The early release and refusal to place new inmates in California is huge. According to federal statistics, California dropped 50k internments per year and are releasing early 13k per month. Just their decline alone accounts for 72% of total US reductions. Depending on the length of sentences, they may well have sent home the entire 200k 'drop' in prisoners. And other major state prison systems admit their lowering of prison sentences for drug crimes is the reason for their drops.

And the california plan seems to be raising some crimes there

"By contrast, we find robust evidence that realignment is related to increased property crime. In terms of overall property crime, we estimate an additional one to two property crimes per year on average for each offender who is not incarcerated as a result of realignment. In particular, we see substantial increases in the number of motor vehicle thefts, which went up by 14.8 percent between 2011 and 2012. (Magnus Lofstrom and Steven Raphael, Public Safety Realignment and Crime Rates in California, Public Policy Institute of California, Dec., 2013 at p. 2.)"

http://www.bjs.gov/content/pub...

http://www.latimes.com/local/c...

http://www.bjs.gov/content/pub...

Its like the pedo stories they used to do on tv news shows. Lure offenders to a home and take pictures of their creepy activities and show them to the public. The only thing they didnt do was show who the creepy offenders are. Why 75% of slashdotters want to debate feminism and womens rights in the workplace only shows just how uncomfortable people are discussing this issue. The 25% who are discussing the actual article are apparently the creeps she/they are trying to expose (or at least awaken their moral compass)

I agree with everything you said. The problem comes in the stage after the 'theory' is released. When "Assuming that evolution is true, this other idea should also be true; let us find out" becomes "Now we have accepted evolution as THE properly functioning mechanism of living things, we can make assumptions based on this". They take the 'If' off of the consideration. Discussions now start with an assumption of multiple varied (and sometimes non functional or conflicting) theories under one roof, all True. It doesnt matter if the Scientist hold his theory as a theory if the public holds it as a fact. Secondly, the scientific methods encourage an atheistic approach. Theorized unknowns are still unknowns. Dark matter, while scientifically appealing, is complete conjecture beyond the scientific need to have it there as a placeholder. In fact Science as a whole is conjecture and assumptions (carefully measured and considered) despite the fact that they accurately predict the way some things work. Im not discouraging scientific study and exploration. Im all for it. Study and measure it all, Ill continue to read it and try to make sense of it while enjoying the new toys and information that result. I will also continue to doubt any particular theory is the answer when it is announced as such. And I dont have a problem seeing God as author of it all, as He is great and vast and capable of creating the intricacies we enjoy observing. Sorry about the structure, never did figure out how to create line breaks on slashdot.

This argument (software bundling) has been around since 1993. Slashdot has been taking notice of this argument (beginning with IE bundling antitrust debates) going back almost that far. This ruling is about Italian legal standards and technology confusion more than what any of the comments are about. In fact this ruling is about microsoft and it's legacy more than anything else. Every piece of data storing technology has 'software' on it. Most of them can be described as having an OS. Im talking about everything from a flash drive to a car, to computerized airplanes, to CNC routers, to MRI machines, etc. 1) There is no chance in hell even Italy will uphold all electronics be available sans software. 2) Even in a limited situation for computers, requiring a company to warrantee a computer to be run under 100 possible OS's places a high burden on the company and will only happen in nations with very low tax income from computer manufacturers. 3) You can always just build a computer... with any OS you desire. 4) Phone companies wont do it for the same reason they dont adopt Ubuntu PC's.... 6 million daily calls from grandpas who accidentally got the Ubuntu PC and cant get his AOL to work... and by the way, where is the spider solitaire? Not everyone wants to spend days getting everything to work, then still having to remember his "root" . Andyou still have the compatibility problem assuming you get Android on an Iphone and tweak it till it actually works. Now all the Apps in Appstore need to be compatible with all phones, or acknowledge they arent and which they arent... test for all, debug for all, multiple versions of every app, linked features, etc. This is before apple quality testing. Then apple loses their clean 'it just works' appearance (which is their best sales edge) which is exactly what went wrong with Windows and why everyone is disgusted with it. All things to all people=consistently frustratingly sort of compatible. 5) Im not sure cell phone providers would ever allow true open underlying software because they dont trust people with unfettered access to their networks.

Thats why I told several customers to upgrade to 7 ... because it is what MS told us. Except Access to LPTI and USB ports is different enough that anything except completely monolithic software requires serious technical experience in choosing settings otherwise you cant even print from the device. One important note. If 7 had no drivers for your printer/dongle/adapter for both x32 and x64, (which is a lot of the issue we ran into and why they didnt move on during Vista) XP mode had no access to the device either. A common example is Flexi sign, a proprietary software that you had to pay $6000 for the 7 x64 compatible version. In the time I worked these legacy softwares which have no modern versions with the same options/appearance/utility were absolute stopping points for a specific segment of the population.

When electricity is conducted on a wire,are new electrons sent down the wire riding on the surface? Or are they pushed through the mass of existing electrons and cause one currently in line to bounced off the back end (like a newton's cradle)? Something Ive always wondered...

Because you dont make headlines, get congressional attention, or get federal funding for accusing local hoodlums. Say terrorist and point at something potentially vulnerable and you may just win the lottery. The whole point of this story should be that the guy(s) did a good deal of damage to several components and didnt cause one single outage. The histrionic congressional response "Any guy with a .22 could shut down the whole thing!!!" should be a comedic punchline.

The guardian (Snowden's paper of choice apparently) Says the entire story about this is 'dubious' "The lack of specificity made cybersecurity expert Robert David Graham dubious that the plot NSA claimed to discover matched the one it described on TV. “All they are doing is repeating what Wikipedia says about BIOS,” Graham blogged, “acting as techie talk layered onto the discussion to make it believable, much like how Star Trek episodes talk about warp cores and Jeffries Tubes.” " http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/dec/16/nsa-surveillance-60-minutes-cbs-facts The details the author poins out about the rest of the NSA statements are revealing as well.

why would they replace the network cables? Why would they make such a big deal about replacing the cables?

If you actually read the first article it states the primary source of 'subsidy' is tax credits and limits on taxation for certain circumstances. From a 60 year total of around 800 billion, 47% is for direct tax benefits., 20% is for perceived imbalanced price controls and the costs of government oversight (ie the Nuclear regulating agency: NRC), 10% is (mostly to hydroelectric plants) for construction of Dams, access to shipping ports and operations of the Dept of Interior. Which leaves grants for operations of shipping, 6 billion, and R&D expenditures, 153 billion. Thats about 3 billion a year on average of actual subsidy. That is well in line with US government subsidy of other industries... like the 3 billion insurance program for small business loans, or 3 billion for 'improving teachers', or 4 billion for insurance against milk profit margins for farmers. etc, etc http://funding-programs.idilogic.aidpage.com/

http://www.nature.com/news/rat-study-sparks-gm-furore-1.11471 According to this, the conclusions are unobtainable because of 1) small sample size, 2) inappropriate subjects (cancer prone rats), 3) unusually long study on inappropriate subjects (apparently the rats in question suffer higher than 50% cancer rates after a year) 4) inappropriate experiment methods (grown crops should be tested in a way to predict dosages more accurately)... From the nature article: The authors concede that Sprague-Dawley rats may not be the best model for such long-term studies... They admit the study is flawed. Instead of arguing to keep flawed conclusions they should do the study again with better subjects and methods. As it is, this seems like the flawed and misleading studies of saccharine in the 70s which took 20 years for California to withdraw. http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=10&ved=0CGcQFjAJ&url=http%3A%2F%2Fcancerres.aacrjournals.org%2Fcontent%2F33%2F11%2F2768.full.pdf&ei=edSYUseBG4jooASo-YCwCg&usg=AFQjCNH4Bo7SBZqLpEPwJ8kmBTzQ-sxckg&sig2=sdNk2Isqa6aryZapEUdVnQ&bvm=bv.57155469,d.cGU&cad=rja

"Rational miners will join this pool to increase their benefits, creating a snowball effect that may end up with a pool commanding a majority of the system's mining power. Such a pool would be able to single-handedly control the blockchain" Sounds like a description of feudalism (at least the economic side). Im not sure that the system can escape being transformed in the same ways economies and currencies have throughout history.

I have to thank you for being the only poster that ive seen actually refer to the game and the article and not some comment on grammar or japanese etiquette. Gameplay should be important to this remake/sequel. The game was an absolute blast to play. Like a fun metroid. Or castlevania even.

If you want a B&W laser for efficiency go high capacity cartridge and separate drum. Brother machines are fine, but few of them have cartridges over 4000 pages. The real saving comes in when the toner holds 6000 or higher. Canon, Xerox are both fine brands as well. (though dont get the wax based Xerox machines) For inkjet it completely depends on your usage. Epson makes machines with odd features but print great at high resolution and carry small and expensive PPG cartridges. HP has some midgrade photo printers and some very high efficiency machines (Officejet 7500 etc) I dont like Lexmark or Kodak. Features dominate the inkjet models so look for features you need to be sure they will be there. But each model has unique quirks. The Officejet series seems to like to forget they are on a network, Epsons dont have the comprehensive software you might expect. Kodaks like to kill their printheads... Be wary of some high end HP inkjets, they are pretty versions of very low end models with low quality prints and inks. The envy series in particular.

According to an article in PC World they are saying EPIC doesnt have standing to request, so the Supreme Court has no petitioner authorizing the court to appeal. Of Course no one has the standing to go to a Court over this by design (Verizon has to appeal to the NSA or the secret court, not to a public institution) So the supremes might overrule that loophole. Hopefully. http://www.pcworld.com/article/2054900/supreme-court-shouldnt-review-nsa-spying-case-us-govt-says.html