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Comment Oh Look, a Car Analogy for Last Week's Story! (Score 1) 649

Why don't the automakers just seek refuge under the DMCA from all those evil automobile hackers? Clearly, figuring out how your car works is a direct attack on the very hard work and property of those automakers.

Time to pass a bill state by state. I'm the sure the invisible hand of the free market will line all the right politicians' pockets to rush those through. Hopefully someday we won't be able to own our cars and we can go back to the Ma Bell days when every phone was rented.

Comment Re:Judicial rules? (Score 1) 191

Perhaps. I don't see their bailing out as the big thing, like it's a protest.

It's unseemly for jurists working for tue government to appear at a conference where a featured speaker is on the lam.

It says nothing about the issues being debated -- some may even privately support him, or at least Wikileaks.

It's like US supreme Court justices applauding at political statements by the president during the state of the union.

Comment Re:Walking advertisements (Score 1) 61

You don't need water reminders for daily life, nor do you need a water bottle. Nor, for the most part, water.

You get more or less enough from your food alone. "You need to keep hydrated" is a fraud along the lines of valentine's day stuff -- a complete creation of companies.

Hehe. You pay twice what you pay for pop...for water.

Comment Re:Interstate Water Sharing system (Score 1) 678

The Supreme Court has long ruled any federal plan to siphon from the Great Lakes requires the permission of the states on them, not to mention Canada by way of treaty.

I doubt they could do it without their permission, for that matter, as California is seen as a folly of its own making -- go let them hang. The Great Lake states vote, too, and are larger. May we assemble a multi billion dollar debt package payment for you, too? /sarcasm-this-is-about-as-likely-to-pass

Submission + - DARPA Just Open Sourced All This Swish 'Dark Web' Search Tech (forbes.com)

schwit1 writes: Google appears to be an indomitable force. But, with today's release from the US military's research arm of its Memex search technologies and Europe's competition investigation into the Mountain View giant, it might be a propitious time for tech-minded entrepreneurs to start building a Google killer.

DARPA's Memex search technologies have garnered much interest due to their initial mainstream application: to uncover human trafficking operations taking place on the âoedark webâ, the catch-all term for the various internet networks the majority of people never use, such as Tor, Freenet and I2P. And a significant number of law enforcement agencies have inquired about using the technology. But Memex promises to be disruptive across both criminal and business worlds.

Christopher White, who leads the team of Memex partners, which includes members of the Tor Project, a handful of prestigious universities, NASA and research-focused private firms, tells FORBES the project is so ambitious in its scope, it wants to shake up a staid search industry controlled by a handful of companies: Google, Microsoft and Yahoo.

Putting those grandiose ideas into action, DARPA will today open source various components of Memex, allowing others to take the technologies and adapt them for their own use. As is noticeable from the list of technologies below, there's great possibility for highly-personalised search, whether for agents trying to bring down pedophiles or the next Silk Road , or anyone who wants a less generic web experience. Here's an exclusive look at who is helping DARPA build Memex and what they're making available on the Open Catalogue today

Submission + - Oklahoma says it will now use nitrogen gas as its backup method of execution (washingtonpost.com)

schwit1 writes: Yesterday, Oklahoma governor Mary Fallin signed into law a bill that approves the use of nitrogen gas for executions in the state. The method, which would effectively asphyxiate death row inmates by forcing them to breathe pure nitrogen through a gas mask, is meant to be the primary alternative to lethal injection, the Washington Post reports.

Fallin and other supporters of the procedure say it's pain-free and effective, noting that the nitrogen would render inmates unconscious within ten seconds and kill them in minutes. It's also cheap: state representatives say the method only requires a nitrogen tank and a gas mask, but financial analysts say its impossible to give precise figures, the Post reports.

Oklahoma's primary execution method is still lethal injection, but the state's procedure is currently under review by the Supreme Court. Earlier this week, Tennessee suspended executions statewide following challenges to its own lethal injection protocol.

Submission + - Not drinking enough water has same effect as drink driving (telegraph.co.uk)

schwit1 writes: Having as few as five sips of water an hour while driving is equivalent to being over the drink drive limit. Drivers make more than twice as many mistakes when they are just mildly dehydrated, according to new research.

The study revealed that drivers who had only had 25ml of water an hour made more than double the number of mistakes on the road than those who were hydrated — the same amount as those who have been drink driving.

Submission + - FBI overstated forensic hair matches in nearly all trials before 2000 (washingtonpost.com)

schwit1 writes: The Justice Department and FBI have formally acknowledged that nearly every examiner in an elite FBI forensic unit gave flawed testimony in almost all trials in which they offered evidence against criminal defendants over more than a two-decade period before 2000.

Of 28 examiners with the FBI Laboratory's microscopic hair comparison unit, 26 overstated forensic matches in ways that favored prosecutors in more than 95 percent of the 268 trials reviewed so far, according to the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers (NACDL) and the Innocence Project, which are assisting the government with the country's largest post-conviction review of questioned forensic evidence.

The cases include those of 32 defendants sentenced to death. Of those, 14 have been executed or died in prison, the groups said under an agreement with the government to release results after the review of the first 200 convictions.

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