I have a problem with using dogs for criminal enforcement. In court you can only cross examine the handler, not the dog. I have long suspected the handlers can use hand signals to tell the dog to alert. Either way they walk into court and testify that the dog alerted to the presence of drugs.
While interesting, the TFA is missing more content than it contains. Just a few quick oversights that I thought of while skimming the list. Platinium is widely used in sparkplugs. Uranium was used in depression glass as well as pottery and it is the active ingredient in armor piercing DU ammunition. Rhodium is used in electronics where arcing is undesirable. I wonder how long before the electric and hybrid cars become a target of theft for the precious metal and rare earth content. Iron doesn't show up at all. Scandium is used to make high strength aluminum alloys. Gallium-Arsenide has a very low internal resistance which made it suitable for high frequency and photo sensitive circuits for years.
Charles Seife's Zero, The Biography of a Dangerous Idea chronicles the origin of the number zero. It's one of the most interesting math and history books I've ever read.
Maybe NBC and it's parent corporation realized the original parody was fair use. They redacted it from the archives because they don't want bots sending DMCA notices and they don't want to take them to court and argue fair use.
One of the reasons the Bureau of Printing and Engraving has never moved to laser etching or some other automated method for making dies and plates is that the tiny flaws introduced by human frailties add a unique signature to every bill printed by the plate. A small blemish in a line here, another line that's too thick there. These. The individual characteristics of each engraving can identify a specific plate. When there are no flaws in the engraving it is unlikely to have been created by human hands.
The presses and engraving technology they have were overtaken in counterfeiting countermeasures in the 1990's when microprinting was introduced ( IIRC "USA 100" repeating around Franklin's lapel and in the border around his portrait.) The presses they have are adequate for their own currency if they use paper with security threads and watermarks.
Back in the seventies Iran had the same intaglio presses used by the Bureau of Printing and Engraving to print US Currency. Back then they used it to print their own currency. After the revolution they are suspected to have used the presses to print counterfeit US currency. If they can build isotope separation centrifuges on an industrial scale they can manufacture whatever spare parts they need to keep those old presses in operation.
Meteorites are worth a nice piece of change. This is nothing but a way to collect revenue from commercial collectors. Probably defined as anyone who auctions one on ebay.
People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals killed more than 95 per cent of animals in its care last year at a Virginia shelter, a shocking new report states....
Records from 2011 alone state that of the 1,992 cats and dogs received, 34 were transferred, and 24 were adopted. The remaining 1,911 were put down, the report states.
Read the rest at the link. If you want to know more get Penn and Teller's Bullshit! on DVD and watch the PETA episode.
Many dinosaurs may be facing a new kind of extinction—a controversial theory suggests as many as a third of all known dinosaur species never existed in the first place. That's because young dinosaurs didn't look like Mini-Me versions of their parents, according to new analyses by paleontologists Mark Goodwin, University of California, Berkeley, and Jack Horner, of Montana State University.
The documentary makes a compelling case that juvenile examples of various species have been misidentified as a separate species of dinosaur.
PBCS got raked over the coals by Thunderf00t et.al. Not sure what all happened to him. This case also pointed to a central problem with false DMCA takedown notices. Persons in foreign countries can claim rights under the DMCA but are not subject to DMCA jurisdiction for making false claims.
I wonder how this patent swarm compares to the sewing machine patent swarm. Probably worse because the sewing machine compaines never thought about patenting things like rounded corners.
Opera/9.80 (Android 3.2; Linux; Opera Tablet/ADR-1207201819; U; en) Presto/2.10.254 Version/12.00
This jackass is wearing his ass for a hat. Such fuckwittery would have prevented deployment of the transistor. Except for a few niches, the transistor rendered the vacuum tube obsolete in about twenty years. It would have prevented deployment of the turbine engine because they rendered radial engines obsolete. If he were left in charge we would all be using SNA because Ethernet would not be permitted.
It's easy to forget that early computers used expensive labor intensive ferrite core memory. Core memory had to be assembled by skilled technicians who threaded each core on a matrix of wires. I once heard that four kilobytes of twelve bit memory cost over thirty thousand dollars back in the early sixties when silver was still the coin of the realm. These old relics were also power hungry. Sac State once had an RCA 301 that was stashed in the Non Destructive Testing lab (The building was adjacent to the river levy and immediately south of the Guy West footbridge and at the time used for storage.) We counted nearly a farad of capacitance in the power supply modules. I wonder what became of the core module from that machine. We used it as a display piece during a couple of open houses.
Good point. Subscriptions force consumers onto the upgrade treadmill. We subscribe to Bloatware X until they force us to subscribe to Bloatware X+1. The software dies when the subscription lapses. We no longer have the option to use the older version because the subscription cannot be renewed.
I predict that renewal reminders will be sent out up to three months early and everyone who renews early will start the subscription clock ticking when they renew, not when their existing subscription expires. Some of the antivirus companies did this for a long time. There is case law regarding the practice but I don't know how deeply it has penetrated the jurisprudence.
Back in 1998 one of my colleagues expressed a favorable attitude towards the pay per view technology being marketed by Circuit City as Divx. I gasped and suggested an analogy of having to pay Microsoft a dime every time you used MS word or even worse, every time you saved a document. While not the same as subscriptions the concept is similar. Office is deeply entrenched in the business world so this move could be a financial bonanza for Microsoft until the business world rebelled. Lotus Notes (Which IMNSHO sucks big green donkey dicks.) could replace Outlook and the Lotus suite of apps based on Open Office could replace the balance of Office. Courageous management would dump commercial software and go with Open Office or Libre Office. Big challenges are user training and finding a replacement with the same kind of email and calendar integration that Outlook offers. I work for a large tech company. Being able to schedule meetings and conference calls, and getting reminders of same makes the work day flow smoothly. At least until your exchange server becomes unreachable.
We need a Darth Balmer icon for Slashdot.
The status quo of the forensic labs working for a law enforcement agency needs to change. Law enforcement agencies will hire people with a law enforcement mindset. They collect and process material looking for probative evidence while not seeking exculpatory evidence. Management can pressure them to provide a desired result. Independent forensic labs could solve part of this problem. Not necessarily private labs, but not part of a law enforcement agency.
Years ago when we finally got rid of the double nickle speed limit there were people predicting carnage on the nations highways. I tried to run the numbers and came up with inconsistent results. Here's a couple of stats I remember from that era:
AAA reported that over eighty percent of injury accidents occur at speeds under forty miles per hour and within a few miles of home. This was in their monthly magazine.
At the same time it was widely reported that half of all traffic fatalities were the result of intoxicated drivers. (Alcohol, drugs.)
Those two stats leave very little room for accidents on high speed freeways where speed is the sole factor in the accident.
3D printing technology is moving into realms that many of us would have overlooked. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z8MaVaqNr3U documents using a "sand printer" to make very precise molds for sand casting. Precision castings reduce the amount of finish work required on the casting. Many of the parts used in a gun could be cast using such a technique, finished, tempered where necessary. (Ruger casts a lot of frames, At one time Springfield used cast bolts in the M1A until enough of them broke that they started forging bolts.) MIM is already widely used in the firearms industry for parts like hammers, triggers and grip safeties. The only parts I can think of that couldn't be made using 3D printing or the above technology are springs which can be bought in bulk, and the barrel, which has to be ordinance grade steel and rifled unless you're shooting a smoothbore with shot or a fin stabilized projectile.
Slashdot Mirror
I have a problem with using dogs for criminal enforcement. In court you can only cross examine the handler, not the dog. I have long suspected the handlers can use hand signals to tell the dog to alert. Either way they walk into court and testify that the dog alerted to the presence of drugs.
While interesting, the TFA is missing more content than it contains. Just a few quick oversights that I thought of while skimming the list. Platinium is widely used in sparkplugs. Uranium was used in depression glass as well as pottery and it is the active ingredient in armor piercing DU ammunition. Rhodium is used in electronics where arcing is undesirable.
I wonder how long before the electric and hybrid cars become a target of theft for the precious metal and rare earth content. Iron doesn't show up at all. Scandium is used to make high strength aluminum alloys. Gallium-Arsenide has a very low internal resistance which made it suitable for high frequency and photo sensitive circuits for years.
Charles Seife's Zero, The Biography of a Dangerous Idea chronicles the origin of the number zero. It's one of the most interesting math and history books I've ever read.
Maybe NBC and it's parent corporation realized the original parody was fair use. They redacted it from the archives because they don't want bots sending DMCA notices and they don't want to take them to court and argue fair use.
Looks like "Not yet."
https://wiki.mozilla.org/Security/Roadmap
This IOS versus Android stuff is as tired as the Windows 95 versus OS/2 screeds of 1995.
I second Microsoft Security Essentials. Add Firefox with Noscript. Malware Bytes is highly recommended.
One of the reasons the Bureau of Printing and Engraving has never moved to laser etching or some other automated method for making dies and plates is that the tiny flaws introduced by human frailties add a unique signature to every bill printed by the plate. A small blemish in a line here, another line that's too thick there. These. The individual characteristics of each engraving can identify a specific plate. When there are no flaws in the engraving it is unlikely to have been created by human hands.
The presses and engraving technology they have were overtaken in counterfeiting countermeasures in the 1990's when microprinting was introduced ( IIRC "USA 100" repeating around Franklin's lapel and in the border around his portrait.) The presses they have are adequate for their own currency if they use paper with security threads and watermarks.
Back in the seventies Iran had the same intaglio presses used by the Bureau of Printing and Engraving to print US Currency. Back then they used it to print their own currency. After the revolution they are suspected to have used the presses to print counterfeit US currency. If they can build isotope separation centrifuges on an industrial scale they can manufacture whatever spare parts they need to keep those old presses in operation.
Meteorites are worth a nice piece of change. This is nothing but a way to collect revenue from commercial collectors. Probably defined as anyone who auctions one on ebay.
Daily Mail, therefore inadmissible as evidence in reasonable debate.
That's a genetic fallacy.
Perhaps The Atlantic is more acceptable. A comparable story is linked here http://idle.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3171579&cid=41592303
Read the rest at the link. If you want to know more get Penn and Teller's Bullshit! on DVD and watch the PETA episode.
Many dinosaurs may be facing a new kind of extinction—a controversial theory suggests as many as a third of all known dinosaur species never existed in the first place.
That's because young dinosaurs didn't look like Mini-Me versions of their parents, according to new analyses by paleontologists Mark Goodwin, University of California, Berkeley, and Jack Horner, of Montana State University.
The documentary makes a compelling case that juvenile examples of various species have been misidentified as a separate species of dinosaur.
http://www.bop.gov/iloc2/LocateInmate.jsp doesn't have him listed yet. He probably has some specified amount of time to surrender to authorities.
PBCS got raked over the coals by Thunderf00t et.al. Not sure what all happened to him. This case also pointed to a central problem with false DMCA takedown notices. Persons in foreign countries can claim rights under the DMCA but are not subject to DMCA jurisdiction for making false claims.
I wonder how this patent swarm compares to the sewing machine patent swarm. Probably worse because the sewing machine compaines never thought about patenting things like rounded corners.
Opera/9.80 (Android 3.2; Linux; Opera Tablet/ADR-1207201819; U; en) Presto/2.10.254 Version/12.00
This jackass is wearing his ass for a hat. Such fuckwittery would have prevented deployment of the transistor. Except for a few niches, the transistor rendered the vacuum tube obsolete in about twenty years. It would have prevented deployment of the turbine engine because they rendered radial engines obsolete. If he were left in charge we would all be using SNA because Ethernet would not be permitted.
It's easy to forget that early computers used expensive labor intensive ferrite core memory. Core memory had to be assembled by skilled technicians who threaded each core on a matrix of wires. I once heard that four kilobytes of twelve bit memory cost over thirty thousand dollars back in the early sixties when silver was still the coin of the realm. These old relics were also power hungry. Sac State once had an RCA 301 that was stashed in the Non Destructive Testing lab (The building was adjacent to the river levy and immediately south of the Guy West footbridge and at the time used for storage.) We counted nearly a farad of capacitance in the power supply modules. I wonder what became of the core module from that machine. We used it as a display piece during a couple of open houses.
Good point. Subscriptions force consumers onto the upgrade treadmill. We subscribe to Bloatware X until they force us to subscribe to Bloatware X+1. The software dies when the subscription lapses. We no longer have the option to use the older version because the subscription cannot be renewed.
I predict that renewal reminders will be sent out up to three months early and everyone who renews early will start the subscription clock ticking when they renew, not when their existing subscription expires. Some of the antivirus companies did this for a long time. There is case law regarding the practice but I don't know how deeply it has penetrated the jurisprudence.
Back in 1998 one of my colleagues expressed a favorable attitude towards the pay per view technology being marketed by Circuit City as Divx. I gasped and suggested an analogy of having to pay Microsoft a dime every time you used MS word or even worse, every time you saved a document. While not the same as subscriptions the concept is similar.
Office is deeply entrenched in the business world so this move could be a financial bonanza for Microsoft until the business world rebelled. Lotus Notes (Which IMNSHO sucks big green donkey dicks.) could replace Outlook and the Lotus suite of apps based on Open Office could replace the balance of Office. Courageous management would dump commercial software and go with Open Office or Libre Office.
Big challenges are user training and finding a replacement with the same kind of email and calendar integration that Outlook offers. I work for a large tech company. Being able to schedule meetings and conference calls, and getting reminders of same makes the work day flow smoothly. At least until your exchange server becomes unreachable.
We need a Darth Balmer icon for Slashdot.
The status quo of the forensic labs working for a law enforcement agency needs to change. Law enforcement agencies will hire people with a law enforcement mindset. They collect and process material looking for probative evidence while not seeking exculpatory evidence. Management can pressure them to provide a desired result. Independent forensic labs could solve part of this problem. Not necessarily private labs, but not part of a law enforcement agency.
Here is a case study in how not to collect and store a sample. While not a law enforcement action the effect ruined a life:
http://digitalcommons.pepperdine.edu/drlj/vol10/iss1/5/ Download the pdf.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederic_Whitehurst#FBI_career and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Bureau_of_Investigation_Laboratory offer some useful background on the topic.
http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2009/10/why_i_hate_star_trek.html "Fill in the tech" applies to CSI shows as well. That's how we get infinitely sharp magnification and instant DNA results.
Thirty year old joke originally from David Potter aka Gharlane.
What do you call a dwarf who plays drums in the Paris Subway?
A Metro Gnome.
Years ago when we finally got rid of the double nickle speed limit there were people predicting carnage on the nations highways. I tried to run the numbers and came up with inconsistent results. Here's a couple of stats I remember from that era:
AAA reported that over eighty percent of injury accidents occur at speeds under forty miles per hour and within a few miles of home. This was in their monthly magazine.
At the same time it was widely reported that half of all traffic fatalities were the result of intoxicated drivers. (Alcohol, drugs.)
Those two stats leave very little room for accidents on high speed freeways where speed is the sole factor in the accident.
3D printing technology is moving into realms that many of us would have overlooked. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z8MaVaqNr3U documents using a "sand printer" to make very precise molds for sand casting. Precision castings reduce the amount of finish work required on the casting. Many of the parts used in a gun could be cast using such a technique, finished, tempered where necessary. (Ruger casts a lot of frames, At one time Springfield used cast bolts in the M1A until enough of them broke that they started forging bolts.) MIM is already widely used in the firearms industry for parts like hammers, triggers and grip safeties. The only parts I can think of that couldn't be made using 3D printing or the above technology are springs which can be bought in bulk, and the barrel, which has to be ordinance grade steel and rifled unless you're shooting a smoothbore with shot or a fin stabilized projectile.