Comment Re:This week for me! (Score 1) 323
The judge has nothing to be embarrassed about. He followed the law. The legal system should be embarrassed.
Comment And give you a drink (Score 4, Funny) 216
almost, but not quite, entirely unlike tea
Justice Not As Blind As Previously Thought 256
NotSoHeavyD3 writes "I doubt this is much of a surprise but apparently Cornell University did a study that seems to show you're more likely to get convicted if you're ugly. From the article: 'According to a Cornell University study, unattractive defendants are 22 percent more likely to be convicted than good-looking ones. And the unattractive also get slapped with harsher sentences — an average of 22 months longer in prison.'"
Anti-Gamer South Australian Attorney General Quits 104
dogbolter writes "South Australian Attorney General, Michael Atkinson, infamous for the banning of R18+ rated games and the censoring of political comment in Australia, has quit. The recent South Australian election provided a massive swing against Atkinson's governing labor party. As a direct result of the South Australian election result, he is standing down. Hopefully someone with half a clue will assume the vacant post and overturn the decision to ban adult oriented computer games."
Debunking a Climate-Change Skeptic 807
DJRumpy writes "The Danish political scientist Bjørn Lomborg won fame and fans by arguing that many of the alarms sounded by environmental activists and scientists — that species are going extinct at a dangerous rate, that forests are disappearing, that climate change could be catastrophic — are bogus. A big reason Lomborg was taken seriously is that both of his books, The Skeptical Environmentalist (in 2001) and Cool It (in 2007), have extensive references, giving a seemingly authoritative source for every one of his controversial assertions. So in a display of altruistic masochism that we should all be grateful for (just as we're grateful that some people are willing to be dairy farmers), author Howard Friel has checked every single citation in Cool It. The result is The Lomborg Deception, which is being published by Yale University Press next month. It reveals that Lomborg's work is 'a mirage,' writes biologist Thomas Lovejoy in the foreword. '[I]t is a house of cards. Friel has used real scholarship to reveal the flimsy nature' of Lomborg's work."
Dinosaur Feather Color Discovered 219
anzha writes "Do you remember being a kid and told we'd never know what colors the dinosaurs were? For at least some, that's no longer true. Scientists working in the UK and China have closely examined the fossils of multiple theropods and actually found the colors and patterns that were present in the fossilized proto-feathers. So far, the answer is orange, black and white in banded and other patterns. The work also thoroughly thrashes the idea that fossils might not be feathers, but collagen fibers instead. If this holds up, Birds Are Dinosaurs. Period. And colorful!"
Comment Re:what do you think? (Score 1) 347
My view is that the reason science and religion come up with different answers is because they ask different questions.
Science can tell you how to create a bomb that will kill lots of people. Religion can try to tell you whether or not creating such a bomb is a good idea.
I agree that science and religion ask different questions but I would suggest that Science will tell you discover how to create a bomb that will kill lots of people, Religion will tell you to use it on those unbelievers over there.
Submission + - RIAA's Bid to Stop Jammie From Objecting Fails (blogspot.com)
NewYorkCountryLawyer writes: "The RIAA's motion to prevent Jammie Thomas-Rasset from objecting to evidentiary problems with the RIAA's copyright registrations has been denied. The decision by Judge Michael J. Davis (PDF) held that 'The Court's Order granting a new trial in this matter granted an entirely new trial on all issues. The fact that Defendant did not object to Plaintiffs' evidence of registration in the First Trial does not preclude Defendant from putting Plaintiffs to their burden of proof on this issue in the retrial.' Judge Davis rejected the RIAA's contention that he could take 'judicial notice' of the validity of the registrations, since 'judicial notice' doctrine is only applicable to matters which are 'not subject to reasonable dispute'."
Apple Crippled Its DTrace Port 476
Linnen writes in to note that one of developers of Sun's open source system tracing tool, DTrace, has discovered that Apple crippled its port of the tool so that software like iTunes could not be traced. From Adam Leventhal's blog: "I let it run for a while, made iTunes do some work, and the result when I stopped the script? Nothing. The expensive DTrace invocation clearly caused iTunes to do a lot more work, but DTrace was giving me no output. Which started me thinking... did they? Surely not. They wouldn't disable DTrace for certain applications. But that's exactly what Apple's done with their DTrace implementation. The notion of true systemic tracing was a bit too egalitarian for their classist sensibilities..."
Submission + - Are Cow farts sweeter with a Kangaroos stomach? (news.com.au)
ghostcorps writes: The Australian has an article discussing plans to modify cows stomachs to produce less/no methane."
From the article: "Thanks to special bacteria in their stomachs, kangaroo flatulence contains no methane and scientists want to transfer that bacteria to cattle and sheep who emit large quantities of the harmful gas.
''Not only would they not produce the methane, they would actually get something like 10 to 15 per cent more energy out of the feed they are eating,'' said Mr Klieve.
From the article: "Thanks to special bacteria in their stomachs, kangaroo flatulence contains no methane and scientists want to transfer that bacteria to cattle and sheep who emit large quantities of the harmful gas.
''Not only would they not produce the methane, they would actually get something like 10 to 15 per cent more energy out of the feed they are eating,'' said Mr Klieve.
Submission + - Microsoft Censors... Its own Naughty Santa
CajunArson writes: The Register has a story about a rather naughty Santa. It appears that the seemingly nice holiday service provided via Windows Live Messenger took on a mind of it's own. When the AI version of Santa Claus began to talk dirty to underage children, it appears that the ghost of Microsoft management present decided to sent AI Claus packing back to the digital north pole.
Submission + - Astronauts test sex in space 3
Arevazi writes: The Guardian has a story about a book confirming that US and Russian astronauts have had sex in space for research programmes. The book (The Final Mission: Mir, The Human Adventure by Pierre Kohler) cites a confidential Nasa report on a space shuttle mission in 1996. A project codenamed STS-XX was to explore sexual positions possible in a weightless atmosphere. The result: only four positions were found possible without "mechanical assistance". One of the principal findings was that the classic so-called missionary position, which is so easy on earth when gravity pushes one downwards, is simply not possible.
Submission + - California Testers Find Flaws in Voting Machines (arstechnica.com) 1
quanticle writes: According to Ars Technica, California testers have discovered severe flaws in the ES&S voting machines. The paper seals were easily bypassed, and the lock could be picked with a "common office implement". After cracking the physical security the device, the testers found it simple to reconfigure the BIOS to boot off external media. After booting a version of Linux, they found that critical system files were stored in plain text. They also found that the election management system that initializes the voting machines used unencrypted protocols to transmit the initialization data to the voting machines, allowing for a man-in-the-middle attack.
Altogether, it is a troubling report for a company already in hot water for selling uncertified equipment to counties.
Altogether, it is a troubling report for a company already in hot water for selling uncertified equipment to counties.
Submission + - Tim Berners-Lee receives Order of Merit from Queen
nfras writes: Tim Berners-Lee has been awarded the Order of Merit by HM Queen. There are only 24 members of the Order at any time and is a personal award from the Queen. He joins the company of Florence Nightingale, Winston Churchill and Edward Elgar as members of the OM.
