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Comment The "Reality" Setting (Score 1) 352

by jlaprise1 (#34860420) Attached to: Balancing Choice With Irreversible Consequences In Games

Speaking of choices in games, every now and then I wish that games would have a "reality" setting. In FPS games, this might manifest as "Oh look. I shot a police officer and now every police officer within a couple of miles is gunning for me." Maybe the other guy is a good shot too...oh, head shot? So sorry.

Maybe every 20th game should automatically start in reality mode.

This is not a diatribe against violence, simply the occasional reminder that virtual violence and lethality are very different than their real analogs.

Submission + - Wikileaks fallout and Federal harrassment (boingboing.net)

Submitted by
jlaprise1
jlaprise1 writes: "From Boing Boing

Jacob Appelbaum, a security researcher, Tor developer, and volunteer with Wikileaks, reported today on his Twitter feed that he was detained, searched, and questioned by the US Customs and Border Patrol agents at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport on January 10, upon re-entering the US after a vacation in Iceland.

He experienced a similar incident last year at Newark airport.

An archive of his tweeted account from today follows."
Mars

Scientist Says NASA Must Study Space Sex 389

Posted by samzenpus from the mars-needs-women dept.
Velcroman1 writes "NASA has always been tight lipped on the subject of sex in space — which makes people all the more curious. How would it work? Has anyone done it before? Can a child be conceived in zero-G? With few animal tests (and virtually no human testing), there's been next to no scientific analysis of the issue. Until now. The Journal of Cosmology has published a special issue detailing the mission to Mars, which touches all the bases. In a chapter titled Sex on Mars, Dr. Rhawn Joseph from the Brain Research Laboratory in California discusses everything from the social conditions that would push astronauts to have sex to the possibility of the first child being born on another planet. Such an infant would be the first real Martian — at least by nationality, the researcher pointed out. 'On Mars, the light's going to be different, the gravity will be different, it's a completely different atmosphere,' he said. 'So if you put an infant on Mars, they would adapt to varying degrees of the new environment. And after several generations, you'd have a new species,' he said."
Privacy

US Twitter Spying May Have Broken EU Privacy Law 342

Posted by samzenpus from the playing-nice-with-others dept.
Stoobalou writes "A group of European MPs will today push EU bosses to say if the US government breached European privacy laws by snooping on Twitter users with links to whistle-blowing site WikiLeaks. The Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe (ALDE) will today pose an oral question to the European Commission, seeking clarification from the US on a subpoena demanding the micro-blogging site hand over users' account details."
Biotech

Nobel Prize Winner Says DNA Performs Quantum Teleportation 347

Posted by samzenpus from the giant-book-that's-hidden-inside-you dept.
HJED writes "TechWorld is reporting that the joint winner of the Nobel Prize for medicine in 2008, Luc Montagnier, is claiming that DNA can send 'electromagnetic imprints' of itself into distant cells and fluids which can then be used by enzymes to create copies of the original DNA. This would be equivalent to quantum teleportation. You can read the original paper here [PDF]."
Government

Pentagon Credit Union Database Compromised 108

Posted by samzenpus from the leaking-like-a-sieve dept.
Trailrunner7 writes "The credit union used by members of the US armed forces and their families has admitted that a laptop infected with malware.was used to access a database containing the personal and financial information of customers. The Pentagon Federal Credit Union (PenFed) issued a statement to the New Hampshire Attorney General that said data, including the names, addresses, Social Security Numbers and PenFed banking and credit card account information of its members were accessed by the infected PC."
Facebook

Tunisian Gov't Spies On Facebook; Does the US? 221

Posted by timothy from the bet-you-a-few-lire dept.
jfruhlinger writes "Tunisians logging into Facebook encountered extra JavaScript, probably a sign of their repressive government's attempt to spy on them. The question is: does the US government do the same thing, just more subtly? We're not talking about agents friending you on Facebook to get more information about you; we're talking monitoring your supposedly private information behind the scenes."
Businesses

Record Labels To Pay For Copyright Infringement 235

Posted by Soulskill from the of-pots-and-kettles dept.
innocent_white_lamb writes "Sony Music Entertainment Canada Inc., EMI Music Canada Inc., Universal Music Canada Inc. and Warner Music Canada Co. have agreed to pay songwriters and music publishers $47.5 million in damages for copyright infringement and overdue royalties to settle a class action lawsuit. 'The 2008 class action alleges that the record companies "exploited" music owners by reproducing and selling in excess of 300,000 song titles without securing licenses from the copyright owners and/or without paying the associated royalty payments. The record companies knowingly did so and kept a so-called "pending list" of unlicensed reproductions, setting aside $50 million for the issue, if it ever arose, court filings suggest.'"
Facebook

Twitter Fights US Court For WikiLeaks Details 268

Posted by samzenpus from the we're-not-gonna-take-it dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Micro-blogging site Twitter is opposing an order from a US court to reveal the account details of supporters of WikiLeaks. Twitter has called on Facebook and Google to reveal whether they also received similar court orders. As part of the US government's investigation into WikiLeaks, a court ordered Twitter, in mid-December, to give details of accounts owned by supporters of the whistle-blower site. Twitter has protested against the subpoena and informed the individuals whose account information has been requested, while raising the possibility that other social networking players have received similar orders."
Government

Social Security Information Systems Near Collapse 279

Posted by Soulskill from the not-unlike-social-security dept.
matty619 writes "An Information Week article warns that the computer systems that run the Social Security Administration may collapse by 2012 due to increased workload, and a half-billion-dollar upgrade won't be ready until 2015. One of the biggest problems is the agency's transition to a new data center, according to a report (PDF) by the SSA's Inspector General. The IG has characterized the replacement of the SSA's National Computer Center — built in 1979 — as the SSA's 'primary IT investment' in the next few years."
Security

Major Security Flaws Discovered In Internet HDTVs 128

Posted by Soulskill from the toasters-soon-to-be-at-risk dept.
wiredmikey writes "Security researchers have discovered several security flaws in one of the best-selling brands of Internet-connected HDTVs, and believe it's likely that similar security flaws exist in other Internet TVs. The security researchers were able to demonstrate how an attacker could intercept transmissions from the television to the network using common 'rogue DNS,' 'rogue DHCP server,' or TCP session hijacking techniques. Mocana was able to demonstrate that JavaScript could then be injected into the normal datastream, allowing attackers to obtain total control over the device's Internet functionality."
Government

Obama Eyeing Internet ID For Americans 487

Posted by Soulskill from the anti-troll-doctrine dept.
Pickens writes "CBS News reports that the Obama administration is currently drafting the National Strategy for Trusted Identities in Cyberspace, which will be released by the president in the next few months. 'We are not talking about a national ID card,' says Commerce Secretary Gary Locke, whose department will be in charge of the program. 'We are not talking about a government-controlled system. What we are talking about is enhancing online security and privacy and reducing and perhaps even eliminating the need to memorize a dozen passwords, through creation and use of more trusted digital identities.' Although details have not been finalized, the 'trusted identity' may take the form of a smart card or digital certificate that would prove online users are who they say they are. These digital IDs would be offered to consumers by online vendors for financial transactions. White House Cybersecurity Coordinator Howard Schmidt says that anonymity and pseudonymity will remain possible on the Internet. 'I don't have to get a credential if I don't want to,' says Schmidt. There's no chance that 'a centralized database will emerge,' and 'we need the private sector to lead the implementation of this.'"
Science

Should Dolphins Be Treated As Non-Human Persons? 785

Posted by Soulskill from the as-long-as-cows-are-still-treated-as-delicious dept.
Hugh Pickens writes "Dolphins have long been recognized as among the most intelligent of animals, but now the Times reports that a series of behavioral studies suggest that dolphins, especially species such as the bottlenose, have distinct personalities, a strong sense of self, can think about the future and are so bright that they should be treated as 'non-human persons.' 'Many dolphin brains are larger than our own and second in mass only to the human brain when corrected for body size,' says Lori Marino, a zoologist at Emory University. 'The neuroanatomy suggests psychological continuity between humans and dolphins and has profound implications for the ethics of human-dolphin interactions.' For example, one study found that dolphins can recognize their image in a mirror as a reflection of themselves — a finding that indicates self-awareness similar to that seen in higher primates and elephants. Other studies have found that dolphins are capable of advanced cognitive abilities such as problem-solving, artificial language comprehension, and complex social behavior, indicating that dolphins are far more intellectually and emotionally sophisticated than previously thought. Thomas White, professor of ethics at Loyola Marymount University, has written a series of academic studies suggesting dolphins should have rights, claiming that the current relationship between humans and dolphins is, in effect, equivalent to the relationship between whites and black slaves two centuries ago."

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