Hmm. A new program to uniquely track and identify scientists springs up in the middle of an all out war between science and the idiocracy. Totally coincidental. *adjusts tin foil hat*

The Writers Guild of America requires that all members have unique names. There cannot be two of the same person as to prevent confusion. This is evident with David X. Cohen, well known as a writer for The Simpsons and Futurama. His real name is David S. Cohen but the Writers Guild of America already had a David S., so he took David X. Cohen.

Seems to me that's it's too low on both the top end and bottom end. You couldn't use it for detecting real hotspots on the top end and it's so sensitive on the bottom end that even exposure to direct sunlight will have everyone panicking. I think it's more likely to cause irrational behavior than help.

if they get up to a half mS, you probably get pop-up ads for the closest pharmacy with iodine pills.

This phone is a ruse, to captalise by make people think they can manage this. In other words, it is a comfort item, not an actual safety measure.

It also works as a propaganda item. "Testing radiation levels is the new normal, it's even on my phone, see!" The management of public perception is far easier than the management of spent fuel in reactor 4.

The real, long-term prospect for anyone living in the Fukushima shadow is too horrible to contemplate.

The new, official story - just made public - is that the initial release from TEPCO was 2.5 X higher than was admitted at the time. If this is what they are recalcitrantly admitting to, after incontrovertible evidence, how bad is it really? After all, the utility and the government both demonstrate they cannot be trusted to prefer health and safety over saving-face.

So? Buy a phone and whistle past the graveyard...

Why don't they call a 'radiation detector' by its name? It's a Geiger Counter. Way to make a name for something fall out of common usage...

Unless it contains a Geiger–Müller tube, it isn't much of a Geiger counter. Since this phone apparently contains a 'chip'(quite possibly just a CCD of some sort packaged so that most of the pxel hits can be assumed to be from high energy radiation, possibly something cleverer/more specialized), and since cramming a gas tube and high-voltage driver circuits into a cellphone is a pain, I'm guessing that there is nothing 'Geiger' about this counter...

There are numerous requirements for something to be a contract in US law and the EULA fails a number of them. The biggest is contracts have to happen before the exchange of goods/money. They can't be ex post facto. So if a company requires you to sign a contract before you buy the software, that's a real contract. An EULA that you are introduced to after the sale, not a contract.

Easy to see here at work too. I work for a state university so they are very big on the "only approved people can sign contracts for the university" thing. Any contract has to go through the contracts office and be approved by the lawyers. EULAs? They tell us don't worry just click through. In other words, they are confident the EULAs don't bind us to shit. If they though they did, we'd have to get them all approved.

They're a much bigger drop than small claims actions though. Since most people don't bother with the small claims stuff.

Sure the money ends up going to the lawyers, and there's no real benefit to those harmed. There is some cost to the company involved though, which they'll avoid almost entirely without class actions and just keep it for themselves.

As opposed to the infinite "Legal Wisdom" of mbone, I'll take Scalia any day of the week.

FYI: The Supreme Court exists to INTERPRET LAW, not to create it. So unless there is a law on the books that says that you can't put a clause preventing the signatory party from engaging in Class Action suites in a binding agreement, then how can any Court rule that you can't?

If you start letting judges making up laws, what sort of law shall we have? Easy: You get Kangaroo Courts where the laws are made up to fit the ends of the Court.

Billing issues or service issues?
So you mean the minor details of not being cheated out of money or the service you are paying for?

What other interaction does one have with these companies than getting service and being billed?

It isn't hate speech.
It's the girl sharing her OPINION on same-sex marriage, and backing-it-up with a citation from a 4000 year old book (Leviticus if I recall correctly). - Or - have we taken-away that right to share our opinions? Is that now verboten, simply because we don't like the opinion? And how does that justify youtube leaving up the death threat videos targeted at this young woman? Those should be pulled too.

Both. That piece of wall-mounted paper has been publicly displaying the artwork for years, to every person who's passed by that window in front... According to my trade-secret formula, that is at least 27 billion people who've received an unlicensed viewing of the artwork, and at a reasonable rate of $200,000 per incident, the paper poster alone is responsible for $5.4 quadrillion in lost revenue, which is clearly backed up by the fact that the poster-printing company has not made $5.4 quadrillion in profit since the poster was printed.

While it is an interesting argument, it is still fundamentally flawed.

YouTube is not the one performing the copyright infringement. "They" don't like to hear this, but "They" are required to control and defend their copyrights, and nobody else.

To say that YouTube needs to verify every single possible iota of content for proper use of legal entitlements is just plain crazy. That would be like IHOP being required to frisk you down, take your smartphone and tablets, and then somehow check to see if you have the legal entitlements to all IP on your person. I say somehow, because the logistics of identifying the copyright holder, contacting them, and the copyright holder even assessing the truth is damn near insurmountable.

No.

It needs to be a system where the copyright holders are responsible for administering the copyrights that we, The People, gave to them. I don't think society would have decided to give them those copyrights if they were going to go all psycho-batshit-nuts and started conscripting large groups of citizens into their private copyright armies to terrorize the masses.

At some point, enough is enough, and it no longer serves the original purpose, which was to enrich society by providing a stream of valuable content for the Public Domain.

Why yes, you're right. On that note, I'd like to share my opinion on niggers and how that problem should be handled.........

And you should have that right even though this is reprehensible.

The rest of us are also free to decide not to associate with you. That's how it should be handled. I do not want some authority punishing you for it. You simply won't have too many friends and lots of people may decide not to do business with you and that's enough.

It is hate speech and youtube can take it down if they want to. I suggest she go speak it in public, where she has that right. I fully support her right to do that, but I will not force youtube to carry material they do not want to.

Many peoples opinions are hate speech, there is no difference. The fact that excuse for this is a very old book of myths makes it no better.

This is the sort of thing we need to see real progress in self replicating bio-artificial beings.

Just a few steps remain:
- Mutate some bacteria to contain one of those integrated chemical chips as a byproduct of their nutrition.
- Mutate that bacteria again to create different (on mytosis) gates depending on fed nutrients, temperature or somesuch.
- Find the correct nutrient/temperature/... map (base) over which, when the bacteria are grown, they create a particular circuit.
- Find which particular circuit creates a map that self replicates.
- Feel proud as our species is replaced by the ultra-intelligent logical-gate-bacteria-overlords.

We're going to need a LOT more knowledge about how neurons, axions, and other brain components work first. Just because the circuit is based on ions doesn't mean it's anything at all like an animal's brain works. Note that TFS says "Like silicon-based chips, the integrated chemical chip contains logic gates, such as NAND gates, that form the basis of digital electronics by allowing for the construction of all logical functions."

Your brain contains no digital circutry. The brain is analog, not binary.

However, if you're referring to cybernetic implants to help those suffering from brain damage, then perhaps. I don't know enough about the brain or these ionic logic gates to be able to tell. I'm pretty sure there's going to need a hell of a lot more research on the brain to find out.

I've always wondered why they haven't studied insect brains. Flies do way more complex things than any robot so far invented, and would surely be easier to understand than the workings of a mammal brain.

Linux copyright holders should be involved in compliance actions on embedded systems.

I believe they MUST be involved. As a 3rd party SFLC really has no say ( IIRC the legal term is "standing".). IANAL but If someone strips the GPL from some code and puts that code in their product, the copyright holders are the only one who can legitimately make a complaint. The users may notice, but their rights to source code are defined in the GPL - which is absent in such a case.

"It is thanks to the SFLC that companies are afraid to use GPL code in their products... they think, quite reasonably, that it just isn't worth the hassle. Which is better, buy a licence for non-free software (fixed, one off cost) or use free software and pay for lawyers to be sure you are in compliance?"

Its better to use free software and pay for lawyers, because;
  - You get the source code.
  - You _should_ have a lawyer review non-free software licences also, so its not an extra cost.

If corporations are afraid to use GPL software because they are terrified they might have to _share_ something then there are little or no benefits to the Free software community from them being involved.

i.e. The invisible hand will slap down such corporations.

IMO this is a good thing, especially if it means greater pressure on the likes of HTC and other Android vendors to be more proactive and release the kernel source for their devices when the devices and binaries are released instead of taking months and repeated prodding by the copyright holder to get code out there.

The creator of Busybox just got sick of helping the SFLC line its pockets by discouraging the use of free software. I think in the end he disowned Busybox and started a new project to do the same thing, under the BSD licence.

Just in case anyone is paying attention to the AC here... The creator of Busybox was Bruce Perens who went on to be the 2nd head of Debian where he authored the Free Software Guidelines. He worked with HP on their move into the Linux community and founded several more Linux projects. He currently works with the government of Norway in a Linux related role.

This alleged rape case has meant that rape is what people think about when they hear about wikileaks - rather than the crimes/... that wikileaks has exposed. Wikileaks itself has also taken its eyes off the ball.

As a way of diverting attention from the real issues the rape case & extradition has been very successful.

"Rape" in Sweden is not the same as rape elsewhere.

What Julian did was have *consensual sex* with two different women. Neither woman was angry with him, until several days later when they met one another and discovered he was a two-timer. THEN they decided to accuse him of "not wearing a condom" during the consensual sex. THAT'S what Julian is being charged with, and it's a bunch of bullshit.

I don't even know how you're supposed to prove such a thing. How do you prove the guy, over a year ago, had sex without a condom? You can't go by the two women's word, because they could be lying. It's an unprovable case.

Since Julian is not a UK citizen, those caveats don't apply. There's nothing to stop the Swedes from handing-over Julian to the United Soviet States as soon as they get him into a prison.

Frankly I'm surprised Obama didn't just order him assasinated. He's done it before with other criminals (including American citizens and a 16-year-old boy).

No, he wasn't, and hiding one's action doesn't make a consensual sexual act into rape in Sweden. There's rape, våldtäkt, and there's 'sexuellt tvång', which is still more serious than what Assange has been accused of, but not rape.

Why don't you save us all some effort and supply a simple citation?

Oh, wait, you can't. I'm guessing that's why you post A/C.

Me? I'll provide all the cites you want.

What they're trying to charge him with is sex by surprise. Nobody's quite sure what that is but we know the maximum penalty for it is a $715 fine.

This fine is why the whole Interpol warrant and extradition is a farce - it simply doesn't happen for a crime as minor as that (in fact it's against Interpol's charter to get involved with this - the crime is too minor and it only happened in a single country).

There's also choice of topic, slant of the article and what is included or excluded.

I see, for example, they excluded the chart with the average IQs of all nations.

Slant of article is tough to define, but it's your approach to the topic. "Self-Appointed 'Neighborhood Watch' guy shoots innocent teen" or "Angry Teen with marijuana possession offense attacks neighborhood watch official."

As long as there are people, there will be political bias, and Wikipedia still leans left because the people behind it are mostly students.

There is also another problem. They are measuring only the bias toward the two main parties. What about bias toward/against other points of view?

There are no other points of view.

Am I mistaken or will the Falcon Heavy have 27(!) engines going at liftoff? (3 x the nine engines of a Falcon 9).

I guess they really have the control systems for such a large number of engines licked (in a previous thread I noted that back in the 60s the Russian Moon super-rocket N-1 had 30 engines. It failed, repeatedly.)

So are large numbers of small rockets preferable, efficiency wise, to a few large ones (think the five F-1s of the Saturn V first stage). Or they cheaper in aggregate? Or are they more reliable? (less superhigh pressures in the turbines, I dunno). Or if they fail is there the simple fact of more redundancy (I read that if any one of the Falcon 9s engines conked out it could still make it to orbit. Except right at lift off).

Or did Space-X just not have the funds to develop a really big engine (In which case couldn't they have licensed the design for the F-1 or J-1 from NASA?). Not knocking them, it's still an INCREDIBLE achievement, just wondering.

To quote an Airforce General: "A new plane doesn't make possible a new engine, a new engine makes possible a new plane.". So it's great to see an (obviously) flight worthy new rocket engine!

SpaceX has loads of NASA people and technology, and couldn't exist except as a NASA contractor backed by NASA.

SpaceX has a great many former NASA employees and has studied some of the data that NASA contractors have produced at taxpayer expense (which data is available to anybody who wants it, including China, Russia, India, and anybody else in the world). I suppose you could argue that SpaceX is using Velcro, Tang, and Space Pens.... please don't get me started on "NASA technology" as I can go off on what kind of joke that really is.

It should also be noted that the Falcon 9 and the Dragon capsule that SpaceX has developed was started independently without a government contract and SpaceX is not dependent upon government funds to get either of those products produced by SpaceX completed. That NASA was handing out money under various programs and SpaceX decided to bring a bucket to catch that money only shows SpaceX has some people who are intelligent and perhaps are a bunch of money grubbers. They may even take that as a compliment, and is a good thing if you want to remain a for-profit company.

SpaceX can survive without NASA, but could NASA survive without SpaceX?

Sorry, the DVD region code for NZ is 4. The UK and Europe is 2 (see wikipedia ). Fortunately enforcing the suppliers use of region locking on DVD players was ruled a breach of our competition legislation (which explicitly makes parallel importing legal) and our copyright act explicitly excludes region locking as a proctection measure See here So almost all DVD players are sold unlocked.

The cops work for the government, which is your elected representation. It is up to you to control them. I'm afraid you must take responsibility.

Carefull, looking at them in the wrong way can land you sexual harassment charges in Sweden ...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:US_Trade_Balance_1980_2011.svg

The Chinese currency is currently, artificially, kept very low. It has been for a very long while. NPR Report from 2006 on Yaun manipulation

If the Yaun were more influenced by the market like the rest of the world, it would be balancing much quicker. The issue has very little to do with what US workers are willing to work for and more to do with what corporations are willing to pay. With the current unemployment rates in the US, you could stock a factory with minimum wage, skilled laborers, without an issue. But that still can't compete on a resource cost level with a stifled Yaun.

Even so, as skilled production work moves to China, wages continue to increase due to labor shortages. NY Times article on the wage and labor issue. It is starting to even out, and we'll likely see more jobs returning to US shores as an equilibrium as reached.

This is another point against anyone who claims NASA, and going to space in general, is a complete waste of money.

It might prove NASA has some use. But it doesn't sound like going into space was necessary for this research, so that could, in principle, still be a waste.

I'd like to volunteer for a month of bed rest a year.

The problem with bedrest (among the obvious ones of removing the subject from useful tasks for a month) is that it causes a large amount of muscle loss and the very bone loss it is trying to detect. What's more, the bone loss from immobilization is rapid and it may take years to recover from. Alternatively, you may never recover from it fully.
I am a researcher working in the field, and there is a moderate amount of data available from immobilization studies like this (both russian and american) Based on what I know, I'd gladly take a DXA scan over bedrest just based on the risks and accounting for effectiveness, all other factors nonwithstanding.

Even if this method is more effective, ultrasound-based screening methods, which have neither the cost or the radiation dose of an X-ray, are becoming available. As osteoporosis is easy to treat if detected early, in all likelihood this problem will be solved this generation.

This is another point against anyone who claims NASA, and going to space in general, is a complete waste of money.

This has always been a totally bogus argument, because you can't do a controlled experiment. Suppose that the US had never engaged in the Cold War propaganda exercise known as the space race. Later, suppose that the US had never gotten into pork-barrel projects such as the space shuttle and the ISS. What would the world have been like? We have no way of figuring out what scientific advances would have been made in this alternate history.

Maybe more tax money would have been directed toward unmanned space exploration, which, unlike human spaceflight, provides scientific results in reasonable proportion to what it costs.

Maybe the nonexistence of a government monopoly on human spaceflight would have encouraged the private sector to start up a space tourism industry decades ago, and my wife and I would have celebrated out 20th anniversary last year in orbit.

Maybe, simply by reducing the size of government, we would have boosted the over-all economy a little bit, and through exponential growth (the "butterfly effect") that small change would have made the economy significantly bigger today, say by 10%. In a 10% bigger economy, a fixed percentage of taxes spent on cancer research means 10% more cancer research, so maybe we'd have a cure for cancer now.

Maybe one smart person, rather than becoming an engineer on the Apollo program, would instead have gone into fundamental research in physics, and we'd have a theory of quantum gravity today.

We just have no way of knowing. You could just as easily say that World War II was a good thing, because without it we would never have invented radar.

I cannot tell you how many times I've had conversations that went like: "Whatever you do, do ... push the red button!" / "Confirming, you want me to push the red button?" / "I c... hear what ... SQUAWK red button!" / "OK, so are you saying not to push it?" / (dead air) / "Hello?"

I don't know if it was a technology problem with iDEN (how hard could it be to get a simple TDMA system right?) or if Nextel just woefully underdeployed cells, but a decade ago they definitely set the standard for how much a network could suck and still somehow attract business customers.

I'm pretty sure the other providers managed to add in comfort noise which you could hear cut out whenever a packet got dropped. Maybe that's where iDEN screwed up?

Small point of clarification here -- Nextel never used GSM, they have only ever used iden. iden had sim cards like GSM and the backend / MSC "felt" like GSM, but the air interface -- the shoveling of bits across the air between tower and handset, have always been IDEN.

It's also worth pointing out that nextel used what is called the SMR band .. ~800mhz. This frequency typically propagates further than the 1900mhz the rest of Sprint is operating on, so it is entirely possible for the new phone tower in the same location wouldn't reach you, while an iden at 800mhz would.

Working for a home-builder using Motorola iDEN phones was a blast. Like OP, we played with the data in the field quite a bit, and ISTR it did require a DUN connection to work but it was rock-solid. Sprint screwed up our billing so badly after taking over Nextel that we wound up with two accounts -- one Nextel and one Sprint -- no longer with shared minutes or services even though we were promised that everything would remain under one account. The situation was so frustrating that the operations manager asked me to work on the issue. I wound up having several meetings with various carrier business sales teams, including the regional Sprint/Nextel reps who promised that within "a few more months" everything Sprint and Nextel would be fully combined, including plans and billing. I ended the Sprint/Nextel meeting within a few minutes and kicked them out of the office (diplomatically, of course) as I had told them we wanted to move to Exchange-compatible phones (ActiveSync) NOT BlackBerry (my exact words before the meeting were "If you come with just Blackberries, don't come at all") and they showed up with nothing but BlackBerry and another promise that we'd be able to get non-BlackBerry phones within "a few more months." (None of their promises ever amounted to anything for us.)

We couldn't wait "a few more months" so we moved people who didn't need PTT over to AT&T and just kept the Nextel service for builders in the field and their in-office managers who used the hell out of PTT. Within the year following that move we brought the builders over as well as our new building management system required Palms, while Sprint/Nextel continued to make promises of "a few more months."

The short, Sprint bungled the whole thing with Nextel so badly that we halved our account with them within four months (about 180 phones) then were completely moved off within 18 months. I have a similar story about Alltel and Verizon, but I'll save that for a "bad Verizon" story.

I thought one of the problems of CDMA and GSM networks was that call setup time was prohibitively long to get effective 2-way PTT communications going, something which doesn't affect a continuous voice conversation on a mobile phone. Wasn't that the appeal of the TETRA standard? 0.5s call setup time, the benefits of digital communications on a 2-way and packet data support (albeit slow)?

Our city has an area wide TETRA network managed by Motorola, not some ISP. This announcements sounds very like butchering one customer to benefit another.

Can someone tell me why a customer of a PTT system would want an internet browser instead of a 2-way radio? I'm confused. Anyone here have any experience with PTT over CDMA?

I have nothing else to say.

Is everyone in the justice system thick? Never mind whether the joke is funny or not, if you are actually going to bomb a public place, you don't announce your plan publicly on twitter using your personal fucking account because that would put you in the iq range of someone who has to ride the special bus and thus somewhat stunt your ability to organise acts of domestic terrorism.

We have a seriously disproportionate number of dumbshits in our police agencies, it seems.

When it comes to government, I've learned to attribute malice over stupidity no matter how adequately it would explain it.

Probably they knew perfectly well it wasn't meant literally. They just wanted to make a very public harrassment so other people might be sufficiently scared into censoring themselves.

Next time I see legal insanity like this, I'm blowing a court house sky high. (for people with very small brains:joke and no intent to ever actually do this)

The really sad thing is that you had to explain that it was a joke, and still had to post as anonymous. Land of the brave, home of the free! What happened to you Americans!!

I disagree that he did anything "extremely stupid". Bungie jumping with a 10 m cable and a 5 metre drop would be extremely stupid. Posting a joky comment online is not. It is the authorities that are completely unreasonable here. What he did should not be a crime.

As someone from the UK I shake my head in disbelief at the surveillance society that they have let themselves become, and hope like hell it an't contagious.

>>>Obama is anti-war, he is getting us out of Iraq and Afghanistan as gracefully as possible.

"If our troops are not out of Iraq and Afghanistan by the time I take office, I will bring them home my first year. You can bank on it!" - Candidate Obama. So that would be the end of 2009.

Iraq actually ended two years after the promised date, and only because of a treaty that Dubya Bush had already signed. Meanwhile Obama tried to negotiate an extension to the war to keep troops over there, but the Iraq government said "get the soldiers out". So Obama had to leave against his will. (And even in the present time there are still ~100,000 armed "advisors" occupying Iraq.)

- And of course Afghanistan did not end in 2009.
PLUS the man went and involved us in NEW wars (Yemen, Libya, and drone attacks on Pakistan). I fully-expect he'll start bombing Iran after he win reelection. He is not anti-war. Watch his ACTIONS and his broken promises, not his current rhetoric.

>>>Obama is pro bill-of-rights.

Is that why he signed the NDAA after saying he would veto it? Is that why he asked Congress to add the two sentences taking-away a right to trial for suspected terrorists? Is that why he signed the pro-censorship ACTA treaty? Is that why he expanded the power of the TSA to grope our bodies (or nude bodyscan us) from airports to train terminals to bus depots to along interstate highways to post office, malls, and just this past weekend, a music festival in Detroit? Is that why he remains silent while elderly are strip-searched, urine/colostomy bags are spilled, women's breasts are groped, and other nursing mom are forced to stand in glass jails?

He does not care about our rights.

>>>Obama is anti deficit spending.

Then how come his new budget submitted to Congress increased from 1.2 trillion to 1.6 trillion? ALSO stop blaming the republicans. The Democrats had full control of the White House, the House, and the Senate. If Obama really & truly wanted to eliminate the deficit, he and his Democrat Congress would have done it in 2009 or 10.

Frontline's eight year old documentary called The Persuaders (specifically chapter 5, though it's all quite interesting) showed the pollsters going door to door, but before knocking they got all your data from Axciom or Lexis so they could tell you EXACTLY what you want to hear. Disingenuous? Nahh, it's just politics.

and you even have your mail viewer set to not download images

the setting is not "do not download images".. it's "do not download external references".

In thunderbird it is "Allow remote content. "
In outlook it is "Block images and other external content in HTML e-mail. "

What programmer would be stupid enough to stop images, but not other remote content? Not only is it a privacy issue, it is also a security issue.

So I have a hard time believing you really understand how email tracking works.

"Retina Display" is not a type of display, it is a marketing term for a dense pixel display. While LG has made dense pixel display's for the iPhone, they do not appear on the iPad3, marketed under the name "Retina Display." I responded to a claim that Apple had somehow locked up the supply of "Retina Displays," which seems to me to be demonstrably false.

My Android phone lasts a week with light use, 12 days if it's just in standby. I can drain it in a couple of hours if I turn everything on (eg. GPS navigation).

The worst culprit for draining the battery was the screen auto-rotate. You'd think they'd turn it off when it's in standby, but, nooooo....

You get 6 hours out of a +1GHz multicore computer with +1GB of RAM and a screen bright enough to overpower the sun? I completely fail to see how battery life needs addressing.

He gets 6 hours use out of a device that would be a lot more useful to him if it had longer battery life. As it would be a better device with longer battery life then battery life is something to be addressed.

Increasing display will further reduce battery life (possibly quite drastically) while probably providing zero benefit as human eyes are unlikely to be able to discern the difference.

no.. it's like buying a sports car to drive down your 200ft driveway and get your mail. if you're going to use car analogies, at least have them make sense.

Why is it called a driveway if you are using it as a parking lot?

I'm so tired of this particular "observational" humor, that I will explain.

There are two ways to your house: the WALKWAY (you walk to your house) and the DRIVEWAY (you drive to your house) Simple enough for you?

And while I'm at it, the PARKWAY is typically called that because it goes through a PARK (or once did), not because you park your car there.

Until those battery lives are measured in days and not hours, there's still a lot of work to be done.

1 Motorola Droid Razr Maxx 0.82 days
2 Apple iPhone 4 (with 3G off) 0.61 days
3 Apple iPhone 3GS (with 3G off) 0.56 days
4 HTC Legend 0.53 days
5 RIM BlackBerry Curve 9360 0.5 days

Better?