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Comment Re:do you really want the uninformed voting (Score 5, Interesting) 1089

So do you really want the uninformed/non interested making a vote.

The unspoken assumption behind this proposal is that yes, Obama does want the uninterested and uninformed to vote, because he assumes they will trend Democrat. Some of the Democrats' greatest strongholds are high-density urban centers where both education and income levels are low. So Obama extrapolates that out and decides that means that mandatory voting will be a big windfall for Democrats, and give them a one-party lock on government.

I suspect that the reality wouldn't be as rosy for them as they're hoping. I could see it being a boon for third parties, as people who have no interest in the two major parties are compelled to find a candidate they don't hate.

Comment Re:contamination? (Score 1) 135

Aside from the huge privacy issues, I'm even more concerned that they would screw up collecting it. Everyone sheds DNA. Who is to say that the DNA they collect is actually from the person they think it is? DNA gets all mixed together after it leaves a person's body.

That's what juries are for. The prosecution presents evidence that the defendant's DNA was found at the scene of the crime. The defense attorney then attacks the credibility of the evidence, for example by offering an alternative theory for why his DNA was there, or attacking the method of collection to raise doubt that it's actually his DNA the police collected. (He doesn't necessarily have to provide his own DNA sample. Defendants aren't obligated to prove their innocence.) Then the investigator explains why the collection method is sound. At the end of the day, the jury decides whether the defense has raised a reasonable doubt.

Comment Re:Nothing wrong here. (Score 3, Insightful) 135

This comment makes absolutely no sense. Where does probable cause come from, except from an investigation? How do you expect police to do their job if they're only allowed to start collecting evidence after they get a warrant, which must be supported by evidence?

The purpose of a warrant is to allow the police to breach your otherwise constitutionally-guaranteed reasonable expectation of privacy. A warrant permits police to search your home, person, vehicle, or other private space without your permission. Other than such private spaces, police don't need permission from anybody to investigate. They certainly don't need a warrant to search a crime scene, where you have no legally-protected reasonable expectation of privacy.

Comment Re:As the majority pointed out (Score 1) 135

so they follow you around until they see you throw away a cup, or a piece of gum, or sneeze and toss the tissue away in a public place. Then they amble up and help themselves.

That sounds like "police work" to me. I'd rather police spend their time doing things like staking out suspected criminals than doing what the NSA does.

Comment Re:Just damn (Score 1) 411

Mark Twain supposedly said, "It's easy to quit smoking. I've done it dozens of times!" (Implying that even in the late 19th century, there was a reason to want to quit smoking).
United States

US Govt and Private Sector Developing "Precrime" System Against Cyber-Attacks 55

An anonymous reader writes A division of the U.S. government's Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity (IARPA) unit, is inviting proposals from cybersecurity professionals and academics with a five-year view to creating a computer system capable of anticipating cyber-terrorist acts, based on publicly-available Big Data analysis. IBM is tentatively involved in the project, named CAUSE (Cyber-attack Automated Unconventional Sensor Environment), but many of its technologies are already part of the offerings from other interested organizations. Participants will not have access to NSA-intercepted data, but most of the bidding companies are already involved in analyses of public sources such as data on social networks. One company, Battelle, has included the offer to develop a technique for de-anonymizing BItcoin transactions (pdf) as part of CAUSE's security-gathering activities.

Comment Re:The lesson here (Score 1) 266

There is a lot of truth to that statement. It was the cheaper consumer models that were affected. Retail profit margins are so thin that manufacturers and retailers make up for it with preloaded crapware.

Lenovo's business products were not affected by this as these aren't usually preloaded with crap. The same goes for other manufactures too. Dell and HP both offer cheap crapware infested models, along with pricier crap free business models.

You do get what you pay for.

The last consumer-grade Dell PC I bought came with a restore disk that was just a plain vanilla Windows 7 image. It didn't even have drivers. So, voila, perform a clean install right out of the box, install the drivers (from the included driver disks), and you've got a crapware-free Windows. (Of course, it's still on a consumer-grade Dell laptop, and that's a little harder to remedy. But like you say, you get what you pay for.)

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