Archive for July 16th, 2009

J.K. Rowl­ing Must Reg­is­ter as a Poten­tial Pedophile

July 16th, 2009

In a stun­ningly mis­guided pro­gram imple­mented by the British gov­ern­ment, all children’s book authors who visit schools must reg­is­ter with a national data­base intended to pro­tect chil­dren from pedophiles, and they must pay a fee to do so. Begin­ning Octo­ber 12, 2009, the Vet­ting and Bar­ring Scheme (VBS) will require that all adults who work with chil­dren, includ­ing authors such as J.K. Rowl­ing and Philip Pull­man if they make spe­cial vis­its to schools, will be required to reg­is­ter with the data­base for a fee of £64 ($105).

Full story at http://carnalnation.com

Health Care Bill Will Fund State Vac­cine Teams to Con­duct ‘Interventions’

July 16th, 2009

Obama Health Care Speech

There is a knock at the front door. Peek­ing through the win­dow, a mother sees a man and a woman, both in uni­form. They are agents of health-care reform.

“Excuse me, ma’am,” says the man. “Our records show that your eleven-year-old daugh­ter has not been immu­nized for gen­i­tal warts.”

“And your four-year-old still needs the chicken-pox vac­cine,” says the woman.

“He will not be allowed to start kinder­garten unless he gets that shot, you know,” says the man — smil­ing from ear to ear.

“So, can we please come in?” asks the woman. “We have the vac­cines right here,” she says, lift­ing up a black med­ical bag. “We can give your kids the shots right now.”

“We are from the gov­ern­ment,” says the man, “and we’re here to help.”

Is this a scene from the over-heated imag­i­na­tion of an addlepated con­spir­acy the­o­rist? Or is it some­thing akin to what is actu­ally envi­sioned by the health-care reform bill approved this week by the Sen­ate Health, Edu­ca­tion, Labor and Pen­sion Committee?

Full story at http://www.cnsnews.com

PHP — 5.3.0 is released

July 16th, 2009
The PHP devel­op­ment team is proud to announce the imme­di­ate release of PHP 5.3.0. This release is a major improve­ment in the 5.X series, which includes a large num­ber of new fea­tures and bug fixes.

Some of the key new fea­tures include: name­spaces, late sta­tic bind­ing, clo­sures, optional garbage col­lec­tion for cyclic ref­er­ences, new exten­sions (like ext/phar, ext/intl and ext/fileinfo), over 140 bug fixes and much more.

For users upgrad­ing from PHP 5.2 there is a migra­tion guide avail­able here, detail­ing the changes between those releases and PHP 5.3.0.

Get 5.3.0 at http://www.php.net

Fur­ther details about the PHP 5.3.0 release can be found in the release announce­ment, and the full list of changes are avail­able in the ChangeLog.

Judge Denies Bid By Air­lines To Ques­tion FBI In 9/11 Case

July 16th, 2009

NEW YORK (Dow Jones) – A U.S. judge has denied a motion by a group of air­lines to depose sev­eral Fed­eral Bureau of Inves­ti­ga­tion agents regard­ing the government’s probes into the Sept. 11, 2001, ter­ror­ist attacks in New York and Washington.

In an order Thurs­day, U.S. Dis­trict Judge Alvin Heller­stein in Man­hat­tan denied a motion by the air­lines to ques­tion six cur­rent and for­mer FBI agents, a poten­tial set­back for their defense.

The judge indi­cated the air­line defen­dants hoped to show at trial that the government’s fail­ure to appre­hend the ter­ror­ists and stop the attacks was so con­sid­er­able that it mit­i­gates and excuses any alleged faults of the air­lines and the ter­ror­ists likely would have suc­ceeded even if the defen­dants had exer­cised due care.

Full story at http://online.wsj.com