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Shark

New Real Life Laser-Rifle Cuts Through Metal Like a Blowtorch 143

dryriver writes "We've seen real laser guns before pulling off tricks like starting small fires, or popping black balloons. That's cool, sure, but it's got nothing—on this handheld laser rifle. Developed by TWI this laser-cutter was initially designed for use by robots, but a few recent tweaks including a pistol-grip and a trigger made it into a human-sized rifle. It is designed specifically with nuclear decommission in mind, specifically chopping up huge pieces of metal infrastructure into bite-sized bits that are easily disposed of. And while it's definitely suited for that, it has some short-comings compared typical rifles. That range is pretty low, for instance, and it's not exactly mobile."
EU

Pirate Party MEP Helps Draft New Credit Card Company Controls 129

Dupple writes with this excerpt: "It has become an increasingly large problem that Visa, MasterCard, and Paypal control the valve to any money flow on the planet. Today, the European Parliament established this as a clear problem, and initiated regulation of the companies, limiting and strictly regulating their right to refuse service. The Pirate Party was the initiator of this regulation, following the damaging cutoff of donations to WikiLeaks, after said organization had performed journalism that was embarrassing to certain governments."

Comment Re:Rather shaky "proof"... (Score 1) 3

So, Republicans have been getting 8-10% more votes in larger districts than in smaller ones in Arizona -- that's proof? Only in wishful thinking of "progressives".

Not only in Arizona, no. He started his research in Arizona, and eventually learned that this is happening across the country. Obviously you did not RTFA (Or not well). And there should be no correlation between district size and voting results. For example, large cities often have a mix of large and small voting districts that are right next to each other, with very similar demographics.

Privacy

Ubuntu Will Now Have Amazon Ads Pre-Installed 646

An anonymous reader writes "Scheduled to be released next month, Ubuntu 12.10 now includes both Amazon ads in the user's dash and by default an Amazon store in the user's launcher. The reason for these 'features'? Affiliate revenue. Despite previous controversies with Banshee and Yahoo, Canonical is 'confident it will be an interesting and useful feature for our 12.10 users.' But are the 'users' becoming products?" Update: 09/22 19:35 GMT by T : Reader bkerensa scoffs, calling the Amazon integration unobtrusive, and says objections to its inclusion in the OS should be ignored, "because in reality ads will not be found in 12.10 unless you are seeing them on a third party website you go to in a web browser." He's got screenshots.

Comment On the dangers of voting machines (Score 5, Informative) 245

Submitted this related article to Slashdot a few months ago. Bev Harris looked into this as well.

To sum up the above link: An interesting phenomenon has occurred in every state of this year's Republican primaries. Votes appear to be flipped away from other candidates in favor of Romney, with a 99% correlation to precinct size. Although votes are "canvassed" (checked) after each primary, the methods used are primarily designed to detect vote stuffing, rather than vote flipping.

This phenomenon has recently been shown to be absent if you can get your hands on poll tapes from individual machines, rather than from voting tabulators (machines that count the totals from the various voting machines).

Voting machines are just scary stuff. More so since poll tapes are not always made readily available. Thankfully, a bill was recently introduced that would require poll tapes from individual machines (not just tabulators) to be made available by the next day following an election.
Businesses

Submission + - US Mobile Carriers Won't Brick Stolen Phones (msn.com)

WheezyJoe writes: "NBC News has some wicked disturbing security video of people getting beat up... over their smart phones. And it's on the rise. Police Chiefs like D.C.'s Cathy Lanier are asking US mobile carriers to brick phones that are reported stolen to dry up what must be a big underground market for your favorite Android or iPhone, but right now they won't do it. So I suppose we're best leaving our mobile phones at home?"

Comment Re:Dying from lack of surprise... (Score 1) 765

The first two issues here are clearly local government, while the third may be a state OR federal government issue. However, in my experience, when people talk about "the government" they are usually referring to the federal government. I would imagine that was the case here.

Furthermore, I suspect that he was being slightly hyperbolic when he said "always" making it worse. Few libertarians argue that all government is completely bad. The (federal!) government could get FAR smaller without cutting off basic services.

Comment Re:8000 miles = Close shave (Score 5, Funny) 183

So the same as our tactical nukes ~ 750 KT, enough to wipe out Manhattan. Perhaps statistically the chance of hitting a major city is low, but if it does hit a city, it would be tragic and the stats would no longer matter. Even if it was a 1 in a billion chance, I'd be all for spending a trillion dollars trying to nuke it out of existence.

You work for the TSA, don't you?

Comment Re:Nostalgia (Score 1) 98

The year we got our NES for Christmas, we ended up opening Zelda before the system. We were so upset that Santa didn't realize we had a 2600 and not an NES. Obviously it was a big deal when we did unwrap the actual system.

Then we played Zelda all night. My sister couldn't stay in the same room. The dungeon music made her so nervous she had to go to the bathroom!

When I got the GB version I was so excited I was shaking in the car outside the video game store. Definitely my favorite franchise ever.

Comment Re:Training for the future (Score 1) 515

This, like so many other school programs, is an egregious violation of the students' rights.

Not so. Most parents would happily sign a release if it meant not having to go through truancy charges.

You seem to be ignoring the fact that truancy charges themselves are a violation of an individual's right to raise his own children. Guess they already got to you!

Comment Re:Is it me (Score 1) 479

Is it me or this guy gets all the attention that should instead be devoted to the leaks' content? I bet most people following assange' ascention to stardom don't even read wikileaks.

I don't think of that as being a bad thing. The leaks in general draw attention to the US's abuse of power, but so do the US's (open) actions and statements regarding Assange and Manning.

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