Want to read Slashdot from your mobile device? Point it at m.slashdot.org and keep reading!

 



Forgot your password?
typodupeerror
×

Comment Re:I lost the password (Score 1) 560

While it’s true that they will open a physical safe themselves if you refuse, you can indeed be held in contempt if you have the ability to open a safe and refuse to do so when presented with a valid warrant. The “physical safe” analogy is one of the things that’s (unfortunately) applied as an existing-law analogy to crypto.

That's actually only true if they already know for certain it's your safe and you have access to it. Otherwise, admitting that you know how to open the safe (by opening it or providing the combination) is admitting that the contents of it are in fact yours. That's self-incrimination and you can't be forced to do it, though of course with a valid warrant they can still try to break into the safe. They just can't make you admit it's yours, and that's what you're doing if you open it.

In this case, however, the idiot went and bragged to the police that yeah, that stuff is all mine! To extend the safe analogy, that's like saying to the police "Yeah, I know the combination, but I'm not giving it to you!" Now you wouldn't be telling them anything they don't know, so opening the safe is no longer self-incriminating. If he'd kept his mouth shut (first rule of being questioned by the police, keep your fucking mouth shut, they mean it when they say anything you say will be used against you), this case would likely have been decided differently.

Comment Re:Most interesting part... (Score 1) 461

American incomes have been stagnant, or declining in real purchasing power for thirty years. That hasn't not happened in Germany, which allows unions to exist - and operate properly.
A large number of the American middle class are months away from losing their homes, given a health cost issue or a job loss, a situation that doesn't happen often in Germany.
We are adopting private solar plants at a slower rate primarily because a chunk of our middle class can't afford it, not with the hell that they've been taking since the "free marketers" took over. Germany's people are more secure and more prosperous, because they've made fewer ideological decisions about income distribution.
Germany ain't perfect, but it's middle class is richer than ours. It's that simple.

Comment Economically impossible! Government is bad! (Score 1, Insightful) 461

It seems Germany is leading the way in showing, by example, that every bit of American futzing about solar power and unions is, to put it down hard, a load of cultish crap designed to make rich people much richer.
They are an economic powerhouse with strong exports, a union-based worker's economy, and now they've shown you can run 50% of an industrial economy off the power of the sun, in something less than ten-twenty years. WHILE they absorbed a pauperized East Germany after the Soviets finally gave up. Oh yep - they innovate like mad. With health care for everyone.
Randites, avoiding the No True Scottman fallacy, examine why you are wrong on this. Seriously, before your wreck us beyond repair.

Comment Some Public Records ... You Know ... Just in Case (Score 5, Informative) 448

So a whois.net domain name lookup on their site yielded nothing. And there are suspiciously no patents mentioning "wetag" or "ifind" and the names they listed (Dr. Paul McArthur) are in patents but for cold fusion BS in California.

Surely, though, they must have registered the "iFind" trademark? And if you search on TESS we find:

Owner (APPLICANT) WeTag, Inc. CORPORATION TEXAS 3309 San Mateo Drive Plano TEXAS 75023

With an attorney listed as "Richard G. Eldredge" which corresponds to a local attorney. Before you deploy the door kickers to lynch somebody, that address is just somebody's $200,000 house and could possibly be a random address used by a jerk. Remember that it's entirely possible that this is all a front by some other actor and someone was paid western union/bitcoin to register this trademark through this attorney without realizing they were just being used by literally anyone in the world ... of course, kickstarter should have even better transaction details (hopefully).

Mars

Elon Musk: I'll Put a Human On Mars By 2026 275

An anonymous reader writes Elon Musk says that he'll put the first human boots on Mars well before the 2020s are over. "I'm hopeful that the first people could be taken to Mars in 10 to 12 years, I think it's certainly possible for that to occur," he said. "But the thing that matters long term is to have a self-sustaining city on Mars, to make life multiplanetary." He acknowledged that the company's plans were too long-term to attract many hedge fund managers, which makes it hard for SpaceX to go public anytime soon. "We need to get where things a steady and predictable," Musk said. "Maybe we're close to developing the Mars vehicle, or ideally we've flown it a few times, then I think going public would make more sense."
Books

HUGO Winning Author Daniel Keyes Has Died 66

camperdave writes Author Daniel Keyes has died at 86. Keyes is best known for his Hugo Award winning classic SF story Flowers for Algernon and the film version Charly. Keyes was born August 9, 1927 in New York. He worked variously as an editor, comics writer, fashion photographer, and teacher before joining the faculty of Ohio University in 1966, where he taught as a professor of English and creative writing, becoming professor emeritus in 2000. He married Aurea Georgina Vaquez in 1952, who predeceased him in 2013; they had two daughters.

Comment It's about Time (Score 1) 686

The universe is indeed full of life. And life becomes intelligent and thrives. And every ten million years or so...
Gets hit by a meteor.
Another meteor.
Comet this time.
Solar flare.
Nearby nova, supernova or far-away hypernova fries them.
Ice age.
Heat age.
Bacteria this time.
Here comes some volcanoes.
Food poisoning.
Drought.
Floods come.
War.
Mutations.
And finally, time happens, if nothing else. The universe is full of life - BUT NOT ALL AT THE SAME TIME, and not all at a time that happens, in each case, to emit radiation that arrives at our sensors at this tiny opportunity of ours to detect it. The universe is full of little flashes of life in the dark that wink on and off like fireflies, and we can't possibly see them - in time. We are alone, and we had better damned well take care of ourselves.
PS: what makes people think that successful life stays on a planet? That's a surefire way to die, by the list of events above. Successful life gets off the planet, builds terraria in orbit, and sends some off into the darkness to spread and survive the death of the home planet. At the very least. At the most, they spread into adjacent universes or dimensions. Or even travel in time, whatever that is. Life, successful life that lives a long time, grows up and gets out of the petri dish. Or dies with all the other failed flashes of life.

Comment Filming the police is not bad (Score 5, Interesting) 216

While switching trains, I once saw the police arresting someone at the train stop. They were becoming very aggressive and seemed about to become violent with the man they were arresting, despite the fact that he was not threatening them in any way.

I took out my cell phone and began filming. Very shortly after, one of the officers pointed at me and said something (not audible, he was too far away), but all of a sudden, their behavior became very professional, and the arrest proceeded without incident.

If I were in the same situation, I hope someone would do the same. There is no reason police should not be accountable for their behavior while performing their duties. After all, isn't it they who so often say "If there's nothing to hide, you've nothing to fear"? What would be wrong with a video of police officers doing their job properly? If anything, that would protect them if they were later accused of doing something wrong. The only ones with anything to fear from a video recording are those who intend on doing something wrong, and that's the exact time we need them being taped.

Comment Re:secure by default (Score 4, Insightful) 248

I certainly don't consider myself a "scandal addict", and most of the manufactured "scandals" (Fast and Furious, Benghazi, Solyndra, IRS/Tea Party, etc., etc.), are indeed just throwing something at the wall and hoping it sticks.

This is not the same. This is collection of massive amounts of data on citizens who are under no suspicion of wrongdoing, let alone enough to get a warrant. That needs to be addressed, and it needs to be addressed in a similar way as wiretapping, where a warrant based upon individualized evidence of wrongdoing is required and the data collection is done so as to minimize the collection of data not related to the purpose of the warrant.

So, you're right about the majority of the "scandals". But not this one. This one is a serious problem. It's not the fault of any given administration, but it needs to stop with this one. I wish people would drop the idiotic faux-scandals and concentrate on this.

Comment Seiki - dumb and good (Score 1) 221

A TV that's just a TV:
http://www.seiki.com/
buy 'em here:
http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb...
Robert Heron reviews:
http://www.heronfidelity.com/b...

No smart anything. Just 1080p or 2196p, various sizes. Good prices. Good picture. No camera. No mic. No spyware. No need to hook it to the internet. A TV, not a computer, at least not the kind of computer the others want you to have. A 4K 30fps 39 inch display/TV for $499? Bit more for more screen space. Why not? Good enough for movies.

Slashdot Top Deals

One of the chief duties of the mathematician in acting as an advisor... is to discourage... from expecting too much from mathematics. -- N. Wiener

Working...