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Comment Re:So basically... (Score 1) 391

That's the case I just settled. My client's didn't trust banks (go figure) and kept their cash in a safe. They got most of their cash from a legal action but they couldn't account for all of it because their job was tip based and they couldn't prove their expenses. Long story short, they went to make a large purchase, people got suspicious, and 90% of American currency has cocaine residue (either from being used to snort or simply going through money counters at a bank). Under a few states' laws and the former federal law, known as civil forfeiture, you are guilty until proven innocent. See e.g. USA v. $124,700. Only property connected with drugs is forfeited, but the raw deal is that innocent people must prove their innocence and guilty people must prove the proportion of their guilt to get the property back. Double Jeopardy does not apply and so the guilty person that proved his guilt to get his property back has proved the states' later criminal case.

My clients settled for less than their entire amount (like everyone does) because of the uncertainties of trial - they couldn't prove how much money they spent from their legal award and they couldn't completely prove how much they made in their jobs. Further, my clients were minorities and the case was venued in a minority unfriendly county.

Comment Even Lomborg doesn't believe Lomborg anymore (Score 1) 807

Interestingly, Lomborg recently wrote an op-ed in the New York Times where he spouts many views about what we need to do to fix the CO2 problem, seemingly forgetting entirely that he used to claim that it wasn't a problem that needed to be solved. Seems even Lomborg is skeptical of his own former skeptical self these days.

Comment Definitions (Score 1) 81

If you insist on the definitions and choices used in the report then no, I'm afraid this is not really a very exciting statistic at all.

From page 5:
"Security risks" ranked by importance, by IT Managers:

Cyber Attacks - 42%
Traditional Criminal Activity - 17%
Brand related events - 17%
Natural Distasters - 14%
Terrorism - 10%

So IT Managers are mostly concerned with threats to computers? Colour me surprised.
Medicine

Submission + - "Vegetative" patients communicate via M.R.I. (nytimes.com)

l00sr writes: Researchers in England have developed a clever way to communicate with some victims of brain trauma in a "vegetative state." They instructed the vegetative patients to answer a series of yes or no questions by thinking of either playing tennis, or being at home--each of which is associated with activity in a different region of the brain. They then asked the questions while imaging their brains via M.R.I to determine which region activated, if any, in response to the questions. Surprisingly, a few of the patients studied were able to successfully communicate in this manner, correctly answering questions the researchers posed.
The Internet

Submission + - IPTV Development Given Go-Ahead in UK (bbc.co.uk)

iateyourcookies writes: Following the deliberations of the BBC Trust, the BBC alongside TV companies such as ITV, Five and Channel 4 and ISPs including TalkTalk and BT (British Telecom) has been given the go-ahead to participate in "Project Canvas" — an attempt to develop a common interface for internet-television services in the UK. Canvas will be designed as an open platform, allowing other broadcasters to join and offer their content. For example, Flickr could offer a tool to allow people to stream their photographs form the site directly to their Canvas-powered set-top box and television. Manufacturers will be free to use the software to build their own set-top boxes.
Communications

Submission + - "Iranian Cyber Army" Hijacks Twitter DNS (bbc.co.uk)

iateyourcookies writes: At approximately 0600 UTC today, an organisation calling itself "The Iranian Cyber Army" redirected unwitting Twitter users to a site displaying the message "We shall strike if the leader orders, we shall lose our heads if the leader wishes. Those that wage fight on the path of God win." Twitter service was resumed after a few hours and staff apologised for the so-called "unplanned downtime". It is speculated that this may be retaliation against Twitter being used to publish the details of protests surrounding Iran's controversial June elections.
Space

Super-Earths Discovered Orbiting Nearby, Sun-Like Star 242

likuidkewl writes "Two super-earths, 5 and 7.5 times the size of our home, were found to be orbiting 61 Virginis a mere 28 light years away. 'These detections indicate that low-mass planets are quite common around nearby stars. The discovery of potentially habitable nearby worlds may be just a few years away,' said Steven Vogt, a professor of astronomy and astrophysics at UCSC. Among hundreds of our nearest stellar neighbors, 61 Vir stands out as being the most nearly similar to the Sun in terms of age, mass, and other essential properties."

Submission + - (drum fill) The Google Phone (wired.com) 1

foobsr writes: Wired informs us that, finally, the Googlephone will be on sale in the beginning of 2010. And it is already in use: "Mozilla/5.0 (Linux; U; Android 2.1; en-us; Nexus One Build/ERD56C) AppleWebKit/530.17 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0 Mobile Safari/530.17". The device is unlocked.

Submission + - Alan Ralsky Gets 51 Months in Prison (washingtonpost.com)

tsu doh nimh writes: Alan Ralsky, the 64 year-old dubbed the "Godfather of Spam," was sentenced to 51 months in prison on Monday, The Washington Post's Security Fix reports. According to anti-spam group Spamhaus.org, Ralsky has been spamming since at least 1997, using dozens of aliases and tens of thousands of "zombies" or hacked PCs to relay junk e-mail. Also sentenced — to 40 months in jail — was Ralsky's 48-year-old son-in-law, Scott K. Bradley and two other men named last year in a 41-count indictment for wire fraud, mail fraud, money laundering and violations of the CAN-SPAM Act.

Comment You're going to embarass yourself (Score 4, Insightful) 172

You'd think advertisers would have learned by now how to avoid embarassing themselves. Clearly, they have not. Every year there are advertisements that fail to account for cultural values, context, or placement, and wind up sending an unintended message. Sometimes it's hilarious, sometimes its tragic. You've all seen the jars of Gerber baby food, right? The one with the big baby face on the front? Turns out when they first tried to sell it in rural segments of Africa, it wouldn't sell -- like at all. Turns out that the majority of the population in those markets is illiterate and so the products contained pictures of what was inside the jars and boxes. Well, the locals thought Gerber was selling, achem... baby. Needless to say, the packaging was updated shortly thereafter.

Here's the problem with advertisements where people are aware they are being targetted: What if the machine makes a mistake? What if it identifies the 18 year old male who's captain of the football team with a couple of his female friends and the machine decides that there are three females in the party instead of two, and spits out an advertisement for tampons or makeup. Perhaps even doing an impromptu photoshop with their faces and a "before and after" shot, with directions to the nearest makeup counter? Well, he might need some coverup then... To hide his suddenly very flushed appearance.

The problem with mechanical identification of any physical trait in a human being is that it won't ever be 100%, because the meanings associated with those traits are context-dependent. That is to say, the correlations are the problem, and it's true whether it's a matter of sex, race, or age... And when people are aware they are being targeted by those factors, and especially when its misread, and very especially when others are aware of this -- it can have significant social reprecussions. In marketing, context and placement means a lot -- and the only thing saving people from taking it personally is the very fact that they know it's targeted impersonally. When that changes, marketers are going to be in for a real surprise.

Comment Re:Education shouldn't be for profit anyway (Score 1) 272

I once had a conversation with a department head at Caltech who told me that, thanks to their endowments, they could easily afford to charge a much smaller tuition, and that like 70% of their students were given fairly good financial packages, but if they lowered their base price and charged less than other universities, people would assume that they were of lesser quality. Since the value of a degree (not of an education) is in how other people view it, cutting their prices would be a great detriment to their graduates.

As long as the system is in place, and as long as there are more people who want to go to good schools than those schools can accommodate, it is in their best interests to keep their sticker prices high. They only have reason to show you the price you will pay if nobody is considering them because they are too expensive.

Comment Re:This is why we need science education (Score 1) 616

No, this is why we need critical thinking. People don't learn how to separate fact from BS. Because of this, we have people who will believe something with no fact and insist that it is fact. Look at North Korea, that is where the US will be heading if people think they can believe anything they read in textbooks, the internet, what random people say when they use "big words". Some of the most fun I had in high school is telling people total lies but using words that they didn't understand so they believed me.

Comment Re:Sematics... of course... (Score 1) 130

Not true. A third-person over-the-shoulder camera can accommodate pretty much the same approach to aiming as a first-person camera, while still providing a phenomenal (literally) avatar with which gamers can subjectively identify (or can objectify, in the same way that cinema moves between those two operations).

Until you try to take cover behind a box and start wondering whether you'll be shooting right into the box because the tip of your gun is behind it or whether you'll shoot the target in your unobstructed crosshair. If it's the former have fun drawing imaginary lines between your model's gun and the target all the time.

Granted, even first person games suffer from this sometimes but it isn't nearly as bad.

Hardware Hacking

Submission + - Apple: iPhone Jailbreaking Could Hurt Cell Towers (wired.com) 1

AHuxley writes: Apple notes nation's cellphone networks could be open to "potentially catastrophic" cyberattacks by iPhone-using hackers at home and abroad if iPhone owners are permitted to legally jailbreak their wireless devices.
The Copyright Office is considering a request by the Electronic Frontier Foundation to legalize the widespread practice of jailbreaking.
Apple feels that if the "baseband processor" software, which enables a connection to cell phone towers is exposed then a user could crash the tower software, or use the Exclusive Chip Identification number to make anonymously calls.
Apple feels its closed business model is what made the iPhone a success.
Costas Tsalikidis, the Greek telco (Vodafone) whistleblower did show what could be done within the Greek telco network but that was from within and he was later found hung.
What do slashdot readers think? Is Apple playing the "evil genius" hacker card or can "anyone" with a smartphone and a genius friend pop a US cell tower?

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