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carusoj writes in with NetworkWorld reporting from a panel at Harvard last week. It concluded that employee non-compete agreements have stifled tech startup development in Massachusetts, where the pacts are aggressively enforced, but failed to hold back the tech industry boom in states like California, where they are mostly unenforceable. We've discussed non-competes often here in the past; Techdirt made much the same point a year and a half back.

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Geoffrey.landis writes "The Massachusetts Department of Industrial Accidents fired worker Michael Fiola and initiated procedures to prosecute him for child pornography when they determined that internet temporary files on his laptop computer contained child porn. According to Fiola, 'My boss called me into his office at 9 a.m. The director of the Department of Industrial Accidents, my immediate supervisor, and the personnel director were there. They handed me a letter and said, "You are being fired for a violation of the computer usage policy. You have pornography on your computer. You're fired. Clean out your desk. Let's go."' Fiola said, 'They wouldn't talk to me. They said, "We've been advised by our attorney not to talk to you."' However, prosecutors dropped the case when a state investigation of his computer determined there was insufficient evidence to prove he had downloaded the files. Computer forensic analyst Tami Loehrs, who spent a month dissecting the computer for the defense, explained in a 30-page report that the laptop was running corrupted virus-protection software, and Fiola was hit by spammers and crackers bombarding its memory with images of incest and pre-teen porn not visible to the naked eye. The virus protection and software update functions on the laptop had been disabled, and apparently the laptop was 'crippled' by malware. According to Loehrs, 'When they gave him this laptop, it had belonged to another user, and they changed the user name for him, but forgot to change the SMS user name, so SMS was trying to connect to a user that no longer existed ... It was set up to do all of its security updates via the server, and none of that was happening because he was out in the field.' A malware script on the machine surfed foreign sites at a rate of up to 40 per minute whenever the machine was within range of a wireless site."

What should the tooth fairy leave under a pillow ?

circletimessquare writes "Dennis Overbye at the New York Times has some ruminations on some of the historical totems of science going up for auction at Christie's next week. There is the 1543 copy of 'De Revolutionibus Orbium Coelestium' by Copernicus, which you can have for $900,000 to $1.2 million. If you have some cash left over, maybe you can pick up an original work by Galileo, Darwin, Descartes, Newton, Freud, Kepler, Tycho Brahe, or Malthus. And then there is the 1878 copy of the world's first phone book: 'a shock of recognition — that people were already talking on the phone a year before Einstein was born. In fact, just two years later Einstein's father went into the nascent business himself. Einstein grew up among the rudiments of phones and other electrical devices like magnets and coils, from which he drew part of the inspiration for relativity. It would not be until 1897, after people had already made fortunes exploiting electricity, that the English scientist J. J. Thomson discovered what it actually was ...'"

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Wired is running a story about Christopher Tarnovsky, the man who was accused of working for NDS, a company owned by Rupert Murdoch's News Corp., to sabotage a competitor's satellite TV system. Wired had a chance to speak with Tarnovsky and get his description of how the smart-card hacking war developed. Quoting: "Tarnovsky, who was known online as 'Big Gun,' says Ereiser offered him $20,000 to fix cards that were killed by ECMs, and he agreed. Each time NDS created a countermeasure, Tarnovsky would analyze the code and find a way to circumvent the countermeasure. He did it while working full-time as a software engineer for a semiconductor company in Massachusetts. 'I'd be at work and I'd check the IRC (channel) to see if they'd launched their Thursday countermeasure yet,' he says. 'It was like a chess game for me. I couldn't wait for them to do a countermeasure because I would counter it in minutes.' It wasn't long before NDS came courting. Tarnovsky had a contact at the company to whom he'd begun passing information about holes in its software, even supplying patches to fix them."

FiReaNGeL alerts us to a huge development in virology and microscopy: by using a specialized microscope that only illuminates a cell's surface, scientists at Rockefeller University have watched, in real time, hundreds of thousands of molecules coming together in a living cell to form a single particle of HIV-1. A video is available on Rockefeller's front page. "By zeroing in at the cell's surface, the team became the first to document the time it takes for each HIV particle, or virion, to assemble: five to six minutes. 'At first, we had no idea whether it would take milliseconds or hours,' says Jouvenet. 'We just didn't know.' 'This is the first time anyone has seen a virus particle being born,' says Bieniasz, who is an associate professor and head of the Laboratory of Retrovirology at Rockefeller and a scientist at the Aaron Diamond AIDS Research Center. 'Not just HIV,' he clarifies, 'any virus.'"

Bob Loblaw writes "I ran across a huge stash of floppies at our office, and after some discussion, it became clear that rather than throw them away, we should build a gun that fires floppies. I had just bought a welder so this was a challenging first project. After about a month of work in my garage at night the DataStorm was born. It was constructed of scrap metal, a kid's bike, a weed-eater motor, and an electric screwdriver. The most difficult task ended up being how to add spin to the disk without significantly reducing its velocity. After a week and a half of trying different options, a stack of zip ties was found to work best. Since we had so much time in it we elected to shoot an infomercial showcasing the device, and had to learn to shoot & edit video as we went. It was basically an office joke that spiraled out of control. My wife is not amused. At all. I hope you like it."

jonniee writes "The results of a new report from the Kauffman Foundation are contrary to what we usually hear about U.S. tech start-ups. Who are these entrepreneurs? Is the report in sync with what you're seeing?" According to the linked article, "Challenging the perception of American technology entrepreneurs as 20-something wunderkinds launching businesses from college dorm rooms," the new study "reveals most U.S.-born technology and engineering company founders are middle-aged, well-educated, and hold degrees from a wide assortment of universities."

coondoggie alerts us to a story that is actually a few weeks old now about a network of sonic buoys to listen to right whales, in order to warn ships away from them. On April 10, 22% of the known population of right whales in the world — 79 out of 350 — were gathered at Stellwagen Bank, off of Massachusetts, to feed on a bumper crop of the tiny crustaceans called copepods. The network of smart buoys helps to protect the whales from the roughly 1,500 ships per year that go through this feeding ground on their way to and from Boston.

reverseengineer writes "Eminent physicist John Archibald Wheeler has died from pneumonia at the age of 96. The coiner of the terms 'black hole' and 'wormhole,' Wheeler popularized the study of general relativity, and advised a distinguished list of graduate students including Kip Thorne and Richard Feynman. Other work included a collaboration with Niels Bohr to develop the 'liquid drop' model of nuclear fission. Max Tegmark, a cosmologist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said of Dr. Wheeler, 'For me, he was the last Titan, the only physics superhero still standing.'"

NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "On January 2, 2008, the Massachusetts State Police ordered MediaSentry, the RIAA's investigator, to cease and desist from conducting investigations in Massachusetts without a license. Based on what appears to be irrefutable proof that MediaSentry has been violating that order, the Boston University students who tentatively won, in London-Sire v. Doe 1, an order tentatively quashing the subpoena for their identities, have brought a new motion to vacate the RIAA's court papers altogether, on the ground that the RIAA's 'evidence' was procured by criminal behavior."

See [1] for details. ^ All Massachusetts-born Presidents have been born in Norfolk County . ^ a b Born in the Waxhaw region on the North Carolina / South Carolina border.

Adams was born in Braintree , Massachusetts , in a part of town which eventually became Quincy ... Bob Withers, The President Travels by Train - Politics and Pullmans , (1996) ^ ...

2nd United States President: He was born in Braintree, Massachusetts, to a father who was a deacon in the Congregational church as well as a successful farmer and shoemaker.

Presidents born in Massachusetts. John Adams; John Quincy Adams; John Kennedy; George Bush; Presidents born in Missouri. Harry Truman; Presidents born in Nebraska

... that the President be born in ... President be born in the U.S. U.S. Presidents and Their States of Birth. George Washington (1789-97) Virginia John Adams (1797-1801) Massachusetts ...

University of Massachusetts > UMass Presidents > UMass Presidents James C. Greenough. James C. Greenough, 1883-86. James C. Greenough was born in 1829, near the Amherst campus in ...

On the resignation of President Clark in 1879, Flint was elected president. He resigned in the spring of 1880. Flint was born in Middleton, Massachusetts, in 1824.

Your Massachusetts page lists 3 presidents born in Massachusetts - John Kennedy and the two Adams. George Bush Sr was also born in Massachusetts, in Milton.

He was one of three Presidents born in Massachusetts. John was born on October 30, 1735 in Braintree (now Quincy), Massachusetts. Adams' great, great grandfather and grandmother ...

Born: June 12, 1924, in Milton, Massachusetts William Jefferson Clinton 42nd President of the United States (January 20, 1993 to January 20, 2001)

See [1] for details. ^ All Massachusetts-born Presidents have been born in Norfolk County . ^ a b Born in the Waxhaw region on the North Carolina / South Carolina border.

Adams was born in Braintree , Massachusetts , in a part of town which eventually became Quincy ... Bob Withers, The President Travels by Train - Politics and Pullmans , (1996) ^ ...

2nd United States President: He was born in Braintree, Massachusetts, to a father who was a deacon in the Congregational church as well as a successful farmer and shoemaker.

Presidents born in Massachusetts. John Adams; John Quincy Adams; John Kennedy; George Bush; Presidents born in Missouri. Harry Truman; Presidents born in Nebraska

... that the President be born in ... President be born in the U.S. U.S. Presidents and Their States of Birth. George Washington (1789-97) Virginia John Adams (1797-1801) Massachusetts ...

University of Massachusetts > UMass Presidents > UMass Presidents James C. Greenough. James C. Greenough, 1883-86. James C. Greenough was born in 1829, near the Amherst campus in ...

On the resignation of President Clark in 1879, Flint was elected president. He resigned in the spring of 1880. Flint was born in Middleton, Massachusetts, in 1824.

Your Massachusetts page lists 3 presidents born in Massachusetts - John Kennedy and the two Adams. George Bush Sr was also born in Massachusetts, in Milton.

He was one of three Presidents born in Massachusetts. John was born on October 30, 1735 in Braintree (now Quincy), Massachusetts. Adams' great, great grandfather and grandmother ...

Born: June 12, 1924, in Milton, Massachusetts William Jefferson Clinton 42nd President of the United States (January 20, 1993 to January 20, 2001)

If there yet be any citizens feeling politically shortchanged by this year's presidential campaign, they might find fulfillment in a New York museum exhibit that dramatically traces the 200-year history of this ...

Appointed to replace Thurgood Marshall , the court's first African American member, Thomas gave the court a decisive conservative cast.

Over two hundred years ago, a group of patriots wrote a Declaration of Independence to assert their freedom from an oppressive tyrant.

National election attention centers on the candidates for president, but some of the most intriguing behind-the-scenes decisions usually involve the nominee for vice president.

When George W Bush took office seven-and-a-half years ago, few expected that he'd devote much time or energy to the Northern Ireland peace process.

Danny Davis, a Grammy-winning band leader and record producer who blended swing music with a country style, died Thursday, his publicist said.

Grammy-winning trumpet player Danny Davis, who popularized the use of horns in country music and whose Nashville Brass stands as one of Music City's best-known instrumental ensembles, died Thursday at ...

Danny Davis, a Grammy-winning band leader and record producer who blended swing music with a country style, died Thursday, his publicist said.

JFK, Jimmy Carter Doctor James Young, Dies At 78 by Staff Friends, family and politicians were paying respects Monday to James Morningstar Young, a former White House physician who died last week at age 78.

Friends, family and politicians were paying respects Monday to James Morningstar Young, a former White House physician who died last week at age 78.