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Comment Re:So sad, but it's time (Score 1) 390

by Phurge (#33686502) Attached to: Blockbuster Files For Bankruptcy

I'm tired of hearing crocodile tears for the steam powered "mom 'n pop" stores. As Blockbuster is being taken down by services that better provide what the customer wants, so the "mom 'n pop" stores were taken down by Blockbuster.

fair point - but there are no crocodile tears for a soulless corporate like blockbuster, in fact, there's more than a little Schadenfreude :-)

Comment 2c on ebooks (Score 1) 437

by Phurge (#33682332) Attached to: E-Books Are Only 6% of Printed Book Sales
Contrary to some other opinions around here - I have to say I love the convenience of reading ebooks on my phone. I catch the train to work and the volume of my reading has increased massively. Previously books were too bulky to slip into my suit pocket and I used to read a book once a month or so, now I'm finishing books once every couple of days.

Submission + - Gun buy back in Aust --stunning fall in suicides (smh.com.au) 6

Submitted by Phurge
Phurge writes: TEN years of suicide data after John Howard's decision to ban and then buy back 600,000 semi-automatic rifles and shotguns has had a stunning effect.

The buyback cut firearm suicides by 74 per cent, saving 200 lives a year, according to research to be published in The American Law and Economics Review.

A former Australian Treasury economist, Christine Neill, now with Wilfrid Laurier University in Ontario, Canada, said she found the research result so surprising she tried to redo her calculations on the off chance the total could have been smaller.

''I fully expected to find no effect at all,'' she told the Herald. ''That we found such a big effect and that it meshed with a range of other data was just shocking, completely unexpected.''

Comment With Great Power comes Great Responsibility (Score 1) 578

by Phurge (#33199812) Attached to: Human Rights Groups Join Criticism of WikiLeaks
With their encrypted servers, Julian Assange & Co have a very powerful tool at their disposal. But they're really not doing their credibility any favours by taking a naive "publish everything" stance. Wikileaks have to be held responsible for the results of their publishing.

This is not a perfect world and I do believe there is a place for wikileaks as "sunlight is the best disinfectant".

Wikileaks simply need to accept responsibility for the written bombs they are dropping, just the same as the US Army and the Taliban have to accept responsibility for theirs.



(apologies for the Spiderman quote - see http://www.newsfromme.com/archives/2005_10_06.html
Medicine

Human Tests of Mind-Controlled Artificial Arm To Begin 119

Posted by kdawson from the do-what-i-mean dept.
kkleiner writes "The world's first human testing of a mind-controlled artificial limb is ready to begin. A joint project between the Pentagon and Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory, the Modular Prosthetic Limb will be fully controlled by sensors implanted in the brain, and will even restore the sense of touch by sending electrical impulses from the limb back to the sensory cortex. Last week APL announced it had been awarded a $34.5M contract with DARPA, which will allow researchers to test the neural prosthetic in five individuals over the next two years."
Music

Submission + - “Dirty” MP3 Files Are A Back Door Into (techcrunch.com) 1

Submitted by Phurge
Phurge writes: Hidden in purchased music files from popular stores such as Apple and Walmart is information to identify the buyer and/or the transaction. You won’t find it disclosed in their published terms of use. It’s nowhere in their support documentation. There’s no mention in the digital receipt. Consumers are largely oblivious to this, but it could have future ramifications as the music industry takes another stab at locking down music files.

When personal libraries are stored in the cloud, it becomes possible to retrieve this personal data and match it to a user identity. If the match is successful the song plays, but if not, access can be blocked through a network DRM system such as the one Lala patented (which is now owned by Apple).

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