"For those who do not know, 747's are big flying Unix hosts. At the time, the engine management system on this particular airline was Solaris based. The patching was well behind and they used telnet as SSH broke the menus and the budget did not extend to fixing this. The engineers could actually access the engine management system of a 747 in route. If issues are noted, they can re-tune the engine in air."

"It is heard to believe, yet a true story. A pregnant woman in Iowa (USA) had been jailed for "attempted feticide" because she told hospital staff that she once thought about having an abortion."

"Mr. Cooper starts to make a point - that allowing same sex couples marriage equality would also entitle opposite sex couples to domestic partnership equality - but he can't actually say what would be wrong with this, just that nobody can prove that it *wouldn't* be harmful so maybe it would. The judge doesn't buy it. You don't have to prove that same sex marriage is harmless any more than you have to prove that freedom of speech or the press is harmless, which it sometimes isn't.

(Aside: I didn't realize that the Prop 8 people want to discriminate against gays *and* straights. It's not just important that gays can't have marriage; straights also shouldn't have civil unions.)"

"Sandra Burt, 56, who works at A&T Food store in Clackmannanshire, was warned she could be fined for her singing by the Performing Right Society (PRS)."

"After a wave of ugly rhetoric and dubious policies, a number of northern Italian councils run by the far-right Northern League (Silvio Berlusconi’s biggest coalition partner in government) have gone on the rampage against anything foreign. Top of the list, the town of Capriate, 20 miles from Milan, where the council announced a ban on kebab and ‘ethnic’ shops from the town centre."

"People in Azerbaijan who voted for a song by neighbouring Armenia in May's Eurovision Song Contest have been questioned by the authorities. One man told the BBC he was accused of being unpatriotic and a potential security threat, after he sent a text backing Armenia's song, Jan Jan."

"A Foxconn employee in China has committed suicide, after a fourth-gen Apple iPhone prototype he was entrusted with went missing. 25 year-old Sun Danyong worked in the company’s product communications department, and was responsible for shipping prototypes from Foxconn to Apple. Having reported the missing handset, Sun’s apartment was illegally searched by Foxconn employees and he was, according to unsubstantiated allegations, detained and physically abused. On Thursday July 16th, just after 3am, he jumped from the window of his apartment."

"Then, launching into utopian hyperbole, he mused: "You cannot have Rwanda again because information would come out far more quickly about what is actually going on and the public opinion would grow to the point where action would need to be taken."

We'd like to see him try Twittering that to people in Sudan, or Northern Sri Lanka, or Somalia."

"At his urging, the Kleberg County commissioners on Monday unanimously designated 'heaven-o' as the county's official greeting. The reason: 'hello' contains the word 'hell.'"

"THIS IS A HOLYSPIRIT MANUSCRIPT BOOK: WHEN YOU BUY THIS BOOK YOU WILL BE READING A HOLYSPIRIT DIRECTED BOOK FROM GOD; & *CHRIST JESUS. THIS BOOK IS GODS HOLYSPIRIT VOICE: THE CALL FOR ALL CHRISTIANS & CHURCHES TO REPENT FROM ALL THEIR SINS: EVEN FROM FALSE CHRIST TEACHINGS. BIRTH CONTROL SINS HAVE CURSE THE CHURCH WITH SPIRITUAL WHOREDOM & FALSE WORSHIP. RESULTING IN THE PERSECUTIONS: AGAINST THE HOLY PEOPLE"

"So the Russians erected autonomous nuclear-powered lighthouses. Which worked great, until the collapse of the Soviet Union. In fact, they probably would have been fine after that, if people hadn’t looted them for copper and anything else that looked like it wasn’t nailed down too hard. Including, apparently, reactor shielding."

"A man who fathered a child for a lesbian couple angrily confronted a group of Fathers 4 Justice protesters today as they demonstrated with a banner against 'Lesbo Dads'"

"The most senior judge in Saudi Arabia has said it is permissible to kill the owners of satellite TV channels which broadcast immoral programmes."

""They showed me the footage from the helicopter and I couldn't believe it. They said if I hadn't been in they would have broken the door down to get in. ... If there's nothing wrong with our house how come we've been raided by the police?"

"Rep Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) just pretended to be a Democrat. ... He then said, "I am a Democrat, and here is my energy plan" and he held up a picture of an old VW Bug with a sail attached to it. He paraded around the House floor with the sign while the crowd cheered."

"What the überbox did contain was 16 smaller boxes "which in turn [each] contained (wrapped in foam so they wouldn't get broken) exactly two sheets of A4 paper"

"Iran's state-run media agency has been accused before of having digitally manipulated images released to foreign media. This week, as word spread of purported missile tests in Iran, the validity of an image of four missiles shooting into the sky turned o

"The White House in December refused to accept the Environmental Protection Agency’s conclusion that greenhouse gases are pollutants that must be controlled, telling agency officials that an e-mail message containing the document would not be opened, se

"Mr Sokolov described the photo as political provocation and said he was pulling it, together with 16 other works, from a show at Paris's Maison Rouge exhibition hall."

"The Happy Ending Foundation is planning a series of Bad Book Bonfires for later this month, when parents will be encouraged to burn novels with negative endings."

"Branson, who along with Machel was travelling with Carter, said some refugees had slipped notes in his pockets. "We (are) still suffering from the war as our girls are being raped on a daily basis," read one of the notes, translated from Arabic."

After placing the bait, snipers observed the area around it, Captain Didier said in his statement. “If someone found the item, picked it up and attempted to leave with the item ... we would engage the individual, as I saw this as a sign that they would

"A Hartlepool man is facing jail after he urinated on a disabled woman who lay dying in the street. The 27-year-old shouted "this is YouTube material" as he degraded Christine Lakinski, 50, who had fallen ill, magistrates heard."

"OMG DON’T JUMP! You have so much to live for …"

“There have been two or three reports of public executions of North Korean young people in major cities including Chungjin, as punishment for having illegally copied and distributed South Korean visual material,”

"So Viacom took a video that I had made for non-profit purposes and without trying to acquire my permission, used it in a for-profit broadcast. And then when I made a YouTube clip of what they did with my material, they charged me with copyright infringem

"In one of history's more absurd acts of totalitarianism, China has banned Buddhist monks in Tibet from reincarnating without government permission."

"JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Israeli police arrested on Tuesday a woman who pretended to be an army officer for five years, and even went to last summer's war in Lebanon, because it made her "feel good"."

MOAR PONY!

"They are hackers on steroids"

"Town attorney Ted Ayo said the ordinance expands on the existing state indecent exposure law by adding underwear to the list of forbidden exposures."

"Or, what happened when LED Throwies met Mouse Taxidermy. Be warned, this is another extremely graphic tutorial featuring guts, dismemberment, and soldering."

"In the cellar we found a chest containing money. A length of fishing wire almost invisible to the eye connected the clasp to a hidden cavity in the wall ... Anybody who opened the chest would have had his head blown off from a weapon concealed in the cav

"Still, I'm glad he was able to get his FOID [firearm owner's identification card] card. It makes an adorable addition to his baby book."

"But questions are being asked about why no-one has been concerned as to her whereabouts for the last six years."

"A friendship-building football match between Muslim and Christian clergy in Norway was called off after a row over the participation of women players. Muslim Imams had refused to play against women because it went against their beliefs about close physic

An... interesting video :)

"Police have yet to establish how a tape dispenser which caused a security alert in Ballymena came to be left on a bollard outside a PSNI station. [...] The Army carried out a controlled explosion on the object which was declared safe."

"That's right. [Microsoft] took hardware support away from the most ubiquitous sound API implemented in games over the past several years."

"Microsoft sent this tape to retailers to explain the benefits of Windows 386. Boring until the 7 minute mark when the production is taken over by crack-smoking monkeys."

"FedEx guy: They look too much like bomb-making materials."

"Twenty-five percent of psychiatrists sexually abuse their patients. Psychiatrists deliberately kill about 10,000 people a year ... psychiatrists were responsible for the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks..."

"Do they think I can be bought for one pear and four apples?"

"A homeowners association in southwestern Colorado has threatened to fine a resident $25 a day until she removes a Christmas wreath with a peace sign that some say is an anti- Iraq war protest or a symbol of Satan."

"Poor little clams! Snap! Snap! Snap! Poor little clams! Snap! Snap! Snap! Poor little clams! Snap! Snap! Snap!"

"Another Willett parent, Celeste D'Elia, said her son feels safer because of the rule. "I've witnessed enough near collisions," she said.