It has made so many enemies, it doesn't know where the next attack may come from. So universal surveillance is necessary. Maybe make less enemies next time?

Can't we find a use for them? As soon as capitalism gets to work on them, they'll be goners too.

I think outside of the US whatever fun there may have been in visiting the neighbours and eating sweets is completely lost in its commercialisation. My memories are of Bonfire Night ("Remember, Remember the 5th of November, Gunpowder Treason and Plot"), roasted chestnuts, fireworks and burning Guy Fawkes. (You should be glad we remembered and burned Guy Fawkes all those hundreds of years, or whose face would have become the symbol of Anonymous, Wikileaks, etc?)

I thought for a moment this was going to be more interesting. "But you can't shut down our ISP, how will we connect to the internet?" "We don't care. Virgin Media has been used for copyright infringement and must be eliminated from the face of the earth. Our business model requires it, and we all know that the well-being of the music industry overrides all other concerns."

Wow, with such a superior, arrogant and manipulative attitude, I think it is time for Debian to write their own, or continue with what they have. I would have nothing to do with someone who has so little respect for anyone else's efforts, using FUD against other projects, and who is so obviously trying to lure people into his self-serving spider-web trap. Perhaps his vision is that systemd will be the one process to rule them all, my precioussssss... and then finally Linux will be all his. Run away!!!

Maybe if everyone's cars drive at exactly the speed limit, then people will realize how ridiculous some of them are and get them changed.

Yeah, exactly. Someone somewhere has won a huge contract based on probably unverifiable claims of LED lifespans.

Also European and Australian ones, in fact any web services that are in a country where there is an NSA-affiliated tap point, or where your traffic crosses one of those countries. In fact, if you are a 'foreigner' best disconnect completely and go live in a cave -- but not one dug by the CIA because then you're a terrorist and we will send drones.

This is my concern. If you give them DRM implemented widely, they will use it for EVERYTHING, even things that don't need it. DRM by default.

If it's in a standard, you're not fully standard-compliant until you implement it.

And then what? What if every company says, "Can we fully DRM our website?". Sounds like a good idea, more security, people can't read your JS code, whatever. What happens if the default position becomes everything DRM'd and locked down. That isn't the internet we grew up with.

And to those who say "I won't use those browsers or visit those websites", right ... so if everything is DRM'd by default you're going to not have much choice if you want to read news or visit your bank or whatever.

Oracle should completely discontinue Java in the browser. It only causes misconceptions about Java's overall quality, and constant bad press which seems to inform almost all Slashdot opinion on the matter.

Also, I don't agree with your assessment. Java is used because it does a good job. You could say that popularity builds on popularity (e.g. widely-used, means courses, which means more use), but constant exposure means refinement and stability as well, and also mature libraries (Doug Lea concurrent stuff for example). None of this is to be sneezed at.

To develop stable applications quickly, you want MORE compile-time checking, not less. Like if Java could mark variables as nullable or not and compile-time check that (there are some extensions for that, but they don't always keep up). Java/JVM does so much right ... If people can't see that, then I suggest they attempt some reasonably large project in several languages and compare. (I have done exactly that, in C, Vala and Java; Rust will be next when I get some time.)

Best all the buyers (in the US) learn their rights then. Or form an organization to defend themselves en masse.

Buyers are not much at risk. It is the sellers they are after.

The one where they move to Australia which has been transformed to a kind of equal-sharing Eden. Racking my brains for some suitable search keywords.