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mefi
The Department of Homeland Security has
expressed interest [PDFs] in forcing all commercial airline passengers to wear a taser bracelet that can be used to incapacitate anyone on an airline. This
video, from the company that will produce the bracelets, explains how the bracelet would be put on the passenger at the point that they clear security, and would not be removed until they leave secure areas. It would take the place of boarding passes, carry personal and biometric information about the passengers, track and monitor every passenger via GPS and shock the wearer on command, immobilizing him or her for several minutes. DHS official, Paul S. Ruwaldt of the Science and Technology Directorate, office of Research and Development is also excited about the possiblility of using it as an interrogation tool at airports. Ah freedom, who knew it smelled like burning flesh?
posted to MetaFilter by dejah420
at 10:35 AM on July 12, 2008
(152 comments)
Strong earthquake hits Japan,
hundreds of homes have been destroyed, bridges have been leveled, tsunamis are forming, and most frightening, the nuclear power plant appears to be
leaking radioactive water. The quake registered as a 6.8 on the
Richter scale. I hope that our Japanese Mefites are safe and sound and will let us know if there is anything we can do to help.
posted to MetaFilter by dejah420
at 7:36 AM on July 16, 2007
(52 comments)
There's been much talk about the Supreme's decisions on
desegregation and
free speech, but another ruling with broad consumer impact has gone relatively unnoticed. In a
5-4 decision [PDF], the U.S. Supreme Court
struck down a 96-year-old ban on minimum pricing agreements between manufacturers and retailers. Dissenting opinion believes that this ruling will hurt consumers, raise prices and keep new retailers out of the marketplace. The 1911 ruling that was overturned was
Dr. Miles Medical Co. vs. John D. Park & Sons which decided that it is always illegal for a supplier to dictate minimum prices to a retailer.
posted to MetaFilter by dejah420
at 12:13 PM on June 29, 2007
(47 comments)
Soldiers may no longer use MySpace to communicate with family.
The Defense Department will begin "worldwide" blocking access, as of today, to
YouTube,
Metacafe,
IFilm,
StupidVideos,
FileCabi,
MySpace,
BlackPlanet, Hi5,
Pandora,
MTV,
1.fm,
live365, and
Photobucket on its computers and networks, according to a memo sent Friday by Gen. B.B. Bell, the U.S. Forces Korea commander. Note that most soldiers deployed in war zones don't have access to any network outside of the military network.
posted to MetaFilter by dejah420
at 12:10 PM on May 14, 2007
(76 comments)
GamerDad,
a site which has been around since 2003 (and is a registered trademark), has been a source of amusement and reviews for parents who play games, and parents who want to know what their kids are playing. Microsoft decided that they liked the name so much,
they would steal it. But at least they had the courtesy to
admit they knew about GamerDad before they stole the name.
posted to MetaFilter by dejah420
at 10:41 PM on October 19, 2006
(19 comments)
Police abuse remains one of the most serious and divisive human rights violations in the United States. The excessive use of force by police officers, including unjustified shootings, severe beatings, fatal chokings, and rough treatment, persists because
overwhelming barriers to accountability make it possible for officers who commit human rights violations to escape due punishment and often to repeat their offenses.
This reporter went out to discover just how hard it would be to anonymously file a complaint report. As it turns out, he was threatened, roughed up, and even intimidated by the suggestion that he would be shot. After reporter Mike Kirsch filed this story, the
retaliation was swift and one would have thought, illegal.
posted to MetaFilter by dejah420
at 1:33 PM on April 5, 2006
(67 comments)
The HIV virus has jumped from primates to people
on at least seven separate occasions in recent history, not twice as is commonly thought. And people in Cameroon are showing up with symptoms of HIV, but are testing negative for both the virus and its primate equivalent SIV, the virus from which HIV is thought to have evolved. That suggests that new strains of an HIV-like virus are circulating in
wild animals and infecting people who eat them, sparking fears that such strains could fuel an already disastrous
global HIV pandemic.
posted to MetaFilter by dejah420
at 10:17 AM on August 6, 2004
(15 comments)
Weapons that can incapacitate crowds
of people by sweeping a lightning-like beam of electricity across them are being readied for sale to military and police forces in the US and Europe. From guns that shoot streams of conductive fibers to plasma that will stop a truck, the military and the police are getting
whole new ways to deal with protestors.
posted to MetaFilter by dejah420
at 7:10 AM on June 17, 2004
(30 comments)
Middle-Class 2003: How Congress Voted (executive summary)
Who is doing better under the a Republican White House and Congress? If you're part of the vast majority...the middle class...it isn't you. So finds a very useful new report out today from the
Drum Major Institute for Public Policy, a non-partisan think tank.
Full report here. (PDF) The study defines middle class as Americans with incomes between approximately 200 percent of the federal poverty threshold and those of the top 5 percent of earners -- roughly $25,000 to $100,000 a year. (Which excludes Congresscritters, who have consistently given themselves raises to
well over 150k a year.)
posted to MetaFilter by dejah420
at 1:22 PM on May 21, 2004
(13 comments)
That American forces use depleted uranium
in our weapons isn't news, but these statistic are a little spooky. According to Bob Nichols at the
Dissident Voice, we've unleased 4,000,000 pounds of DU in Iraq. That's the radioactive equivalent of
250,000 Nagasaki bombs (pdf) says Admiral Vishnu Bhagwat, former chief of Naval Staff in India. And since it's dust...it travels with the wind, which means Europe will see some fallout.
It also turns out that most of the soldiers
didn't know they were using DU, didn't know what DU was, and are now suffering reactions to it.
posted to MetaFilter by dejah420
at 2:23 PM on April 6, 2004
(32 comments)
The Republican National Committee
is demanding that the Federal Election Commission issue
new rules that would
shut down groups that are in any way critical of President Bush or members of Congress. Under the
proposed rules, nonprofit organizations that advocate for cancer research, gun and abortion restrictions or rights, fiscal discipline, tax reform, poverty issues, immigration reform, the environment, or civil rights or liberties -
all these organizations could be transformed into political committees if they criticize or commend members of Congress or the President based on their official actions or policy positions.
posted to MetaFilter by dejah420
at 1:14 PM on March 30, 2004
(20 comments)
Charges of racism have been leveled
against this president
in the past. But
this stunt even surprised me. Then I remembered a
similar scene on the Capital steps. There hasn't been
much media about it, so I'm wondering...is this a regional racism, such that it slid under the radar of the east and west coast news machines, or has the myth of rubbing the head of a black man for luck thankfully faded from the cultural unconscious?
posted to MetaFilter by dejah420
at 2:08 PM on March 10, 2004
(65 comments)
"People had to leave everything,
from photos of their grandparents to cars." One brave (or foolish, depending on your view) girl, and her Kawasaki motorcycle take a tour through the Chernobyl "
dead zone". An astounding an eyewitness photo-essay of
chernobyl today.
(Note that the first link is a google cache, but subsequent pages are available from the site when you click the "next page" link...Angelfire, go figure.)
posted to MetaFilter by dejah420
at 12:50 PM on March 8, 2004
(15 comments)
Feds win one in the war on anti-war activists
A federal judge has ordered a university to turn over records about a gathering of anti-war activists. In addition to records about who attended the forum, the university has been ordered to divulge all records relating to the local chapter of the National Lawyers Guild, a New York-based legal activist organization that sponsored the forum. Subpoenas were also served on activists who attended the forum at the school.
posted to MetaFilter by dejah420
at 10:02 PM on February 7, 2004
(43 comments)
The Bush Administration has advocated, and Congress recently approved
, the repeal of a 1994 ban on U.S. research and development on new, low-yield nuclear weapons, setting the stage for pursuit of a new generation of such weapons. "The Administration had sought to remove this restriction because of the chilling effect it has had on nuclear weapons research and development," wrote Linton F. Brooks, head of the National Nuclear Security Administration in a
December 5 memo(PDF). A detailed Congressional Research Service (CRS) report on "
Nuclear Weapon Initiatives: Low-Yield R&D, Advanced Concepts, Earth Penetrators, Test Readiness" was updated last week. (PDF)
posted to MetaFilter by dejah420
at 11:38 AM on December 19, 2003
(32 comments)
A new MS Internet Explorer vulnerability is discovered.
Most digerati already know about the spammer and lamer trick to publish URLs that look like legitimate hostnames to fool people in to trusting a malicious site. This trick is frequently used by spammers to steal people's PayPal accounts, by tricking them in to "resetting" their password at a site owned by the spammer but disguised as PayPal.com.
Today's new IE vulnerability is significantly worse. By including an 0x01 character after the @ symbol in the fake URL, IE can be tricked in to not displaying the rest of the URL at all. Don't expect a patch right way, the guy who found the hole
released it to BugTraq on the same day he notified Microsoft.
(via Simon Willison)
posted to MetaFilter by dejah420
at 2:28 PM on December 9, 2003
(29 comments)
Framed for defending herself.
On August 28th, 2002 in Las Vegas, Nevada a woman named
Kirstin Lobato was sentenced to life in prison. She was the victim of an attempted rape in May 2001, and had defended herself against her rapist. prosecutors used this "confession" of self defense to convict her of a murder that happened months later and in a town where
she didn't even live. How "innocent until proven guilty" can you be if prosecutors are willing to use known perjurers and refuse to allow expert testimony?
posted to MetaFilter by dejah420
at 10:35 AM on November 26, 2003
(17 comments)
Waiting in line won't help you.
According to the New York Times,
Ticketmaster plans to begin auctioning off the best concert seats to the highest online bidders. The paper says there would be no limit on how high prices could go - it would be simply a matter of how much people were willing to pay. So, with ClearChannel, the RIAA and Ticketmaster now officially boinking the fan base...what other methods can the music industry use to drive away fans?
posted to MetaFilter by dejah420
at 6:22 AM on September 3, 2003
(70 comments)
Can it be called war profiteering?
The size and scope of the government contracts awarded to
Halliburton in connection with the war in Iraq are significantly greater than was previously disclosed and demonstrate the U.S. military's increasing reliance on
for-profit corporations to run its logistical operations. Independent experts estimate that as much as one-third of the monthly $3.9 billion cost of keeping U.S. troops in Iraq is going to
independent contractors.
posted to MetaFilter by dejah420
at 10:11 AM on August 28, 2003
(66 comments)
"Bring them home now!"
is a campaign of military families, veterans, active duty personnel, reservists and others opposed to the ongoing war in Iraq and galvanized to action by George W. Bush's inane and reckless challenge to armed Iraqis resisting occupation to "Bring 'em on." At a news conference yesterday,
reported the Washington Post, the organization has stated their goals of returning to their home bases the 150,000 U.S. troops serving in Iraq.
posted to MetaFilter by dejah420
at 4:43 PM on August 14, 2003
(19 comments)
Kidnapping women and children is a justifiable action,
says Col. David Hogg, commander of the 2nd Brigade of the 4th Infantry Division when his troops picked up the wife and daughter of an Iraqi lieutenant general. They left a note: "If you want your family released, turn yourself in." A quick glance at the
Geneva Conventions and Protocols would suggest that this is illegal. "The ends justifies the means" seems to be the current Conservative meme, but how well will these tactics serve us in the long run?
posted to MetaFilter by dejah420
at 9:53 PM on July 28, 2003
(61 comments)
