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"About 10% of the current US population are estimated to be cyborgs in the technical sense, including people with electronic pacemakers, artificial joints, drug implant systems, implanted corneal lenses, and artificial skin. A much higher percentage participates in occupations that make them into metaphoric cyborgs, including the computer keyboarder joined in a cybernetic circuit with the screen, the neurosurgeon guided by fiber optic microscopy during an operation, and the adolescent game player in the local video game arcade."
From Hyphen to Splice: Cybernetic Syntax in Limbo

They will be late to market. It takes a lot of time to copy and reprint a book that you bought in a store. So the original publisher has that set time to ask for a high price. Once that time is over the original publisher will probably still make more money then copycats because of brand loyalty. Read http://levine.sscnet.ucla.edu/general/intellectual /against.htm for a nice discussion about it.

You actually believe that all that money is used for research? Well, that's a laugh, and the jokes on you if you do believe it.

After all, everyone knows that all of these drugs just grow on trees.

Why, yes, many of them do.

Of course. But figuring out what branches to insert in the example above is static and *easy*, there's no excuse for a language not to do it for you.

> you don't have too many languages to choose from.

Yes, it's a pity. There is so much embedded code it's surprising things haven't moved much past how they were in the 60s. But the ideas are out there. There are papers on technqiues like region analysis for figuring out in advance what memory needs allocating, and there are interesting tools like Lava which can serve just as well as programming languages for embedded systems as well as HDLs. There are lots of smart people thinking hard about targeting small devices with functional languages and at some point I'll test this out.

Nice :)

In case that was a little obscure, I'll elaborate by saying that 0xCC is the x86 single-byte opcode for the int3 instruction, to generate a CPU breakpoint interrupt.

INT instruction (x86).
Interrupt 3, the generated interrupt.
Prior art: 1974.

Uh, what media bias?

http://www.polisci.ucla.edu/faculty/groseclose/Med ia.Bias.pdf

Just facts on who the media are made up of contradict you.

This comes up every few years in the paleo literature. In the 80's it was called the 26-million-year Death Star, aka the Nemesis Theory (http://swanson.bol.ucla.edu/, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nemesis_(star)). Supposedly old Sol has a companion star somewhere out in the Oort cloud that disrupts the orbits of comets and meteors on a regular basis, increrasing the likelihood of an Earth collission. Of course, major extinctions controlled by a regular astronomical phenomenon then they would be very regular. But, they're not periodic because they're caused by many different factors often occurring simultaneously. They call it the "Murder on the Orient Express" hypothesis - one of my favorites!

The accused will also be stigmatised for life. Too many people think that where there's smoke, there's a fire, and will not believe a verdict of innocent

There is no such thing, only verdicts of "not guilty". The law has an assumption of innocense, people don't. Often you hear quotes along the lines of "that it is better [one hundred] guilty Persons should escape than that one innocent Person should suffer." - Benjamin Franklin (1785). Other people quote other numbers ranging from 50-50% to 10:1 to 1000:1 (read more here), but no matter which of those you choose, many guilty men get a verdict of not guilty. That is just a fact of life, and is quite preferable to the alternative that many inncoent men get a verdict of guilty.

What you describe is a good application for eccentric mass vibrators, if you can affix one to the structure. I do appreciate the scale of the shake table these folks built, but sometimes you can't move the structure to your shake table to test it.

Eccentric mass vibrators are just like the cell phone vibrator (or other things you know of that vibrate) but much larger. And you strap these to the roofs of large buildings, wherever they are.

This is a crude Wikipedia article on it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vibrator_(mechanical)

Here's a good example of one at UCLA: http://nees.ucla.edu/eccentric_mass.htm.

Another interesting way to do structural testing is called snapback testing. A lot like when you played tug-of-war with your friend, but you let go of the rope. So you attach cabling to a structure and force it to be bent by pulling really hard on it. The coupling mechanism allows for rapid de-coupling of the force being applied (i.e., it lets go). The structure snaps back to its original position, and in so doing you can analyze its dynamic behavior under roughly controlled conditions.

I guess that also means that Bill Clinton, Al Gore, and Hillary Clinton did not support the The Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998 and it was never passed in the first place? It is what gives the RIAA and MPAA control over the consumer's rights and freedoms in the first place and basically takes away "fair use" and other clauses. That there was never any lobbyist money from the RIAA and the MPAA to the Clinton campaign and most of Congress to pass such a law?

I guess we US Citizens have short memories because we can tend to forget the injustices that the Democrats did against the US people? Their corruption does not count.

Now there are ties to the RIAA again, and all one has to do is cite Wikipedia allowing us to completely ignore or rewrite history in favor of the Democrats.

I'll bet people even forgot when Tipper Gore was censoring music lyrics and forced warning labels on CDs and video games, and doing so had the prices of them raised up to cover the cost of the rating system. Full support of the Democrats on that one as well.

Anyway I hope Barack Obama gets the nomination instead of Hillary Clinton, as I trust him a whole lot more than I trust her, because Obama hasn't stabbed the US in the back like Clinton has.

There is a project at UCLA to test multiple-in, multiple-out (MIMO) performance of 802.11n. They use Lego robots to adjust antenna spacing. Pretty cool stuff. Link to paper: pdf.

(I'm not affiliated, just ran into that project while browsing)

Benjamin Franklin thought "that it is better [one hundred] guilty Persons should escape than that one innocent Person should suffer."

http://www.law.ucla.edu/volokh/guilty.htm

To clarify my last post a bit:

Venus likely had a very strong magnetosphere similar to Earth's early in it's lifetime, but it's core has since solidified or undergone other changes that caused it to lose that magnetosphere.

Venus's current magnetic field doesn't come from the core, like Earth's does, it comes from the interaction of the solar wind with Venus's ionosphere. This produces a much smaller and weaker magnetic field, but still produces a barrier at an average of 300km above Venus's surface. Venus is currently losing it's upper atmosphere to the solar winds, but this magnetic field is offering some protection, and it probably had much more protection in the past.

Mars's magnetic field is weaker than that of Venus, producing a barrier below the 300km altitude, exposing more of it's atmosphere to the solar winds.

Once again, links:
http://www-spc.igpp.ucla.edu/personnel/russell/pap ers/venus_mag/
http://www-spc.igpp.ucla.edu/personnel/russell/pap ers/mars_mag/
http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2001/ast31jan_1 .htm

To clarify my last post a bit:

Venus likely had a very strong magnetosphere similar to Earth's early in it's lifetime, but it's core has since solidified or undergone other changes that caused it to lose that magnetosphere.

Venus's current magnetic field doesn't come from the core, like Earth's does, it comes from the interaction of the solar wind with Venus's ionosphere. This produces a much smaller and weaker magnetic field, but still produces a barrier at an average of 300km above Venus's surface. Venus is currently losing it's upper atmosphere to the solar winds, but this magnetic field is offering some protection, and it probably had much more protection in the past.

Mars's magnetic field is weaker than that of Venus, producing a barrier below the 300km altitude, exposing more of it's atmosphere to the solar winds.

Once again, links:
http://www-spc.igpp.ucla.edu/personnel/russell/pap ers/venus_mag/
http://www-spc.igpp.ucla.edu/personnel/russell/pap ers/mars_mag/
http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2001/ast31jan_1 .htm

Patents are a necessary part of scientific development.

At absolute most you can suggest that there is more "scientific development" with patents than without - though the actual research on the subject seems to disagree. It is factually false to state that patents are necessary to cause innovation.

Recommendation: The committee suggests exploring whether or not the notion of copy is an appropriate foundation for copyright law, and whether a new foundation can be constructed for copyright, based on the goal set forth in the Constitution ("promote the progress of science and the useful arts") and a tactic by which it is achieved, namely, providing incentive to authors and publishers. In this framework, the question would not be whether a copy had been made, but whether a use of a work was consistent with the goal and tactic (i.e., did it contribute to the desired "progress" and was it destructive, when taken alone or aggregated with other similar copies, of an author's incentive?). This concept is similar to fair use but broader in scope, as it requires considering the range of factors by which to measure the impact of the activity on authors, publishers, and others.

Copyright was originally the grant of a temporary government-supported monopoly on copying a work, not a property right. Its sole purpose was to encourage the circulation of ideas by giving creators and publishers a short-term incentive to disseminate their work. Over the past 50 years, as a result of heavy lobbying by content industries, copyright has grown to such ludicrous proportions that it now often inhibits rather than promotes the circulation of ideas, leaving thousands of old movies, records and books languishing behind a legal barrier.

Mercury has no magnetic field and the one around Mars is patchy and not nearly as strong as the on here on Earth. Does that mean this would be better suited for terrestrial travel?

You are correct that Mars has a very weak, patchy magnetic field. However, Mercury does have a rather strong magnetic field. Mercury even has a magnetosphere, even though it does not have an atmosphere. In fact, the MESSENGER spacecraft is currently on its way to Mercury to study the planet's magnetosphere. Venus, on the other hand, does not have a magnetic field.

We live or die by our patents.
If we didn't have a patent on our core equipment, we would not be in business.
We're primarily a soil remediation/washing company;

That might sound harsh, but it's a reality. ...and here's why:
The *only* reason (based on what you've written) that you would go bankrupt in the face of competition is if you're not efficient and your competition is.
In other words, you believe you can only obtain profitable business by being the only player.
But wait! You're a _service_ business. You charge to provide the service of dealing with polluted soil. Even if your competitor 'stole' your technology they would still have operating costs, just like you do. Liberating your technology doesn't mean they can do it and you can't. That's the nice bit about ideas and such: we can all have them w/o taking anything away from anyone else.

because someone would literally steal our equipment

Do I think a patent system, in principle, is a good idea? Yes.

As usual, I invite any-sayers to read this before applying flamage to my comments. And actually read it, dammmit.

Here's the reference, but unfortunately it says "The first, second, and third most centrist outlets are respectively Newshour with Jim Lehrer, CNN's Newsnight with Aaron Brown, and ABC's Good Morning America."

It goes on to say, "The fourth and fifth most centrist outlets are the Drudge Report and Fox News' Special Report with Brit Hume." Nonetheless, the scale was 0-100, with 100 being most liberal and 50.1 being centrist. Brit Hume's score was 39.7, making it clearly conservative.

And finally, "Our method only measures the degree to which media is liberal or conservative, relative to Congress," ergo even FOX's most centrist show is more conservative than Congress.

You are probably thinking of this: http://www.newsroom.ucla.edu/page.asp?RelNum=6664

If so, you are wrong.

Key quote:

"Only Fox News' "Special Report With Brit Hume" and The Washington Times scored right of the average U.S. voter.

The most centrist outlet proved to be the "NewsHour With Jim Lehrer." CNN's "NewsNight With Aaron Brown" and ABC's "Good Morning America" were a close second and third."

I believe that research in the field would have sped up if Einstein hadn't so been so public in his denouncing it.

As far as I can tell, Einstein's arguments did nothing to slow research in the field. Most people were on Bohr's side by that time.

Slowly Bohr managed to win and lets face it the EPR paper was an embarresment, then whoom as you said everyonewas on the qm band wagon.

The EPR paper wasn't an "embarrassment", it remains one of the most important papers on foundational QM, and the QM bandwagon started as soon as Heisenberg published his paper.

I remember that the current BB model had to be revisited to account for new theories in QCD/QED.

The main influence that quantum field theory has had on Big Bang cosmology is that the Higgs boson inspired the invention of inflationary cosmology. Far from modifying the BB picture, inflation solved a number of its long-standing problems.

QFT has also had influences in other areas of now-accepted cosmology, such as dark matter, but that doesn't affect the Big Bang much.

I tried to locate the article and found this one. It's interesting what he has to say, especially about the shift in ideas. I don't know much about the physics (nor, sadly the time to get into again) to say one way or the other. Maybe you've heard of it. If so what do you think? http://www.rense.com/general53/bbng.htm

Lerner is a pretty well known crackpot. (See Ned Wright's discussion here. He and Lerner had a back-and-forth and Wright eventually gave up arguing with him.) On the list of signatories are other people like the founders of Steady State cosmology, a theory which failed decades ago.

As for the scientific criticisms, yes Big Bang cosmology needs inflation and dark matter. One man's "fudge factor" is another's new theory. It's absurd to claim that BB cosmology has not made any predictions; it predicts an expanding universe, the existence and blackbody spectrum of the CMBR, light-element nucleosynthesis rate ratios, it accounts for measurements of luminosity-redshift curves, it predicts hotter temperatures in the past which have been observed, and so on. Inflation makes specific predictions about the statistical power distribution of the CMBR spectrum which have been confirmed. Dark matter has a wide range of evidence in its favor from galactic rotation to clusters to large-scale structure formation to cosmology. Furthermore, it is now known that candidate particles for the inflaton and dark matter appear naturally in almost every extension to the Standard Model that people have thought up — and not because they were added in explicitly to serve as inflatons or dark matter — including some in the Standard Model itself; inflation and dark matter could be predicted on the basis of particle physics alone.

During my four years at Uni I was told the models for neutron stars, planetary creation etc were constantly under debate to match observations with newer technology. Fair enough, I'm the first to say we can't know everything about a system and that we need to rethink when new data is found, but my point is if so many of our models are under doubt then why are our climate models so trustworthy?

Well, for one, they don't depend on unknown physics like the behavior of quantum chromodynamics at high densities. They also are based on far more data than we have about stellar interiors.

That being said, our current climate models aren't terribly accurate, by most physics standards. But climatologists have found that they get decent results when they average the predictions of an ensemble of climate models. In short, it's not the case that we can't use models accurately. Their predictions vary (I showed you graphs of that), but model calibration studies give reason to believe that the true values fall somewher

TFA is a regular newspaper citing a New Scientist article, whose author may have read the original paper or perhaps just the press release.

All that gets reported is what is old news, as you point out. The original work is by Baker and Bellis, and dates back to the 80s. but isn't cited in this article. Baker and Bellis' work has been criticized as being poorly controlled and subject to sample bias.

This study has a stronger statistical basis, and that's news. But most of the actual articles won't talk about that, because it's boring, and would rather discuss the original hypothesis, which as you point out has a long history.

And this story isn't exactly timely, either. The original scientific paper is now over a year old, and was published six months ago.

The tired light model does not predict the observed time dilation of high redshift supernova light curves. This time dilation is a consequence of the standard interpretation of the redshift: a supernova that takes 20 days to decay will appear to take 40 days to decay when observed at redshift z=1.

While cosmological redshift does exist, it doesn't turn a finite universe into an infinite one. The Big Bang happened about 14 billion years ago according to an observer "at rest" with respect to the cosmic background radiation. (The Earth is such an observer for practical purposes.)

There are not actually "anomalies" with cosmological redshift. There are some objects that we can't get a good spectrum off of, as the previous poster said, and the Sun is irrelevant to cosmological redshift. Tired light is a non-viable idea.

Is this actually true? I would like to ask Mr. Lutz for a cite or three to back this assertion.

It seems reasonable at first blush, after all, unless you just LOVE sitting in your car idling down the freeway for hours a day, you probably want to live somewhere close to work. The average distance from home to work in Los Angeles is 8.2 miles (pdf), which includes claims that this is "consistent" with census data (except that it looks like the Census doesn't report distance, they report travel time) and compares with other metropolitan areas. This (another pdf) says that the average first job for people going off welfare is 6.5 miles away. This PDF claims that work causes people to drive an average of 12 miles per day. This site says that over 1/3 of workers in the 100 largest cities drive more than 10 miles to work.

(me:) As I usually do in any patent debate I refer you to this

You start your post with: "I love when people claim Fox News biased and then never cite examples..."

And yet you finish with: "Whether you like it or not, all the polls, studies, and research done has shown a left-of-center bias in the press." Yet, you don't site even one pole, study or a bit of research regarding this.

I would be amazed if _ALL_ studies showed a left-of-center bias in the ALL the press. In fact this study (the first one I could find) found that while most news organizations have left-leaning bias, Fox News and The Washington Times are both right-of-center.

Though some may quibble about just how much profits are necessary to sustain investment, no one with a solid understanding of business or economics would fail to recognize that profits are essential to motivate investment and that high risk investments demand higher returns

Even if you think Toyota should be the model of the maximum profit margin allowed to a company

the drug business still depend on patents to cover their costs

Beyond the ethical concerns of arbitrarily denying people drugs, the reality is that human advancement is in baby steps, and drugs have a long testing period. This testing period gives the 'originator' of a new drug an artificial monopoly during which time the generic has to design, test and have their own drug approved. This gives the 'original' first-mover advantage, which gives them profit enough for the micro-change/improvement they have made, but doesn't force everyone else to wait 20+/- yrs to improve the drug. It eliminates the patent system which decreases their operating costs, eliminates patent enforcement costs and makes generics available in less time making drugs more affordable.

As I usually do in any patent debate I refer you to this.

This book, for an example, claims that because of this patent, the industrial revolution was set back by "a decade or two". While I'm no historian, I agree on the general principal. If you don't let society use ideas, they can't build further inventions upon them, improving them, advancing technology, and ultimately improving everyone's lives. I also think that even the poor should have access to technology. It shouldn't just be for those rich enough to pay the inventor's fee and because there hasn't been true competition using the idea to drive down the prices.
http://levine.sscnet.ucla.edu/general/intellectual /against.htm

My name was on the list. Hooray!

I was just about to submit this story myself. Here's UCLA's official website devoted to the whole incident: Link

I wonder, will there be a point in time when we hold accountable either the credit agencies for their broken system or organizations we are forced to trust with our data for not keeping it safe?

December 12, 2006

Dear Friend,

UCLA computer administrators have discovered that a restricted campus database containing certain personal information has been illegally accessed by a sophisticated computer hacker. This database contains certain personal information about UCLA's current and some former students, faculty and staff, some student applicants and some parents of students or applicants who applied for financial aid. The database also includes current and some former faculty and staff at the University of California, Merced, and current and some former employees of the University of California Office of the President, for which UCLA does administrative processing.

I regret having to inform you that your name is in the database. While we are uncertain whether your personal information was actually obtained, we know that the hacker sought and retrieved some Social Security numbers. Therefore, I want to bring this situation to your attention and urge you to take actions to minimize your potential risk of identity theft. I emphasize that we have no evidence that personal information has been misused.

The information stored on the affected database includes names and Social Security numbers, dates of birth, home addresses and contact information. It does not include driver's license numbers or credit card or banking information.

Only designated users whose jobs require working with the restricted data are given passwords to access this database. However, an unauthorized person exploited a previously undetected software flaw and fraudulently accessed the database between October 2005 and November 2006. When UCLA discovered this activity on Nov. 21, 2006, computer security staff immediately blocked all access to Social Security numbers and began an emergency investigation. While UCLA currently utilizes sophisticated information security measures to protect this database, several measures that were already under way have been accelerated.

In addition, UCLA has notified the FBI, which is conducting its own investigation. We began notifying those individuals in the affected database as soon as possible after determining that personal data was accessed and after we retrieved individual contact information.

As a precaution, I recommend that you place a fraud alert on your consumer credit file. By doing so, you let creditors know to watch for unusual or suspicious activity, such as someone attempting to open a new credit card account in your name. You may also wish to consider placing a security freeze on your accounts by writing to the credit bureaus. A security freeze means that your credit history cannot be seen by potential creditors, insurance companies or employers doing background checks unless you give consent. For details on how to take these steps, please visit http://www.identityalert.ucla.edu/what_you_can_do. htm.

Extensive information on steps to protect against personal identity theft and fraud are on the Web site of the California Office of Privacy Protection, a division of the state Department of Consumer Affairs, http://www.privacy.ca.gov.

Information also is available on a Web site we have established, http://www.identityalert.ucla.edu. The site includes additional information on this situation, further suggestions for monitoring your credit and links to state and federal resources. If you have questions about this incident and its implications, you may call our toll-free number, (877) 533-8082.

Please be aware that dishonest people falsely identifying themselves as UCLA representatives might contact you and offer assistance. I want to assure you that UCLA will not contact you by phone, e-mail or any other method to ask you for personal information. I strongly urge you not to rel

December 12, 2006

Dear Friend,

UCLA computer administrators have discovered that a restricted campus database containing certain personal information has been illegally accessed by a sophisticated computer hacker. This database contains certain personal information about UCLA's current and some former students, faculty and staff, some student applicants and some parents of students or applicants who applied for financial aid. The database also includes current and some former faculty and staff at the University of California, Merced, and current and some former employees of the University of California Office of the President, for which UCLA does administrative processing.

I regret having to inform you that your name is in the database. While we are uncertain whether your personal information was actually obtained, we know that the hacker sought and retrieved some Social Security numbers. Therefore, I want to bring this situation to your attention and urge you to take actions to minimize your potential risk of identity theft. I emphasize that we have no evidence that personal information has been misused.

The information stored on the affected database includes names and Social Security numbers, dates of birth, home addresses and contact information. It does not include driver's license numbers or credit card or banking information.

Only designated users whose jobs require working with the restricted data are given passwords to access this database. However, an unauthorized person exploited a previously undetected software flaw and fraudulently accessed the database between October 2005 and November 2006. When UCLA discovered this activity on Nov. 21, 2006, computer security staff immediately blocked all access to Social Security numbers and began an emergency investigation. While UCLA currently utilizes sophisticated information security measures to protect this database, several measures that were already under way have been accelerated.

In addition, UCLA has notified the FBI, which is conducting its own investigation. We began notifying those individuals in the affected database as soon as possible after determining that personal data was accessed and after we retrieved individual contact information.

As a precaution, I recommend that you place a fraud alert on your consumer credit file. By doing so, you let creditors know to watch for unusual or suspicious activity, such as someone attempting to open a new credit card account in your name. You may also wish to consider placing a security freeze on your accounts by writing to the credit bureaus. A security freeze means that your credit history cannot be seen by potential creditors, insurance companies or employers doing background checks unless you give consent. For details on how to take these steps, please visit http://www.identityalert.ucla.edu/what_you_can_do. htm.

Extensive information on steps to protect against personal identity theft and fraud are on the Web site of the California Office of Privacy Protection, a division of the state Department of Consumer Affairs, http://www.privacy.ca.gov.

Information also is available on a Web site we have established, http://www.identityalert.ucla.edu. The site includes additional information on this situation, further suggestions for monitoring your credit and links to state and federal resources. If you have questions about this incident and its implications, you may call our toll-free number, (877) 533-8082.

Please be aware that dishonest people falsely identifying themselves as UCLA representatives might contact you and offer assistance. I want to assure you that UCLA will not contact you by phone, e-mail or any other method to ask you for personal information. I strongly urge you not to rel

Okay, maybe I just don't get it... I'm not religious, but I don't buy into the big bang theory either... Why can't we just theorize that time is not finite - there's no beginning and no end... - you are not religious, but you are not scientifically minded either. We do not 'just theorize', we gather data and propose ideas - hypothesis and mathematical models. These models fit the gathered data and can be used to predict events in the future.

The current evidence shows that the Universe is expanding. We do not just theorize something for the sake of theorizing and for no reason, so we cannot just theorize that the Universe was and is and will be static forever, we know it is changing and expanding from an initial singularity.

Nothing in the Big Bang theory prevents further studies into the origins of the initial singularity. The time as we understand it only is applicable within this Universe because it is a property of this Universe and should we discover later that there are other Universes (a mathematical possibility at this point only,) the idea of time as we know it may not be applicable in them.

When you use the term 'infinite', you assume infinite time, and our understanding of time within our reality, this notion may be totally inapplicable to the original singularity and to the events preceeding the original singularity.

Cheers.

Please remember that Japan is a much smaller country than the U.S. Just about everything they do (in the city) is done in high values. http://www.isop.ucla.edu/eas/japan/geography/japan -us-size.gif

REM sleep can't be necessary for memory consolidation, because monoamine oxidase inhibitors eliminate REM sleep, but not not impair memory even if used for a long time. Furthermore, this is a there is a case of brain injury which eliminated REM sleep but did not impair memory. http://www.npi.ucla.edu/sleepresearch/science/1058 full.html

Dear Sir, I am writing to you in regard of the Powell library incident in which a student was attacked with a taser five times because he did not have his identification with him. From the accounts I have heard and videos of the event I have seen, it appears thatthe student was not given an opportunity to leave before he was repeatedly shocked. The officers seemed to ignore the debilitating effect of the device they were using. I urge you to reconsider your policies on use of force because the actions of the officer on this night were excessive. The purpose of the library policy is to protect students, but when a student is not causing a problem and is attacked following a "random" search, I begin to wonder if this is just another case of police brutality. We do not live in a police state, but actions like these begin to erode our rights of freedom as individuals in favor of an all-powerful state. Please, consider the impact on this young man and the greater impact on society resulting from an overly-aggressive stance on law-enforcement.

This story is a dupe! Same officer, same campus, but no cameras:

http://dailybruin.ucla.edu/news/articles.asp?ID=27 099

Frazier said he had been writing a letter in the study lounge for close to an hour and a half before he was confronted by Duren. He said the officer approached him and asked if he was student. Frazier said he responded, "I'm leaving," and got up to leave.

Oh, and here's another dupe:

After Duren allegedly awoke a student napping in the Kerckhoff Hall study lounge on Aug. 25, 1993, Duren escorted the student outside, slammed him against a wall, and cuffed and arrested him, a court complaint stated. While on the way to jail, the complaint said Duren told the student, "For a while there I thought I was going to have to 'Rodney King' you."

And another:

Only a day before, Duren had arrested another student who was also studying in the same building. A second court complaint said Duren harassed and unreasonably searched the student about three months earlier in the lounge, and this time, while the student was studying, the complaint said Duren questioned and arrested him without probable cause.

It's kind of hard to be tresspassing on public property if you are in a common use area of the property unless it is after established hours of business.

UCPD officers became involved after they were asked for help by a community service officer - or CSO -- employed by the library. This is typically the next step in such a situation, since the UCPD officers and our CSOs - which number 123 and are mostly students -- work collaboratively and routinely without incident. A person identified after the incident as a student was repeatedly refusing to comply with the requirement that he show an ID in the library after 11 p.m.

Showing an ID after 11 p.m. is a longstanding university policy to ensure the safety of all students. It is so routine that many of the students place their IDs on the table next to them so as not to be disturbed.

The student was clearly told by both the community service officer and, subsequently, the UCPD that if he refused to show his ID, he would have to leave the library.

When he continued to refuse to do so, officers attempted to escort him out. At this point, the student went limp and, at the same time, encouraged other library patrons to join in his resistance.

These actions created an urgent situation in which the officers deemed it necessary to touch the student with a Taser that was set in its "drive stun" capacity in order to gain compliance. He was touched -- not "shot" -- with a Taser, which conveyed an electric current.

He was subsequently arrested for resisting or obstructing a police officer, a misdemeanor. He was released with a citation and issued a court date. The incident is under investigation, and our case will be presented to the City Attorney.

Not all the events Tuesday night can be heard or viewed on YouTube. Only a complete investigation will tell the whole story. I know we're all looking forward to learning exactly what occurred.

All use of force incidents require an administrative review of the officers' actions by the department, which is also underway.

While I am confident of our ability to perform a fair and thorough investigation, I am also cognizant of the need for a transparent review. Therefore, I have recommended to Chancellor Abrams that he appoint an independent investigator to look into the incident.

The LA Times is reporting that this is the third "excessive use of force" incident on that police officer's record. Also, anyone who is concerned about this type of police conduct can/should contact Chancellor Abrams and ask when the independent investigation is going to be completed.

I already contacted Chancellor Abrams' office, the FBI, and my members of Congress to request they investigate, and prosecute the officers responsible.

The LA Times is reporting that this is the third "excessive use of force" incident on that police officer's record. Also, anyone who is concerned about this type of police conduct can/should contact Chancellor Abrams and ask when the independent investigation is going to be completed.

I already contacted Chancellor Abrams' office, the FBI, and my members of Congress to request they investigate, and prosecute the officers responsible.

http://www.ucla.edu/bulletin/remarks-nov17presscon f.html

Short cut from the link above:
UCPD officers became involved after they were asked for help by a community service officer - or CSO -- employed by the library. This is typically the next step in such a situation, since the UCPD officers and our CSOs - which number 123 and are mostly students -- work collaboratively and routinely without incident. A person identified after the incident as a student was repeatedly refusing to comply with the requirement that he show an ID in the library after 11 p.m.
UCPD officers became involved after they were asked for help by a community service officer - or CSO -- employed by the library. This is typically the next step in such a situation, since the UCPD officers and our CSOs - which number 123 and are mostly students -- work collaboratively and routinely without incident. A person identified after the incident as a student was repeatedly refusing to comply with the requirement that he show an ID in the library after 11 p.m.

The student was clearly told by both the community service officer and, subsequently, the UCPD that if he refused to show his ID, he would have to leave the library. When he continued to refuse to do so, officers attempted to escort him out. At this point, the student went limp and, at the same time, encouraged other library patrons to join in his resistance. These actions created an urgent situation in which the officers deemed it necessary to touch the student with a Taser that was set in its "drive stun" capacity in order to gain compliance. He was touched -- not "shot" -- with a Taser, which conveyed an electric current.

... and here's my favorite:
Not all the events Tuesday night can be heard or viewed on YouTube...

Apparently there will be an independent investigation, so I'm guessing nothing will happen in the end.
Wait long enough and people forget...

Ok, I've read on, and it looks like the official stance of the ucla is that they are ok with these actions. They go all on about safety measures for students by checking the passes after 11 pm, but do not mention a word about having their students physically abused even if these students were not displaying any physical violence. This doesn't look good, and I'm pretty happy that I'm not an UCLA graduate at this moment, I would be so much ashamed! To be fair, the european universities that I visited that not have any police department of their own, let alone armed security at their premises! This was because they didn't need it! Never at one point I, nor anyone of my fellow students, felt unsafe with this situation, even when we were present there late at night or during weekends. What are you people, sick?

They do more than pass around knowledge out here

Hmm, I think they should better stick to passing around knowledge and leaving the passing around of taser shocks out of it. Anyway, here is the official account, which is in no direct words mentioned on the page by the way.

They have issued their own info about the incident at: http://www.ucpd.ucla.edu/ucpd/zippdf/2006/Taser%20 11-15-06.pdf (Yes, it IS brilliant to have a whitespace in a filename on tha Internets)

The UC related individuals who initiated the incident were unarmed 'Community Service Officers' (CSOs), who assist with security in buildings, check for missing scent-cakes in the urinals, log and track missing umbrellas, etc. R E N T A -- C O P'perzzzz (watch the video please...). Real officers would have handled the situation in an entirely different, and dare I say _professional_, manner. Which, by the way, is the real issue. Wanna-be's that can't handle the least bit of authority without screwing things up when some airhead decides it's a good day to die.

Before criticizing the officers, you might want to read the UCLA Police Department Taser Policy. The policy explicitly authorizes the use of Tasers' "Drive Stun" mode against passive resistors. In some circumstances, this can include passive resistors already in handcuffs. When officers are following policy, I think it's more worthwhile to criticize the policy than the officers. Criticizing the policy is the only way to change things for the future and hold those who formulated the policy in the first place to account.

http://www.ucpd.ucla.edu/ucpd/contact.html

kross@ucpd.ucla.edu
adamsj@ucpd.ucla.edu
alvarezk@ucpd.ucla.edu
heleng@ucpd.ucla.edu