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Seinfeld's Good Samaritan Law Now Reality? 735

Posted by samzenpus from the not-that-there-is-anything-wrong-with-that dept.
e3m4n writes "The fictitious 'good samaritan' law from the final episode of Seinfeld (the one that landed them in jail for a year) appears to be headed toward reality for California residents after the house passed this bill. There are some differences, such as direct action is not required, but the concept of guilt by association for not doing the right thing is still on the face of the bill."
Idle

Hitler Responds To the iPad 38

Posted by samzenpus from the final-tablet-solution dept.
One of the best in the "Hitler Responds" series.

Comment Re:If women are so smart . . . (Score 1) 928

by PO1FL (#30350698) Attached to: How Men and Women Badly Estimate Their Own Intelligence

Here's a hint those numbers are probably almost identical, women just don't admit that that happens to men as well.

Actually, guys do it to themselves by underreporting abuse because it doesn't fit with the traditional notions of gender, (citations at bottom), though I agree the numbers probably are equal, and may even be higher for boys because of the expectation that they won't report it.

Good luck getting the police to protect you from an abusive woman

Most police are male, so honestly this is another of those cases where it has to do with guys own expectations of other guys.

Here's a hint those numbers are probably almost identical, women just don't admit that that happens to men as well.

Good luck getting the police to protect you from an abusive woman

Most police are male, so honestly this is another of those cases where it has to do with guys own expectations of other guys.

Society as whole (or the legislature in question) writes the laws with an undue preference towards the female gender because of a perceived weakness compared to males in this aspect. So, its not some beat cop's fault when he (or she) enforces a mandatory arrest law.

This could be just me, but i don't think less of a male if his (female) significant other abuses him. In what way is he supposed to stop this, without subjecting himself to domestic violence claims (justified or not)?
Microsoft

Counter-Claims On Flaws In OOXML Meeting 96

Posted by kdawson from the what-went-on-behind-closed-doors dept.
ericatcw writes "Critics have charged that last week's ISO Ballot Resolution Meeting (BRM) to decide the fate of changes to Office Open XML standards proposal was too perfunctory and deviated from accepted ISO practices, possibly in an attempt to smooth the passage of the Microsoft format. This week, the ISO 'convener' of the BRM disputed those charges, saying that voting to dispose of 900 changes to the spec at once and allowing 'O' Observer countries to vote were the correct moves. ISO released a statement backing him up. Also, Patrick Durusau, editor of the competing OpenDocument Format specification and a late convert to OOXML's passage, also said that claims the process was flawed were overstated."
The Military

US Air Force Issues DMCA Takedown Notice 93

Posted by kdawson from the above-all dept.
palegray.net writes "Threat Level brings us the story of the US Air Force's use of the DMCA to forcibly remove a 'Cyber Command' recruitment video that they had previously thanked Threat Level for running. The article notes that US government works are not even subject to copyright, but this fact didn't stop YouTube from caving and taking down the video."
Education

Mega-Cash Prizes and Revolutionary Science 134

Posted by CmdrTaco from the big-piles-of-cash-often-motivate-people dept.
Bruce G Charlton writes "A new paper in Medical Hypotheses suggests that very big cash prizes could specifically be targeted to stimulate 'revolutionary' science. Usually, prizes tend to stimulate 'applied' science — as in the most famous example of Harrison's improved clock solving the 'longitude' problem. But for prizes successfully to stimulate revolutionary science the prizes need to be: 1. Very large (and we are talking seven figure 'pop star' earnings, here) to compensate for the high risk of failure when tackling major scientific problems, 2. Awarded to scientists at a young enough age that it influences their behavior in (about) their mid-late twenties — when they are deciding on their career path, and: 3. Include objective and transparent scientometric criteria, to prevent the prize award process being corrupted by 'political' incentives. Such mega-cash prizes, in sufficient numbers, might incentivize some of the very best young scientists to make more ambitious, long-term — but high-risk — career choices. The real winner of this would be society as a whole; since ordinary science can successfully be done by second-raters — but only first-rate scientists can tackle the toughest scientific problems."
Media

Norwegian Broadcaster Evaluates BitTorrent Distribution Costs 175

Posted by Soulskill from the leeches-welcome dept.
FrostPaw writes "An experiment was conducted recently by Norwegian broadcasting company NRK involving the release of the series 'Nordkalotten 365' (a wildlife program) in a DRM free format using BitTorrent. One of the broadcasters has posted the approximate figures for the overall distribution costs, and discussed his reasons for doing so. Their estimated cost for using Amazon S3 to offer the files through HTTP/FTP/etc. come to approximately 41,000 NOK (about $8,000 US). However, when using the Amazon servers as the originating seed and utilizing BitTorrent, their total cost for distribution of the entire project, thanks to generous seeds, would amount to approximately 1,700 NOK. The post with the original figures is available only in Norwegian.
Privacy

British Airport Will Require Fingerprints From Domestic Passengers 279

Posted by Soulskill from the you-can-trust-us dept.
ProfBooty brings us a story about England's Heathrow airport, which will begin fingerprinting passengers on its domestic flights later this month. Airport executives claim that the data will be stored for no longer than 24 hours, and will not be shared with law enforcement. We've previously discussed airport fingerprinting measures in the United States and Japan. Quoting: "All four million domestic passengers who will pass through Terminal 5 annually after it opens on March 27 will have four fingerprints taken, as well as being photographed, when they check in. To ensure the passenger boarding the aircraft is the same person, the fingerprinting process will be repeated just before they board the aircraft and the photograph will be compared with their face. Dr Gus Hosein, of the London School of Economics, an expert on the impact on technology on civil liberties, is one of the scheme's strongest critics. He said: 'There is no other country in the world that requires passengers travelling on internal flights to be fingerprinted. BAA says the fingerprint data will be destroyed, but the records of who has travelled within the country will not be, and it will provide a rich source of data for the police and intelligence agencies.'"
The Courts

RIAA Expert Witness Called "Borderline Incompetent" 170

Posted by kdawson from the tell-us-what-you-really-think dept.
NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "Prof. Johan Pouwelse of Delft University — one of the world's foremost experts on the science of P2P file sharing and the very same Prof. Pouwelse who stopped the RIAA's Netherlands counterpart in its tracks back in 2005 — has submitted an expert witness report characterizing the work of the RIAA's expert, Dr. Doug Jacobson, as 'borderline incompetence.' The report (PDF), filed in UMG v. Lindor, pointed out, among other things, that the steps needed to be taken in a copyright infringement investigation were not taken, that Jacobson's work lacked 'in-depth analysis' and 'proper scientific scrutiny,' that Jacobson's reports were 'factually erroneous,' and that they were contradicted by his own deposition testimony. This is the first expert witness report of which we are aware since the Free Software Foundation announced that it would be coming to the aid of RIAA defendants."

Spreading "1 in 5" Number Does More Harm Than Good 382

Posted by samzenpus from the think-of-the-children dept.
Regular Slashdot contributor Bennett Haselton has some opinions on child safety online and the use of fear mongering. Here are his thoughts. "The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children has been running online ads for several years saying that "Each year 1 in 5 children is sexually solicited online", a statistic that has been endlessly repeated, including by vendors of blocking software and by politicians who often paraphrase it to say that 1 in 5 children "are approached by online predators". While others have quietly documented the problems with this statistic, lawmakers still bring it out every year in a push for more online regulation (preempted this year only by the topic du jour of cyberbullying), so it's time for anti-censorship organizations to start campaigning more aggressively against the misleading "1 in 5" number. That means two things: framing the debate with more accurate numbers, and holding the parties accountable for disseminating the wrong ones -- and that means naming names, including those of organizations like the NCMEC that are normally beyond reproach." Read below for the rest.
Sci-Fi

Submission + - Paramount Casts New James T. Kirk (trektoday.com) 1

Submitted by
Tycoon Guy
Tycoon Guy writes: "TrekToday reports that Paramount is in talks with 27-year old actor Chris Pine to play the role of Captain Kirk in the new 'Star Trek' film. Pine is almost completely unknown, but he's also being courted to star opposite George Clooney in 'White Jazz,' so he's being called "the hottest new actor in town." In addition, 'Hulk' actor Eric Bana was cast today as Nero, the main villain of Trek XI."
Networking

Submission + - CERN Collider ready; get ready for data deluge

Submitted by
slashthedot
slashthedot writes: "The world's largest science experiment, a physics experiment designed to determine the nature of matter, will produce a mountain of data. And because the world's physicists cannot move to the mountain, an army of computer research scientists is preparing to move the mountain to the physicists.
At universities across the United States and at other institutions around the world, teams of computer research scientists and physicists are preparing for the largest physics experiment ever.
The collider will give protons a pop hoping to catch a glimpse of the Big Bang, or at least the subatomic particles that are thought to have last been seen at the big event 10 billion to 15 billion years ago that led to the formation of the universe. The CERN collider will begin producing data in November, and from the trillions of collisions of protons it will generate 15 petabytes of data per year.
By comparison, 15 petabytes would be the equivalent of all of the information in all of the university libraries in the United States seven times over. It would be the equivalent of 22 Internets, or more than 1,000 Libraries of Congress. And there is no search function.
More at: http://www.hpcwire.com/hpc/1572567.html"
Programming

Submission + - Shredded secret police files being reassembled

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: German researchers at the Frauenhofer Institute said Wednesday that they were launching an attempt to reassemble millions of shredded East German secret police files using complicated computerized algorithms. The files were shredded as the Berlin Wall fell in 1989 and it became clear that the East German regime was finished. Panicking officials of the Stasi secret police attempted to destroy the vast volumes of material they had kept on everyone from their own citizens to foreign leaders.

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