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Comment Re:Legalization (Score 3, Interesting) 647

by jkiol (#28946535) Attached to: Philips Develops Roadside Drug-Testing Device

If the police or MADD actually cared about stopping drunk driving, they would go into the bar and give people an optional breathalyzer before they get into a car and before they can be arrested. Of course the punishment for this is to go back inside the bar and order some water until your BAC goes down. But no one makes money that way.
Graphics

How Nvidia Wants To Bring 3D Glasses Back 341

Posted by timothy from the so-stylish dept.
notthatwillsmith writes "For the last ten years, we've heard the promise of 3D shutter glasses, which when combined with the proper video card drivers and a good display, can trick your brain into thinking that your 2D monitor is creating 3D images. Unfortunately the glasses never really took off, partly because there were rendering problems with many popular 3D games but mostly because monitors didn't support high enough refresh rates to display games without giving people crushing headaches. Nvidia thinks they've solved both problems--the software works much better, and there are a surprising number of supported 120Hz-capable TVs and monitors that ameliorate the headache factor. Maximum PC has a hands-on with Nvidia's new tech, plus details about Nvidia's planned hardware solution."
Democrats

Submission + - Clinton campaigners busted for astroturfing (computerworld.com)

Submitted by
Ian Lamont
Ian Lamont writes: "The liberal blog Blue Hampshire has banned six users after determining that the users failed to disclose their affiliations with Sen. Hillary Clinton's campaign. The scheme came to light after Blue Hampshire noticed that the users all registered from an IP address used by the Clinton campaign in order to recommend the post Winning the Policy Debate — Clinton over Obama. Blue Hampshire has banned the accounts in question and has threatened to do the same to 'undisclosed paid staffers of any campaign' who are 'gaming the system.' Clinton's campaign office told the blog that the astroturfing was the product of 'overeager staffers and volunteers.'"
Privacy

Submission + - Judge:Man can't be forced to divulge passphrase (news.com) 2

Submitted by
mytrip
mytrip writes: "A federal judge in Vermont has ruled that prosecutors can't force a criminal defendant accused of having illegal images on his hard drive to divulge his PGP (Pretty Good Privacy) passphrase.

U.S. Magistrate Judge Jerome Niedermeier ruled that a man charged with transporting child pornography on his laptop across the Canadian border has a Fifth Amendment right not to turn over the passphrase to prosecutors. The Fifth Amendment protects the right to avoid self-incrimination.

Niedermeier tossed out a grand jury's subpoena that directed Sebastien Boucher to provide "any passwords" used with his Alienware laptop. "Compelling Boucher to enter the password forces him to produce evidence that could be used to incriminate him," the judge wrote in an order dated November 29 that went unnoticed until this week. "Producing the password, as if it were a key to a locked container, forces Boucher to produce the contents of his laptop."

Especially if this ruling is appealed, U.S. v. Boucher could become a landmark case. The question of whether a criminal defendant can be legally compelled to cough up his encryption passphrase remains an unsettled one, with law review articles for the last decade arguing the merits of either approach. (A U.S. Justice Department attorney wrote an article in 1996, for instance, titled "Compelled Production of Plaintext and Keys.")"
Space

Submission + - Who Speaks for Earth? (seedmagazine.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Scientists have been searching for evidence of extraterrestrial intelligence for almost 50 years. They've found no credible traces. Beginning with Frank Drake's 1974 broadcast from the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico, and continuing on into the present day, some SETI devotees have engaged in "Active SETI"- deliberate attempts to contact alien civilizations. One of them, Russian astronomer Alexander Zaitsev, has access to one of the world's largest radio telescopes. Zaitsev has sent multiple powerful messages at nearby stars known to have exoplanets, and plans for future transmissions. Seed Magazine has a thought-provoking story online today about two powerful SETI figures who recently resigned from an elite international committee over a dispute about regulating Active SETI. Should mavericks with radio transmitters be able to reach out to the stars and unilaterally represent all of humanity? And are we really prepared for an answer?
Government

Submission + - CDN forces 50y reactor online against safety regs (www.cbc.ca)

Submitted by
Socguy
Socguy writes: "The Canadian government has passed legislation that will reopen an Ontario nuclear reactor that produces most of the world's supply of critical medical isotopes, even though the site has been shut down for safety maintenance.

Witnesses and experts were called in to the House to face questions about safety concerns and all parties eventually voiced support for the bill, which would effectively suspend CNSC's oversight role for 120 days.

The Chalk River reactor ceased operating on Nov. 18. Pressure on the government to restart operations began to build after delays in the shutdown of the government-run site, which generates two-thirds of the world's radioisotopes, began to cause a critical shortage of radioisotopes.

Harper declared in the House of Commons "there will be no nuclear accident" resulting from reopening the plant, citing an independent analysis of the site that already said there would be no safety risks.

http://www.cbc.ca/health/story/2007/12/11/radioisotope-legislation.html

However not eveyone is happy with the Canadian government decision to overrule the national safety regulator.

Green Party Leader Elizabeth May accused Prime Minister Stephen Harper of undermining nuclear safety in Canada by "turning his guns" on the federally appointed regulator.

She also alleged the company that runs the reactor, Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd., has been "negligent, if not criminally negligent" in its operation of the more than 50-year-old facility.

http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2007/12/12/isotope-reax.html"
Social Networks

Submission + - Personal networking tips for the terminally shy

Submitted by
Esther Schindler
Esther Schindler writes: "Technical people — rightly or wrongly — have a reputation of being lost among the machines, and more adept with byte code than in talking with other humans. The general term for this is "shy" or at least "introverted." Yet, sometimes you just gotta schmooze with people outside your own circles — such as when you're bucking for a promotion or interviewing for a new job. CIO.com assembled 12 Networking Tips for Shy People to help improve your networking mojo.

But networking doesn't mean "conversations" that mean only "what's in it for me?":

It is possible for shrinking violets and shy guys to master the skill of networking. They just have to realize, says Ferrazzi, that successful networking is all about building intimate, sincere relationships based on mutual generosity, not duplicity, and that they can't achieve their career goals on their own. They have to network their way to success.


The 12 points include tap into your passions; ask for introductions; be generous... and, obviously, a bunch more."
Biotech

Submission + - Cloned Glow in the Dark Cats (koreatimes.co.kr)

Submitted by
eldavojohn
eldavojohn writes: "Well, you can finally get genetically modified cloned animals. South Korean scientists have shown it is possible to alter a protein via therapeutic cloning to "artificially creating animals with human illnesses linked to genetic causes." The images of these animals are amazing. This research was headed by Kong Il-keun, the first person in the country to clone cats in 2004."
Red Hat Software

Submission + - Mission-critical hospital systems on Linux (computerworld.com)

Submitted by
jcatcw
jcatcw writes: "Health care software vendor McKesson Provider Technologies is focusing on ways to cut IT costs for customers, including hospitals and medical offices. The cure is moving many of McKesson's medical software applications to Linux, which can then be used on less expensive commodity hardware instead of expensive mainframes. A deal with Red Hat allows McKesson to offer its software in a top-to-bottom package for mission-critical hospital IT systems."
The Matrix

Submission + - Can Time Slow Down? 2

Submitted by
Ponca City, We Love You
Ponca City, We Love You writes: "Does time slow down when you are in a traffic accident or other life threatening crisis like Neo dodging bullets in slow-motion in The Matrix? To find out, researchers developed a perceptual chronometer where numbers flickered on the screen of a watch-like unit. The scientists adjusted the speed at which the numbers flickered until it was too fast for the subjects to see. Then subjects were put in a Suspended Catch Air Device, a controlled free-fall system in which "divers" are dropped backwards off a platform 150 feet up and land safely in a net. "It's the scariest thing I have ever done," said Dr. David Eagleman. "I knew it was perfectly safe, and I also knew that it would be the perfect way to make people feel as though an event took much longer than it actually did." Subjects were asked to read the numbers on the perceptual chronometer as they fell (video). The bottom line: While subjects could read numbers presented at normal speeds during the free-fall, they could not read them at faster-than-normal speeds. "We discovered that people are not like Neo in The Matrix," Eagleman said. "The answer to the paradox is that time estimation and memory are intertwined: the volunteers merely thought the fall took a longer time in retrospect,""
The Internet

Submission + - Data Center Power Use to Grow by 10,000 Megawatts (datacenterknowledge.com)

Submitted by
1sockchuck
1sockchuck writes: "A new study predicts that global electricity use by data centers will grow by 10,000 megawatts between 2005 and 2010. Power use by servers is growing 16 percent per year, according to the analysis by Jonathan Koomey of Lawrence Berkeley Labs, whose previous research on the topic was featured in the recent EPA report to Congress on data center energy issues. The data highlights one of the major challenges in energy trends: the growing demand for power from emerging economies in the Asia-Pacific. The study, which uses IDC server data and was backed by AMD, projects that data center power usage in the Asia-Pacific region will grow at a 23 percent clip through 2010."
KDE

Submission + - KDE 4 uses 40% less memory despite 3D eye-candy

Submitted by
An anonymous reader writes: Pro-Linux reports that KDE 4, scheduled to be released in January 2008, consumes almost 40% less memory than KDE 3.5, despite the fact that version 4 of the Free and Open Source desktop system includes a composited window manager and a revamped menu and applet interface. KDE developer Will Stephenson showcased KDE 4's 3D eye-candy on a 256Mb laptop with 1Ghz CPU and run-of-the-mill integrated graphics, pointing out that mini-optimizations haven't even yet been started. Will this combination of resource efficiency and consumer appeal make KDE 4 the leader in the booming Linux-based ultra mobile laptop and energy efficient desktop markets?
Security

Submission + - New Tools Enable Cookie Sniffing & Session Hij

Submitted by TheSkepticGuy
TheSkepticGuy writes: Michele Dallachiesa of Italy has released Cookie Tools which contains two OS software tools he claims are a "a simple and powerful cookie sniffer" and then "impersonate the cookies of someone else in your browser." Security Focus contains a posting of the "project," and an article on Computer World contains an appropriate amount of paranoid FUD from a "security analyst" who just happens to own a security software company. Does anyone else find it nteresting that the Computer World story appears just one day after the release of "Cookie Tools."
Businesses

Submission + - Green buildings make employees see red (networkworld.com)

Submitted by b.foster
b.foster writes: 'Forget about having your own printer, coffee pot or a mini-refrigerator in your office. Heck, you can forget about having your own office, too, because you'll probably get assigned a modular desk in a big, open space.' Network World reports that more and more, companies are asking employees to sacrifice comfort at work for the sake of the environment (and the bottom line).

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