Category: Uncategorized
Supreme Court: Want to Search a Cellphone? “Get a Warrant.”
Something seems very wrong here, because the report is that the Supreme Court has unanimously held in Riley v. California that the police need to get a warrant before rummaging through the cellphone of someone they’ve arrested.
(…)
The opinion, apparently written by someone posing as Justice Roberts, is quite broad and there’s no reason it shouldn’t apply to laptop computers, for example.
Court Says The Process For Getting Off The No Fly List Is Unconstitutional
However, in a very big ruling today, a district court judge in Oregon has basically found the process of getting off the No Fly List unconstitutional. According to the ACLU, who handled the case on behalf of 13 Americans who were on the list:
The judge ordered the government to create a new process that remedies these shortcomings, calling the current process “wholly ineffective” and a violation of the Fifth Amendment’s guarantee of due process. The ruling also granted a key request in the lawsuit, ordering the government to tell the ACLU’s clients why they are on the No Fly List and give them the opportunity to challenge their inclusion on the list before the judge.
Teaching Creationism As Science Now Banned In All UK Public Schools
In a vicory of science and logic, the UK government has now banned teaching creationism as a science in schools.
patenting “… on a computer” is not allowed
says the US Supreme Court.
The court ruled unanimously that all of patent-holder Alice Corp.’s claims were invalid, because they simply added computer language to a basic idea: using a financial intermediary to create trust in transactions. The 9-0 opinion, written by Justice Clarence Thomas, is the clearest statement yet from the Supreme Court that adding technological-sounding language to existing ideas isn’t enough to get a patent.
Some advocates were hoping the case would go so far as to eliminate software patents altogether. If that were to happen, this would have likely been the case to do it. But the court didn’t go that far, instead suggesting that software patents could still be allowed when they “improve the functioning of the computer itself” or “improve an existing technological process.”
Microsoft FUD patent list seems to have been published
According to Techdirt, the Chinese Ministry of Commerce has published a complete list over the 100 patents Microsoft has asserted against Android manufacturers.
One can only hope this gives F/OSS lawyers enough information to invalidate at least most of the patents in question.
Sherlock Holmes REALLY Is In The Public Domain
Over the last few years, we’ve [Techdirt] been covering the declaratory judgment lawsuit trying to establish that Sherlock Holmes is in the public domain. As explained, nearly all of the stories about Holmes were published prior to 1923, making them public domain in the US. However, there was one book with ten stories published after 1923, and those works are still covered by copyright, thanks to our nutty system of copyright extensions. Some Sherlock Holmes scholars/authors, Leslie Klinger and Laurie King, filed for declaratory judgment after the Sir Arthur Conan Doyle Estate threatened the publisher of their upcoming book (after successfully pressuring a previous publisher) that Sherlock Holmes is still covered by copyright and a license must be obtained. Klinger argued that he wasn’t using anything from those works that were published post-1923.
Don’t be a dick. Help Ben.
Six Officers Charged In Police Pursuit That Ended With 137 Shots Being Fired At Suspects In A Little Over 20 Seconds
Let’s be clear what happened here:
The driver was fully stopped. Escape was no longer even a remote possibility. The flight was over. The public was no longer in danger because the car was surrounded by police cars and 23 police officers in a schoolyard safely removed from pedestrians and traffic.
The primary danger facing the police at this time was from themselves, if they continued to shoot at each other in the circular firing squad they had inadvertently formed.
After the ceasefire, Officer Brelo unleashed an unlawful, second barrage of shots.
The ultimate legal issue is whether the police officer was justified when he stood on the hood of Mr. Russell’s car and emptied his clip into the occupants after the chance of flight was completely eliminated and they no longer presented a threat to the public’s safety.
He was not.
Do anyone think anything would have been done at all, if it weren’t for the video evidence?
This is why it should never be illegal to record public servants.
No, A ‘Supercomputer’ Did NOT Pass The Turing Test For The First Time
Okay, almost everything about the story is bogus. Let’s dig in:
It’s not a “supercomputer,” it’s a chatbot. It’s a script made to mimic human conversation. There is no intelligence, artificial or not involved. It’s just a chatbot.
Plenty of other chatbots have similarly claimed to have “passed” the Turing test in the past (often with higher ratings). Here’s a story from three years ago about another bot, Cleverbot, “passing” the Turing Test by convincing 59% of judges it was human (much higher than the 33% Eugene Goostman) claims.
It “beat” the Turing test here by “gaming” the rules — by telling people the computer was a 13-year-old boy from Ukraine in order to mentally explain away odd responses.
The “rules” of the Turing test always seem to change. Hell, Turing’s original test was quite different anyway.As Chris Dixon points out, you don’t get to run a single test with judges that you picked and declare you accomplished something. That’s just not how it’s done. If someone claimed to have created nuclear fusion or cured cancer, you’d wait for some peer review and repeat tests under other circumstances before buying it, right?
The whole concept of the Turing Test itself is kind of a joke. While it’s fun to think about, creating a chatbot that can fool humans is not really the same thing as creating artificial intelligence. Many in the AI world look on the Turing Test as a needless distraction.
Oh, and the biggest red flag of all. The event was organized by Kevin Warwick at Reading University. If you’ve spent any time at all in the tech world, you should automatically have red flags raised around that name. Warwick is somewhat infamous for his ridiculous claims to the press, which gullible reporters repeat without question. He’s been doing it for decades.
Have a look at the original article from over at Techdirt to read some more analysis of why the claims are most likely false.