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Comment Re:Blue Lives Matter (Score 1) 76

by andreMA (#62196913) Attached to: Missouri Highway Patrol Mistakenly Sends Batman-themed Alert
They sure as hell won't be sending notices when their (hopefully former) cops are convicted of anything. Or even if one of them is convicted of murder on duty. I have far more interest in those things than a cop with an "injury". I've seen cops taken to the ER for minor abrasions and don't care about that either.

Comment Re:..or (Score 1) 186

by andreMA (#44707081) Attached to: Tor Usage More Than Doubles In August
I doubt that Silk Road is a significant factor in increased Tor usage, but if it is Bitcoin being in the news recently (and the attendent running in circles like chicken little by law enforcement) might be a factor..
Android

Why Apple's DUI Checkpoint App Ban Is Stupid 228

Posted by timothy from the tip-of-the-corporate-crony-iceberg dept.
hookskat writes "Reason.tv Editor in Chief Nick Gillespie reacts to Apple's decision to ban DUI Checkpoint Apps from the App Store, writing: 'Let me add something even more damning of this latest development in corporate cave-ins to legally protected free speech and I'm gonna bold it for emphasis: Some police departments actually supply the data used in such apps because they reduce the number of drunk drivers on the roads! Somehow, I'm thinking that Steve Jobs circa 1984...would have told U.S. senators sending threatening letters about computer-based info sharing to take a hike. Or at least to spend time on, I don't know, creating a freaking budget for the country rather than worrying about regulating something that helps reduce impaired driving.' Last month, after RIM caved on the same question, Reason.tv released this video on the subject of banning DUI checkpoint apps."
Image

Website Sells Pubic Lice 319

Posted by samzenpus from the gift-that-keeps-on-giving dept.
A British website called crabrevenge.com will help you prove that there is literally nothing you can't find online by selling you pubic lice. A disclaimer on the site says the creators "do not endorse giving people lice," and the lice are for "novelty purposes only." The company also boasts about a facility "where we do all of our parasite husbandry and carefully considered selective breeding." Three different packages are available: "Green package - One colony that can lay as many as 30 eggs for about $20. Blue package - Three colonies to share with your friends or freeze a batch or two for about $35. Red package - A vial of 'shampoo-resistant F-strain crabs' which can take up to two weeks to kill for about $52."
Science

The Fruit Fly Drosophila Gets a New Name 136

Posted by timothy from the hope-you-used-pencil dept.
G3ckoG33k writes "The name of the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster will change to Sophophora melangaster. The reason is that scientists have by now discovered some 2,000 species of the genus and it is becoming unmanageably large. Unfortunately, the 'type species' (the reference point of the genus), Drosophila funebris, is rather unrelated to the D. melanogaster, and ends up in a distant part of the relationship tree. However, geneticists have, according to Google Scholar, more than 300,000 scientific articles describing innumerable aspects of the species, and will have to learn the new name as well as remember the old. As expected, the name change has created an emotional (and practical) stir all over media. While name changes are frequent in science, as they describe new knowledge about relationships between species, these changes rarely hit economically relevant species, and when they do, people get upset."
Data Storage

Need Help Salvaging Data From an Old Xenix System 325

Posted by timothy from the warrior-princess dept.
Milo_Mindbender writes "I've recently gotten ahold of an old Altos 586 Xenix system (a late '80s Microsoft flavor of Unix) that has one of the first multi-user BBS systems in the US on it, and I want to salvage the historical BBS posts off it. I'm wondering if anyone remembers what format Xenix used on the 10MB (yes MB) IDE hard drive and if it can still be read on a modern Linux system. This system is quite old, has no removable media or ethernet and just barely works. The only other way to get data off is a slow serial port. I've got a controller that should work with the disk, but don't want to tear this old machine apart without some hope that it will work. Anyone know?"
Government

Bill To Ban All Salt In Restaurant Cooking 794

Posted by timothy from the too-stupid-to-live-as-long-as-possible dept.
lord_rotorooter writes "Felix Ortiz, D-Brooklyn, introduced a bill that would ruin restaurant food and baked goods as we know them. The measure (if passed) would ban the use of all forms of salt in the preparation and cooking of food for all restaurants or bakeries. While the use of too much salt can contribute to health problems, the complete banning of salt would have negative impacts on food chemistry. Not only does salt enhance flavor, it controls bacteria, slows yeast activity and strengthens dough by tightening gluten. Salt also inhibits the growth of microbes that spoil cheese."
Image

The 10 Most Absurd Scientific Papers 127

Posted by samzenpus from the burning-potential-of-fire dept.
Lanxon writes "It's true: 'Effects of cocaine on honeybee dance behavior,' 'Fellatio by fruit bats prolongs copulation time,' and 'Are full or empty beer bottles sturdier and does their fracture-threshold suffice to break the human skull?' are all genuine scientific research papers, and all were genuinely published in journals or similar publications. Wired's presentation of a collection of the most bizarrely-named research papers contains seven other gems, including one about naval fluff and another published in The Journal of Sex Research."

Comment Re:But where's the fines? (Score 3, Insightful) 359

by andreMA (#31252870) Attached to: Federal Judge Orders Schools To Stop Laptop Spying

We don't actually know for sure whether the school did anything wrong.

We're pretty sure they did, if we take at face value the statements of the district administrators.

Assuming the only activations were in the case of laptops being misplaced or stolen. as claimed publicly by the District, by pursuing it themselves rather than turning it over to the police department, they were acting as private investigators.

Pennsylvania, like most states, requires licenses for PIs. I strongly doubt the persons activating the cameras were so licensed.

That's the most generous reading of events I can come up with at this point.

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