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Comment Re:Bitcoin (Score 2) 263

Lol 5-13% inflation? Um, try the vast majority of the last 20 years inflation as been somewhere between 1-4%. Source ( http://inflationdata.com/Infla... ) 1-4% is a healthy range for an economy, if it is below or above bad things will happen (Deflation on the low side, runaway inflation on the other end). Deflation causes people to sit on their money, not invest in new tech, not invest in the future and not expand their businesses (who wants to expand when the money used to do so would be worth more then the investment made?).

A zero percent inflation rate is unattainable (population growth, a million other factors) so keeping it around and low in the 1-4 range is good for everybody.

Electronic Frontier Foundation

DOJ Often Used Cell Tower Impersonating Devices Without Explicit Warrants 146

Via the EFF comes news that, during a case involving the use of a Stingray device, the DOJ revealed that it was standard practice to use the devices without explicitly requesting permission in warrants. "When Rigmaiden filed a motion to suppress the Stingray evidence as a warrantless search in violation of the Fourth Amendment, the government responded that this order was a search warrant that authorized the government to use the Stingray. Together with the ACLU of Northern California and the ACLU, we filed an amicus brief in support of Rigmaiden, noting that this 'order' wasn't a search warrant because it was directed towards Verizon, made no mention of an IMSI catcher or Stingray and didn't authorize the government — rather than Verizon — to do anything. Plus to the extent it captured loads of information from other people not suspected of criminal activity it was a 'general warrant,' the precise evil the Fourth Amendment was designed to prevent. ... The emails make clear that U.S. Attorneys in the Northern California were using Stingrays but not informing magistrates of what exactly they were doing. And once the judges got wind of what was actually going on, they were none too pleased:"

Comment Re:Results from a Brit... (Score 2, Insightful) 334

Or perhaps that since the results were made public and reported on, smarter people, the people who read the news relatively currently, have actively looked for and taken the quiz. People who like to take little quizzes like this do it because scoring higher probably makes them feel a little better about themselves. Uninformed people probably don't seek out things that will, in all likelyhood, make them feel dumb.

Math

Distributed.net Finds Optimal 25-Mark Golomb Ruler 265

kpearson writes "Distributed.net's 8-year-old OGR-25 distributed computing project has just proven conclusively that the predicted shortest 25-mark Golomb ruler is optimal. 'The total length of the ruler is 480, with marks at positions: 0 12 29 39 72 91 146 157 160 161 166 191 207 214 258 290 316 354 372 394 396 431 459 467 480. (This ruler may alternatively be expressed in terms of the distance between those positions, which is how dnetc displays them: 12-17-10-33-19-...).' 124,387 people participated in the project and two people found the shortest ruler, one on October 10, 2007 and the other on March 24, 2008."
Books

Entertainment Weekly Bemoans Lack of Great Science Books 257

Bryan writes "A recent headline at Entertainment Weekly suggests that the '100 Best Reads' of the last 25 years do not include a single science book (not even a popular science book). In response, cosmologist Sean Carroll at Cosmic Variance has given an interesting analysis of EW's disappointing list, and Soul Physics is calling for suggestions on the Greatest Physics Books of the Last 25 Years. For all the great literature that science has produced in the last 25 years, EW's list seems to represent a major shortcoming in the field: it still isn't diffusing into popular culture." I'm not sure what Entertainment Weekly's standing to complain would come from. That aside, have science books ever in modern times been a driving force greater than ones intended as (mere) entertainment, religious instruction, etc? I'd put anything by Richard Feynman on this list, though.
Privacy

Chicago Links School Cameras To Police 156

Farakin brings us a story about how cameras in roughly 200 Chicago schools are being connected to police headquarters and the city's 911 emergency center. The goal of the effort is to "consolidate video surveillance," and it will involve both routine monitoring and real-time updates to officers on their way to a crisis. According the the Chicago Tribune, "The mayor acknowledged the cameras provide only limited security, citing a spate of shootings in recent days that have claimed young victims during after-school hours." The story also contains a video in which Mayor Daley indicated that he expects the cameras to serve as a deterrent now that people know they're under the eye of the police.
Privacy

Journal Journal: No good deed goes unpunished...

A few nights ago I was reading my email when I got some phish; an email broken English stating that I MUST use their software. (Not included in the email but linked to instead) to access my Monster.com account. Notwithstanding Monster's WAY too lazy security policy on email addresses (I get a few "shipping coordinator" offers a week); something about this piqued my curiosity.
Patents

Submission + - Microsoft argues software not patentable

MCRocker writes: "Linux-Watch reports that in a Supreme Court appeal, 'Microsoft vs. AT&T', Microsoft and a surprise supporter, the Software Freedom Law Center, are effectively arguing against software patents.
SFLC is asking the Supreme Court to decide against U.S. patents applying to software that is copied and distributed overseas.
For nitty-gritty details, check out The Groklaw story."

Global Warming Debunked? 1120

limbicsystem writes, "I'm a scientist. I like Al Gore. I donate to the Sierra club, I bicycle everywhere and I eat granola. And I just read a very convincing article in the UK Telegraph that makes me think that the 'scientific consensus' on global warming is more than a little shaky. Now IANACS (I am not a climate scientist). And the Telegraph is notoriously reactionary. Can anyone out there go through this piece and tell me why it might be wrong? Because it seems to be solid, well researched, and somewhat damning of a host of authorities (the UN, the editors of Nature, the Canadian Government) who seem to have picked a side in the global warming debate without looking at the evidence." The author of the Telegraph piece is Christopher Monckton, a retired journalist and former policy advisor to Margaret Thatcher.

AMD Unveils Barcelona Quad-Core Details 206

mikemuch writes, "At today's Microprocessor Forum, Intel's Ben Sander laid out architecture details of the number-two CPU maker's upcoming quad-core Opterons. The processors will feature sped-up floating-point operations, improvements to IPC, more memory bandwidth, and improved power management. In his analysis on ExtremeTech, Loyd Case considers that the shift isn't as major as Intel's move from NetBurst to Core 2, but AMD claims that its quad core is true quad core, while Intel's is two dual-cores grafted together."

Analyzing 20,000 MySpace Passwords 177

Rub3X writes "Author found 20 thousand MySpace passwords on a phishing site and did some tests on them. They were tested for strength, length and a number of other things. Also tested was the most popular password, and the most popular email service used when registering for myspace."

Ballmer Speaks on His Solo Act 196

Carl Bialik from WSJ writes "In his first one-on-one interview since Bill Gates's retirement announcement, Steve Ballmer tells the Wall Street Journal he is bullish on Microsoft's investments in online services, and he dismisses as 'random malarkey' the idea that Microsoft is having trouble hiring and keeping the kind of brilliant employees that have always been the company's competitive weapon. Here's Ballmer on Gates's departure: 'As co-leaders of the business, I could allow Bill to be the full-time champion of innovation. And [now] with me really being the guy who's here every day running the place, I must be the champion of innovation.' And on competing with Google: 'We're going to compete. We're going to be in the online business. We are going to have a core around online. We're going to be excellent. That, I would tell people, to count on...'"

Safe Landing For Space Shuttle Discovery 106

dylanduck writes "Discovery is back safe and sound, despite minor problems with a leaky power unit and a last minute change of approach direction to the runway. The mission tested some post-Columbia safety changes, and also set up the space station for future construction. But in some ways, the tough job starts now - NASA has just 40 days or so to get Atlantis up."

Two-Tier Internet & The End of Freedom of Speech 364

Max Fomitchev writes "The proposed Two-Tier Internet bill threatens not only to raise prices on goods and services served online but also to seriously hamper free speech on Internet by allowing telecom providers choking user pages and blogs not associated with major content providers. What a perfect way of censorship..."

Cell Division Reversed for the First Time 238

SubtleGuest writes "Gary J. Gorbsky, Ph.D., a scientist with the Oklahoma Medical Research Foundation, has found a way to reverse the process of cell division. The discovery could have important implications for the treatment of cancer, birth defects and numerous other diseases and disorders. Gorbsky's findings appear in the April 13 issue of the journal Nature. "No one has gotten the cell cycle to go backwards before now," said Gorbsky. "This shows that certain events in the cell cycle that have long been assumed irreversible may, in fact, be reversible." In the lab, Gorbsky and his OMRF colleagues were able to control the protein responsible for the division process, interrupt and reverse the event, sending duplicate chromosomes back to the center of the original cell, an event once thought impossible. Here is a video of it happening."

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