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Comment Re:inb4 people making jokes of this (Score 5, Insightful) 413

Or maybe people other people just don't spend a lot of time getting bent out of shape over the death of someone they didn't know and to whom they had no connection. Personally I find it just as distasteful to make insincere public expressions of sorrow over something that actually doesn't affect you at all because "it's what you're supposed to do" or because you want to show all the other random anonymous slashdotters what a sensitive and caring person you are.
The Courts

Submission SPAM: FBI grants Lockheed $1billion biometrics contract

coondoggie writes: "The FBI today awarded Lockheed Martin's Transportation and Security Solutions the contract for the design, development, documentation, integration, testing, and deployment of its Next Generation Identification (NGI) System. As expected, the $1 billion, 10 year services contract will expand on the FBI Criminal Justice Information Services (CJIS) Division's current Integrated Automated Fingerprint Identification System (IAFIS), which is primarily a fingerprint-based identification system operated and maintained in Clarksburg, West Virginia. The project is an expansion of the data gathering the FBI already does at its Criminal Justice Information Services (CJIS) Division. CJIS is the FBI's massive central repository for criminal justice information services; the CJIS division operates national-level crime data systems that furnish name checks, fingerprints, criminal history data, mugshots and other information to law enforcement officials. The FBI said the new system will move beyond what it called a "dependency on a unimodal (fingerprints) biometric identifier" and incorporate multimodal biometrics such as iris and facial imaging. [spam URL stripped]"
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The Internet

Submission Virtual Vigilantism for Megan Meier's family ->

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First Person Shooters (Games)

Submission Bioshock PC is defective by design 4


Submission Major New Discovery in the Ancestry of Man->

Pcol writes: "The New York Times is reporting a major new discovery in the ancestral line to Homo sapiens that challenges the conventional view that Homo erectus evolved from Homo habilis. Instead, the two hominid species apparently lived side by side in eastern Africa for almost half a million years suggesting "that they had their own ecological niche, thus avoiding direct competition," said Dr. Meave Leakey, one of the co-authors, in a statement from Nairobi. The discovery leaves the early evolution of the genus Homo even more shrouded in mystery and means that both habilis and erectus must have originated from a common ancestor between two million and three million years ago. A fossil search for the common ancestor has drawn a virtual blank. The size of the new Homo erectus skull was also a surprise. "The fact that the skull — probably belong[ing] to a young adult — is so small suggests that the size range of Homo erectus was much larger than we imagined," said Fred Spoor, who discovered the hominin fossils. Homo erectus has always been viewed as similar to Homo sapiens in both body shape and lifestyle but the new discovery of a large sexual dimorphism suggests a family set-up more akin to that of modern gorillas in which dominant males mate with a harem of females."
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Submission Bush names anti-open source lobbyist as counselor->

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Submission Red Planet was once Blue->

CowboyRaver writes: Mars, the rugged Red Planet, may have once been blue according to new research that suggests massive ancient oceans once covered a third of its surface. The discovery was made by a joint Canada-U.S. research team that says it has uncovered evidence of the shorelines of ancient seas. The team's findings are set to be released in the journal Nature on June 14.
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Submission How to deal with an abusive web host?


Submission Harvard prof: computers need to "forget" m

Jessamine writes: A Harvard professor argues that too much information is being retained by computers, and the machines need to learn how to forget things as humans always have. "If whatever we do can be held against us years later, if all our impulsive comments are preserved, they can easily be combined into a composite picture of ourselves," he writes in the paper. "Afraid how our words and actions may be perceived years later and taken out of context, the lack of forgetting may prompt us to speak less freely and openly." Will such massive databases make us all act like politicians? Is data retention creating a "panopticon"? These are questions that the good doctor raises.
