law

IBM has come up with a new technique for making the tiny switches and memory cells at the heart of computer chips: a drop of ionic liquid.

The technique converts a metal oxide on a computer chip from a conducting to an insulating state and back again, a transition that, using a different approach, is at the heart of conventional semiconductor chips today. Insulators don't conduct electricity and conductors do, so changing a material's state is instrumental to how it performs the logical operations of computer processing.

Today's semiconductor chips work by applying electrical voltage to a &… Read more

We tend to react with feelings first and thoughts a little later.

Many in the last 24 hours have reacted with feeling (and the occasional thoughtfulness) to the visit paid by police to the New Jersey home of Shawn Moore.

Should you have been hospitalized after accidentally impaling yourself on a deer antler at your local gun club recently, here's the back story: Moore posted a picture to Facebook of his 11-year-old son, Josh, clutching (very properly) a .22-caliber rifle that looked like a little more than a .22-caliber rifle.

It was his birthday present.

As is ever more … Read more

Microsoft said today it received 75,378 law enforcement requests worldwide last year for customer information, but disclosed "content" in only 2 percent of those cases.

Those are just a couple of the details laid out in Microsoft's "2012 Law Enforcement Requests Report," the first-ever such disclosure from the software giant.

The report covers all of Microsoft's major online services including Hotmail, Outlook.com, SkyDrive, Xbox Live, Microsoft Account, and Office 365. It separately discloses similar data from Skype.

In releasing the information about law enforcement requests, Microsoft follows the lead of online heavyweights … Read more

I am sure there are several 11-year-old boys who are terribly proficient at handling a gun.

But, given that I wouldn't trust an 11-year-old boy with a popsicle, I would just as well not be anywhere near them.

This, however, doesn't appear to have been the policy of the authorities in New Jersey. They were allegedly alarmed by a Facebook photo of Josh Moore, aged 11, holding a .22 rifle, and they allegedly wanted to get very near him.

The photo had been posted by his father, Shawn, to Facebook. It showed Josh, in his camouflage outfit and … Read more

The most effective crimes, like business deals, take a lot of planning.

You have to consider the eventualities and anticipate the unexpected.

There may, therefore, have been insufficient aforethought in the cell-phone scheme of newly convicted thief Florin Constantin.

Constantin, 28, who arrived in England from Romania earlier this year, used a unique means to store multiple cell phones. He wore a pair of specially-designed leggings beneath his pants.

As the Daily Mail reports, he then headed to the Waterfront bar in Norwich to allegedly help steal as many cell phones as possible from the unsuspecting.

All, apparently, went quite … Read more

Evidence can be a menace.

You think you've gotten away with something, and then that moment comes along when you suddenly remember that perhaps you've left a clue.

This thought may (or may not) have crossed the mind of an alleged cell phone thief.

As the New York Post reports, police in the Bronx feel sure that what happened is that a certain man -- whose picture they now have -- robbed a 27-year-old woman of her gadget.

He then allegedly used it to take a quite fetching picture of himself smoking pot.

This would not be the … Read more

Is it all getting too much?

Is your thinking crooked, your logic frazzled, and your every wire crossed?

Perhaps it's time to go and cut yourself off from your phone and Internet. No, not metaphorically, but literally.

That was allegedly the slightly illegal thought-process of Raymond Bischoff of Hastings, Minn.

As CBS Minnesota wires it, Bischoff, 65, allegedly thought it best to cut the wires and cables that happened to connect a local business to the Internet, the phone service, and even the satellite TV because he wanted to "relieve the pressure on his brain."

Some might … Read more

No one knows who Batman really is.

But when he arrests you and takes you to the police station, you know you're in trouble.

No, I haven't been reading comics or feasting on old episodes of Adam West and Burt Ward.

I've been reading the Guardian, which informs me that CCTV images released by police in West Yorkshire, England, reveal that a caped crusader marched a wanted man into a police station and handed him over to the authorities.

There is no evidence of there having been a struggle. Just as there is no evidence of a … Read more