You may well be right (I don't know the constitution well enough), but I suspect that the previous poster's sentiment may still be valid.

The NSW police would have to petition the State Government to get the laws changed.

Having said all of that, the laws in Australia that relate to firearms give the police quite broad powers. And IMHO, the appropriate steps for police/governments around the world is to legislate 3D printable weapons regulations that relate to the other laws in their jurisdictions.

We cynical folks in /. know that those laws won't stop all the 3D guns from being printed. However, that is the way things are done in our modern society. The government legislates, the police (attempt to) enforce. If and when the problem starts to get out of control, the police are granted heavier powers and they go on a 'blitz'.

I'm quietly pleased to see the police dotting their i's and crossing their t's on this one. The first thing any good scientist would do to validate the stories on the internet is 'build one and test it to see what happens'. Let's hope that no-one publishes a 3D printable nuke, eh?

Seems we're suffering from a bit of Climate Change Fatigue... which suggests that the less than 1% of credible scientists who doubt AGW have managed to sow enough seeds of dramatic dissent for the rest of us to lose interest.

Or perhaps, it is something a little simpler in the human psyche. Whilst we bemoan politicians who have no more future vision than the end of their current term, it seems that we too are particularly short-sighted about the future of this planet. I suspect that the majority of us look little further than how we're going to satisfy the physical aspects of Maslow's Heirarchy of needs.

When our life expectancies are extended to 1000 years (or more), and we face the very real prospect of living on the planet we are currently terraforming, we may take a slightly different view. Somehow, I doubt it. Most of the people alive today will live to see an increase of 4-6 degrees C... and yet, we're far more interested in gun control and the Kardashians.

I feel sad for our children (and their children) when I think about the world they will inherit from us.

Ummm... yeah, about that 'inefficient, outdated systems'...

Can we please get some specifics about that?

Since when does outdated equate to inefficient? Anybody who upgraded to IE10 from IE8, or to Windows Vista from XP will probably have a few words to say in this space.

Or alternatively, you could look at the scenario of a middle sized financial institution where I used to work about 12 years ago. They were looking at upgrading from NT to 2000. It was going to cost them in the order of $32M to upgrade about 6000 desktops. This included some hardware upgrades, but also sociability testing on apps, a few software upgrades, deployment, retraining, etc. Senior Management said 'what is the payback for this $32M project'. IT said 'Microsoft told us if we didn't do it, they'd stop supporting us.' After a while the howls of derisive laughter died down and management said 'No, really... what's the benefit to the company'. There was none. Nada... zip. Outdated did not equate to inefficient. Eventually, they realised that Microsoft had them over a barrel, and decided to act. What did they do? They hired 5 top notch NT gurus at a the princely sum of $200k per year each and told them to support NT in our environment. $1M in staff costs is cheaper than $6M in depreciation on their $32M investment.

In the end, they were able to delay the upgrade a couple of years and leapfrog straight to XP. Saved bajillions of dollars.

272ms on TPG in BrisVegas :((

It occurs to me that China might be a lot more involved in this situation than we know.

People keep talking about NK being the 'little punk bully' in the playground and China being the 'big brother', but I suspect that China is orchestrating a large portion of what is going on. They are shrewd diplomats, and it would serve them well to use NK as a pawn to test the US's military capabilities and resolve.

This is all taking place on the edges of China's radar envelope, so it is giving their military the perfect opportunity to study detection of American stealth technology.

First thing to acknowledge is that piracy will happen, and it is not in your interests to spend a million dollars to save a few (eliminating the last 1% of the pirates). Accept that a certain amount of piracy is 'unstoppable', and you can implement a far more pragmatic scheme.

Ours is simple. We distribute our software as v1.0 (regardless of the build). Inside code, we apply a countdown timer that will crash the application after 50 starts. We make it a kind of 'nagware', but a fairly mild one. We don't use those annoying 5 second delays before you can click OK or any of that crap.

The countdown timer can be cancelled when someone patches to any version that doesn't have a '.0' on the end. However, to upgrade, they have to register (which is a semi-automated process). It costs us about 5 seconds to approve someone's registration.

Once again, remember that this is easily hackable. Anyone with an ounce of IT skills could reset the timer, have the version identifier in the exe, etc, etc - but the point is that 98% of people wont, and 1% of people will try unsuccessfully. Every once in a while we discover someone who has pirated the software, and we send them a dirty letter, and most of them true-up at that point too.

Stay pragmatic, and don't let it annoy you. Good luck!

[Citation Needed]

Don't you mean...

1."Serve the public trust"
2."Protect the innocent"
3."Uphold the law"

I'm not sure which is the greater humiliation for the U.S...

That their security is so weak that he could do it at all...
Or the war crimes that he revealed...
Or the manner in which they have treated him since...

Regardless, he has won a massive moral and ethical battle against the corruption of the U.S. military. It is sad that he will live out his remaining days battling PTSD and depression as a result of their conduct. It makes the rest of us wonder if his victory was worthwhile... and that's exactly how the U.S. military wants it to be.

In a first world country, he would be released on the grounds of 'abuse of process'. In a first world country...

If you substitute the word 'Car' for the words 'IP Address', the ruling reads:

'just because a CAR is registered to an individual does not mean that he or she is guilty of infringement when that CAR is used to commit infringing activity.'

A whole bunch of 'speed camera law' is in exact opposition to this ruling.

I think that the ruling is positive and constructive - but I also think that it will be overruled at a higher level for the exact same reasons that the speed camera law is in place.

Your suggestion is actually quite a good one.

Microwaves are particularly troublesome for WiFi

So, you could effectively jam the leech with a Microwave transmitter.

In essence, I agree with your sentiment, but it does have some problems. Let me explain:

The US is only just starting to discover the joys of a public funded health care system. Australia has had it for a couple of decades. I don't think that too many people would argue that drugs is all about health care. People that use drugs in moderation are not the problem. People that have poor impulse control; those who use drugs to excess are the problem. They exist. You might not be one of them - but they are out there in droves. And the government is worried about them. A public healthcare system means that those people obtain bajillions of dollars worth of taxpayers funding because of their drug problem.

Now, I'm not really interested in the question of whether their excessive use of drugs is a 'lifestyle choice' or whether it is a kind of 'disease'. The government's strategy has always been to regulate things that carry significant risks. At the lower end, regulation of drugs means 'prescription drugs'. At the higher end, the drugs are made illegal.

Lets time travel forward a couple of decades to a time when our healthcare system is more advanced. They can detect exactly what's in your system, and they can tell how intensely you've been taking it over the last 12 months. At that point, the drug-taking-moderates will be removed from the equation. It will be easy to determine that they are not burdening the healthcare system with their drug use. At that point, legalisation will be very viable - and very appropriate. The people with an out-of-control drug habit will be identified in the emergency room and handled differently. Maybe forced to pay for their care (like they could afford it) or simply placed in compulsory rehab (a special kind of jail for druggies?) Who knows how we'll deal with them in 20 years?

As far as I'm concerned, its not a question of whether this can happen. Its purely a question of when. Until it happens, legalisation will be all about controlling the flow of people in emergency rooms. And the drug-taking-moderates are hard out of luck - because they will continue to suffer regulation that is not about them.

I own a software house that makes EMR software.

We distribute to 18 countries, but our primary business is in Australia. We do not sell into the US (and don't want to).

In Australia, the government standard for cloud based EMR is 'Patient Controlled'. They call it PCEHR (Patient Controlled Electronic Health Record). We've nicknamed it 'pecker'. In one sense, it is a good idea, as the patient owns their own data and cannot be held to ransom by their health care provider. Arguably, the authorities could never have made the decision for the data to be owned in any other way.

However, it also means that the electronic patient record contains only the data that the patient wishes to include. Any practitioner would be crazy to accept that record as 'complete' - and for the sake of their PI insurance (and the patient's wellbeing), they basically have to disregard the online electronic record and start from scratch every time.

Furthermore, most health care providers value their business based on the IP in their electronic records (more traditionally known as 'Good Will'). They will not willingly give up that information - at least, not quickly.

Sadly, I can't see an easy solution. It will take time and a bucketload of stakeholder engagement by the government - something that most governments are not very good at.

Come back in 10 years.

Now, be nice. Your acidic remarks are unecessary and uncalled-for.

We are currently one of the cheapest products in our marketplace. We do not sell hardware - and for people who really want touch screens, we recommend wall mounted all-in-ones that sit around U$900.

Oh, and by the way, your ~0.5kg is false.

iPad weight = 652 grams (here is a citation: http://www.apple.com/ipad/specs/). That's the lighter version.
iPad cover weight = 338 grams (citation: http://www.pcadvisor.co.uk/features/apple/3345046/best-cases-covers-for-new-ipad/)
Apple make lighter cases, but the lightest I've seen still comes in at about 180 grams.
Total weight 830 grams at best - though if you choose the 'recommended covers', it will be much closer to 1kg.

Also, subby wasn't talking about reading books. He was talking about reading stapled printouts. There is a big weight difference. If you want an eBook reader for bedtime or on a plane - then, sure, grab one. Please do your research before posting snippy responses in /.

My company makes software for allied health professionals, and a large number of our customers are chiropractors. They are starting to use tablets quite extensively for recording their medical notes, so I am perfectly positioned to offer a slightly tangential response. Full disclosure: I am not a chiropractor - I've just worked with thousands of them, so I know a bit about spines and posture.

Subby, you mentioned that your back isn't what it used to be. This is an important factor.

During our lab trials of tablets, we received a lot of feedback about the ergonomics of tablets - and one tester actually had to be excused from testing after a measly 15 minutes due to neck pain developing. Here's the problem:
- A tablet has a very small screen. Don't let anybody trick you into thinking that a 10.1" screen is big. Its not. You have to hold the tablet quite close to your face to be able to read it comfortably.
- Even the lightest tablets still have significant weight. You can safely anticipate that your tablet will weigh about a kilogram.
- When you hold a kilogram weight up in front of your face, it distorts your body's centre of balance. In order to compensate, your body transfers weight either resulting in you leaning backwards, or sticking your backside out. Either of these are posturally abnormal positions. For the first 5 minutes, no problems - but for extended periods, this can (and likely will) result in back pain, neck pain and headaches. Over weeks and months, it will damage your spine.
- The alternative is to sit in a relaxed position and hold the device in your lap. Sounds good until you realise that your entire body is falling into a C shape (when seen from the side). This is also an abnormal position for the spine - and creates the same problems. We see a lot of x-rays of children who spent excessive time with the iPod/PST/handheld device in their lap - their spine is worse than that of a 40 year old.

In the end, we published an official white paper advising our customers that A) tablets work fine; the technology is sound and reasonably mature; B) we DO NOT recommend that they use them.