What level of luminescence and at what frequency do current UV sterilizers need to be for current treatment systems? And what wattage/gal are we talking about here? If they can find a way to mass produce these, there could be some significant wins globally for water sanitation.

Also: would this make it possible to create portable systems that you could carry with you whle hiking/carry to remote locations and operate via solar power/battery?

Interesting thing with this is that recent studies on stem cell communication shows that cells "age" and mutate when exposed to stress and inflamation. Which means this could also aid in longevity and reducing cancer activity in the body. I think there was an article on slashdot recently looking at a drug that combatted inflamation by the immune system in body tissues -- the two of these treatments together could be rather interesting.

Hmm... maybe someone should start up a spin-off called LobbyRoad where politicians can meet to trade kickbacks and favors in an anonymous setting?

Well, in this case, the device itself is standard issue for many hospitals; the novel bit is accessing it over the internet instead of leaving it on the intranet as has traditionally been the case.

Having been part of the "let's make this emulator do multiplayer over the internet" group back in the day, I agree with you... there's a LOT that can go wrong. If they're not designing for failure (in both software and operating protocol), they're in for a world of hurt eventually.

I have to admit, this one had me scratching my head.

Don't medical safety guidelines always require safe handling of the *worst* case scenario, not the *average* case scenario? Hospitals have network outages, and have plans in place to mitigate that. How do you mitigate a surgeon losing link while he's cutting the right ventricle? When you're yards away and the link goes down, you just scrub in. When you're on the other side of the world....

Apps can also be shorthand for aperitifs or appetizers. As in, "I grabbed the new Google app last night while eating an app at the bistro."

Sounds about right... QEMU isn't designed to be fast, it's designed to be accurate and portable. so writing a pipelined JIT x86 emulator specifically for ARM should get around a 4x speedup over QEMU even if it is solely based on QEMU code and a JIT engine, prior to optimization.

I think it was an attempt at humour.

I think you've just given them assignments B, C, D, and E :)

I'd say there's a sizeable chunk of us that can run on a sandy beach, a rocky beach, a mountain trail, or a cityscape. This robot has been designed specifically to jump hurdles on a standard cinder track, no more, no less.

Yeah; you and the GP agree (as do I) -- the GGP is remembering the Slashdot of last decade that even then we joked about. Even back in college I tended to go out "city running" as we called it back then instead of joining the MTG circle in the catacombs of the CS building. Nothing helps sharpen the mind quite as much as knowing that if you judge wrongly, you will be hospitalized.

If they're making a robotic cheetah, then their next step should be to get it to mimic how a cat falls from a height in any orientation -- if they can get it to master that too, then it doesn't really need to know about the steep cliff, as it'll always land on its feet. Of course, they also would have to give it a windbreak of some sort and bring its mass down far enough that its terminal velocity isn't enough to damage it on impact. Doable, I think.

Yeah; in this case it gets trickier than that.

Prosecution has a police plant who was contacted by DPR to perform a hit. So in order for it not to be hearsay, they have to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that DPR is in fact Ulbricht. This is the trial that decides if DPR == Ulbricht is fact. If it IS fact, then the prosecution can substitute that their plant was contacted by Ulbricht to perform a hit. Which means it doesn't move from hearsay to fact until the finding of fact in this trial. After the finding of fact, they can now conclude that these actions took place, based on the officer's testimony. Since the officer's testimony was already a key piece in orchestrating the original search warrant against Ulbricht, it makes this a case of connect-the-dots.

But again, it all depends on exactly how the judge and prosecution lined things up and presented the evidence; anything out of place/in the wrong order and the entire line of reasoning has to be thrown out.

Yeah; I went for the first 14 years of my working life without a car. Transportation? Essential. Much of it can be done by walking, the rest with busses and rapid transit if you're in an at-all populated area. Sure, I used to regularly walk 20-40 min to get places, but I saved on the gym membership.

I'd say broadband is also an essential service -- and as you point out, that can be provided via libraries. Hey -- I used to have a local library with an internet connection back in the 90's in a rural area pop 3,000. Took me 15 minutes to bike to it. These days I'm sure it's got broadband.

To me it would make more sense to go the UK way: tax the non-essential services like TV to create value to serve over those services. Hey, it works (or at least used to; now people just buy a monitor and stream instead of buying a taxed TV).

Let's do the math.

Employee makes $34k, is taxed at 7%
Employee makes $36k, $34k is taxed at 7%, $2k is taxed at 20%

Now the employee works for thoe government:
Employee makes $28k -- equivalent to $34k-tax. (we're doing really rough estimates here)
Employee also does contract work at $30k. Contract work is taxed at 7%.
OR
Employee makes $28k from government, plus an extra $6k on the side, for a total of $34k (because the tax law states that ANY earnings nullifies your non-taxable government income status) and you pay 7% tax -- and STILL come out ahead of the person who earned $36k.

So while tax bracketing inequality in the current system is indeed a myth, by introducing this new system, it would become reality. Imagine that people in Congress/Senate/etc. had this new system -- they could enjoy all sorts of non-taxable government work and supplement to the bare minimum with non-government work.

And what do you do for contractors who operate as a private entity, but are paid by the government? How about colleges etc. who get grants from the government but are private entities? How about things at the municipal government level?

There may be a place for reducing certain kinds of taxation, but every time you carve out exceptions, you create more exploitable loopholes. You have to calculate the point at which losses due to bureaucracy balance losses due to inequality. Traditionally, the US has gone for "one size fits all" -- except when it comes to corporations, who get special treatment once they can go multinational.

You need to move to an Animal Farm.

I think the idea here (although it'd be hard to prove one way or the other) is that this is an indication of his character, which will influence how likely he is to re-offend in the future, AND what his actual intent was in setting up and running the site. Setting up a black market and using it yourself to obtain some marijuana is a far cry from setting up a blat market and attempting to use it to kill people. It colors his intent for use.

But it's still not a good move on both the prosecution's part and the judge's part, as it damages the veil of impartiality.