That statute only applies to MILITARY flamethrowers, which this is not. It does not appear to spray burning sticky liquid, just flaming gas - which really makes it a "torch" rather than a "flamethrower" as it's used with regard to weapons. Moreover, that's an import restriction statute, not a prohibition on possession or domestic sale.

The disease this is intended to treat is Leber's congenital amaurosis (LCA). It's buried in the article. Seems like the kind of important specific technical information that definitely belongs in a Slashdot summary.

...for your own reviewing and commenting enjoyment: https://www.facebook.com/bkkbu...

Not exactly. Factual use of a trademark by a third party is not infringement. As long as what you are selling is an actual Ford product, you are free to call it a Ford without Ford's permission, and they cannot stop you. If your company customizes or modifies a product and resells it, you can call it what it is by using the original manufacturer's name and product name. You cannot imply that you are that original company though. See, for example, Lingenfelter's marketing of Chevrolet-compatible parts and customization of Chevrolet vehicles. Similarly, you can use a third party's trademark to factually identify what your product works with. For example, an independent company that makes iPhone cases can call them iPhone cases and identify which models they work with. They cannot label their own product an iPhone though, or imply that it is made by Apple.

THOSE DIRTY BASTARDS!!! They had the temerity to violate a minor rule in an unenforceable voluntary standard to fix an actual operator safety issue! What gall.

Really though, nobody should care one bit about this. The violation is that the icon is green under normal conditions. Turning red when unsafe is standards-compliant, but the green normal state isn't. The problem is that a white normal state provides no confirmation to the user that the battery status has been checked at all. Turning green confirms that the check has been performed and the result was acceptable. Could they have used some other method of indicating this? Sure, but it would have been more intrusive and less clear to the user. This is simple and elegant, and addresses a problem that the standards writers certainly never anticipated. It's a great solution, really. Why would anyone object?

So the amount of radioactive material is comparable to amounts commonly *lost* due to carelessness in the early 20th century (see "Radium Lost and Found" by Burbidge Taft), and we've freaked out and spent $2 billion on it even though the contaminated area was inherently limited. Isn't the lesson here that government is grossly inefficient and irrational reactions need to be kept in check?

Anybody can sue anybody for anything. That's how the system works. To counterbalance the potential for abuse in such a system, filers of frivolous suits are often subject to awards of attorney's fees plus sanctions for dragging blameless defendants into court. What you cannot do is bungle your defense on the assumption that a judge will eventually see you're being screwed and throw the case out. How is a judge supposed to adjudicate a dispute between two unrepresented parties who don't know or follow the rules, and both claim they're right? This guy got himself into a huge procedural mess by failing to respond properly in his first response to the lawsuit. If you get sued, especially by a litigious moron, hire an attorney immediately. These things NEVER get easier to handle later on, and it is NEVER better to try it yourself first. The best defenses to ridiculous lawsuits MUST be raised immediately, correctly, and aggressively. You want the system to work differently? Talk to your legislators. Until then, lawyer up.

The summary says he was a "chicken wing thief", but the story says he "robbed" the employee. Theft and robbery are different, for good reason. Stealing property is nonviolent. Robbing someone of property (i.e. taking it from a person by force or threat of force) is a violent crime. When someone sticks gun in your face and demands that you hand over the goods, it doesn't make much difference if the goods are chicken wings or jewelry, does it? Without more information about what this guy actually did to forcibly acquire those chicken wings, it's not very reasonable to conclude that this should have been a low priority case and the cops went overboard. Was he armed? Did he really threaten force? Did he assault the guy? TFA does not answer the real questions.

That's how every autopilot system works. It's the only failure mode that aircraft engineers have deemed appropriate in decades of development. What better solution is there?

Flying a rocket pack with no helmet on sounds about as appealing as felling trees barefoot with a chainsaw, or arc welding with no hood.

I think I'm wasting a post due to the April 1 chaos today, but everyone seems to be missing the point here. This is real, and it's not just an open network. And it's not vulnerable to range boosters - it's fundamentally undefeatable range-based authentication. The system uses time-of-flight of the signal to measure the distance from access point to user much like radar. Some wifi hardware already does this, but doesn't use that information for authentication purposes. For example, Ubiquiti's AirOS devices provide an actual range measurement but with much lower resolution since they are intended for long-range links. This is just an improvement in accuracy combined with the use of measured range data for authentication. It's very clever.

My understanding from reading several articles on this case is that the phone call alibi was investigated at the time and those records were part of the original case file. The change is in the testimony and credibility of witnesses who had previously undermined that alibi. They did not just now uncover records of a phone call from 1957. This does not answer the question of what records are retained by who and for how long.

"As a result of these necessary changes, users are not able to flash the current generation of open-source, third-party firmware. We are excited to see the creative ways members of the open-source community update the new firmware to meet their needs." That's a pretty obvious wink and nod there. "We are required to make it look like we're actually trying to stop you from doing this. We look forward to seeing all the new ways you figure out how to do it anyway."

I suspect that the real story here is that buzzword-technobabble-marketspeak-generating AI has advanced significantly and the summary was actually composed by an autonomous system. The bad news: The computer that wrote this summary has just convinced your board of directors to hire it as CIO.

No, I did not mix them up. You're missing the entire distinction at issue here: Copyrights cover expression, patents cover implementation. All of your examples of patents describe prohibitions on the *use* of ideas, not on the communication of the ideas themselves. In fact, the whole purpose of the patent system is to encourage free public dissemination of the ideas underlying the patent - in exchange for a monopoly on the actual use of those ideas in the real world. Amazon does not own the *idea* of one-click purchasing. You can talk about it all you want, theorize about it, come up with improvements to it; whatever. What you can't do is actually put it into use. You can patent a method of producing a molecule, or a specific use for a molecule, but you can't patent the idea of the molecule itself. Everyone else can still draw it, talk about it, analyze it, make it using other methods or use it for other purposes, and do anything else they want with it - as long as they don't do the specific thing your patent covers. They can talk about your patented thing; they just can't actually DO your patented thing. Software, by itself, is merely an idea. An expression (in all senses of the word). That's not the stuff of patents. A patent may keep you from using software to do something, but should not prevent you from writing the software in the first place.