Court Delays Missouris Concealed Weapons Law; Leak Criticizes Proposed U.K. ID Card; Student CD Piracy Lawsuit Dropped; Goats a Powerful Fire Maintenance Tool

Court Delays Missouris Concealed Weapons Law

According to an AP story on the St. Louis Post-Dispatch website, the state Supreme Court refused today to lift a temporary restraining order against Missouri’s new concealed guns law, meaning the law likely will remain on hold for at least a little while longer. The law would allow Missourians age 23 and older who pay $100 and pass criminal background checks and training courses to receive permits from their county sheriffs to carry concealed guns. According to CNN.com coverage of the story, passage of the law would make Missouri the 45th state to allow concealed weapons.Leak Criticizes Proposed U.K. ID CardThe Register today. Straw, Blunkett’s predecessor at the Home Office, warns of a “large-scale debacle,” while the Treasury letter argues that the fee for the compulsory card would have to be categorized as a tax hike. The Register, in its arch coverage, suggests these politicians will instead pursue a strategy of picking off areas where ID in a converged format can be introduced without widespread outcry (e.g. passports, driving licences, national health, social security, foreigners). This can effectively be converted into a de facto national ID card down the line, without really having to ask people about it.

British home secretary David Blunkett’s ID card scheme may now be off for the foreseeable future, following the leak of highly critical letters from foreign secretary Jack Straw and the Treasury over the weekend, according to

Student CD Piracy Lawsuit DroppedBBC News today. SunnComm originally said it was going to sue to computer science student John Halderman for revealing the secrets of the anti-piracy measures built into SunnComms MediaMax CD-e software. But following publicity surrounding the case, the company’s boss has backed away from the threat of legal action. A columnist in todays Boston Globe remarks on the case, suggesting the music industry may have finally figured out that stopping piracy completely is impossible. The emerging approach then is to assume most music downloaders are not criminals and to design systems that seek to gently nudge people toward honesty, by giving them a way to make a few copies of their favorite tunes for a reasonable fee, without worrying about breaking the law.

SunnComm Technologies has dropped a threat to sue a U.S. student who published details on how to get around anti-piracy technology on a new music CD, according to the

Goats a Powerful Fire Maintenance ToolArizona Daily Sun, The Prescott National Forest has been using about 650 goats to eat chaparral and other brush as part of a six-month pilot project to provide a fire buffer around forest area homes. The forests dense, dead brush could become fuel for a major blaze. While prescribed burns are used widely to eliminate brush, the potential danger to homes was considered too high. Roy Fluhart, the forests fuels management and fire planning group leader, told the Daily Sun, “Chaparral easily burns … and consumes pretty much everything. We needed to burn it or mechanically treat it. What we’re finding is that goats are a precision application.” The project, which ends later this month, was also beneficial for the goats from the Navajo Reservation, where hundreds of goats have been going hungry this year because vegetation is scarce.

According to an AP story in the