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Government

Caffeinated Alcoholic Drinks May Be Illegal 398

Posted by kdawson from the so-much-for-irish-coffee dept.
Anonymusing writes "The FDA has announced an investigation into the safety and legality of alcoholic beverages containing caffeine. As a Wall Street Journal blog reports, two major beer companies, MillerCoors and Anheuser-Busch, stopped producing caffeinated alcoholic drinks last year after reports surfaced of increased negative effects compared to caffeine-free alcohol. CNN notes that, according to FDA rules, 'food additives require premarket approval based on data demonstrating safety submitted to the agency' — and caffeine is a food additive. The 26 targeted beverage makers have 30 days to respond."

Comment Re:How about cable and sat boxes that can power do (Score 1) 609

by philmack (#26363499) Attached to: New Energy Efficiency Rules For TVs Sold In California
My Scientific Atlanta 8300HDC cable box does this. When it is sitting there doing nothing with the television off, I hear the hard drive spin up every evening exactly 5 minutes before a scheduled recording start.

The downside of the drive powering down is that I can be watching one channel live for hours, then I miss what someone says and click the go-back-a-few-seconds and that causes the drive to spin up (which takes usualy 5 to 15 seconds) and start recording from that point, defeating one of the purposes of the DVR.

~Phil

Comment Speculation didn't work out (Score 1) 588

by philmack (#25499763) Attached to: Why are oil prices dropping?
All of the "speculators" were expecting the value of oil to go up so they invest and drive prices up. They were wrong about the then future/now current value of the oil, and as that comes to sight prices are driven to the current expectation of oil's future value.

The price of oil reflects the future value of oil.
The Internet

Submission + - Honeybees prompt faster Internet server technology (networkworld.com) 1

Submitted by
coondoggie
coondoggie writes: "Honeybee intelligence can be used to improve the speed and efficiency of Internet servers by up to 25% according to Georgia Institute of Technology researchers.Honeybees somehow manage to efficiently collect a lot of nectar with limited resources and no central command. Such swarm intelligence of these amazingly organized bees can also be used to improve the efficiency of Internet servers faced with similar challenges. http://www.networkworld.com/community/node/22045"
Privacy

Submission + - Japan to start fingerprinting foreigners again

Submitted by
rabiddeity
rabiddeity writes: "If you're planning to visit Japan sometime in the near future, you may want to reconsider. Last year, Japan's parliament passed a measure requiring foreigners to submit their fingerprints when entering the country. The measures, which apply to all foreigners over 16 regardless of visa status, take effect tomorrow. The worst part: the fingerprints are stored in a national database for an "unspecified time", and will be made available to both domestic police and foreign governments."
The Courts

Submission + - FBI Doesn't Tell Courts About Bogus Evidence

Submitted by dprovine
dprovine writes: According to a joint investigation by series of articles in The Washington Post and 60 Minutes, a forensic test used by the FBI for decades is known to be invalid. The National Academy of Science issued a report in 2004 that FBI investigators had given "problematic" testimony to juries. The FBI later stopped using "bullet lead analysis", but sent a letter to law enforcement officials saying that they still fully supported the science behind it. Hundreds of criminal defendants — some already convicted in part on the testimony of FBI experts — were not informed about the problems with the evidence used against them in court. Does anyone at the Justice Department even care about what effect this will have on how the public in general (and juries in particular) regards the trustworthiness of FBI testimony?
The Almighty Buck

Submission + - Close but no Cigar from Netflix 1

Submitted by
Ponca City, We Love You
Ponca City, We Love You writes: "In October 2006, Netflix, the online movie rental service, announced that it would award $1 million to the first team to improve the accuracy of Netflix's movie recommendations by 10% based on personal preferences. Each contestant was given a set of data from which three million predictions were made about how certain users rated certain movies and Netflix compared that list with the actual ratings and generated a score for each team. More than 27,000 contestants from 161 countries submitted their entries and some got close, but not close enough. Today Netflix announced that it is awarding an annual progress prize of $50,000 to a group of researchers at AT&T Labs, who improved the current recommendation system by 8.43 percent but the $1 million grand prize is still up for grabs and a $50,000 progress prize will be awarded every year until the 10 percent goal is met. As part of the rules of the competition, the team was required to disclose their solution publicly. (pdf)"
The Courts

Submission + - School District Threatens Suit Over Parent's Blog

Submitted by penguin_dance
penguin_dance writes: A Texas School District is threatening to sue a parent over what it terms, "libelous material" or other "legally offensive" postings on her web site and are demanding their removal. Web site owner, Sandra Tetley, says they're just opinions. The legal firm sending the demand cited 16 items, half posted by Tetley, the rest by anonymous commentators to her blog. The alleged, libelous postings, "accuse Superintendent Lynne Cleveland, trustees and administrators of lying, manipulation, falsifying budget numbers, using their positions for 'personal gain,' violating the Open Meetings Act and spying on employees, among other things."

The problem for the district is that previous courts have ruled that governments can't sue for libel. So now, in a follow up story, the lawyers say, "the firm would file a suit on behalf of administrators in their official capacities and individual board members. The suit, however, would be funded from the district's budget." Tetley, so far hasn't backed down although she said, "she'll consult with her attorneys before deciding what, if anything, to delete."

What was that about "personal gain"?
Input Devices

Submission + - How to allow multiple physical console users

Submitted by
_Sharp'r_
_Sharp'r_ writes: "I'm trying to design the least expensive way to make OpenOffice, email, and a web browser available to students in a new charter elementary school. In my past experience working with charitable computer donations, I can usually get three to four working computers out of five donated "broken" computer systems, usually with plenty of monitors, keyboards and mice left over. I'd like to use one computer for multiple students by attaching multiple monitors, usb keyboards and mice.

The infrastructure is FreeBSD, with only a few MS Windows systems for certain staff. We're planning to use either FreeBSD or Linux with remotely stored home directories for the donated student desktops. These are multi-user operating systems in terms of physical resources required and operation, but only one physical console per machine. What drivers/OS versions support multiple local input devices and monitors that can be attached to a specific login session? Will this require virtualization? Is there a config I haven't found that you can use to assign these devices to specific ttys? Have you done this before?"
Patents

Submission + - Amazon Patents Use of Humans to Assist Computers

Submitted by
theodp
theodp writes: "Amazon's latest patent, the Hybrid Machine/Human Computing Arrangement, reads like scary Sci-Fi, with claims covering the use of humans 'of college educated, at most high school educated, at most elementary school educated, and not formally educated' to perform subtasks dispatched by a computer. From the patent: 'For examples, the task on hand requires French speaking humans, and Task Server has requested that each subtask be performed by at least 10 humans with a past accuracy record of at least 90%.' Yikes."

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