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The Military

The Revolutionary American Weapons of War That Never Happened 133

An anonymous reader writes There have been many US military machines of war that seemed to be revolutionary, but never make it out of the prototype stage. As Robert Farley explains: "Sometimes they die because they were a bad idea in the first place. For the same reasons, bad defense systems can often survive the most inept management if they fill a particular niche well enough." A weapon can seem like an amazing invention, but it still has to adapt to all sorts of conditions--budgetary, politics, and people's plain bias. Here's a look at a few of the best weapons of war that couldn't win under these "battlefield" conditions.

Comment Re:Public (Score 1) 321

A friend of ours with leukemia made a plea to donate cord blood to help others in her situation. We looked into it and found that there were no donation companies in our state. However, one company would ship us a collection kit to FedEx back to them. Because it would be shipped, if we delivered certain times of the week then they wouldn't be able to accept the sample.

The doctor was great about collecting the cord blood, especially at 4:30 in the morning. The thing we didn't know was that the hospital staff wouldn't take responsibility for putting the blood together for the kit--they didn't want to accept the liability. That responsibility fell to me... after 18 hours of labor, even though I wasn't the one delivering it was still difficult.

We did get a thank-you form letter from the company. Hope it helped someone out.

Education

Monkeys Exhibit the Same Economic Irrationality As Us 254

grrlscientist writes "Laurie Santos is trying to find the roots of human irrationality by watching the way our primates make decisions. This video documents a clever series of experiments in 'monkeynomics' and shows that some of the stupid decisions we make are made by our primate relatives too."
Privacy

Israel's Supreme Court Says Yes To Internet Anonymity 198

jonklinger writes "The Israeli Supreme Court ruled this week that there is no civil procedure to reveal the identity of users behind an IP address, and that until such procedure shall be legislated, all internet postings, even tortious, may remain anonymous. The 69-page decision acknowledges the right to privacy and makes internet anonymity de facto a constitutional right in Israel. Justice Rivlin noted that revealing a person behind an IP address is 'an attempt to harness, prior to a legal proceeding, the justice system and a third party in order to conduct an inquiry which will lead to the revealing of a person committing a tort so that a civil suit could be filed against him.'"

Comment Golden week? (Score 1) 158

Golden week... that's what a friend calls the time of the month that falls outside his girlfriend's week before, week of, and week after. He's a big fan of that week.

Made me wonder whose week Digital Music was enjoying.

But back on topic, I wonder how closely the rate of gift-download redemption follows the rate of gift-card redemtption.

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