> so unless there's one that allows the police to text or email while operating a motor vehicle, then he's guilty of vehicular manslaughter.

The no-texting law in that state does in fact explicitly allow police to use their issued communication equipment.
Whether it SHOULD allow police to communicate while driving is a different question. Perhaps two cops should be in each car, with the passenger operating the radio. Existing law allows the driver to do so.

It appears that operating the mobile computer while driving is "routine procedure" for this police department. That's clearly a dangerous policy, so the department is liable and if they don't pay up the family should file a wrongful death suit.

This particular officer probably didn't break any criminal law. You could argue "reckless driving", but reckless has a very specific meaning in law. The fact that the driver's vehicle continued in a straight line as the bike lane curved suggests that he wasn't any less careful than many people are on a regular basis. "Reckless" requires a wanton disregard, a level of carelessness well beyond what a reasonable person would do.

Therefore I think it may be correct that the police department that established the dangerous policy is held responsible. I don't see any serious crime commited by this particular officer, based on the facts available.

> in the head

The story says pelvis, which matches the proper height for a heart shot at a deer.

You may recall Netscape's user-agent string was Mozilla. Within the company called Netscape, the browser was called Mozilla. The full name of Firefox is Mozilla Firefox.

Netscape was rebranded Mozilla Seamonkey. As Mozilla Seamonkey gained more and more features, some of the Mozilla (aka Netscape browser) people decided to make a version with some of the features removed to make it more streamlined, a lightweight version of the Mozilla browser, previously known as Netscape. They called this lightweight version of Netscape Firefox. *

*First they tried calling it Phoenix, which is an animal which is resurrected from it's own ashes. Somebody already had that name. A Phoenix is also known as a Firebird, but somebody already had that name, so they ended up with Firefox.

From my reading, Hardkernel has some other, unrelated boards that use the Samsung. They wanted to release a board which would be software compatible with the RPi, and that would mean using the Broadcom SOC.

Using your analogy, it would be as if a company who previously made products with Motorola chips wanted to release a PC-compatible system to run Windows. Intel and AMD wouldn't work with them , so they had to cancel their planned x86 product.

Pick two or three compilers from different sources. It's okay if they are all trojaned.
Compile each compiler with the other two compilers. Unless they are all trojaned in precisely the same way, including exactly the right cross-trojans for each other, you can see which one(s) can be trusted.

https://www.schneier.com/blog/...

Other defenses are also available. If you don't have the source to the compiler, you write a loop that automatically builds up the program line by line from "return 1". If adding one line of ansi C code adds several kilobytes of binary, there's a problem. Inspect the newly added portion using your choice of tool.

> Russian FSB has actually wrung Windows code reviews out of Microsoft so if they didn't find any back door in that code I'd say there are none to find...

So it's entirely possible to do a code review of an entire operating system and be sure that there are no vulnerabilities?
Of course, you can't be sure that something as simple as an ssl library is safe, but an entire OS is no problem. Despite the fact that there's no way to know if the code you're reviewing matches the installed binaries.

> there is always the option of doing a personal code review of what is it now, 200 million plus? lines of Linux source code and then compiling your own Slackware
Yep, that'd be even easier than the Windows code review, especially since thousands of other people have already done some initial review for you. You can then compile it yourself and know that the source code matches the binary, unlike Windows.

(The trojaned compiler attack is fairly trivial to defeat, so don't bother going there .)

raymorris said:
> a few hundred citizens and a few thousand foreign nationals not allowed to fly into or out of the country.

When this topic came up a few weeks ago here on Slashdot, I did a bit of research and found out that the "no fly list" would be better named the "no entry list", as the people are not allowed to enter or leave the country on a plane - they can fly within the country if they wish. It is a list of a few hundred citizens and a few thousand foreign nationals not allowed to fly into or out of the country. The Terrorist Watch List, on the other hand, has MILLIONS of people listed, mostly US citizens.

I'm far more concerned about the government watching millions of it's own people, treating them potential terrorists, than I am about them listing a few thousand foreign actors who aren't allowed to enter the US.

I code in PHP for my day job. There's almost nothing I can't do in PHP. Millions of people use my PHP code. I also know several other languages, so I have some basis of comparison to say PHP 5.0 kinda sucked as a general purpose programming language, and I can tell you exactly WHY it sucked.

PHP was originally a blog / CMS script written in Perl. It was designed to be a blog, not language for general programming. In fact, it wasn't even supposed to be used by programmers at all. It was designed for webmasters who didn't know Perl and didn't want to learn. Up through version 4, it's roots were painfully obvious. Lerdorf has said "I know nothing about language design ", and he's right. Fortunately, he hired some people who do have a clue for the 5.4 versions, so it's getting better.

Thanks for the interesting discussion.

> Science is concerned with understanding how and why things do work (using rigorous logical and mathematical models). In contrast, your statement about what religion tries to do is all about making rules to enforce how things should work. Science is strictly objective and descriptive; religion is inherently subjective and prescriptive.

I suppose that's a matter of perspective. I do pyrotechnics. While learning about pyrotechnics, the sources will repeatedly remind you "do not mix chlorates with sulfur, because it will become friction sensitive and could explode". That's applied chemistry. That's quite similar to "do not screw your neighbor's wife, because he may become enraged and kill you". The primary test of a scientific proposition is whether it's predictive - if it correctly tells us what will happen in a given situation. Testing the science, or applying it, means we have statements of the form "if you do this, this will happen". Same with the religious passages - "if you screw your neighbor's wife, that will put your life in danger".

Note the whole "God smite you down" thing is something you made up. That's not in the passage. In fact, it suggests the opposite. The passage is "For a prostitute can be had for a loaf of bread, but another man’s wife preys on your very life." It says a hooker is cheap, screwing another man's wife could cost you your life. Is that because God approves of screwing hookers, but will kill you for screwing a neighbor's wife? Or is it because your neighbor might kill your dumb ass when he comes home from lunch while you're pumping his wife up the butt? I think the latter is more reasonable interpretation.

See also Leviticus 14, and tell me that's the opposite of science, in any way, shape or form. I think you'll need to fall back to your position that most of the Bible is in no way religious. That's an interesting definition of religious.

> That entire section of the bill is terribly worded, incredibly vague and leaves it open to a great deal of misinterpretation.
> ...
> Take the following line":
> "prohibit political or religious interpretation of scientific facts in favor of another."

Good point. That line is grammatically invalid and has no definite meaning. Also, the line about focusing on scientific knowledge and scientific facts more than processes is, I believe, INTENDED to mean:
        "focus on the facts about climate, rather than a given theory about processes possibly involved in climate change ".

The wording is so unclear, if someone wanted to be silly they could even misinterpret it to mean they shouldn't teach much about how to do science - the process of heating a beaker, or the scientific method.

This is all quite unfortunate. Somewhere along the way, "the end is nigh" alarmists took the lead on climate change, with my stepdaughter being taught in school that by 2015 there would be no snow on Kilimanjaro. It's almost 2015, and Kilimanjaro is still covered with snow, so of course I'm going to push back on that crap being taught to my newborn daughter.

> Everyone immediately disables SELinux

I hope you're talking about your personal desktop and not publicly accessible servers. Many years ago, many packages didn't have SELinux policies, and that was painful. Disabling it was rather tempting. With all the many Linux computers I manage, I haven't run into a single SELinux related issue in several years. If you're disabling it now based on your experience in 2007, it might be worth taking another look.

As to "everyone immediately disables", about 10% disable it these days. 90% don't.

Explain again how a "focus on scientific knowledge " somehow magically prohibits teaching knowledge of microorganisms? About that Bible thing - I guess you missed "prohibit religious " in the law.

I'm not sure if the irony in your post is intentional. The bill says the emphasis should be on scientific knowledge and facts, rather than spending most of their time on one person's idea of what process might result in those facts. Present the facts, the knowledge, and let the students analyze whether or not that proves a process in place which will have California underwater by 2010 (oops, I guess not). Your objection to presenting facts rather than potential processes is "they'll never learn to question your authority". You realize that's precisely what your advocating, that their time be spent hearing about Al Gore's guess as to the process, rather than hear the facts for themselves.