Comment Re:Nicely done (Score 0) 470
Read Charles Nuttall SciFi Terran Marine Corps series about the empire, or just check his website for interesting european slant....
Comment More Important (Score 0) 116
How about adding hardware encryption so Google can't read your messages or contacts!
Comment Electronic Verification (Score 1) 388
This won't work because we would need to verify that people are eligible to vote, and this discriminates against a huge segment of our population!
(...or so the lawsuits here in Florida would seem to indicate.)
Can someone explain the difference?
Submission + - World's First Battery Fueled by Air 3
Hugh Pickens writes: "The Telegraph reports on the revolutionary 'STAIR' (St Andrews Air) battery could now pave the way for a new generation of electric cars, laptops and mobile phones. The cells are charged in a traditional way but as power is used an open mesh section of battery draws in oxygen from the surrounding air that reacts with a porous carbon component inside the battery, which creates more energy and helps to continually 'charge' the cell as it is being discharged. The battery has a greater storage capacity than other similar-sized cells and can emit power up to 10 times longer. "The key is to use oxygen in the air as a re-agent, rather than carry the necessary chemicals around inside the battery," says Professor Peter Bruce of the Chemistry Department at the University of St Andrews. "Our target is to get a five to ten fold increase in storage capacity, which is beyond the horizon of current lithium batteries.""
Submission + - Right-to-Repair Law to Get DRM Out of Your Car (eff.org) 2
eldavojohn writes: Ralph Nadar's back to hounding the automotive industry ... but it's not about safety this time, it's about the pesky DRM in your car. Most cars have a UART in them that allows you to read off diagnostic codes and information about what may be wrong with the vehicle so you can repair it. Late model cars have been getting increasingly complex and dependent on computers which has caused them, as with most things digital, to move towards a proprietary DRM for these tools, diagnostic codes and updated repair information. This has kept independent auto-shops out of the market for fixing your car and relegating you to depend on pricier dealers to get your automotive ailments cured. The bill still has a provision to protect trade secrets but is a step forward to open up the codes and tools necessary to keep your car running.
Submission + - TSA's 'Behavior Detection' Less Than 1% Efffective (usatoday.com)
Anonymous Coward writes: "Fewer than 1% of airline passengers singled out at airports for the much vaunted "suspicious behavior detection techniques are arrested, Transportation Security Administration figures show. The TSA program, launched in early 2006, looks for terrorists using a controversial surveillance method based on behavior detection and has led to more than 160,000 people in airports receiving scrutiny, such as a pat-down search or a brief interview. That has resulted in only 1,266 arrests, often on charges of carrying drugs or fake IDs, the TSA said. The TSA has not publicly said whether it has caught a terrorist through the program."
Comment Re:Cell phone companies to blame? (Score 1) 386
No, it's not the cell phone companies who are to blame, but the software designers. OUCH. Too close to home? Designers want to be cute, to be hip, to jump into the latest paradigm and the poor user is left to thrash about. Someone used Google as an example, but have you tried to navigate something on the sight you are unfamiliar with? I had set up a corporate email on Google for a couple of companies, and I had forgotten how to set up some feature (it was really, really late) so I tried to get âoeHELPâ to show me how. Simple question. Google wanted to show me a movie on how to set it up! I didnâ(TM)t want a movie! I wanted to scan a set of instructions for the part I wanted â" or discover the information wasnâ(TM)t there â" not see a movie! But designers get bored, and want to show off, and as usual, the user suffers.
Submission + - TSA bans ID-less flight (cnet.com)
mytrip writes: "In a major change of policy, the Transportation Security Administration has announced that passengers refusing to show ID will no longer be able to fly. The policy change, announced on Thursday afternoon, will go into force on June 21, and will only affect passengers who refuse to produce ID. Passengers who claim to have lost or forgotten their proof of identity will still be able to fly.
As long as TSA has existed, passengers have been able to fly without showing ID to government agents. Doing so would result in a secondary search (a pat down and hand search of your carry-on bag), but passengers were still permitted to board their flights. In some cases, taking advantage of this right to refuse ID came with fringe benefits — being bumped to the front of the checkpoint queue."
As long as TSA has existed, passengers have been able to fly without showing ID to government agents. Doing so would result in a secondary search (a pat down and hand search of your carry-on bag), but passengers were still permitted to board their flights. In some cases, taking advantage of this right to refuse ID came with fringe benefits — being bumped to the front of the checkpoint queue."
Submission + - Full body scanners installed in 10 US Airports (usatoday.com)
Lapzilla writes: "Body-scanning machines that show images of people underneath their clothing are being installed in 10 of the nation's busiest airports in one of the biggest public uses of security devices that reveal intimate body parts.
The Transportation Security Administration recently started using body scans on randomly chosen airline passengers in Los Angeles, Baltimore, Denver, Albuquerque and New York's Kennedy airport.
Airports in Dallas, Detroit, Las Vegas and Miami will be added this month. Reagan National Airport near Washington starts using a body scanner Friday. A total of 38 machines will be in use within weeks."
Submission + - DHS Plans Changes in Air Passenger Screening (itworld.com)
narramissic writes: "The Department of Homeland Security on Thursday announced plans to revamp its Secure Flight program, with the agency no longer no longer assigning risk scores to passengers or using predictive behavior technology. In addition, the Transportation Security Administration, part of DHS, will have direct control of checking domestic passenger lists against terrorist watch lists, instead of the airlines, said DHS Secretary Michael Chertoff. But as Marc Rotenberg, executive director of privacy advocacy group the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC), notes, air passengers still can't see the reasons why they're targeted for extensive searches or kept off flights, nor can they correct bad information on the terrorist watch lists. 'The problems with the watch list are still valid and are not going away,' said Rotenberg."
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