petition

Bluetooth speaker made from 50,000-year-old wood

Bluetooth speakers are everywhere, so it's hard to come up with a way to distinguish a new design. An Indiegogo project called Petite Square is looking to stand out by building its enclosures out of ancient history. The speakers are crafted from 50,000-year-old wood excavated from bogs in New Zealand.

Ancient Kauri has been called the the oldest workable wood in the world. It's certainly easier to work with than petrified wood. The giant logs have to be raised out of prehistoric bogs, adding to the expense and rarity of the material. Still, there seems to be plenty available on the market for craftspeople to make musical instruments, carvings, and the Petite Square speakers.… Read more

NRA's iPhone shooting app triggers petition for its removal

A new shooting game bearing the NRA name has enraged a number of people who are now petitioning Apple to remove it from the App Store.

Released this past Sunday, NRA: Practice Range features a virtual shooting gallery in which you can fire at targets by tapping the screen. The app offers you a few handguns and rifles for free, but you can upgrade to such weapons as an AK-47 assault rifle or an MK-11 sniper rifle.

Compared with scores of other video games, NRA: Practice Range is rather tame, despite the ability to use assault and sniper rifles. You'… Read more

The Empire gloats over White House Death Star petition

Poor President Obama. Not only does he have to deal with Congress, now he's also the target of some interstellar smack talk coming from none other than the Galactic Empire.

Recently, the White House responded to a petition on its "We the People" Web site calling for the federal government to construct an actual Death Star.

The answer was a definitive no, citing budgetary constraints and the administration's opposition to blowing up planets.

"It is doubtless that such a technological terror in the hands of so primitive a world would be used … Read more

White House raises petition signature threshold to 100K

Future petitions to the White House to build a Death Star, have Piers Morgan deported, or fire Aaron Swartz's prosecutor will have to attract more support to merit the White House's attention.

Beginning today, petitions filed on WhiteHouse.org's We the People platform will need to log 100,000 signatures in 30 days to receive an official response from the Obama Administration, quadrupling the previous minimum of 25,000.

The higher threshold will "ensure we're able to continue to give the most popular ideas the time they deserve," Macon Phillips, the White House's … Read more

White House shoots down petition to build Death Star

The White House has rejected a proposal to build a Death Star, saying that in addition to its prohibitive construction costs, the current administration does not advocate destroying other planets.

Today's lighthearted official statement came in response to a petition posted in November to the White House's We The People platform that called for the administration to begin construction of a moon-size military battlestation armed with a planet-destroying superlaser by 2016. The petition, which attracted well more than the minimum 25,000 signatures necessary for a response from the White House, suggested that such a project could give … Read more

Anonymous petitions U.S. to see DDoS attacks as legal protest

It's hard to imagine a group that adheres to anarchic ideology would want its actions legalized under U.S. law. But that is exactly what Anonymous is doing.

The loose-knit group of hackers submitted a petition to President Obama this week asking that distributed denial-of-service attacks be recognized as a legal form of protest.

The petition, which is posted on the White House's "We the People" Web site, claims that DDoS attacks are not illegal hacking but rather a way for people to carry out protests online. Similar to the Occupy movement when protesters pitched tents … Read more

Empire strikes: White House to respond to Death Star petition

Isn't it about time the White House had a distraction from the fiscal cliff (whatever that is)? How about the feasibility of building a real-world Death Star?

As of today, a petition calling for the government of the United States to begin construction on a Death Star by 2016 has more than 25,000 signatures on the administration's official public suggestion page, surpassing the threshold that triggers a required response from the White House.

The petition hit the mark today, just a day before reaching its 30-day expiration date. Conveniently, petition creator "John D." of Longmont, Colo., even provided some politician-friendly talking points to promote the idea:… Read more

Should Columbus Day be changed to 'Exploration Day'?

Columbus Day has attracted its share of detractors in recent years among indigenous peoples' groups and others. That's not to mention the widening recognition that Christopher Columbus ended up in the Americas through some remarkably bad navigational skills and then set about conquering its people through slavery, disease, and other little bits of nastiness.

Suburban St. Louis business owner Karl Frank Jr. has always had similar sentiments. While taking in media reports on the death of Neil Armstrong that compared the shy moonwalker to Columbus, Frank says a light bulb went off. He contacted a few nerdy friends and soon a petition was drafted to re-dedicate Columbus Day as "Exploration Day." … Read more

'We the People' goes open-source

The Obama administration's "We the People" online petitions platform has been open-sourced, allowing other individuals or groups to tailor the system for their own use.

The "We thePeople" code was released under the GNU General Public License yesterday, and is now available on GitHub.

Macon Phillips, the White House's director of digital strategy, posted on the official White House blog:

When President Obama talked about We the People at the Open Government Partnership last year, he promised to, "share that technology so any government in the world can enable its citizens to do … Read more

Former factory workers add pleas to sign Apple labor petition

Two former Wintek employees who say they suffered permanent health problems while assembling iPhones in 2009 have come out in support of a petition asking Apple to demand better working conditions at overseas factories.

In a statement today, Guo Rui-Qiang and Jia Jing-Chuan, who were among those who suffered health problems as a result of exposure to n-hexane, a toxic chemical that was being used in a China factory as a cleaning agent, are asking more people to sign the petition ahead of Apple's annual shareholders meeting tomorrow.

"We have been pressuring Apple, and its new CEO Tim … Read more