I suspect they're not producing these kinds of phones simply because, despite the author's assertion, very few people actually do want such phones.

A writer and a submitter does not constitute some vast ignored market.

How much does a middle aged Slashdot ID go for nowadays? I might be in the market to sell mine to an astroturfer.

Silly question on a nerd site, you don't "prove" anything with science, and Jurassic park was a movie, not a scientific model.

Back then the short cut they took probably saved them weeks in rendering time, and as you say, came out looking realistic. A scientific simulation would be comparing real data points to the output, it would be able to identify the "handful of leaders" that initiate each manoeuvre of a real flock, it would definitely not be a bunch of lab coats looking at the pretty pictures and nodding.

Disclaimer: I like Crichton's stories too, but he tends to write in "false document" style and every story has the same "science gone mad" plot.

I'm not clear as to how, for instance, using buggy versions of SSL libraries fits into your whole theory. One possibility is that what you wrote is gibberish.

Yeah right, the infamous "mushroom cloud" comment was all about chemical weapons. Also I'm old enough to recall the attack on the Kurds, it happened in the 80's long before Clinton was elected. The Bush administration lied about nukes and lied about Saddam's connection to 911 because they wanted to "fix" the ME once and for all.

Sure most people wanted Saddam gone but most people could also see the end was not worth the means. The US should have backed down when it did not gain the support of the UN but they did the exact opposite. The US should have kept Iraq's public service intact but they disbanded them on the third day and the entire nation went on a looting rampage from which they still haven't recovered.

You could have saved some typing by not opening the article. But then you would not have been able to write this long pointless OT rant.

Yes, the proof is in the pudding, the "land of the free" has the highest incarceration rates in the world, roughly 7X the rate of countries like China, Europe, and Australia. They are even more enthusiastic about locking up their own people than Saudi Arabia and Sudan.

As for TFA, most people outside Australia and many inside of it do not understand why this is a perennial issue in parliament. Neither side are serious about these things, they use the issue purely for political gain in the senate.

Aussie governments on both sides have argued both for and against this type of legislation since video cassettes became popular in the 80's. Malcolm Turnbull is not personally in favour of this legislation and Brandis just made a huge "free speech" fuss about changing the racial discrimination act to give people the right to be a bigot (specifically because his own media attack dog was found guilty under the act). However their personal stance is largely irrelevant since I'll bet that there is a minority "balance of power" senator that wants this, my guess is Bob Day from "family first". They were the ones who pushed this issue under the Labour gov, then spat the dummy when their own anti-abortion web sites started appearing on the "leaked" blacklist.

Both sides of government have used this issue as bait for independent senators, they promise to implement if the senator cooperates on other matters, knowing full well the majority of parliamentarians won't accept it when, or rather if, it comes to a vote. They get the senate vote(s) early in their term, then they have endless inquires about how to implement "stupid idea X", people get stirred up, enquires come back with mixed results, the issue goes quiet before the next election. Independent senator loses seat he was luck to win in the first place and is replaced by a new independent from a different electorate with similar ideas and no experience bargaining with a major political party.

In other words unless the pure political cynicism in keeping the status-quo concerns you, then this is a non-story.

"Either your name is on the volume licensing agreement... or your brains."

As we speak, Microsoft is instructing its European "business partners" to give a certain French city a shitload of really cheap Office licenses.

I have to confess, I'm pretty mystified. For our own internal servers, I have my own CA, and can see no reason why I would want to have someone else sign internal certs.

Sounds like yet another way in which the commercial CAs scam stupid CIOs out of cash.

Double kudos for writing it on touch screen devices. I do some Play-by-email roleplaying and at times I do posts on my Nexus 7, and man oh man it's difficult. I wouldn't even dream of doing long prose writing on a tablet.

Quite frankly, and this sounds stupid, but I'm emotionally attached to my glasses. I'm 42 now, and I've been wearing glasses since I was six. Frankly I don't even remember what it was like without them. I freely admit it's an irrational and emotional response, but I like my glasses.

Both the accountant and solicitor I use for tax, conveyancing, etc, have a BSc as their first degree.

Indeed, the oxygen we breath is another life-form's pollution.

One of the assumptions behind SETI is that aliens want to be heard, we have deliberately broadcast radio messages to nearby stars, SETI are hoping aliens will do the same thing.

The idea of looking for atmospheric signatures of technological life that do not occur in nature (such as CFC's) has been around for a long time. Non technological life can be inferred from an atmosphere rich in both methane and oxygen. People are trying to perform atmospheric spectroscopy on exoplanets but the technology is not quite there yet, I believe someone recently claimed to have detected water vapour on an exoplanet.

Having said that I was taught in 1970's high school that it was theoretically impossible to detect an exoplanet from Earth, but that was before wobble mirrors were invented..