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And my mother practices Reiki, beliving crystal rocks and chakra/chi are used to heal the body, despite (to my knowledge) any actual benefits noted by any reputable scientific source beyond the placebo effect.

Do not underestimate the power of the placebo.

http://www.wired.com/medtech/drugs/magazine/17-09/ff_placebo_effect

...Also why do they have to make roads out of them.. where did that come from? Just put them out on land somewhere, you don't have to drive all over them.

This was my first thought too. Making the solar panels into roads (or vice versa) is compounding the problem. Just put the 25,000 mi^2 of solar panels in the middle of the desert and call it even. Adding a layer of glass or some sort of protective surface is going to lessen the efficiency and raise the cost of production and maintenance. I'm all about green energy, but there are better places we could be spending our money and energy.

Back at uni, I did a mini-course on the the Solar Car challenge, because my University made some of the solar panels for the top cars, and we also had a car that entered and did fairly well (for a low budget). One of the things we learned was that solar cells lose efficiency very quickly from a variety of things. The two that most researchers ignored in the lab but mattered in the field was heat and dirt. The cars in the race are washed with cold water thoroughly at every opportunity because colder, cleaner cells are substantially more efficient. Think CPU overclocking - lower temperatures improves things a lot.

Now lets compare this situation to a typical road which is:
a) Blistering hot most days.
b) Really, truly, thoroughly dirty.

Sounds like the perfect place to put an expensive solar cell panel!

Another thing we learned is that a single "test" panel in a lab operates very differently to a bunch of real panels in the field. What a lot of naive researchers miss is that the amount of sunlight over the entire collecting surface in the real-world is not constant. For a one-square-foot panel, it is, but for any significant surface (the size of a car, road, whatever), it won't be. The surface will be curved or partially shadowed. This matters a lot because if you just connect a bunch of cells together, they perform roughly the same as the worst of the lot. If there's a few cells under a shadow, that's drags down the efficiency of the panels receiving sunlight. To efficiently extract energy from a bunch of panels receiving differing amounts of light takes a bunch of expensive power management electronics that can combine the different cell outputs in the right way.

In practice, cells are so expensive that the best place to put them is on huge, flat, orientable panels out in the desert where there's no clouds, no rainfall to cake dirt onto the panels, and they can be oriented to face the sun at all time, like this array in southern California.

This is the part that scares me most. The idea that someday I may not be able to backup my CDs or DVDs, due to Windows blocking that action, troubles me. The U.S. Supreme Court has declared every user has the right to make a backup, and they even have a right to record live programs (time-delayed viewing). Who is Microsoft (or RIAA/MPAA) to overrule the supreme court and say "nope; not allowed".

The Court system, not Microsoft, has also upheld that the DMCA prevents a person/company from manufacturing, selling, or importing software that can rip protected DVDs (and in theory, protected CDs). See: Universal City Studios v. Real Networks.

The only real reason this isn't a big issues with CDs is the action Philips has taken against companies that attempt to copy protect CDs.

Oh yeah, a much better article on Wired! Despite the bad link and very short summary, it is still an important issue. They key is that they say "Ideally, when searching a computerâ(TM)s hard drive, the government should cull the specific data described in the search warrant, rather than copy the entire drive, the San Francisco-based appeals court ruled. When thatâ(TM)s not possible, the feds must use an independent third party under the courtâ(TM)s supervision," So basically, they had a warrant for 10 drug results, but happened to find 104 results, and took them all. This ruling is a good one in my eyes. Now, they keyword I see there is "ideally", which seems to mean it could be stretched both ways by a smart lawyer, but still overall good stuff.

But if you put up a speech from a Chinese or Burman disident, will it be taken down? No it wont no matter how hard their governments try.
And I think you might have forgotten things like TPBs support for the Iranian democratic movement.
And then there was the whole Arboga-case debacle which in no uncertain way showed how much more TPB cared about open information than expected revenue.

They really DO give a fuck about free speech, and they've shown it again and again!

"Linux is for real work and Windows is for gaming"

NO, Linux is for real work, Games Consoles are for gaming and Windows is for swearing at !

--

Citibank Hack Blamed for Alleged ATM Crime Spree"

Hackers breach Heartland Payment credit card system

Jaws

--

Citibank Hack Blamed for Alleged ATM Crime Spree"

Hackers breach Heartland Payment credit card system

Obviously the blogger wasn't very anonymous if the abusee could so easily find out her real identity. And if you are going to abuse someone else online than at least have the gumption of using someone elses account, preferably on their home computer - that way they'll get the blame ...
--

Citibank Hack Blamed for Alleged ATM Crime Spree"

Hackers breach Heartland Payment credit card system

"It looks almost as if they publicized the whole PB deal just to inflate the shares of the company, and then one by one leave the company (with the proceeds in their pockets maybe?)... Classical case of Enron-itis"

Pure speculation on your half and Enron was never about falsely inflating the stock but outright fraud as in they cooked up fake trades that were actually between subsidiaries of Enron, a classic shell game.
--

Citibank Hack Blamed for Alleged ATM Crime Spree">

Hackers breach Heartland Payment credit card system

And then one day there's a licencing dispute and whoops.

It was only three years ago, guys! I suppose that means it's a whole new college intake, but there must be some old-timers still here who remember back to 2006?

Yeah. That worked for Enron.

Yeah, I think there was a documentary on this some years ago and here's a Wired.com article on it from 2007: Mixed Feelings - See with your tongue

Here's a CBS News video on the Brainport from January 2007: Blind Learn To See With Tongue

And here's an article on the tech from way back in 2004: Tongue-Vision Allows The Blind To Lap-Up The Sights

> You can smear Jobs, but he's given more than you ever will

And

> Do you have his tax records or something?

In the same post, with only a short numbered list separating the two. If you're gonna feed the trolls, at least *try* to be reasonable.

A quick google search for "steve jobs charitable contributions" comes up with a bunch of stuff indicating that Jobs doesn't donate much or anything. Here's the Wired article that's first on that list: http://www.wired.com/gadgets/mac/commentary/cultofmac/2006/01/70072 FTA:
"Giving USA Foundation, a philanthropy research group which publishes an annual charity survey, said Jobs does not appear on lists of gifts of $5 million or more over the last four years. Nor is his name on a list of gifts of $1 million or more compiled by Indiana University's Center on Philanthropy.

Jobs' wife is also absent from these philanthropic lists, although she has made dozens of political donations totaling tens of thousands of dollars to the Democrats, according to the Open Secrets database."

Personally, I could not care less about Steve Jobs' personal or professional life. But apparently others do care, for some reason. This is for them. :)

Anything else? There is a link talking about it, let me know if you want anything else master and I'll be happy to oblige.

What do you think we should do? I see two ways to attack this problem:
1. Single payer health care with required nutritional counseling.
2. Remove food from the free market and give everybody a calorie-based, instead of dollar-based, budget for food.

3. Make it required that all consumer electronics are self powered. Either by walking or hooking up a treadmill to a generator or similar technology.

Weight loss and power savings to the grid!

That wasn't so hard, was it? Just have to think a bit outside the Doritos bag.

Wired magazine has quite an extesive review of the magazine, reviewing many aspects, from chip maker itself, the audio, to the rest of the page

http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2009/08/cbs-embeds-a-video-playing-ad-in-a-print-magazine/

Some side notes for those that don't RTFA.
Audio - yes there is audio, and quite loud they note
Chip Maker - Americhip (the first 5 seconds is an promo for the chip maker)
Depth - the chip itself is 1/4 inch thick, not exactly paper thin.
Market - Sending to select subsribers in LA & NYC

I am still curious about the environmental impact of this technology on the garbage world

Yes, there will be sound, no you can't set the volume, yes it plays with sound when you first open it, this is an advertisement after all -- they want you to attract the attention of those around you.

You should check out the Wired article. It has a YouTube clip.

Wrong. It doesn't cost phone companies anything to transfer text messages, as it's done using a separate control link that previously was only used to communicate things like signal strength and other control data between the phone and the tower.

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/technology/2009/05/invented-text-messaging.html

http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2008/12/text-messages-c/

This channel is used whether or not anyone sends any text messages on it, so there's absolutely no cost to the carrier to handle the SMS data.

So when the carrier charges you $0.25 to send or receive a text message, you're REALLY being gouged.

Now, for wire transfer fees: to my knowledge, people wire money to each others' accounts all the time in Europe, and it doesn't cost anything (or there might be a very, very small sending fee, I can't recall exactly). These silly $35 wire transfer fees in the USA are another crazy thing that's "only in America". Why is it this way? I dunno; I guess because the banks like it that way because it makes them more money, and banks are completely unregulated in the USA unlike in Europe. Only in America do the banks get giant bail-outs when they have financial problems.

At this stage, you the individual don't benefit tremendously from cloud computing. But your company, at *almost* any head count, might be able to leverage what's also known as utility computing today. Depending on what it does or doesn't want to bother hosting internally.

Hosted Microsoft Exchange is a concrete example of a cloud (cloud-like) service that's been gaining ground for a while now.

Wired had a read-worthy piece on Azure's principal architect Ray Ozzie last year, Ray Ozzie Wants to Push Microsoft Back Into Startup Mode. Hyperbole aside, anyone who's directly interfacing with Microsoft sales people and engineers these days will tell you, Azure is a big part of Microsoft's next money grab.

However, it's amusing that the definition of "cloud computing" continues to mean different things to different vendors, as evidenced by Amazon, Google and Microsoft offering fairly distinct and non-overlapping services. Until they come into direct competition with one another, I think this is going to continue to be seen as a novelty by many CTOs and IT decision-makers.

Is cloud computing the future? I don't know, but I think it's safe to say it's *a* future. Even if it isn't yours. :)

That's a bit of an extreme position to take. After all, how is that kid going to make money when his stuff is pirated too?

The question is, how profitable is intellectual property? Yes, I know, information wants to be free. But does that mean that folks who want to make a living by creating intellectual property are just going to have to suck it up and make due? It's not a clear cut good vs. bad situation.

It's understandable to feel like it's the People vs. the Borg when the RIAA is brought into the discussion but in a larger sense, the RIAA isn't the issue.

The issue is the same thing that was discussed way back in 1994 by John Perry Barlow (co-founder of the EFF) in Wired magazine in an article titled "The Economy of Ideas".

"Throughout the time I've been groping around cyberspace, an immense, unsolved conundrum has remained at the root of nearly every legal, ethical, governmental, and social vexation to be found in the Virtual World. I refer to the problem of digitized property. The enigma is this: If our property can be infinitely reproduced and instantaneously distributed all over the planet without cost, without our knowledge, without its even leaving our possession, how can we protect it? How are we going to get paid for the work we do with our minds? And, if we can't get paid, what will assure the continued creation and distribution of such work?"

Its rather smart in a way. If its hacked, its just a windows box with a database on it.
Collecting info in real time for later use in court.
The Australians wanted to do a "Special Agent J. Keith Mularski" and run the forum for a few years, but something did not work out.
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2008/10/darkmarket-post/
"... online watering hole for thousands of identify thieves, hackers and credit card swindlers, has been secretly run by an FBI cybercrime agent for the last two years.."
Something went wrong with the admin swap and a clean MS box for evidence collecting got 'seen'
Nothing new is known (a new keylogger, carnivore, magic lantern, MS backdoor, Operation Fairplay), that could not be read in Wired, that feds can take over forums and record all.
The real fun is all the users will now be looking over their shoulders for sneak and peek warrants :)

This is already a reality: http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2009/01/gun-mount-and-s/

All the TV interviews were real unscripted questions asked of real South Africans on illegal immigrants in South Africa. I quote from here: To give the short a realistic feel, Blomkamp interviewed real people about the influx of immigrants into real-life Johannesburg; their frank answers to questions about Zimbabweans and other refugees were transformed into documentary-style commentary on extraterrestrials unwanted by a fearful local population. (See Alive in Joburg below.)

Everyone harping on about how this is about Apartheid is wrong. It's about modern, everyday xenophobia, alive and kicking in place like South Africa and havens of moral rectitude like the US of fucking A where just as many people hate foreigners because they're, uhm, foreign as people anywhere else do.

But no, it's set in South Africa, so it must be about Aparthied, right? I mean nothing else ever happened there, right?

As long as you can keep the people who lied about their own miracles away from the methodology that makes breakthrough science possible.

There are some details about the legal hurdles behind the Apple-1 replica in this 2002 article from Wired: http://www.wired.com/gadgets/mac/news/2002/11/56426

This is about as interesting and informative as everything else being posted to Twitter!!
http://www.wired.com/images_blogs/threatlevel/2009/08/botnet_arbor.jpg
:D

Actually I wonder if Microsoft doesn't have a strategic goal here.

I read that back when Apple was in trouble Microsoft bought shares in the company and guaranteed to keep supporting Office on the Macintosh. The idea was that Apple would never be able to kill Windows but if Apple died there might be anti trust issues or another more dangerous competitor might take its place. Or maybe it was just to stop look and feel lawsuits.

http://www.wired.com/thisdayintech/2009/08/dayintech_0806/

Now Symbian is in trouble it seems like they are doing the same thing. I guess it is because they worry about Android. Not that Android is exactly taking the world by storm.

Still I think porting Office is one of those decisions that are taken mostly for strategic reasons.

Sorry, WRONG. Thanks for playing, though.

"And before any of you jump in to point out that the DMCA is just a U.S. thing, you had better keep in mind that the DMCA is just the U.S. implementation of the WIPO COpyright Treaty [wikipedia.org], so these types of court cases are probably in the pipeline for your country soon too!"

Your prediction is 100% correct.

At the last attempt at copyright reform in Canada (Bill C-60 last year), the government proposed specifically giving consumers the right to make backups of DVDs or transfer video or audio to other media devices (format conversion), while simultaneously bringing in WIPO-compliant DMCA-like provisions that would have made circumvention of CSS copy protection on those DVDs illegal, and made development or sale of any tools to do so illegal. When reporters and others brought up the pointlessness of bringing in "new rights" that were impossible to legally exercise, the minister of the day had a tough time offering a rational explanation.

Fortunately, the combination of that level of stupidity, the resulting public outrage, and the minority government situation led to the bill dying a quiet death. And, now that the minister in question has been replaced, there are ongoing public consultations to help prepare a new bill (last time there no real consultation). It seems to have finally sunk in that they made fools of themselves and that the the public isn't going to let the government get away with only listening to the media lobby. Maybe they'll propose something sane this time.

Canada is lucky that the U.S. took the lead on this stuff. I really appreciate the crap that people in the U.S. have to go through. It means Canada and other countries benefit from being able to cite many U.S. examples of the problems the DMCA created (my favorite are the lawsuits over 3rd-party printer cartridges and garage door openers). These laws have terrible implications for both consumer rights and for maintaining competition in industry. What the U.S. needs to do is amend the law so that you don't have the stupidity of having fair use rights, but not being able to (legally) exercise them the moment someone applies some copy protection. The DMCA puts *way* too much power in the hands of copyright holders. The court case in the article makes that clear -- perhaps the ruling is legally correct, but if so, it shows that the law needs to change.

Why don't you stop with whacky theories about what the concept of unequal bargaining position means, and go look up some cases?

Such as Gatton v. T-Mobile

Where the court found an arbitration clause in the EULA procedurally unconscionable, under the circumstances under which it was a contract of adhesion

an agreement imposed and drafted by the party with superior bargaining strength, which gave the consumer only the opportunity to accept or reject the contract, not to freely negotiate it.

BETTER PRIVACY PLUGIN.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/6623

100% compatible with Firefox 3.5*
Please do not ask me about missing updates here, read FAQ at the bottom of this page.

Better Privacy serves to protect against not deletable longterm cookies, a new generation of 'Super-Cookie', which silently conquered the internet. This new cookie generation offers unlimited user tracking to industry and market research. Concerning privacy Flash- and DOM Storage objects are most critical.
This addon was made to make users aware of those hidden, never expiring objects and to offer an easy way to get rid of them - since browsers are unable to do that for you.

Flash-cookies (Local Shared Objects, LSO) are pieces of information placed on your computer by a Flash plugin. Those Super-Cookies are placed in central system folders and so protected from deletion. They are frequently used like standard browser cookies. Although their thread potential is much higher as of conventional cookies, only few users began to take notice of them. It is of frequent occurrence that -after a time- hundreds of those Flash-cookies reside in special folders. And they won't be deleted - never.

BetterPrivacy can stop them, . by allowing to silently remove those objects on every browser exit. So this extension becomes sort of "install and forget add-on". Usually automatic deletion is safe (no negative impact on your browsing), especially if the deletion timer is activated. The timer can delay automatic deletion for new or modified Flash-cookies which might be in use. It also allows to delete those objects immediately if desired.

With BetterPrivacy it is possible to review, protect or delete new Flash-cookies individually. Users who wish to to manage all cookies manually can disable the automatic functions. BetterPrivacy also protects against 'DOM Storage' longterm tracking, a browser feature which has been granted by the major browser manufactures.

Some flash LSO-cookie properties in short...

they are never expiring - staying on your computer for an unlimited time.

by default they offer a storage of 100 KB (compare: Usual cookies 4 KB).

browsers are not aware of those cookies, LSO's usually cannot be removed by browsers.

via Flash they can access and store highly specific personal and technical information (system, user name, files,...).

ability to send the stored information to the appropriate server, without user's permission.

flash applications do not need to be visible

there is no easy way to tell which flash-cookie sites are tracking you.

shared folders allow cross-browser tracking, LSO's work in every flash-enabled application

the company doesn't provide a user-friendly way to manage LSO's, in fact it's incredible cumbersome.

many domains and tracking companies make extensive use of flash-cookies.

These cookies are not harmless.

IMPORTANT
IF YOU PERMIT DELETION OF LSO's,
THEN COOKIE-STORED INFORMATION LIKE
GAME SETTINGS OR LOGIN DATA (YAHOO SEAL)
MIGHT BE LOST! MAKE SURE THAT YOU EXCLUDED
IMPORTANT COOKIES FROM DELETION (SEE FAQ)

Frequently asked questions (FAQ):
Please scroll to the bottom of the page.

Recommended comprehensive Flash cookie article (topic: UC Berkeley research report)
http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2009/08/you-deleted-your-cookies-think-again/

Wikipedia LSO information:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Local_Shared_Object

See what Google finds:
http://google.com/search?q=flash-cookie+super-cookie

Privacy test:
http://netticat.ath.cx/extensions.html
Navigate to BetterPrivacy (right column)

Note:
NO

On top of whatever taxes are part of the phone bill, the way a company gets a license to use RF spectrum in the United States involves spectrum auctions every few years. The last time the spectrum auctions happened, you had cell phone companies paying several billion dollars each for their licenses.

The thing is, companies never 'pay' for anything - they just pass the costs on to the consumer. So, how much of each minute is your share of the 2 or 4 Billion dollars?

I think the whole system is fundamentally broken and does not server U.S. Taxpayers very well, because even though it does raise revenue for the government, it also drives mobile phone bills way up. There's got to be a better, cheaper way to allocate spectrum than a highest-bidder auction.

Well, you could always use the similar, launching-at-the-same-time TwittAround to hunt down and slaughter Twitter users... that's pretty terminator-ish.

The only thing that would save them is stopping tweeting, then moving location... but how likely is that?!

Source http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2009/07/twitters-enters-meatspace-the-end-is-nigh/

You can copy the data, and modify the copy, but the signature won't check out, making the exercise pointless.

Passport readers do accept the signature as legitimate.

Falcon

The article doesn't mention whether the edited card created would pass a digital signature check - if such a check has been incorporated, it would almost certainly not pass inspection by a terminal that checked signatures.

It does pass a legitimate passport signature check. What it does not pass is "a system for detecting a fake passport chip like this", the system is only used in 5 countries though.

Personally I don't care either way, except as it discredits the notion IDs can be made unbreakable.

I would support a scheme without this database

Not only do I not support a national ID, but I actively oppose any such thing, with or without it being tied to a database.

Falcon

I suspect that he modified the cloned data -- but could not, of course, produce a digital signature for the modified data

According to a "Wired" article "he showed was how he could take a writeable RFID chip, load it with data (name, birthdate, photo, etc) then hash that data and make a self-signed certificate using the same parameters of a legitimate passport signature so that passport readers would accept it as legitimate."

That article goes more into what was done and what they were not able to do. Such as not being able to fool a way to detect fake passport chips. However the system is only used in 5 out of 45 countries.

Falcon

"Wired" magazine has a better article.

Falcon

Except the man who supposedly modified the data has previously denied that he can do it. It's not his fault that the technologically ignorant media (Daily Mail) chose to bash the Labour government by claiming that's what happened.

Unfortunately, a number of people have interpreted the Times story to mean that van Beek altered the data on a legitimate passport chip without it being detected. Englandâ(TM)s Home Office is among those who read it this way. The Office recently responded to the story by denying that anyone can change data on a passport chip without it being detected.

In fact, van Beek says he didn't change data on a passport chip.

From a previous article on cloning e-passports: In fact, van Beek says he didn't change data on a passport chip.

So van Beek denies that he can actually change the data, and yet the Daily Mail say he can? Hmmm.

Also, the British government isn't in the business of biometric chip design - the card was actually designed by the Thales Group. Blame the government for the policy, but if there was a technology screw up, blame Thales.

The researcher used a mobile phone to clone the card, suggesting that the card itself uses the same GSM SIM card protocols for reading and writing the data area. Probably the data is held in a 'phonebook' style bit of memory. Now here's the thing - people have been able to backup and modify the data on GSM cards for years - but this is not the same thing as cloning a GSM card.

If this is anything like the digital passports, then there is a signature. You can generate a fake passport card with your own photo and ID, and you can even generate your own signing certificate, sign the card, then stick it into an automated machine and it will show your fake ID+photo. There's an Wired article detailing the process. However, you can not travel on one of these - the architecture allows every nation to have its own Certification Authority, but the passport readers have to be set up to accept it. There's no way to become your own CA, and then magically get your card accepted.

So, back to the story. It looks as though it's easy to update the data on this card. So what? Until they demonstrate that the data on the card can actually be used to do something nefarious (like authenticate yourself as another person to claim benefits) without setting off alarms the moment the card is plugged into the actual system, then what threat is this? How do we even know that the cloned card is a true copy - the Daily Mail isn't exactly known for its rigorous approach to science news.

My arguement in this case is that the machine would have to be smarter not than a single person, but than an entire group of people, all with different expertise and internal creative processes, combined, to result in an intilligence explosion. That's a very different conclusion.

But it's the wrong conclusion. This is a mistake (IMO) that I see a lot of people make when talking about machine intelligence in comparison to humans.

The thing is, these machines that are smarter than men are still machines. They are not humans. When you say a machine is "as smart as a human", people seem to automatically assume that means they're as fallible as humans too. That's not necessarily going to be the case and I would argue it likely will not be the case. It's not necessary, nor is it probably the easiest route, to reach a human level of intelligence by designing a machine brain exactly like a human's. More likely, we'll design it in some brute force digital way so that it is computationally as or more powerful than a human brain, but neither has some of our capacity for creative thought nor any of our problems with memory or senses or whatever. (The former is not guaranteed, though; creative thought and intelligence are linked, so a "smart" machine may be just as creative as we are, especially if pre-programmed with a set of overriding directives, as it no doubt would be because otherwise what's the point?)

So yes, a single machine "smarter" than a human could have its own designs in memory and could probably fairly easily teach itself how to build a copy of itself simply by studying how to do it. It would never forget anything until it ran out of memory, it would never be distracted by thoughts of love or sex or by being too tired or bored, it would presumably be built with the precision and dexterity of a robot, so that's not an issue. It wouldn't need to worry about experience, as a human does, because its limbs will just do whatever its "brain" tells them to - unlike a human. It could also pretty easily build machines smarter than itself, either by just adding more computing power or by linking itself to the copies it produces.

Humans are usually not limited in what they can do by their intelligence, but by all of their fallibilities, not to mention a desire for leisure time. We don't want to just be working all the time, and we want to do what we love to do, even if it means we can only build one part of a robot instead of the whole thing. If your field is welding, maybe you don't have any interest in learning how to design memory chips. A robot or android is not going to have that "problem"; it will learn to do whatever it needs to do in order to build whatever it needs to build to satisfy whatever directives it's programmed with. And it'll do it without any leisure time short of stopping to literally recharge its batteries.

*That* is what's really dangerous about all this, IMO. I don't even think robots need to be *as* smart as humans to cause us real problems. A robot with an IQ equivalent of about 50 (which is still far beyond where we are today) but a large amount of memory and good basic dexterity could probably replicate itself and then defend itself (with its buddies) if programmed with an innocuous directive like self-preservation. We are counting on the fact that our higher intelligence will protect us against dumber machines because we will be able to think more creatively and keep one step ahead, but all they really need to do is go to a library and get the right books to study, then hide out in the woods for a while building up a dumb but formidable army.

Even a single semi-intelligent machine programmed poorly could just waltz into a gun store, take a gun off the rack and start shooting people. And it'd probably require an RPG to take it down. We are already almost there - autonomous gun robots have already gone berzerk and killed people. Someday these things are gonna be

The page at Wired.com with the story has a large graphic on the top, right part of the page saying readers can follow tech events via Twitter. Or, you know, not ... ;)

Trust this insofar as you trust Wired. They say that the microwave will leave scorch marks, so this is NOT recommended. I suppose blunt force trauma is virtually undetectable or at least explainable by wear and tear throughout the course of your travels.

The guy lied to the AP (or rather their software), ... Taken in by his deception, they accepted the money. ... Clearly, they have committed a dastardly crime.

I know, right? It's called a test case. He demonstrated that the system was flawed by purposefully taking steps to cause it to express a failure state. Test cases are a Good Thing, you see it is best to discover problems like this before they are exposed disastrously in the wild.

When someone is trying to genuinely use the service, it is going to be because they are quoting a news story that says "Copyright AP" at the bottom. The user will by definition not be an AP subscriber. So, 2short: do you care to elaborate how such a hardworking sap, only trying to do the right thing, will be able to confirm who really owns the quote? Is it from the AP original text? Was it added by the tertiary source? Was it a typo, and the story was really from Reuters?

That is supposed to be the point of this tool. Contrary to your earlier misapprehension, it is not an overglorified word counter. If it were, it would be the most expensive kind I have ever heard of. Who wants a computer to count words for them so badly they would pay $12 for the service?

No, I am certain both you and AP will be perfectly happy when anyone tries to use the tool, then as they are sued for millions usd by the true author of any section of text either loosly- or mis-labeled as copyright AP by a tertiary source, then AP will email them back with "rats, sorry about that!" and refund the poor sap his $12. Of course, only for the 1 out of a hundred citations he has paid for that applied in such a case. Who knows how many of the other 99 AP collected on gratuitously?

More hilarious still would be when AP sues the schmuck anyway. Schmuck brandishes his icopyright receipt in court, and AP lawyers need merely cite TFA as evidence the tool is unreliable to begin with. Or else perhaps they could claim the licence was revoked just before schmuck published his citation; check your spam filter mebe? Well, we'll take the $12 out of the damages we're suing you for, just to be nice.

So its ok to supply the bomb making materials to the terrorists as long as you don't help them build or detonate the bomb?

Correct. I do not hold Ryder or any of the other companies that supplied Timothy McVeigh with the supplies that he used during the Oklahoma city bombing. Nor do I hold Boeing, American Airlines, nor United Airlines for providing planes to terrorists. Provided, of course, that they had no knowledge of what those supplies were intended for.

If this guy was telling people they could play copyrighted games with the mod, or people were asking him to mod it and told him that it was for playing pirated games, then he should be charged as either an accomplice or an accessory to the crime. But if neither of that happens, then he should, IMO, not be held liable for the actions of others. Similarly, if McVeigh told the Ryder truck rental person that the purpose was a make-shift bomb, and the rental still took place, then the renter should be held liable as an accessory. If Mohamed Atta had told the ticketing agents the purpose for his flight and the sale still happened, then the agent ought to be held liable as an accessory.

The article doesn't say whether he was encouraging the modding for pirated content, nor does it say whether he was aware of any of his clients' specific purposes. Certainly I'm sure he was aware that pirated content was possible. Perhaps he knew and didn't care, maybe he operated under a "Don't ask, don't tell" policy, or maybe he was outed because he refused to help someone who told them they wanted to pirate games. The article doesn't indicate any of that. However, In this article he is quoted as saying "If you're talking about piracy, I'm not helping you out." It's now up to the courts to decide, but if what he says is true, then I certainly don't think he should have been arrested, and this only highlights how stupid the DMCA anti-circumvention clause really is.

The Eiffel tower hasn't changed that much in the past 110 years... The MIT (IIRC) used to have a random data feed generated from a webcam and a lava lamp. I guess each datacenter ought to invest in a lavalamp...

Correction : after a quick Google, it seems that it was SGI, and that they actually patented the thing (which may or may not mean something depending on your jurisdiction). The site was (and still is apparently) lavarnd.org.

8 Hr charge @ 200V and 50A? gives 80kwh

I'm not sure that's correct. They say the battery is rated at 24 kwh, so it seems unlikely that it'd need 80 to charge it. Nissan say it'll cost under 4c per mile, but of course independent tests would be a better guide.

The article fail to mention that owner doesn't own the battery and the infrastructure of electricity to power the electric car.

Nissan Leaf is part of Project Better Place have been discussed since last year. Wired have a article about it http://www.wired.com/cars/futuretransport/magazine/16-09/ff_agassi?currentPage=all

And this is the presentation about the Project Better Place. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NfGEbTcNuzA

the price, go here. It is currently slated for under $30k.

I have always thought Apple made product that was technically inferior to the equivalent IBM style hardware. (This is still true ... just looking at an Apple Laptop proves it (and they still have a one button mouse)

Does THIS qualify as a "one button mouse"?

if it wasn't for the artyfart fan boys, Apple would have been long gone.

Wow, then the number of "artyfart fan boys" must not only be legion, but is actually GROWING at a phenomenal rate, especially when compared to the PC Sales slump overall this year.!

Fucking TROLL.