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Comment Re:What? (Score 1) 121

by Flavianoep (#49720639) Attached to: Learning About Constitutional Law With Star Wars

This is not to cry over some perceived unfairness to the Nazi, but rather to stand astounded that all Communists aren't being rounded up today with the same fervor. You claim to want justice for totalitarian perpetrators of genocide? Great, just don't pick and choose.

Not all Communists are genocidal, only their leaders. In the same way, not all Nazis deserved to go on trial (IFAIK, 10% went), nor the ones who faced trial should ben condemned, (again, AFAIK, 10% were). I've heard people say that it is a shame that it went that way and that all Nazis should have been prosecuted and hung. However most of then had no say on the fate of the inmates of concentration camps, nor had important roles in the party, nor have anything to do with the Nazi party besides being affiliated. Heck, Oskar Schindler was a Nazi.
Setting aside the numbers, did you know that Brazil is a genocidal country? The Brazilian government is building a barrage that will flood the lands of some Indian tribes, and is yet to provide a territory for such people to live. But what does the world do? Nothing, because it's a capitalist country and an ally to EU and US.

Comment Re:What? (Score 2) 121

by Flavianoep (#49718535) Attached to: Learning About Constitutional Law With Star Wars

The Terrorists are considered an Evil group. However they are are just a bunch of bullies, who haven't (compared to the military actions in the past) gained much foothold.
The Communists were less Evil, but more a solid threat, the Soviets had taken control of many countries, and having a Nuclear Arsenal as well made them really scarry.

There is some disagreement about those people being evil, especially the communists. One could easily say that the capitalists are the greater evil, especially the owners big corporations, because they pollute the Earth, are utterly greedy, etc and have no concern for the distribution of resources among those who need them. The CIA, on behalf of a capitalist state, participated in coups d'état in various countries, the US invaded Nicaragua, Panama, Hawaii, just to name a few countries. Thus, capitalism is evil.
About the terrorists, I can say that the main distinction between a terrorist group and a state is that other countries recognizes the occupation of territory by a state, but not by a terrorist group, no matter the opinion of the people in the occupied territories.
The Nazis, on the other hand, are held as the embodiment of evil, almost unanimously.

Comment Re: What Bothers me Most (Score 1) 121

We used to have this kind of absurdity here in Brazil. The first divorce law was in a budget law as well. In the last years, some laws where enacted to limit the obvious: budget laws can't deal with anything but budget stuff; an amendment to a "medida provisÃria" (provisional law from the president) has to do with its subject. I was made to think that we are the only ones who needed that kind of things, but unfortunately we where wrong.

Submission + - OrderAhead steals restaurant identities and Google listings (geekwire.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Restaurant delivery service OrderAhead apparently is impersonating restaurants, including claiming Google Maps and Gooogle Business listings without knowledge or consent of restaurant owners.

Submission + - Scientists discover first warm-bodied fish (sciencemag.org)

Submitted by sciencehabit
sciencehabit writes: Researchers have discovered the first fish that can keep its entire body warm, much like mammals and birds. The opah, or moonfish, lives in deep, cold water, but it generates heat from its massive pectoral muscles. And it conserves that warmth thanks to body fat and the special structure of blood vessels in its gills. Having a warm heart and brain likely allows the little-known fish to be a vigorous predator, the researchers suspect.

Submission + - The Biosecurity Logic Behind Australia's Threat to Kill Johnny Depp's Dogs

Submitted by HughPickens.com
HughPickens.com writes: Adam Taylor writes in the Washington Post that Australia's threat to kill Boo and Pistol, two dogs that belong to the American movie star Johnny Depp unless they leave the country by Saturday has made headlines around the world. But the logic behind the threat is typical for Australia, which has some of the strictest animal quarantine laws in the world. According to the Australian Department of Agriculture, dogs can be imported to Australia but are required to spend at least 10 days in quarantine in the country. There are also a whole variety of other restrictions on the dogs – they can only come from an approved country, they cannot be pregnant, and they must not be a banned breed. The dogs are then required to undergo a variety of tests and be fully vaccinated and microchipped. It's a time-consuming, expensive and complicated process that serves one purpose. Australia is one of a relatively small number of countries around the world that are considered rabies-free. "The reason you can walk through a park in Brisbane and not have in the back of your mind, 'What happens if a rabid dog comes out and bites me or bites my kid,' is because we've kept that disease out," says Agriculture Minister Barnaby Joyce.

Australia's geographical distance from much of the rest of the world and its relatively late contact with the West means that its biological ecosystem is unlike those of many other nations. To protect this, the country restricts what can be brought into the country. The impact of alien species on Australian wildlife was made clear early in the 20th century, when the cane toad, indigenous to Central and South America, was introduced to north Queensland in the hope of controlling the local cane beetle population. While the toads had little impact on the beetle population, they unexpectedly thrived in their new environment. Their effects on Australia's ecology include the depletion of native species that die eating cane toads; the poisoning of pets and humans; depletion of native fauna preyed on by cane toads; and reduced prey populations for native insectivores, such as skinks. The population of a few thousand cane toads introduced in 1935 is now in the millions, and are now considered pests that the Australian government is trying to eradicate.

Depp isn't the only American celebrity to run afoul of Australian biosecurity laws. In 2013, a Katy Perry album that featured flower seeds in its packaging triggered a biosecurity alert from Australia's Agriculture Department. "Most people are excited to think that there's an attachment between biosecurity and someone as popular as Katy Perry," said Vanessa Findlay, Australia's chief plant protection officer.

Comment Re:Online voting only allowed if you (Score 1) 258

by Flavianoep (#49689765) Attached to: Online Voting Should Be Verifiable -- But It's a Hard Problem

run OpenBSD. =)

Because only people smart enough to run OpenBSD and install (I think it includes compiling) and start a DE and overcome all the compatibility issues between Moonlight and Silverlight (the booth *must* be written in Silverlight) should be allowed to vote.
That way, you will not even need to ensure anonymity, because it's not hard to find the ones capable of doing the above.

Comment Re: The other 70% (Score 1) 211

by Flavianoep (#49689085) Attached to: FCC May Stop 911 Access For NSI Phones

The NSI phones are often distributed to mentally challenged individuals or medical shut-ins, who are largely unattended during the day, as a way for them to call help in an emergency. These folks--many infirm/all lonely--learned that the phone would dial 911, and the operator-unlike most people they encountered (if they encountered people at all) would speak with them. Many such calls were repeated dozens of times (or more) each day. And the rest were just dopes with nothing better to do.

Isn't in the US a number you can call when you feel depressed, something like the Lifeline I've just found about on Google? It would be more useful if NSI phones could make that kind of calls, too.

Submission + - The secret ingredient to life in the Universe is dark matter

Submitted by StartsWithABang
StartsWithABang writes: When you think about dark matter, you probably think of a few things: how mass and gravity don’t appear to line up, how there isn’t enough normal matter to account for the motions we see on scales of galaxies and up, and how it’s necessary to form the structure we see on the largest scales, from the early times of the cosmic microwave background to the cosmic web spanning billions of light years we see today. But what you might not realize is that without dark matter — a substance that doesn’t interact in any (yet) measurable, non-gravitational way with anything else (or even itself) in the Universe — life as we know it would be unable to exist. But what you might not realize is that without dark matter — a substance that doesn’t interact in any (yet) measurable, non-gravitational way with anything else (or even itself) in the Universe — life as we know it would be unable to exist. The gravitation from dark matter is the only thing keeping supernova ejecta from escaping from our galaxy, and enabling heavy elements to participate in later generations of stars, planets, and biochemical reactions.

Submission + - Kepler's 'Superflare' Stars Sport Huge, Angry Starspots (discovery.com)

Submitted by astroengine
astroengine writes: Astronomers studying stars like our sun that are known to generate powerful “superflares” have also discovered that these superflares are likely associated with monster “starspots.” In 2012, using Kepler Space Telescope data — which is usually associated with the detection of exoplanets as they drift (or transit) in front of their host stars — astronomers were able to identify several hundred superflare events on a number of sun-like stars. These gargantuan events kicked out flares 10-10,000 times more energy than our sun is able to muster. Keeping in mind that these stars are sun-like stars, what makes them such superflare powerhouses? Why is our sun such a featherweight in comparison? In an effort to understand the dynamics of superflare stars and perhaps answer these questions, astronomers from Kyoto University, University of Hyogo, the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan (NAOJ) and Nagoya University turned to the High Dispersion Spectrograph on the Subaru Telescope, located atop Mauna Kea in Hawaii, to carry out spectroscopic measurements of 50 of Kepler’s superflare targets. And they found that all the superflare stars possessed huge starspots that completely dwarf our sun's sunspots.

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