and it doesn’t make a damn bit of difference if you’re straight or gay. It is a responsibility like no other, which can and should make marriage an association between two human beings more fulfilling than any other…”