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Comment Re:Use confiscated drugs (Score 1) 483

by Rande (#47081883) Attached to: Botched Executions Put Lethal Injections Under New Scrutiny

It would be hard to find a modern citizen without psychological problems who could stomach a guillotine.

...So use a guy with mental problems? Maybe even an inmate. Or does the idea of a person enjoying their job make you feel weird?

(Note that I'm generally against the death penalty due to the large numbers of posthumous pardons. But if a convict chooses to die, I'm not against assisted suicide.)

Comment Lack of Commentary (Score 1) 477

by Rande (#46928729) Attached to: Sony Warns Demand For Blu-Ray Diminishing Faster Than Expected

The commentary tracks are the only reason that I buy DVD/BDs. It means that I'll at least watch it twice.
They aren't included in pirate rips. ...and more and more often they aren't included any more on the optical formats either, because "commentary doesn't sell discs' apparently.
While I can't say 'No Commentary, no Sale", it's a _very_ high priority as to whether I'll pay more than GBP5 for a disc.

Comment Re:Good. (Score 3, Interesting) 1037

by Rande (#46675027) Attached to: How the Internet Is Taking Away America's Religion

The flaw in the Riddle is in the assumptions.
That "Evil" is a definable thing that everyone can agree on. What is evil to me may not be evil to you which may not be evil to God.
If you stub your toe, is that evil? Should God have stopped you? Or would it be more evil to prevent your temporary pain because they you wouldn't learn not to do silly things?
Or are you only defining certain bad things as evil? Say genocide, torture, rape, and murder? Because if all those things never existed, all that would do is change the goalposts so that thievery, vandalism and bad language were now the height of evil. Remove them also and things like being ugly, stupid and unwashed are now the height of evil?

Should God wait upon you hand and foot, serving your every whim and desire, preventing any pain of any kind because not to, you would consider evil?
Or would the greater evil be that self same bubble wrapping where you never leave the womb, never to learn, never to grow, never to mature?

Submission + - China rejects 545,000 tons of US genetically modified corn (bbc.co.uk)

Submitted by hawkinspeter
hawkinspeter writes: The BBC is reporting that US corn that was found to contain an unapproved genetically modified strain. Although China doesn't have a problem per se with GM crops (they've been importing GM soybeans since 1997), their product safety agency found MIR162 in 12 batches of corn.

"The safety evaluation process [for MIR162] has not been completed and no imports are allowed at the moment before the safety certificate is issued" said Nui Din, China's vice agricultural minister.

The Chinese are now calling on US authorities to tighten their controls to prevent unapproved strains from being sent to China after the first batch of corn was rejected in November due to MIR162.

Submission + - Microsoft Security Essentials misses 39% of malware (pcpro.co.uk)

Submitted by Barence
Barence writes: The latest tests from Dennis Publishing's security labs saw Microsoft Security Essentials fail to detect 39% of the real-world malware thrown at it. Dennis Technology Labs (DTL) tested nine home security products on a Windows 7 PC, including Security Essentials, which is distributed free to Windows users and built into Windows 8 in the form of Windows Defender. While the other eight packages all achieved protection scores of 87% or higher — with five scoring 98% or 99% — Microsoft's free antivirus software protected against only 61% of the malware samples used in the test. Microsoft conceded last year that its security software was intended to offer only "baseline" performance".

Submission + - Academics should not remain silent on hacking (nature.com)

Submitted by ananyo
ananyo writes: The Guardian's technology editor, Charles Arthur, asks in an opinion piece in Nature why researchers have remained largely silent in the wake of the revelation that the US National Institute of Standards and Technology's standard for random numbers used for cryptography had been weakened by the NSA:
"The nature of the subversions sounds abstruse: the random-number generator, the 'Dual EC DRBG' standard, had been hacked by the NSA and the UK's GCHQ so that its output would not be as random as it should have been. That might not sound like much, but if you are trying to break an encrypted message, the knowledge that it is hundreds or thousands of times weaker than advertised is a great encouragement."
Arthur attributes the silence of UK academics, at least, to pressure from GCHQ. He goes on to say:
"For those who do care, White and Matthew Green, who teaches cryptography at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland, have embarked on an ambitious effort to clean up the mess — one that needs help.
They have created a non-profit organization called OpenAudit.org, which aims to recruit experts to provide technical assistance for security projects in the public interest, especially open-source security software."

Submission + - US Judge explains why few indicted for the fraud created the mortgage crisis (nybooks.com)

Submitted by smaxp
smaxp writes: As the statute of limitations on the fraud committed during the financial crisis is about to expire with few indictments US District Court Judge Jed Rakoff explains why.

According to Rakoff "I suggest that this is not the best way to proceed. Although it is supposedly justified because it prevents future crimes, I suggest that the future deterrent value of successfully prosecuting individuals far outweighs the prophylactic benefits of imposing internal compliance measures that are often little more than window-dressing. Just going after the company is also both technically and morally suspect."

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