9th largest supercomputer in the world and the largest in Europe, the Barcelona Supercomputing Center (BSC) installed in a former chapel.

Via Make

The Most Beautiful Super Computer

Three children and a parent arrested in a LA school after an altercation with a security guard led one of the students wrists being broken. There has been a protest rally in response and there are charges of racism. Its not totally clear from this video what went down here but it is suspicious that one of the children arrested was apparently video taping the arrests.

Another argument for camera-phones in schools

If the advertiser is using the trademark in ad text, we will require the advertiser to remove the trademark and prevent them from using it in ad text in the future. Please note that we will not disable keywords in response to a trademark complaint.

Lets say you run a company called "Bob's Auto Supply" and your competitor Jim runs a company called "Jim's AutoWorld." Jim buys a google ad on the keyword "Bob's Auto Supply" which directs people to his business. Jim is attempting to use your trademark and brand recognition to drive traffic to his competing business. He is basically stealing your advertising. Apparently, however, this matter was litigated and Google won. So there is no recourse under U.S. law. The theory is that web users would know that Jim is your competitor. The problem with that theory is that the value of your brand is being diluted. Its the name recognition that you have built that drives people to his advertisement.

What an awesome system we have. I can't deal with what is a blatent attempt to profit from a brand I'm trying to build, and yet a friend of mine was successfully prevented from using a bank's logo in an informational blog posting due to a broken normative use precident that states that only the minimum amount of the trademark necessary may be used.

If I am using a trademark in a nominal way it shouldn't be a problem regardless of what I'm doing. If I'm attempting to profit from someone else's advertising expenditures I'm commiting a crime. This seems real simple and I don't understand why our courts have gotten it so completely wrong.

Google's broken Trademark precedent

AHMADINEJAD (THROUGH TRANSLATOR): In the name of God, the compassionate, the merciful...

...blah, blah, blah, rationalization for my nuclear program, I hate jews and I'm proud of it...

I haven't managed to make it through the whole thing and I haven't seen anything new in here but I thought it might be of interest to MemeStreams users. Let us know if you see a interesting passage.

President Ahmadinejad Delivers Remarks at Columbia University - washingtonpost.com

k wrote:

Decius wrote:
Unfortunately the theatrical release is ONLY New York and LA. I will be in New York 4 days after it stops screening there. The intent is that you almost, but didn't quite get to see it in the theater and you so you might be more likely to spring for this ridiculous 5 DVD set. Its really disappointing to see something which is supposed to be important for artistic rather than commercial reasons getting used in such a manipulative way.

Oh balls, I actually hadn't heard that. I knew it was going to be a limited release, but not that limited. That is disappointing.

What are the dates? I might find myself in NY, although I imagine tickets will be nigh impossible to acquire.

Fuck.

Its at the Zeigfeld from October 5th until the 18th. Its also on in LA at the Landmark. I emailed Landmark and asked them why they couldn't distribute the film to all their national theaters (there is one in Atlanta) and their response was that "there probably isn't enough demand" but that my email was sent to the proper authorities.

If YOU'D like to see a wider release of Blade Runner Final Cut PLEASE email Landmark and let them know! If they get enough feedback perhaps they'll take a closer look at the market for this.

RE: Q&A: Ridley Scott Has Finally Created the Blade Runner He Always Imagined

At age 69, Ridley Scott is finally satisfied with his most challenging film. He's still turning out movies at a furious pace — American Gangster, with Denzel Washington and Russell Crowe, is due in November — building on an extraordinary oeuvre that includes Alien, Thelma & Louise, Gladiator, and Black Hawk Down. But he seems ready to accept Blade Runner as his crowning achievement. In his northern English accent, he describes its genesis and lasting influence. And, inevitably, he returns to the darkness that pervades his view of the future — the shadows that shield Deckard from a reality that may be too disturbing to face.

Some MemeStreamers are probably interested in this interview.

Q&A: Ridley Scott Has Finally Created the Blade Runner He Always Imagined

Orin Kerr's take:

I should say that as a matter of policy, I think the Patriot Act amendment to FISA is a good idea. If the government can establish probable cause to believe someone is a terrorist or a spy possessing foreign intelligence information, that should be enough to monitor them; allowing the government to then use the evidence to prosecute the terrorist or spy in a criminal case seems sensible to me...

Nor am I particularly persuaded that this is "watering down" the traditional Fourth Amendment warrant process. First, the government still needs to establish probable cause to a federal judge that someone is a terrorist or a spy with foreign intelligence information; that's not exactly a low standard, as the FISCR properly recognized. It seems unlikely to me that the government would seek to circumvent the traditional Fourth Amendment standard of pc that a person committed a crime (however minor) simply by establishing pc that a person was a terrorist or a spy; if that's an easier threshold to meet, it's not clear to me why.

That seems quite logical actually.

The Volokh Conspiracy - My Analysis of the Oregon FISA Decision:

We couldn't find al-Mihdhar and al-Hazmi in August 2001 because we had imposed too many rules designed to protect against privacy abuses that were mainly theoretical. We missed our best chance to save the lives of 3,000 Americans because we spent more effort and imagination guarding against these theoretical privacy abuses than against terrorism.

I feel some responsibility for sending the government down that road.

This is an interesting discussion of the line between intelligence gathering and law enforcement that hasn't been recommended here before. I have some thoughts about this that perhaps I'll discuss at phreaknic.

Setting ourselves up for more 9/11s. - By Stewart Baker - Slate Magazine

I'm actually quoting a quote:

By shifting the required certification from "the purpose" to "a significant purpose," . . . [the PATRIOT Act] necessarily reopens the seemingly settled question of FISA's constitutionality under the Fourth Amendment. First, to the extent that courts have recognized a foreign intelligence exception to the Fourth Amendment's warrant requirement, the question is whether that exception should apply where the gathering of foreign intelligence information is not the main purpose of the surveillance or search.

Apparently the government conceeded the point I raised earlier about the "primary purpose" of this investigation. Perhaps they did so intentionally to bring this question to litigation in a context where the specific outcome has limited relevance because the suspect is innocent.

Balkinization: On the Patriot Act case...

Although AG's offices obviously need to outsource software development, there are obvious problems with outsourcing the identification of criminals to an external service provider.

A private company that's under contract to collect information for law enforcement investigators has a financial incentive to produce results...

This is already a serious problem with prosecutors. In the hands of a private company the risk of abuse is even greater because the incentives are greater and many of the counter-incentives are removed.

"No software can determine whether a person (in a picture) is 17 or 18," Douglas says, so there are bound to be a lot of innocent IP addresses collected by MediaDefender and sent to the AG, before further investigation weeds out innocent suspects from actual lawbreakers.

Most people can't tell whether a person is 17 or 18 regardless of whether or not they are in a picture, which underlines the absurdity of sending people to prison for years and permanently tracking them as sex offenders in such cases.

San Francisco public defender Adachi says the relationship also conceivably gives MediaDefender the power to decide whom to collect evidence against and whom to let go.

"Say I ... find a web site that's run by my sister-in-law and decide that, 'Geez, I'm not going to turn that over,'" Adachi says. "There's no sworn duty by the private company (collecting evidence for law enforcement) to prosecute people in a fair, evenhanded manner."

Not that such a sworn duty stops AGs from doing exactly this all the time.

Defense Lawyers Cringe at MediaDefender's Child-Porn Patrol Plans