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typodupeerror

Comment Without reason against... (Score 1) 785

wars, what is the expected outcome? Given any purported defense, threat or desired conquest, what would stop deployment. We have trouble with control now.

The imposition of one's will over others or the destruction of their lives in any form without the possibility of cost to one's own life is not something I am comfortable with, given history as a guide.

Military operation and, the other shoe, civilian law enforcement should not be given costless and automated imposition, until we become more tolerant, fair, accurate and less dominating. (At which time the necessity will be less?)
Biotech

Researchers Simulate Building Block of Rat's Brain 224

slick_shoes passes on an article in the Guardian about the Blue Brain project in Switzerland that has developed a computer simulation of the neocortical column — the basic building block of the neocortex, the higher functioning part of our brains — of a two-week-old rat. (Here is the project site.) The model, running on an IBM Blue Gene/L supercomputer, simulates 10,000 neurons and all their interconnections. It behaves exactly like its biological counterpart. Thousands of such NCCs make up a rat's neocortex, and millions a human's. "Project director Henry Markram believes that with the state of technology today, it is possible to build an entire rat's neocortex. From there, it's cats, then monkeys and finally, a human brain."
Censorship

Teens Prosecuted For Racy Photos 740

An anonymous reader writes with a story on CNet about two teens who were prosecuted under anti-child-porn laws in Florida for having made and emailed racy photos of each other. Both were under 18 years old, so the resulting pictures are clearly illegal; but the teens' intent was not to share the pictures with anyone else. An appeals court majority opinion found that emailing the photos from one of the kids to the other was a careless act that should, it seems, bring down the full weight of the law. A minority opinion argued that the laws were intended to protect children from exploitative adults, not from other children.

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