The NY Times reports on legislation in Utah which harshly penalizes people who cause fatal car accidents while texting. Instead of merely facing a fine, offenders may now get up to 15 years in jail — the same as drunk drivers. “In effect, a crash caused by such a multitasking motorist is no longer considered an ‘accident’ like one caused by a driver who, say, runs into another car because he nodded off at the wheel. Instead, such a crash would now be considered inherently reckless. ‘It’s a willful act,’ said Lyle Hillyard, a Republican state senator and a big supporter of the new measure. ‘If you choose to drink and drive or if you choose to text and drive, you’re assuming the same risk.’ The Utah law represents a concrete new response in an evolving debate among legislators around the country about how to reduce the widespread practice of multitasking behind the wheel — a topic to be discussed at a national conference about the dangers of distracted driving that is being organized by the Transportation Department for this fall.”

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Runaway1956 writes “Microsoft’s chief Washington lobbyist has been convening regular meetings, attended by the company’s outside consultants, that have become known by some beltway insiders as ’screw Google’ meetings, DailyFinance has learned. The meetings are part of an ongoing campaign by Microsoft, other Google opponents, and hired third parties to discredit the Web search leader, according to multiple sources with knowledge of the matter. ‘Microsoft is at the center of a group of companies who see Google as a threat to them in some combination of business and policy,’ said a source who requested anonymity to avoid retribution. ‘The effort is designed to make Google look like the big high-tech bad guy here.’”

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An anonymous reader writes ‘At my company, our mis-implementation of Agile includes the employment of some of our most highly-paid, principal engineers as ScrumMasters. This has effectively resulted in a loss of those engineering functions as these engineers now dedicate their time to ScrumMastery. Furthermore, the ScrumMasters either cannot or do not separate their roles as Team Leads with those of ScrumMastery and — worse — seem to be completely unaware that this poor implementation of Agile development is harmful to our velocity. To date, I have chalked this up to poor leadership, a general lack of understanding of Agile, and an inability to change from traditional roles left over from the waterfall development mode. In addition, I have contended that, for a given Scrum Team, the role of ScrumMaster should be filled by someone of lower impact, such as an intern brought in specifically for that purpose. But I would like to put the questions to Slashdotters as to whether they have seen these same transitional difficulties, what the results have been at their respective companies, or whether they just plain disagree with my assertion that principal engineers should not be relegated to the roles of ScrumMasters.’

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himitsu writes “In an article titled ‘The Good Enough Revolution: When Cheap and Simple Is Just Fine,’ Wired claims that the future of technology, warfare and medicine will be filled with ‘good enough’ solutions; situations where feature-rich and expensive products are replaced with bare-bones infrastructures and solutions. ‘We now favor flexibility over high fidelity, convenience over features, quick and dirty over slow and polished. Having it here and now is more important than having it perfect. These changes run so deep and wide, they’re actually altering what we mean when we describe a product as “high-quality.”‘”

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one_neuron_two_neuron writes “Researchers at Harvard have taken a new look at how electricity can make neurons fire in the brain. The scientists found some surprising things: if you stick an electrode in the brain and apply current, you don’t just make a small group of neurons fire — many neurons fire a long way away from the electrode. That’s probably because instead of activating the cell bodies of the neurons, their axons fire. Those axons are the wiring of the brain. Your cerebral cortex is something like a big pile of unwound yo-yos — if you stick an electrode into the cortex, you’re much more likely to hit the strings (the axons), and the yo-yo connected to the string can be really far away. So, how will you ever hook up a computer to your brain? This data shows that we need to rethink how to do that with electrical current. If you stick an electrode in one place, neurons in a totally different place will fire. New optogenetic methods (e.g. using viral delivery of proteins) might work. Or possibly we will figure out how to make the brain learn to interpret these sparse, widespread electrical patterns. New optical techniques have made a dramatic impact on neuroscience recently, and this study uses pulsed-laser-scanning microscopy (two-photon microscopy) to take pictures of neurons deep inside the living brain. The academic paper (PDF) is available on the author’s site.”

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It seems that Swedish regulators have decided to extend the requirement of not calling yourself a bank to the registration of domain names. Now anyone that tries to register a .SE domain name with the word “bank” in it will need to prove they are a legitimate bank. Hopefully there are no blood banks or anyone with the last name of “Banks” that might want a .SE domain. Here is a Google translation of the demand issued by the authorities to the .SE registry.

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TheZid writes “A newly proposed bill would give Uncle Sam the power to disconnect private sector computers from the internet in the event of a ‘cyber security emergency.’ As usual, our government is trying to take away our privacy by citing security. What actually counts as a ‘Cyber-Security Emergency?’ Does the president now have the option of disconnecting people when they disagree with his policies? How about disconnecting bloggers that criticize his health care reform? What counts as an emergency? Can political opponents be deemed a cyber-security emergency?”

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o’reor writes “As more cases of iPhone screen explosions emerge in the news on this side of the pond, Apple is now facing official inquiries and lawsuits in France. This situation has forced Apple finally to break silence and acknowledge the incidents: ‘We are aware of these reports and we are waiting to receive the iPhones from the customers. Until we have the full details, we don’t have anything further to add.’ Following those reports, the European Commission had already decided last week to step in, while Apple tried to dismiss the problem as ‘isolated incidents.’ Meanwhile, iPhone explosion-related sites are now popping up on the Internet, releasing games such as iPop to chill out and relax on the subject, but also giving users advice on preventing iPhone accidents, or detecting imminent explosions.”

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IronicToo writes “The US Government has updated its policy on the search and seizure of laptops at border crossing. ‘The long-criticized practice of searching travelers’ electronic devices will continue, but a supervisor now would need to approve holding a device for more than five days. Any copies of information taken from travelers’ machines would be destroyed within days if there were no legal reason to hold the information.’”

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Hugh Pickens writes “BBC reports that a treasured piece at the Dutch national museum — a supposed moon rock from the first manned lunar landing given to former Prime Minister Willem Drees during a goodwill tour by the three Apollo-11 astronauts shortly after their moon mission in 1969 — has been revealed as nothing more than petrified wood, curators say. A jagged fist-size stone with reddish tints, it was mounted and placed above a plaque that said, ‘With the compliments of the Ambassador of the United States of America… to commemorate the visit to The Netherlands of the Apollo-11 astronauts.’ The plaque does not specify that the rock came from the moon’s surface. Researchers from Amsterdam’s Free University said they could see at a glance the rock was probably not from the moon. They followed the initial appraisal up with extensive testing. ‘It’s a nondescript, pretty-much-worthless stone,’ wrote Geologist Frank Beunk in an article published by the museum. Beunk says the rock, which the museum at one point insured for more than half a million dollars, was worth no more than $70. The ‘rock’ had originally been been vetted through a phone call to NASA. As the US Embassy in the Hague said it was investigating the matter, the Rijksmuseum says it will keep the piece as a curiosity.”

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