I think most Slashdotters will agree that the Service is well within their rights to perform forensic analysis on any device that they obtain during a lawful search, whether conducted under a warrant, incidental to an arrest, or based on probable cause. I do not believe that the Service suffers a poor track record regarding extralegal searches as does INS and some other agencies.
On the other hand, the availability of an effective "remote wipe" of a personal device is a rightful means of exercising freedom.
It's about balance.
Although most of them aren't scientists or engineers, they're smarter than your average bear. Nearly all have four-year degrees, in addition to their law-enforcement training.
Don't conflate them with the donut-eating locals whose eyes glaze over when you try to explain the Doppler effect and what it has to do with their radar.
A group of indie developers are selling a package of their games which includes some of the biggest independent games on the market. Gamers can name their own price from 1 to $1,000 for a pack of games that would go for around $80 if sold separately. Anyone who buys the package can feel better about themselves as well; customers can send any amount of their purchases to two major nonprofit groups.
The games are World of Goo, Gish, Lugaru, Aquaria, and Penumbra Overture. The two organisations are the EFF and Child's play. On the website of the offer, it is possible to chose how to split the cake to each group (between the devs, the EFF and Child's play).
Probably. People with no moral scruples later in life often have a history that goes back to childhood.
Which is exactly what judges and parole officers do today using guesswork and Kentucky windage. I think it's hard to maintain that making that process more objective and automated is a bad thing.
Of course, there's potential for abuse through its misapplication to other areas.
The best available studies show that, once a suspect is arrested and charged, the probability of conviction is the same regardless of their actual guilt or innocence of the the particular crime with which they are charged.
In general, there are two kinds of defendants. Those who are guilty as charged, and those who while not guilty of the particular crime they are charged with were nonetheless a) up to something shifty that got them arrested and b) guilty of plenty of other related crimes for which they could not be charged due to an absence of evidence.
The innocent defendant who is pure as the driven snow is a rarity outside Hollywood and Sartre novels.
I think that a presumption of innocence is the only way a court system should be run but that shouldn't blind us to the facts on the ground in other policy areas.
The existing surveillance radar system isn't necessary for safe IFR operations. There are nonradar procedures. Every controller and every IFR pilot knows them. Once widely used, they became less relevant in the 1970s as radar coverage improved to the point where most of major terminals and the route structure in the U.S. were covered by radar. Outages still take place however and the nonradar procedures are still used.
In essence the nonradar system involves separating aircraft by time, altitude, or route, and relies on periodic position reports from pilots, at standardized locations. The position reports follow a standard sequence and would read something like "United 123 Gopher at 1851Z, 17,000 feet Halfway at 58Z, Rochester next" where "United 123" is the flight identifier, "Gopher" is the location name, 1851Z is the time over the location (possibly a minute or two in the past due to delays in reporting if the radio channel is busy), 17,000 feet is the altitude of the aircraft, "Halfway" is the next reporting point, 58Z is the pilot's estimate of the aircraft's arrival time over that point (in minutes after the hour), and "Rochester" is the subsequent reporting point.
Radar is a great tool. It improves capacity, reduces pilot and controller workload, and allows for random routes. However, it would be a mistake to think that aviation depends on it or on any automated replacement for it.
The technologies that made IFR flight possible were the gyro systems that allowed the aircraft to be controlled without a horizon reference, and radionavigation. Radio systems that permitted pilot-controller communication came next. Radar was first deployed at congested airports to improve capacity, and it was not until much later that route surveillance radar and ubiquitous transponder use became the norm.
Sure, if you presume an open, free market where there are competing devices with no artificial barriers to switching. That's not what's going on. Apple enjoys lock-in with both users and application vendors, who incur significant costs to have an iPhone or participate in the App Store respectively. Apple is taking advantage of this lock-in to make up whatever rules it pleases.
And they have apparently decided that the iPhone is mainly for sexless lily-white puritans who pay for DRMed rap music. Or something.
Tenenbaum did an excellent job. The research behind this is significant. The brief is well worth reading, in its entirety.
The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not "Eureka!" (I found it!) but "That's funny ..." -- Isaac Asimov