Low intensity ultrasound has been shown in numerous studies to be quite safe. I'm only familiar with the "outside the skull" version, not this implantable version, but I assume the mechanism is similar. Look up "Low Intensity Focused Ultrasound" on PubMed for some examples. The mechanism isn't clear at this point, but application of low intensity ultrasound does modulate neural activity, although for a relatively short time (for a few hours to maybe a day or two tops). Multiple studies show that it doesn't cause measurable heating or damage because the intensity is too low.

Before the internet, labs used to subscribe to "current contents", which was sort of the TV guide of the scientific literature. It was a list of journal articles that came out each month. The professors would then send a student off to the library to copy the articles that were of interest that were in the library's subscriptions, or send off a postcard "reprint request" to the authors to get a copy. The articles would come back in the mail, and the professor would skim it, and then the student would file them in the appropriate filing cabinet. I remember this well, as this was how I got my first gig in a lab.

Well, yeah, of course they didn't evacuate the school. Because they knew from the start that it wasn't a bomb. But admitting that would have meant that they couldn't have an exciting new episode of "Racist Dumbass Security Theater"

There were also a few cases of the drivers opening the doors on the wrong side of the train. Fortunately, not at rush hour on a packed train.

The question isn't "Can you prove creationism". It's "What evidence would you accept that would DISprove creationism." There are lots of things that could be found that would cause us to throw huge chunks of evolutionary theory in the trash heap. I can't imagine that a "young earth creationist" would ever tell you that any evidence would make them change their mind. If it's impossible to disprove, then any argument is a waste of time.

I think rsync pretty much provides all you need in one tiny command-line to get data from A to B.

But if you want to increase your resilience against failing network connectivity, and make sure you don't delete anything that hasn't been properly copied to your server, I suggest you take a look at datamover: http://www.cisd.ethz.ch/software/Data_Mover

Essentially, it's a daemon written in Java that monitors an outgoing directory. Everythings that is written in there gets safely copied over to a central storage drive. Behind the scenes, they use rsync to do the copying, but it's wrapped in tons of features that improve the reliability of the moving process, like a quiet period before a file gets moved (good for applications that write their output incrementally and sporadically into files), multiple retries on network time-outs, high-water marks, data transformation (e.g. compression) during the move process, etc. It also is very anal about sending you emails for anything that could possibly be a data integrity problem.

We rely on it to store the raw data from scientific experiments. With the proper configuration, your holiday pictures should be just fine.

There are multiple genetic factors that are strongly linked to Autism. That's not really a huge debate in the field. None of the factors are absolute: they don't guarantee the occurrence of autism, instead, they are associated with increased risk.

This isn't a novelty in the psychiatric genetics world. The same holds true for schizophrenia, depression and other mood disorders, and most other brain disorders for that matter. It is likely that this has to do with an interaction between disease genes and environmental factors, other genetic factors, or with stochastic (random) processes.

It's not that different than most other complex diseases. For example, you may carry a risk allele for heart disease. If you follow the right diet, and have a blissful, stress-free life, you might be in luck. But, if you're carrying a second risk allele (whoops!), or down a few too many Big Macs... that risk allele will bite you in the ass. For that matter, even if you do take care of yourself, that risk allele may still bite you in the ass. It's an odds game, and each risk factor makes the odds that much worse.

As for your "experiment that everyone conveniently chooses to forget"-- there's an extensive literature of twins with Autism. It also shows that there is a strong genetic component, but it's not absolute. The concordance of Autism in twins is extremely high -- but not absolute. However, even identical twins have significant differences -- yes, even genetically. And, even though they may share the same womb, they may have siginficant differences in fetal nutrition (depending on how the placenta is located), and they may be subject to different gestational stresses or birth trauma.

In other words -- nobody's conveniently forgetting anything.

Yes, Photography's interesting, 'cause, you know, it's-it's a new art form, and a, uh, a set of aesthetic criteria have not emerged yet.

Don't forget stem cell biology.

"Those internal communication mean nothing"

In prosecuting copyright cases, internal communications mean everything. I'm not speaking in the abstract here; incriminating emails were instrumental in the Napster case and some other major copyright cases, going back to the BBS days. It's an all-too-common pattern: publicly, the company claims that it doesn't know that copyrighted information is being shared in an unauthorized manner; their internal emails reveal that they do know this; plausible deniability is destroyed; game over.

This is central to the concepts of contributory infringement and vicarious infringement. The former is when you know infringement is happening but you do nothing to stop it; the latter is when you're ignoring it because there's a financial incentive to do so.

"The point being, is that just because something seems to be illegal - doesn't mean it is, you/we have NO idea if the customer in question has some kind of weird contract with the copyright holder and if they are in violation of it or not - THAT is up to a judge and/or contract attorney to decide, no one else."

Agreed, compliance can be a hassle, and the more customers and activity you have, the bigger your exposure, which is why ISPs, file lockers, Torrent sites and the like must have sufficient staff for compliance with copyright laws, just as they require sufficient staff to ensure compliance with other laws (everything from Sarbanes Oxley to workplace safety). From reading your situation, it's clear that your ISP is one of the "good guys." However, it's not analogous to MU. It wasn't an issue of not being properly staffed to handle takedown requests, or even legitimate concerns that the requests were bogus -- it was deliberately ignoring the requests because their business model required it.

"What is "reasonable"?"

"reasonable person" is a legal construct. Wikipedia explains it pretty well:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reasonable_person

"Why? What if it's a bogus DMCA takedown request?"

You've read the indictment, right? It's not even an issue of thinking the takedown requests are bogus (ie. somebody's forging an email from Fox to issue a takedown on Avatar). They ignored takedown requests that they knew to be legitimate on hugely popular files (ie. the latest scene releases) because they were making tons of money. Kim's instructions to his team were to ignore all takedown requests except from the major media companies in the US -- ie. the ones that would actually do something about it if the requests were ignored. They knew exactly what they were doing.

"How can anyone know that account which uploaded the video does not actually hold copyright on it? Yes, question sounds silly, but it is extremely complex. Unless someone else claims the copyright ownership, you can only assume that whoever uploaded it is the copyright owner."

You nailed it with "silly." The courts tend to have a lower threshold for silliness than many people understand. If even the proponent of an argument acknowledges that it's silly, it won't pass the laugh test in court.

You see, the justice system has a very low tolerance for bad actors. If the facts are these:

1. User "DeEzNuTs" uploads a screener rip of Avatar.
2. 20th Century Fox sends you a DMCA takedown request.
3. You purposely delete all but one link to the file, so that it stays in the system -- in other words, you don't honor the takedown request.

A reasonable person would understand that "DeEzNuTs" is not the copyright holder for Avatar, and that the film company's distribution strategy does not include posting screener rips to sites known for piracy. Likewise, if MU's defense is that, gosh, they had no idea that DeEzNuTs wasn't actually the copyright holder, they'll be laughed at.

"Yes, of course they were aware about piracy on the site, but what can you realistically do about that except taking down files when they appear in DMCA notice?"

Again, you've nailed it. Respond to copyright claims in good faith, and you're in that safe harbor. That's why it's called a safe harbor. That's why the DMCA hasn't brought down the Internet: the laws are easy to follow. It's nigh on impossible to run a successful service that (a) actively induces piracy and (b) follows the law; each time a Torrent site operator claims that they're "just like a search engine".... they're not. If you avoid the DMCA safe harbor provisions, you're not just like a search engine.

MU ignored the safe harbor previsions, because it would have interfered with the successful execution of their business model.

"There are so many things that need to be properly tested in court, this will certainly be a massive one."

This is all pretty basic stuff. These were all tested in the Grokster decision, the Napster decision, and lots of other P2P-related decisions. Some of this stuff goes back more than a decade.

if the model is basically "we pay if your file is popular", but there is no checking of the actual file, whether the user has actual rights to the file or not, or encouragement of piracy specifically, all that's left is accusing MegaUpload of encouraging popular files.

Note the IF. What you describe is not how MegaUpload operates. If the indictments are to be believed, the operators were caught numerous times encouraging the sharing of content that they knew to be pirated.

You're correct that a truly content-agnostic file storage and sharing site should have nothing to fear. DropBox is safe. The operators of MegaUpload, however, serve as a textbook example of purposely avoiding all the safe harbor opportunities. This isn't because they were stupid -- far from it -- but because this is their very business model.

The legal concept of mens rea -- latin for "guilty mind" -- applies here. The MegaUpload guys, through their actions, have been nailed fair and square. This is their choice. They took the lucrative, but risky, path, of actively courting piracy. Their business model is wholly different than that of DropBox.

That means... Copper thieves are the real Job Creators!