Valve has already "blessed" this effort, and the Black Mesa devs have said as much. There will be no C&D letters.

From Valve (in January 2007...)

Congratulations to the Black Mesa for Half-Life 2 MOD team for picking up the Most Anticipated MOD Award for the coming year from Mod DB. Over 80,000 votes were cast for MODs built for a number of different games, and they have been crowned this year's most wanted. More information on this ambitious project to recreate Half-Life 1 from scratch in the Source engine is available on their site. We're as eager to play it here as everyone else.

The only thing Black Mesa did was remove "Source" from the mod name, but Valve allowed them to keep the domain because of fan base recognition.

That's really interesting.

Asking as someone who has never so much as looked into the dev/modding tools released for various games, are there games whose publicly-distributed quest scripting tools do allow for things like unit testing?

I hope this isn't the real debut of the Pureview technology on Windows Phone.

With that tiny lens assembly, it seems inevitable if it is the real deal that large compromises will have been made to the image quality.

For those who don't know, the Nokia Pureview technology, currently found only on a single Symbian phone, is a breakthrough in imaging quality on smartphones/compact cameras. It is hands-down the best image quality on any smartphone, it is arguably the very best compact camera in the world, and in some circumstances has even been demonstrated to outperform mirrorless cameras like micro 4/3.

For better or worse, this is a new battlespace, and DOD is talking about it

That's all pretty much no true.

Apple is suing over the Nexus line. Not only is the Nexus S part of this suit, but they got an injunction for a while against the Galaxy Nexus for their patent on searching more than one database with a single search.

Furthermore, this suit just affirmed their software patents on pinch to zoom, tap to zoom, and bouncing on scrolling past the end of a list. Finding these software patents valid and that Samsung violated them was a huge part of this case.

I'm an ordinary home user who wants to backup my really important data in case of catastrophe. Besides lots of little stuff, by far my biggest data in this category is my pictures, and when all totaled up, it comes out to about 75GB.

I've been mulling investing in a service like Crashplan, which according to their pricing would cost me $5 a month if I was month to month, or about $3 a month if I committed to 4 years (!).

Amazon Glacier could offer me backups for one cent a GB per month. So for my scenario, that'd come out to 75 cents a month.

Is it just me or is this an insanely good deal for my consumer scenario?

Another interesting development is that Judge Koh "unexpectedly reversed a lower magistrate's finding and decided to change the jury instructions with regards to the destruction of evidence from Samsung, changing the wording to imply that both Apple and Samsung should be presumed to have destroyed email evidence that could be relevant to the case." and "Despite the fact that there is no evidence that Apple has withheld any such emails, Koh's decision opts to give similar notices about both companies to the jury rather than instruct them on Samsung's deletions only. Koh could have also opted to not mention the evidence spoilation entirely, but chose instead to infer that Apple must also have deleted emails potentially favorable to Samsung's case. Had the previous instructions stood, it would have painted Samsung as more untrustworthy -- a key point in Apple's barrage of evidence."

With Apple and Samsung CEOs holding last-minute talks, it will be interesting to see how this shakes out.

Idaho National Laboratory actually commented on the Slate piece, saying:

It was disappointing to read Mr. Brumfiel's article. The Curiosity mission represents everything that is great about American ingenuity and engineering. For months, we've hosted a public website that explains via a virtual tour and factsheets how the nuclear battery was developed, fueled, tested and delivered. The website is available at http://www.inl.gov/marsrover.

The answer:

Dee Rybiski, an FBI spokeswoman in Richmond, said there was no Facebook snooping by her agency.

"We received quite a few complaints about what were perceived as threatening posts," she said. "Given the circumstances with the things that have gone on in the country with some of these mass shootings, it would be horrible for law enforcement not to pay attention to complaints."

Whitehead said some of the posts in question were made on a closed Facebook page that Raub had recently created so he questioned whether anyone from the public would have complained about them.

Really?

So the fact aside for a moment that it's not possible for a Facebook Page to be closed (was it his page, or more likely a Closed Group?), it's not possible for any one of his friends and/or group members to have complained?

Really?

Whitehead said he found nothing alarming in Raub's social media commentaries. "The posts I read that supposedly were of concern were libertarian-type posts I see all the time," he said.

Indeed. Then all of those people should be hauled away then, too, right?

But there will likely be plenty of people here who choose to believe the government is routinely and without warrants monitoring private communications on social media -- it will be the same folks who believe that the government is illegally dragnet-wiretapping all Americans while ignoring legitimate foreign intelligence interests.

...as an unabashedly pro-Apple piece, isn't an argument for a "-1, Flamebait" moderation option on main page article postings on slashdot, I don't know what is. ;-)

For what it's worth, these are the numbers from 2011 IRS data:

Category..........Top 0.1%....1%....5%...10%..25%..50%..Bot 50%
Income Req'd $........1.4M..344K..155K..112K..66K..32K..N/A
Income Share %...........8....17....32....43...66...87...13
Effective tax rate.%....24....24....20....18...15...12....2
Income tax share.%......17....37....59....70...87...98....2

I don't think many people realize these are the actual shares of income, tax, and real tax rates paid...

...and it's one of the most impressive scientific endeavors we've undertaken.

Yes, one of it's missions is "stockpile stewardship" -- maintaining the integrity of the United States nuclear stockpile without nuclear testing, via simulations and tests.

But it also has a goal of initiating "ignition": a sustained ("sustained" being relative, here) fusion reaction which produces more power than was put in.

Even if there is no immediate practical application, understanding various aspects of fusion, and the science it takes to get there, is critical to our energy future.

In short, like many military and national security projects, this is a truly dual-use.

The NIF just made history by firing its 192 beams to deliver more than 500 terawatts and 1.85 megajoules of energy to its target -- more than 1000 times the power the United States uses at any particular instant, and more than 100 times the power of any other laser.

We do need science like NIF, and I'm still pained by the US decision to kill the Superconducting Super Collider (SSC), what was to be the most powerful particle accelerator in the world -- significantly more so than the LHC -- after 14 miles of tunnels were dug and over $2 billion spent.

I hope this article wasn't unintentionally accurate when it called the SSC the "high water mark of American science"...(must see photos by the way).

We NEED big science.

...and has throughout our history — but it shouldn't be the only thing that drives space science and other human achievement.

If you're interested in a truly insightful and inspiring speech on this topic, I highly encourage you to set aside an hour for Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson's recent talk on just this subject at the University of Wisconsin - Madison:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uqJzHHkmJ-8

It's well worth your time to watch, to think about — and to discuss with your elected officials.

And that's a huge problem with cyber: attribution. Even if an attack appears to be coming from a particular source, that doesn't mean it originated from and/or was ordered by that source. In fact, intentional misattribution or denial of attribution is yet another element of cyber operations. From a US perspective, we still don't have a comprehensive set of rules of engagement for cyber, or even really have consistent, well-understood definitions for what constitutes "cyber war" (though there's certainly a lot of hype...)

Some relevant recent articles:

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Cyber Command struggles to define its place on a shifting battlefield - Nextgov

The U.S. Cyber Command, which directs network offensive operations for the Pentagon and protects its networks, is becoming more open about the military’s capabilities in cyberspace. Recently, the Defense Department was forced to show part of its hand when leaks surfaced about U.S.-manufactured cyber weapons and cyber espionage missions. Still, since 2011, the department has told the world it stands prepared to protect U.S. national security interests through cyberspace maneuvers.

http://www.nextgov.com/cybersecurity/2012/08/hacker-wars/57438/

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Confusion Reigns In Cyber Planning - AVIATION WEEK

Pentagon warfighters have for years been asking for a cybercombat policy, rules of engagement, funding and a less-fragmented chain of authority. But those needs remain unfulfilled as bureaucrats, lawmakers and top Defense Department civilian officials thrash about in a pit of indecision while an international complex of digital threats continues to emerge.

http://www.aviationweek.com/Article.aspx?id=%2Farticle-xml%2FDT_05_01_2012_p38-444018.xml&guid=74908

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'Turf War' Slows New U.S. Cyber Rules - Defense News

Despite the ongoing concern about the escalating pace of cyber attacks, a new set of standing rules of engagement for cyber operations — policy guidelines that would specify how the Pentagon would respond to different types of cyber attacks — is being delayed by a debate over the role of the U.S. military in defending non-military networks, sources said.

http://www.defensenews.com/article/20120507/C4ISR01/305070015/-8216-Turf-War-8217-Slows-New-U-S-Cyber-Rules

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Pentagon revamps rules of engagement for cyberwar - The Hill

The Pentagon is rewriting the book on how it defends against and possibly responds to cyberattacks against the United States, the top uniformed officer in charge of the effort told Congress on Tuesday.

http://thehill.com/blogs/defcon-hill/policy-and-strategy/218435-pentagon-revamps-rules-of-engagement-for-cyberwar

Judeo-Christian prayers, sayings, incantations, blessings, and similar?

From TFA:

“Ebay bans alternative religious items.But! Not for Christians. Holy water and other sundry ‘holy’ items are discriminately allowed. Hm. Let me get this straight. Some guy in Rome wearing long robes can wave his hand over some water and imbue it with something, and then it’s very ‘powerful?’ How is that different fromany other magical item previously sold on ebay?”