Comment GPS tracking already legal, now cell-site too (Score 1) 1
Right after warantless GPS tracking was ruled legal: http://yro.slashdot.org/story/10/08/25/192208/GPS-Tracking-Without-a-Warrant-Declared-Legal
Submission + - Optical Speedbumps Create Illusion of Little Girl (popsci.com) 1
An anonymous reader writes: Civil authorities around the world have tried all kinds of tricks to get drivers to slow down: speed bumps, rumble strips, flashing lights, the decoy police cruiser, and of course the good old-fashioned speed trap. The British Columbia Automobile Association Traffic Safety Foundation is taking a different tack: scaring the living hell out of drivers. In an effort to brusquely remind drivers of the consequences of wanton acceleration, they’re painting an elongated image of a child chasing a ball into the street in 2-D on the pavement in such a way that it appears three-dimensional.
Submission + - Court OKs Warrantless Cell-Site Tracking (wired.com) 1
Tootech writes: A federal appeals court said Tuesday the government may obtain cell-site information that mobile phone carriers retain on their customers without a probable-cause warrant under the Fourth Amendment.
The decision by the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals was not, however, an outright Obama administration victory. Lower courts, the three-judge panel wrote, could demand the government show probable cause — the warrant standard — before requiring carriers to release such data to the feds.
The opinion does leaves the privacy issue in a legal limbo of sorts. The standard by which the government can access such records — which can be used in criminal prosecutions — is left to the whims of district court judges. Historical cell-site location information, which carriers usually retain for about 18 months, identifies the cell tower to which the customer was connected at the beginning of a call and at the end of the call
Lower courts across the country have issued conflicting rulings on the topic and will continue to do so without appellate guidance or congressional action. The Philadelphia-based court was the first appeals court to address the issue.
The Obama administration argued a judge could force a carrier to produce cell-site data on a showing that the information was “relevant and material” to an investigation.
But the appeals court, ruling in a narcotics case, said the Stored Communications Act, the law in question, was vague as to what standard was required.
The court left open the possibility that it would revisit the case again and decide whether the constitution requires a warrant for the cell site data. The court said the statute itself could be interpreted as not requiring one
The decision by the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals was not, however, an outright Obama administration victory. Lower courts, the three-judge panel wrote, could demand the government show probable cause — the warrant standard — before requiring carriers to release such data to the feds.
The opinion does leaves the privacy issue in a legal limbo of sorts. The standard by which the government can access such records — which can be used in criminal prosecutions — is left to the whims of district court judges. Historical cell-site location information, which carriers usually retain for about 18 months, identifies the cell tower to which the customer was connected at the beginning of a call and at the end of the call
Lower courts across the country have issued conflicting rulings on the topic and will continue to do so without appellate guidance or congressional action. The Philadelphia-based court was the first appeals court to address the issue.
The Obama administration argued a judge could force a carrier to produce cell-site data on a showing that the information was “relevant and material” to an investigation.
But the appeals court, ruling in a narcotics case, said the Stored Communications Act, the law in question, was vague as to what standard was required.
The court left open the possibility that it would revisit the case again and decide whether the constitution requires a warrant for the cell site data. The court said the statute itself could be interpreted as not requiring one
Comment Re:Twitter doesn't work by design (Score 2, Informative) 175
- there are some 3rd party solutions to update by IM but none work (plus you have to trust the 3rd party)
Comment Twitter Developer Alex Payne on Rails performance (Score 5, Interesting) 175
In an interview with RadicalBehavior.com, Twitter lead developer Alex Payne commented:
By various metrics Twitter is the biggest Rails site on the net right now. Running on Rails has forced us to deal with scaling issues - issues that any growing site eventually contends with - far sooner than I think we would on another framework. [...] At this point in time there's no facility in Rails to talk to more than one database at a time. [...] All the convenience methods and syntactical sugar that makes Rails such a pleasure for coders ends up being absolutely punishing, performance-wise. Once you hit a certain threshold of traffic, either you need to strip out all the costly neat stuff that Rails does for you (RJS, ActiveRecord, ActiveSupport, etc.) or move the slow parts of your application out of Rails, or both. It's also worth mentioning that there shouldn't be doubt in anybody's mind at this point that Ruby itself is slow. [...] I think it's worth being frank that this isn't one of those relativistic language issues. Ruby is slow.
Comment This study has been published in 2002 (Score 3, Interesting) 674
I don't get this - the same news has been published by USA Today in 2002. Still, the PLoS article appears published on 2008-02-26.
Can someone explain?
