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Australia

Australian Senate Hears Open Source Is Too Expensive 365

schliz writes "The Australian Government Information Management Office says that a platform change to open source could cost more than it saves. It was pushed to investigate open source software to reduce its AUD$500m budget at a Senate meeting yesterday. From the article: 'Agencies are obliged to consider value for money on each occasion they apply a software,' spokesperson Graham Fry said. 'If the cost of assessing it [open source] was greater than the cost of the software, you would have to think twice.'"
Robotics

Armed Robot Drones To Join UK Police Force 311

Lanxon writes "British criminals should soon prepare to be shot at from unmanned airborne police robots. Last month it was revealed that modified military aircraft drones will carry out surveillance on everyone from British protesters and antisocial motorists to fly-tippers. But these drones could be armed with tasers, non-lethal projectiles and ultra-powerful disorienting strobe lighting apparatus, reports Wired. The flying robot fleet will range from miniature tactical craft such as the miniature AirRobot being tested by one police force, to BAE System's new 12m-wide armed HERTI drone as flown in Afghanistan."
Image

Subversive Groups Must Now Register In South Carolina Screenshot-sm 849

Hugh Pickens writes "The Raw Story reports that terrorists who want to overthrow the United States government must now register with South Carolina's Secretary of State and declare their intentions — or face a $25,000 fine and up to 10 years in prison. The 'Subversive Activities Registration Act' passed last year in South Carolina and now officially on the books states that 'every member of a subversive organization, or an organization subject to foreign control, every foreign agent and every person who advocates, teaches, advises or practices the duty, necessity or propriety of controlling, conducting, seizing or overthrowing the government of the United States ... shall register with the Secretary of State.'"
Robotics

When Will AI Surpass Human Intelligence? 979

destinyland writes "21 AI experts have predicted the date for four artificial intelligence milestones. Seven predict AIs will achieve Nobel prize-winning performance within 20 years, while five predict that will be accompanied by superhuman intelligence. (The other milestones are passing a 3rd grade-level test, and passing a Turing test.) One also predicted that in 30 years, 'virtually all the intellectual work that is done by trained human beings ... can be done by computers for pennies an hour,' adding that AI 'is likely to eliminate almost all of today's decently paying jobs.' The experts also estimated the probability that an AI passing a Turing test would result in an outcome that's bad for humanity ... and four estimated that probability was greater than 60% — regardless of whether the developer was private, military, or even open source."

Comment Sorry for the late post (Score 1) 488

I'm obviously getting into the comments very late, but I felt the need to reply.

If you plan on replacing your nytimes.com reading with BBC News, you obviously have never read both of them. They are nothing alike. Whereas the BBC mainly reports strictly news (with an arguable anti-US spin that has grown tiresome to me), the NYTimes produces fantastic journalism. They have the best columnists and investigative reporters anywhere. Their travel and food sections are second to none. I also enjoy the tone of their writing -- it carries a more traditional, formal language than many newspapers these days.

I will watch with great interest how this plays out. I love my nytimes.com and would have to think hard about whether to pay for it.

Submission + - Falling leaves, failing domains ...

m2f2 writes: Network solutions may have a problem. A series of domains (one of which, an NGO, I am pleased to administer) have been disabled yesterday and put on "pending renewal".
Their own records tell that the domain expires on 21-Jun-2010 but admin and tech contacts now are the limbo of pendingrenewalordeletion@networksolutions.com.
How many of the ./'ers have been there, and ... what have they done?
Cheers

Comment You can't compete with free unless you lie (Score 1) 703

Just pump up your sales with ads of snowy mountains etc, and do not tell anyone of those nitrate levels, higher than standard tap water, and you're done.

Also, why not *advise* using that bottled water for infant feeding?
If nitrates grow plants, just imagine what wonders might be done with kids...

Comment Re:As a company (Score 1) 703

It seems you're talking from another planet. Here in Italy the non-Berlusconi controlled news are Murdoch's SKY (pay channel), RAI 3 (soon to be "moderated" by Berlusconi cronies) and LA7 (controlled by Telecom Italia).
For me, I did what my grandfather did -- in the 1940s he listened to the BBC to know what was really going on.
--
In the land of the blind, the one eyed man is king.
Censorship

A Black Day For Internet Freedom In Germany 420

Several readers including erlehmann and tmk wrote to inform us about the dawning of Internet censorship in Germany under the usual guise of protecting the children. "This week, the two big political parties ruling Germany in a coalition held the final talks on their proposed Internet censorship scheme. DNS queries for sites on a list will be given fake answers that lead to a page with a stop sign. The list itself is maintained by the German federal police (Bundeskriminalamt). A protest movement has formed over the course of the last several months, and over 130K citizens have signed a petition protesting the law. Despite this, and despite criticism from all sides, the two parties sped up the process for the law to be signed on Thursday, June 18, 2009."

Comment Re:Well here in Italy (Score 1) 353

all the whole shebang is NOT under [state] police control, but by [local, city-paid-for traffic] police control so there's no corruption. it's the city council that met a private company that were peddling those cameras and ok'd their proposal. the system were set up, rigged and operated by private companies, who got a share of the revenues.

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