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For something that isn't policy, was never policy, was never going to be policy, and will never be policy, it certainly looks remarkably like an official policy manifesto to me:
http://www.scribd.com/doc/165690692/Coalition-2013-Election-Policy-%E2%80%93-Enhance-Online-Safety-final

Are you implying their finger slipped in just such a way as to write a 10 page policy document, cost the policy, put the correct date on the document, and post the policy to their website completely accidentally? Or are you claiming that this is some sort of absurdly elaborate (and dull) hacker forgery?

At the very best, you can say that this is a policy that they entertained to quite a complete point before abandoning it- and that the almost-complete literature was made public accidentally. But that still implies that this is a policy that senior Liberals were happy to consider. The document is footnoted "authorised by Brian Loughnane", which is the party's Federal Director and Campaign Director; presumably a man who is at least relatively in tune with his party's policy attitudes.

Troll you may be rated, sir, but...
Saw "Leonard J. Crabs" and it didn't set right, so searched, and yup, that's a character's name, alright. Strike. Still nagged me.
Aha! _Maynard G. Krebs_! Yes. Of course, one link clicked led to another. By a trail too tortuous to document, I ended up downloading the theme music to "Adventures in Paradise", a show I watched and greatly liked from 1959. Don't know if the "Tiki III" is still afloat, last blurb I saw had it in the water in Papeete.

So, thank you.

I also found this:
http://www.scribd.com/doc/139580101/Encyclopedia-of-TV-Shows-Series
dude goes on to have a handful encyclopedic publications - TV pilots, characters, etc.
looks like a cultural historian's bonanza

Yeah, yeah, off-topic. Sorry 'bout that. It's a talent. Or curse.

Of course, I could mention that the DMCA is like too much of recent law more weapon of the rich, mcgrew's experience nothwithstanding. I think that with a complete overhaul and re-write it could be likely done in a fair, useful, manner to protect the weak against the mighty - which, it may be argued, is the basis of law. Historically the mighty have been able to protect themselves.

I believe the issue carried over from Apache Harmony, if this is the issue at fault.

Yup. Under the current administration, Canada is in some ways worse than the States with respect to domestic policy – it's just that the world is emphatically not watching, because – hey – it's Canada. Who cares?

Environmental charities are officially enemies of the state, budget watchdogs have to file freedom of information requests with their own money to get the information their mandates require, environmental protection and first nations rights have been gutted at the documented request of petroleum lobbies, it is now illegal to cover your face at a protest, activism of any kind is being branded as terrorism, and tens of millions of dollars are spent on blatant openly-reviled propaganda, while poverty is a growing problem.

Canada's a mess.

I find it funny that if the same thing happened on iOS with a different company, the comments would be more like "a great app that leaves out the things you don't really need" and "well optimized user interface that doesn't get in the way".

Since it's MS, it's "woefully incomplete"....

The bottom line is Metro is not great design. iOS is now unfairly being compared to Vista..when in reality it is simply behind Android, absorbing many much needed Android (and WebOS) like features into iOS. Its difficult to remember with its now "Fuck the American worker" advertisements while spilling design gobbligook that is simply offensive...how awesome iOS was when it was released, and why its so difficult to move on from. Samsung internal 132-page document comparison wrongfully used in the trial shows how far ahead iOS was than Android (and how quickly it has fallen behind) http://www.scribd.com/doc/102317767/Samsung-Relative-Evaluation-Report-on-S1-iPhone it also highlights some great design in iOS.

The bottom line is *simplifying* and *woefully incomplete* are not the same thing, one provides better access to better access to functions you need in a convenient; rational; intuitive form; The other makes the program unusable. completely different ends of the spectrum.

Hurricanes aren't getting stronger or more frequent. But they are making landfall less often.

Seems to me, if any of the "explanations" for our involvement in Afghanistan were true (rather than that GW was a nutcase and Obama a coward), we'd have as much justification for dropping a missile on this judge as we do on the Taliban.

Given what I've heard about Saudi agents' involvement in 9/11 (which actually happened btw), such as funding the hijackers' apartments and travel and leaning on the CIA to obstruct FBI investigations into these relationships, I'd say you might accidentally be right.

It's still going on. Rather than learning from past experiences, Homeland Security discourages anyone from talking about Operation Green Quest, the 2003 raid of al-Qaeda financiers that pissed off enough connected people that they shut it down.

Well there have been tons of examples of backdoors loaded into firmware then sold with hardware. The Actel/Microsemi ProASIC3 was found last year to have a backdoor in the chip. http://www.scribd.com/doc/95282643/Backdoors-Embedded-in-DoD-Microchips-From-China

This is a very heavily used chip that got into western weapon systems, western power control system....

You posted a scribd link... your argument is automatically null

OK I agree Microsemi took the blame themselves: http://www.scribd.com/doc/149683384/Microsemi-Response-Security-Claims-With-Respect-to-ProASIC3-053112

So I'll withdraw this example.

Well there have been tons of examples of backdoors loaded into firmware then sold with hardware. The Actel/Microsemi ProASIC3 was found last year to have a backdoor in the chip. http://www.scribd.com/doc/95282643/Backdoors-Embedded-in-DoD-Microchips-From-China

This is a very heavily used chip that got into western weapon systems, western power control system....

Wasn't this found to be a hoax? Or not so so much as a backdoor, but your everyday common bug, that could lead to a hack?

http://blog.erratasec.com/2012/05/bogus-story-no-chinese-backdoor-in.html

Well there have been tons of examples of backdoors loaded into firmware then sold with hardware. The Actel/Microsemi ProASIC3 was found last year to have a backdoor in the chip. http://www.scribd.com/doc/95282643/Backdoors-Embedded-in-DoD-Microchips-From-China

This is a very heavily used chip that got into western weapon systems, western power control system....

You claim that the judge eliminated self-defense, not because it wasn't germane, but because of an alleged - but not established - sequence of events. That is simply fatuous, and demonstratably false. The jury was clearly instructed that George Zimmerman's claim of self-defense was the central consideration of the case:

"An issue in this case is whether George Zimmerman acted in self-defense. It is a defense to the crime of Second Degree Murder, and the lesser included offense of Manslaughter, if the death of Trayvon Martin resulted from the justifiable use of deadly force.

If in your consideration of the issue of self-defense you have a reasonable doubt on the question of whether George Zimmerman was justified in the use of deadly force, you should find George Zimmerman not guilty.

However, if from the evidence you are convinced beyond a reasonable doubt that George Zimmerman was not justified in the use of deadly force, you should find him guilty if all the elements of the charge have been proved."

http://www.scribd.com/doc/153354467/George-Zimmerman-Trial-Final-Jury-Instructions

http://www.scribd.com/doc/153168246/Chris-Sevier-Apple-Complaint

That CBS story is infotainment. It's low on details and high on emotionality. CBS throws in a reference to the Trayvon Martin case, which kicks the emotional temperature up a notch (there are 962 comments... cha-ching!)

Here's an actual court document from the prosecution arguing that "stand your ground" didn't apply to this woman's case.

Here's a chart showing how the exchanges are supposed to work. Just a system in which the public looks at different health plans from different providers would be complex enough, but note the links to the IRS, Treasury, Social Security, HHS, Homeland Security, and state Medicaid systems. This thing must be giving nightmares to even top IT pros.

The patent in the suite is this one which is a hardware patent that expires next year. In US law making an infringing item is also infringing on the patent. Had Formlabs waited till all the patents had expired before starting to make the printer and software there would not be an issue. They jumped the gun and infringed.

Quite.
I think that the foundation could send back a nicely worded letter to the effect that they write software/sponsor the writing of software (delete as applicable). They do not sell cars, sell drugs, or engage in money transfer. They should not be held any more responsible for the use their software is put to, than Microsoft is responsible for MS Word being used to write threatening letters to people.

Also, dear the editors, specifically samzenpus, please link to the original source, in this case Forbes, rather than to some random other website. You might also link to the cease and desist letter itself.

Prosecutors told Swartz's attorneys that they planned to seek 7-8 years if they took the case to trial. The defense attorneys confirmed this themselves in their complaint to the DOJ's office of professional responsibility:

[...] while threatening to seek over seven years in prison if Mr. Swartz chose to go to trial. [...]

Swartz would not have gotten anything remotely approaching the 30-year maximum sentence, even if he took it to trial, unless he literally pulled his pants down in the courtroom, invited the judge and the jury to suck his cock "long and sloppy," then promptly defecated on the prosecutor's head.

The official republic electronic voting system (reserved for consulate registered voters so far) has never been breached (that is known of).

First that system belongs to Scytl, a Spanish company so the government has little control over it. Second it has been breached:

• * First it had an SQL Injection vulnerability in the online support page (handled by Atos). The person who reported this wisely did not further exploit it to see which other systems this would give him access to.
• * Then there is this paper shows it's easy to change the Java client so it modifies the user's vote before submitting it. There is also a video and a recipe for exploiting this on a large scale.
• * Finally it has been shown that in the second round it was possible to vote for a candidate that had been eliminated during the first round! While voting for an eliminated candidate is not very useful, it did show up in the election result. Also it may open the door to voting for candidates from every other districts. Unfortunately that voter was again not reckless enough to attempt it and blog about the result.

Some other reminders: voting required using a very specific version of Java that Sun made obsolete just days before the election; on Mac OS X one had to register as an Apple developper to get the right version of Java; the applet would happily send your vote over http rather than https (that's a 'feature'); passwords were sent late or lost with no second chance.

So we have a wide range of mess ups and weaknesses and the only proof we have that the vote was not hacked is that the government says so. You trust the government right? They would not have any incentive to hide embarrassing information, right? And a computer hack always leaves obvious traces that point right at the author, right? If you're not sure about any of these claims then you cannot be sure that vote was not hacked.

The time will come when you can download plans to print or build a Terminator-esque robot. Though possibly not a humanoid, it would still be deadly.

And it'll be illegal to download the plans. Inevitably.

I would hope that by the time such technology came to be, we'd have advanced beyond the silly notion that one can effectively ban ideas or knowledge.

There are already plenty of detailed plans widely available for building all sorts of weapons that can be made at home with relatively little difficulty or expense.

There are plans and even parts kits available to allow almost anyone to build themselves a STEN sub-machine gun.

Plans: http://www.scribd.com/doc/2624298/sten-mk2-complete-machine-instructions

STEN Mk III Parts kits $125: https://www.apexgunparts.com/product_info.php/cPath/51/products_id/1435

"Can't stop the signal, Mal." http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PVF9lZ-i_ss

The only effective way to disarm US citizens is to kill a large portion of the population (maybe a majority) straight away, first thing, with no warning, then herd the remaining survivors into camps/gulags/prisons. There is simply far too many gun-making resources and too much materials, knowledge, and tools widely available in the US, never mind all the weapons already held by the people, to do it effectively any other way.

Considering the above, it would be a shame if all those FEMA camps that the government has recently been readying for use suddenly experienced a rash of fires and vandalism that left them unusable.

Strat

Silly, paranoid people! Why, it's like they believe they live in a country where:

• The IRS routinely conducts spite audits of the President's enemies.
• Or sicks the FBI, ATF and OSHA on them as well.
• Where the DOJ can seize the phone records of reporters without a warrant.
• Or where the DOJ illegally seizing the health records of 10 million Americans.
• Or where the government gave weapons to Mexican drug lords in order to make the case for gun control.
• Or where a leading Democrat publically stated she wanted to confiscated the guns of all Americans.

Silly, paranoid gun owners!

Thank God we live in America rather than that paranoid, nightmarish, Orwellian police state!

Since I submitted the story, the full report has been made public, and the biology teacher involved in the experiment has commented on various details.

Based on information from these two links, I'll try to answer your questions (my translations).

-Wifi and GSM are on different bands so why speculate cell phones could also have the same effect?

The report doesn't explain this. It goes from "We want to study the effects of radiation from cell phones" in one paragraph to "we'll be doing this by [...] cress seeds placed near Wifi hotspots or not" a bit later. The teacher notes "For newer 3G or LTE connections, the difference [compared to AP frequencies] is minimal".

-Did they repeat the experiment using the same plant seed type more than once?

They used seeds from several bags, mixed together and then divided in 12 lots.

-Did they note the temperature, humidity and sunlight available in each room at regular intervals or used any data logging equipment?

Not according to the report. From the teacher: "windows of similar size and both facing south" and "computer controlled temperature (18 deg. Celsius)".

-What kind of rooms, and were they in the same home? Were they the students bedrooms or what?

The report doesn't say. From the teacher: "Access control: only a select group of people can access the 'depotrum' used for the experiment". 'Depotrum' could mean a room used by janitors, to keep books etc.

-Were both testbeds receiving the same amount of sunlight for the same amount of time?

The report says "both windowsills [?, the lowest part of the window frame, facing into the room] were facing south, so we could ensure that all plates were receiving the same amount of sunlight". See note from teacher above.

-Did they try other plant seeds? Or buy the same plant seeds but from different vendors to compare?

No other plant seeds were tested. It is not clear from report or teacher if the bags mentioned above were from the same vendor.

-Did they try to repeat the experiment with the router off to isolate the possibility the rooms environments played a role?

The report doesn't mention this. According to the teacher, they did run the experiment twice, not to test differences between the rooms, but to test if network traffic played any role. The first run was made with the AP only announcing ESSID, the second run had the laptops pinging each other [constantly, I assume].

They used roline wireless routers for the experiment.

http://www.scribd.com/doc/140287125/Untangling-the-Web-A-Guide-to-Internet-Research

That PDF file is not text-searchable - a great disservice to readers.

http://www.scribd.com/doc/140287125/Untangling-the-Web-A-Guide-to-Internet-Research

Here is the official filing:

http://www.scribd.com/doc/139843902/Prenda-Sanctions-Order

First lines:
 

“The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few.” —Spock,
Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan
(1982).

Somebody should make a status of this judge. Preferably 3D printed and with references to popular SciFi universes. He deserves no less. :-)

- Jesper

Really? Teenagers playing around in a bathroom for kicks and youtube?

That's not what the slashdot summary, news articles, or police report states. http://www.scribd.com/doc/138927259/Wilmot-Arrest

Are you confusing this with some other event?

According to the incident report, "Mr. Durham advised Kiera told him she was conducting a science fair experiment... Wilmot advised she did not know what would happen when she mixed the ingredients. Wilmot advised she thought it would just cause some smoke." There were no injuries, no damage, not even clear intent. Where is the felony crime here? It's only in the mind of Assistant State Attorney Tammy Glotfelty.

No. You can make a zipgun out of a ball point pen. Everyone has the ability to make a weapon; most people simply don't have the need, desire, or psychosis to do so.... and admittedly, many don't have the imagination for it either.

Technically a zipgun is made from plumbing parts: http://www.scribd.com/doc/23323372/Zipguns-Pipe-Guns-Silencers

But you're right about the imagination.

Please mod parent informative.

One of the retarded things about btrfs is that you can not see how much disk space is being used by each subvolume. How the hell can you have a filesystem and not know how much space is in use or free ??

The design of ZFS is much more wholistic. That is, when we take a step back and look at both the micro and macro we see that we are really trying to solve 3 problems:

* Volume Management
* File System
* Data Integrity

ZFS solves all of these be leveraging knowledge from ALL the layers as one cohesive whole.
https://blogs.oracle.com/bonwick/en_US/entry/rampant_layering_violation

Why RAID is fundamentally broken
https://blogs.oracle.com/bonwick/entry/raid_z

Another interesting doc
http://www.scribd.com/doc/43973847/5/ZFS-Design-Principles

First, companies like Microsoft, Apple, Oracle, etc... use intellectual property law to crush most of the bubbles forming down below. "If you can't beat them, sue them into oblivion for patent infringement." And every big company has a hand in lobbying legislators to get favorable legislation, from the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) trying for SOPA and PIPA, to Comcast and Verizon trying to get township-funded broadband declared illegal in as many states as they can.

Let them.

More answers than you probably want:

http://www.scribd.com/doc/22599374/Security-Encryption-in-GSM-GPRS-CDMA

And note that no traffic was intercepted in the FBI's operation... all they attained, with the carrier's help*, was an identification of the target's device on the network, which they then pinged in order to triangulate its location. Chris Paget's cell site spoofing blows GSM wide open; nothing remotely similar has happened in the CDMA world.

*(which also required that the carrier remotely reprogram the phone so this could even take place.)

  This has nothing in common with Paget's spoofing. If you have a mobile phone/aircard in your own name, and the Feds go to the carriers with a warrant, they WILL ping your location. If you're paranoid, go prepaid with a 'stage name' and no SSN attached, or establish service in the name of a company or trust that won't be traced back to you. And better hope they don't already know your phone number.

WTF? I'm gonna assume this was intended to be funny, but it's sitting at +3 Interesting

1) Code.org is not run by microsoft. It's a non-profit founded by Hadi Partovi

2) Code.org doesn't promote microsoft coding habits. I can't actually find any microsoft languages on their site.

3) I'm not cetain who "they" refers to in the 3rd sentence, but Code.org doesn't have anything to say about outsourcing tech jobs. If it's referring to Microsoft, then Facebook, Yahoo, Google, Cisco and Intel also signed the letter requesting an overhaul of the tech visa system

4) westerners who...think independently. Yep, that's some pretty "independent" thinking thinking you've got going there. It's so independent, it may form it's own little country with a flag and national anthem.

5) This is all helped by a whole host of corporate artists, celebrities, and other proffesional astro-turfers. Huh?

Sadly, as bat-sh-t crazy as your description was...it still made more sense than the article.

How do you prefer your censorship?
Overt or covert?
And the same could be asked of surveillance.
http://www.scribd.com/doc/82701103/Analyst-Desktop-Binder-REDACTED

Plomo o plata, I think journalism/blogs/social media are as censored in Russia, Europe and America as it is in China.
The tactics might differ but the strategy is consistent.

The re-examination communication (here) only discusses the first anticipatory reference explicitly (the AOL "Lira" patent). That patent describes an overscroll bounce in the context of web page elements, where defined elements that are misaligned with the edge of a particular window are "snapped" back into alignment if the user attempts to move the selected content outside of the of the "snap point."

bonus link: http://www.scribd.com/doc/110860729/12-10-22-doc2079-1-cv1846-ExhA-FOA-381-rej-19-et-al

Last month, just a couple days prior to the launch of MEGA, Slashdot ran a story that informed us all that each user would get 50GB gratis storage on the service. This story brought with it a comment from the creator of ScatterBytes, the distributed storage backend that MEGA uses. The entire reason that gratis 50GB can even be offered to all users, and indeed one of the oft-touted improvements of MEGA over MegaUpload (to try and convince us we won't lose our data at the whim of any given government like last time), is that anyone with spare storage space and bandwidth can be financially compensated for hosting the (encrypted) data of other MEGA users.

The concept of this distributed storage and accompanying financial compensation system is certainly a more novel approach to what file lockers have offered in the past, and this is precisely what ScatterBytes is providing to the infrastructure of the MEGA network. But I was shocked to learn, in the comment of ScatterBytes creator, that the financial compensation system would be using PayPal. Why the creators of MEGA & Scatterbytes would be so short-sighted and foolish to base their system off of a centralised, USA-based payment company widely known to be the Internet sector of the US financial-military-industrial complex was completely beyond me.

As a server operator myself, why would I want my disk space (NOT in the USA) to be a part of the MEGA network (NOT a US website) when details of my contribution (and a cut of the profits) would be handed directly to a US company known to directly work with the US government? Had the people behind MEGA & ScatterBytes not been paying any attention to PayPal's history? Shouldn't the operators of a file locker site which was mercilessly raided by the moneyed American corporate interests trying to stymy progress (and currently entangled in a court case) be slightly more intelligent and aware than this?

In my response to his comment, I asked the ScatterBytes creator why they are creating a system that would hand the US government banking-level details of MEGA collaborators , easily sortable by size of contributions no less! For the successor site to MegaUpload, this level of unthinking oversight is absolutely embarassing. MegaUpload's servers are still sitting in limbo, and people have served jailtime over this service. Why any third-party (ie most of us on Slashdot) would be enthusiastic to contribute to the relaunch of this service, even if it does differ technologically from the previous incarnation, when it means giving all of our personal information to an organisation as nefarious and unfriendly to progress as PayPal is beyond me. To Jack's Complete Lack of Suprise, within a week of the launch of MEGA, an organisation seemingly created to kill file locker services (at least ones which multimedia publishing cartels decide to target) worked to shut off PayPal access to the primary MEGA resellers. So much for paying attention to history.


To see adoption of BitCoin is good news, but it's what should have been done at launch. It's 2013. We don't need centralised US-controlled middlemen spying on all of our financial transactions and taking our money anytime we want to transfer funds. We ha

Here is an almanac: http://www.scribd.com/doc/101102661/PAMBU-PANCHANGAM-2012-13 This one is compiled by Anna Aiyengar, son of Appanai Aiyengar of Kanjanur. They are the official astronomers for the Maharajah of Thanjavur, Shivaji Raja Bhonsle and have the rights to publish this almanac. But this is not the almanac my family uses. Ours is compiled for the Maharaja of Ramnad. Ours predicts, among other things, the amount of rain. This one does not. But it has whole slew of predictions, like, "Since the new moon day of the month of Thai happens on a Saturday, there will be bad things happening to the country".

I'm fairly certain there are ways to build a gun purely from stuff you can buy at Home Depot

You mean like this. I am pretty sure in the US that it isn't illegal to make and or own so long as it isn't fully automatic.

Sure, but Will Smith thinks Scientology's Applied Scholastics in its Delphi Academy is such a good idea he started his own school based on it

ADB has its innards extremely well documented by apple in the IIGS Hardware reference (page 121)

http://www.scribd.com/doc/39044132/Apple-IIgs-Hardware-Reference

It never changed, and ADB was used by other companies such as NeXT, Sun and a few others, this is simply a case of doing a bunch of work cause they didnt know what to google for

The MPAA's original paper: http://de.scribd.com/doc/115644694/NOT-Motion-Picture-Association-of-America-Final

They brag about how much money they are making and speak in passing about the "massive" impact of closing down Megaupload. The one thing that seems to be conspicuously missing is any estimate of how much more money they made due to the reduction in "piracy".

http://www.scribd.com/doc/114019639/Brandbrief-techbranche-aan-Teeven-over-Thuiskopie
In English, link published on http://www.webwereld.nl/

And yet, nearly 50 million of them are sucking the tit of the federal government, and who knows how many countless more are firmly attached to the tit of the state government.

1+ Trillion a year on federal welfare programs: http://www.scribd.com/doc/110366590/Spending-for-Federal-Benefits-and-Services-for-People-With-Low-Income-FY08-FY11

(That would be taking from those who work, and giving it to those who don't / can't) and growing:

http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2010/08/the-unsustainable-growth-of-welfare

Out of the average 60 hour work week I put in, ~20 of those hours are for the government. What do I get in return for this? Shitty roads, shitty schools, and complaints and protests because I'm working hard. No, I don't get to participate in any of our glorious social programs as I earn slightly too much money.

Now I get to hear how I'm greedy and not paying my fair share, and I get to prepare to work even more hours for the government for even less.

Yup, the system works great if you like riding in the cart and not pulling it.

Yes, too bad it's not a policy backed by the GOP (or the MPAA / RIAA), they've pulled down the fucking report, and retracted it.
If you want to read that dead "policy" change, it's still on scribd.

Update: The RSC has now taken down the brief and disowned it via this memo from Executive Director Paul Teller.

The RNC has disowned and pulled the brief. The main article (http://www.theamericanconservative.com/an-anti-ip-turn-for-the-gop/ contains a link to the pulled document. http://www.scribd.com/doc/113633834/Republican-Study-Committee-Intellectual-Property-Brief.

Found it on scribd: Republican Study Committee Intellectual Property Brief

You are absolutely right! And since the most predatory company in business history is Intel I'm sure you will never use any of their products ever again...

According to an engineer I know who worked for Compaq in their heyday. Compaq had developed a superior data bus in the 90's and Intel had requested access to it so they could optimize their chips to utilize it. They signed the NDA and several months later Intel introduced a motherboard with the bus integrated. Copmaq threatened to sue if they didn't pull the board or license the technology. Intel said go ahead and sue...Oh by the way we will no longer sell you CPU's. Compaq licensed the tech to Intel free of charge.

Microsoft did something similar to Citrix and STAC Electronics.

There's these little tiny critters called electrons, right?

And these tiny boogers, these electrons, go through these here digital circuits, also quite tiny, and their movement at that micron level eventually wears the holy hell out of those pathways they travel, causing pitted chips at the micron level --- easily observable with a high-powered electron microscope and other instruments.

I guess they don't teach science in them thar schools anymore, huh?????

And for your further edification, sir:

http://www.scribd.com/doc/110039863/A-Lawsuit-Against-Private-Equity

. . . are naturally cool.
And the crucial news to the American side:

http://www.scribd.com/doc/110039863/A-Lawsuit-Against-Private-Equity

http://www.globalresearch.ca/does-the-romney-family-now-own-your-e-vote/5308911?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=does-the-romney-family-now-own-your-e-vote

Through a closely held equity fund called Solamere, Mitt Romney and his wife, son and brother are major investors in an investment firm called H.I.G. Capital. H.I.G. in turn holds a majority share and three out of five board members in Hart Intercivic, a company that owns the notoriously faulty electronic voting machines that will count the ballots in swing state Ohio November 7. Hart machines will also be used elsewhere in the United States.


http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-2012-us-presidential-non-election-which-brand-of-fascism-this-time/5308307

> Which breaks once the 257th distinct element or the 257th distinct attribute is added.

You DO know how UTF-8 works, right?
http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/Unicode.html

You seem to think Constant bit-rate is the only solution. Here's a hint for the solution: Variable bit-rate

> And the registry is still like HTML in that one has to parse an arbitrary-length string for keys.
Depends on how it is implemented. Guess what, the OS guys have had to solve this _exact_ problem in File Systems. We've only had the concept & solution of B-Trees+ for "ages."

Even though it is about ZFS, it shows some of the B-Tree concepts.
i.e.
http://www.scribd.com/doc/43973847/How-Zfs-Works#page=10

... "zero point" energy is NOT in fact zero (it is actually pretty huge)... [Jane Q. Public]

While talking with my first research advisor around 2003, I mused that it's unfortunate how the Casimir effect only supresses vacuum fluctuations with wavelengths larger than twice the spacing between the plates. Since fluctuations with shorter wavelengths have more energy, the Casimir effect only depletes a vanishingly small fraction of the vacuum energy between the plates. So I agree that a naive quantum calculation leads to a huge vacuum energy. But as I've just explained, the same theory of general relativity [1] that implies stable wormholes and the Alcubierre drive also seems to renormalize the vacuum energy to zero. So this just means that depleting vacuum energy could potentially lead to very negative energy densities.

In fact I thought it was pretty obvious to most people that the fact that "zero point" energy is NOT in fact zero (it is actually pretty huge), has been the motivation for finding ways to "Maxwell's Demon" the quantum vacuum fluctuations. There is nothing theoretically preventing it; one team this year found a possible means of exploiting it. We shall see. [Jane Q. Public]

I asked which team and you replied:

I looked again, and didn't find anything from this year. So my memory could be incorrect. [Jane Q. Public]

Agreed:

What I am curious about is: assume you get the virtual particles which then tunnel: what is the probability that they will tunnel with the same probability, then recombine properly? It seems to me (without having done the math), that there is some possibility here of ending up with a quantum Goretex, or, in other words, a Maxwell's Demon of sorts, no matter how small its effect might be. [Jane Q. Public, 2009-04-21]

Not having done the math often does lead to quantum Goretex and ironic references to Maxwell's (broken) Demon.

But there's Maclay and Forward, from 2004. There are more recent examples but I will not have time to hunt them up today. [Jane Q. Public]

Maclay and Forward 2004 [2] imagined accelerating a mirror fast enough that the dynamic Casimir effect creates real photons. A more recent example was in 2009, which imagined spinning magneto-electric nanoparticles fast enough that the centripetal acceleration created real photons. At the time, I called this device a photon drive. On page 2 of their 2004 paper, Maclay and Forward point out that more conventional photon drives would arguably be better than their propulsion system.

Granted, it's only a thought experiment,