jdfox - Slashdot User

The Blurring Line Between PC and Web 84

Posted by kdawson on Monday February 25, 2008 @09:05AM from the battle-for-hearts-and-minds dept.

The NYTimes has a feature about software development systems that move the Web offline and desktop applications online, with a focus on Adobe Air, which will be released tomorrow. The article has quotes from the developer behind Microsoft's Silverlight (he was a colleague at Macromedia of Adobe's Air guy), and from the head of the Mozilla Foundation about their online/offline offering, Prism.

Submission + - British judge calls for expansion of DNA database

Submitted by jdfox on Wednesday September 05, 2007 @12:00PM

jdfox writes: A senior British judge has proposed that every man, woman and child in the UK, including foreign tourists, should be obligated to provide DNA samples for the national database. Lord Justice Sedley says that the national database containing only records for people who've been arrested is 'indefensible', and that 'a great many people who are walking the streets, and whose DNA would show them guilty of crimes, go free.'

He also points out, with support from the president of the Black Police Association, that DNA records from ethnic minority groups are overrepresented in the current system, implying that the solution to this problem is to add everyone else's records in too. Politicians from both the government and the opposition Conservative party also express support for the idea, in principle.

Sedley adds that this universal DNA database should only be used 'for the absolutely rigorously restricted purpose of crime detection and prevention'. But the human rights advocacy group Liberty notes that the original legislation on permanent DNA retention has been changed several times in recent years, with permanent DNA retention for a limited number of offences following conviction growing to retention following arrest for any recordable offence.

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