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Comment: Re:How else... (Score 5, Insightful) 260

it seems the govt. figures we are all fucking idiots that can't be trusted with our own judgment to use anything more dangerous than a butter knife, or maybe those rounded edge scissors we all got in first grade

I think thats pretty accurate for how a very large number of people in the country should be treated. I definitely don't want a lot of people I know with a commercial laser, as I do like my eyesight. I have a 500 lumen flashlight (its really really bright in a tightly focused beam) and the number of people I told "don't point it at your face because its incredibly bright", that did exactly that is astounding. When I asked why? their response was its only a flashlight... I've seen several people do that with lasers too. Not to mention that is the governments targeted mentality with their current form of "education".

+ - Sugar is toxic-> 1

Submitted by
genericmk
genericmk writes "Using econometric models of repeated cross-sectional data on diabetes and nutritional components of food from 175 countries, this study found that every 150 kcal/person/day increase in sugar availability (about one can of soda/day) was associated with increased diabetes prevalence by 1.1% after testing for potential selection biases and controlling for other food types (including fibers, meats, fruits, oils, cereals), total calories, overweight and obesity, period-effects, and several socioeconomic variables such as aging, urbanization and income. As Mark Brittman points out in his NY Times blog This is as good (or bad) as it gets, the closest thing to causation and a smoking gun that we will see. The study demonstrates this with the same level of confidence that linked cigarettes and lung cancer in the 1960s."
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Comment: Re:How about just not naming them real names? (Score 3, Interesting) 410

by nugatory78 (#42753769) Attached to: How Videogames Help Fund the Arms Industry
this topic makes me curious. Why do games bother to license the names and images? if I make a movie and want a gun in it, I don't ask permission of the manufacturer, I can even use its real name. Same goes for any real world product that gets used in the movies. How is using it in a game any different? Of course as hairyfeet points out, there is a lot of new laws on the books that could change all the rules. The obvious answer is that they will sue you, and try their best to make it unprofitable for you.
Crime

+ - EU Payment Card Fraud Nets 1.5bn a Year to Cybercriminals->

Submitted by
Orome1
Orome1 writes "Although the total number of payment cards (debit and credit) issued in the EU in the previous 12 months reached over 726,000,000 — card fraud has actually been on a decline in recent years due to technological advances that have increased the security of transactions. However, Europol reports that there remains a very active criminal market in payment card fraud in Europe, pulling in around 1.5 billion euros a year for the organized crime groups involved. the level of illegal card-present transactions carried out overseas has seen a sharp increase as criminals target the weak points of the system by committing crimes using non-EMV compliant cash machines and payment card terminals in countries such as the USA, Dominican Republic, Colombia, Russian Federation, Brazil and Mexico. Organized crime groups upgrade their criminal techniques relatively quickly, producing devices to bypass the latest anti-skimming technology and exploring other ways to rip off EU consumers and industry."
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EU

+ - EC meeting designed to whitewash patents in standards->

Submitted by
jrepin
jrepin writes "Simon Phipps spotted a meeting happening in Brussels that looked as if it was a set-up job. He suspected its goal was to ensure that a report was produced which could be referenced in future discussions over EU procurement policies — especially Britain's. While it was probably not a documented goal, such a report could be used to falsely demonstrate that technical standards with patents in them are no problem for open source software. Well, the report is out, and as Glyn Moody disclosed on December 31st, it's everything Simon predicted."
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Data Storage

+ - Quartz glass can preserve data for millions of years, Hitachi says-> 1

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes "Researchers in Japan have come up with a novel way to store data — in a wafer of quartz glass — that could preserve it for eons. Electronics company Hitachi says this process protects the information in a durable, waterproof covering that could weather hundreds of millions of years with almost no degradation. Researchers created a prototype using pieces of quartz glass developed by Kyoto University — measuring two centimetres square and just two millimetres thick.

ZU"
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Government

+ - Voting Machines Should Be as Secure as Slot Machines-> 2

Submitted by
CowboyRobot
CowboyRobot writes "The problems with elections in the U.S. are well-known, yet we seem to need reminding every four years about how bad it's getting.
Howard Marks at NetworkComputing has an essay, pointing out exactly what we need for reliable, accurate voting:
"A valid audit trail, such as a printed ballot the voter can verify; A mechanism for recounting the printed ballots on a machine made by another vendor so the results can be compared; and An audit of the software by an independent third party to insure that the software accurately records and tabulates the voter's true intent."
He then looks at his own experience working with casinos, who would never tolerate the kinds of problems voting machines have. So why not take a lesson from gaming machines and build voting machines the same way?
"The slot machine industry is several times bigger, and significantly more competitive, than the voting machine industry. If IGT, Bally's and Aristocrat can compete for the slot market, then Diebold and Election Systems and Software can stand the same level of scrutiny.""
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+ - Last-minute, untested "experimental" software patch affects 80% of Ohio's vote->

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes "A last minute "experimental" software update affects the tally machines which count 80% of OH's vote, and introduces absurd vulnerabilities into the system: precinct vote tallies in each county will be reformatted by the patch and put on personal thumb drives before submission to the secretary of state. The patch has read/write access to the electronic vote data-base, and hasn't been open to testing or review by any authority. Untested voting software is against Ohio law, but the secretary of state has designated the software "experimental", and so it slips by in a loophole. An injuction was refused this morning."
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Hardware

+ - Hypergravity used to create lighter aircraft engines->

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes "One area where weight savings can be made in aircraft design is in the manufacture of the relatively heavy turbine engines used to power an aircraft. Engines typically rely on the use of nickel superalloys in their construction. They are very strong, stable, and don’t corrode easily, but there is a lighter alternative: titanium aluminide. TiAi is 45% lighter, but the main problem with using it is successfully molding it into the required shapes for use in an engine.

Engineers at the European Space Agency (ESA) set out to solve that problem and came up with a surprising solution: using hypergravity."
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Now there's three things you can do in a baseball game: you can win or you can lose or it can rain. -- Casey Stengel

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