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Submission + - Study Finds U.S. is an Oligarchy, Not a Democracy

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Researchers from Princeton University and Northwestern University have concluded, after extensive analysis of 1,779 policy issues, that the U.S. is in fact an oligarchy and not a democracy. What this means is that, although 'Americans do enjoy many features central to democratic governance', 'majorities of the American public actually have little influence over the policies our government adopts.' Their study (PDF), to be published in Perspectives on Politics, found that 'When the preferences of economic elites and the stands of organized interest groups are controlled for, the preferences of the average American appear to have only a minuscule, near-zero, statistically non-significant impact upon public policy.'

Submission + - US Government confiscates passport of citizen while overseas, doesn't say why (motherjones.com) 1

Submitted by Faizdog
Faizdog writes: The US State Department has confiscated the passport of a US citizen who is overseas. Due to that, he is in a precarious situation regarding his legal status.

The State Dept. has given no explanation for their actions.

Federal law requires that US citizens be granted a hearing before their passports are revoked. According to the man’s attorneys: “Having a passport is part of a citizen’s right to international travel, because without a passport you’re not able to move about or return to the US they can revoke it if they believe it has been obtained fraudulently. But here, there isn’t any allegation of wrongdoing.”

How does one answer the question “papers please?” when they government has taken your papers?

Comment Re:Changing IMEI is illegal (Score 1) 109

by drinkypoo (#46749815) Attached to: Inside the Stolen Smartphone Black Market In London

Of course, that would go pretty strongly against the whole "my phone, my property" thing.

Sometimes, we have to make compromises. I'm willing to have a radio chip that I don't control inside my phone so long as I can turn that little fucker off when I want to. Ultimately, if I want to repurpose my phone I am free to eliminate the GSM antenna.

Comment Re:Funny (Score 1) 693

by MightyMartian (#46749423) Attached to: The GNOME Foundation Is Running Out of Money

And I got downmodded into oblivion. You are exactly the kind of person I was talking about. The whack job Libertarian with some sort of social disorder who goes around declaring that any successful woman is an uppety attention whore, and proper women like nice feminine jobs.

Submission + - Phase 1 of TrueCrypt Audit Turns up No Backdoors (threatpost.com)

Submitted by msm1267
msm1267 writes: A initial audit of the popular open source encryption software TrueCrypt turned up fewer than a dozen vulnerabilities, none of which so far point toward a backdoor surreptitiously inserted into the codebase.

A report on the first phase of the audit was released today by iSEC Partners, which was contracted by the Open Crypto Audit Project (OCAP), a grassroots effort that not only conducted a successful fundraising effort to initiate the audit, but raised important questions about the integrity of the software.

The first phase of the audit focused on the TrueCrypt bootloader and Windows kernel driver; architecture and code reviews were performed, as well as penetration tests including fuzzing interfaces, said Kenneth White, senior security engineer at Social & Scientific Systems. The second phase of the audit will look at whether the various encryption cipher suites, random number generators and critical key algorithms have been implemented correctly.

Comment Re:Jenny needs (Score 0) 588

by drinkypoo (#46748661) Attached to: Jenny McCarthy: "I Am Not Anti-Vaccine'"

to learn the difference between bioavailable mercury and non-bioavailable mercury.

And you need to learn to look at papers which don't share your bias. There is still question about what the breakdown products of Thimerosal actually are. And since it has actually been used for flu shots for schoolchildren in the USA since it wasn't supposed to be, it's still an item for discussion.

Comment Re:Appeal to authority is not good enough (Score 1) 588

by drinkypoo (#46748639) Attached to: Jenny McCarthy: "I Am Not Anti-Vaccine'"

Yes, when amalgam fillings are first placed you are exposed to some mercury vapor.

Yes, but when you die, some of the mercury is always missing. Where did it go? Did it just vanish into the aether? Or was it released from your tooth with hot beverages? I love a hot cup of coffee with extra mercury in the morning, every morning, for the rest of my life. With my 11 silver fillings.

Amalgam is a very durable

It's not. It always loses mercury.

Submission + - Climate scientist: Why nuclear power may be the only way to avoid geoengineering (sagepub.com)

Submitted by Lasrick
Lasrick writes: Tom Wigley is one of the world's top climate scientists, and in this interview he explains his outspoken support for both nuclear energy and research into climate engineering. Wigley was one of the first scientists to break the taboo on public discussion of climate engineering as a possible response to global warming; in a 2006 paper in the journal Science, he proposed a combined geoengineering-mitigation strategy that would address the problem of increasing ocean acidity, as well as the problem of climate change. In this interview, he argues that hat renewable energy alone will not be sufficient to address the climate challenge, because it cannot be scaled up quickly and cheaply enough, and that opposition to nuclear power 'threatens humanity’s ability to avoid dangerous climate change.'

Comment Re:Only in America... (Score 0) 311

That's because you have never been outside your Mom's basement, let alone outside the USA. There are many parts in the world where AMERICA (the sum total of North America, Central America, the Caribbean islands, and South America) is considered one single continent.

Yes, places full of complete idiots. Note the names of the plates. Now note that people who think there is one continent called America are ignorant at best.

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