Yes, I really like putting my finger in front of the thing I'm trying to look at. That'll really help me to see it better.

I also really like having to move my hand several inches instead of using a mouse and moving it a fraction of an inch.

I definitely herald the introduction of new data input devices, but this is probably one of the nastier ones. Only an advantage for a very narrow range of uses.

There are plenty of scenarios where the concept won't help - or could be misused/abused...

Having said that, those shortcomings do not invalidate the concept.

Whenever there are two police officers present, they would need to conspire to turn off their cameras (or delete the footage). That can still happen, but the likelihood will reduce significantly for each additional officer. And it only takes one officer with a healthy conscience to keep their camera rolling.

I don't think that there is a silver bullet, but steps that reduce the odds of miscarriages of justice are a step in the right direction.

As a side note, I'm pleased to see a general trend toward allowing citizens to record police activity. Hopefully, that will be adopted more widely over the coming years.

And we're not doing it now with Apple products?

+1

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.