Here's the important part: "That type of collection is currently allowed under an executive order that dates back to former President Reagan, but the new stamp of approval from Congress was troubling, Amash said."

In other words, the only issue he has with this bill is that it acknowledges an Executive Order is in place. It doesn't even particularly bless it. Nothing is changing other than a slightly-less tacet approval of an order that has been around for decades. It's not a terribly long bill, check it out yourself

It seems like all of these articles trying to dig up dirt and spread controversy about Wikipedia come from wikipediocracy.com. It also seems like they are a very small group. All mentions of wikipediocracy in this comment section prior to this submission (under my default filter settings; forgive my laziness) are from two users, and one of them, the primary one, is the article submitter. I just have major trouble buying anything from a source whose entire mission is to criticize Wikipedia. That kinda just screams bias. This content is always coming out of wikipediocracy. I can't recall the last article posted to Slashdot critical of Wikipedia that didn't include a link from them. It feels like they are just trying to use the visibility of getting their submissions posted to Slashdot to build controversy. It isn't hard to write up a summary and get it accepted by Slashdot just by knowing to write a summary in the accepted style. People don't click the links often because it isn't very interesting, they just note "wow, people sure sound upset at Wikipedia" and don't notice that it's always this small group of people....

Did this poll get made because of the random recent XKCD comic, or has something happened related to the whole singularity idea to make it show up in the zeitgeist?

I don't know very much about comic books. With the exception of my parents' Mad Magazines and silver age Superman comics, I never got into them. Transmet has been one of very few exceptions. By about volume 3, I was rather terrified that this might get horribly adapted into a movie. I just couldn't imagine any way the story could be decently converted into a 90-120 minute format. The animated series adaptation idea, on the other hand, rather intrigued me. I was bummed to see it fall through; the animation looked quite promising (I seem to recall Chris Prynoski/Titmouse Inc. was somehow involved, but can't find confirmation on that). I realize nothing is currently in production, but is there any chance of another attempt at such an adaptation in the future?

It'd have to be a bare minimum of 3 unless someone was foolish enough to shrink it. I've got all the graphic novelizations, and they take up many inches of shelf-space.

Nope. Look into CALEA.

They can use a great encryption algorithm, but if they continue to not authenticate the basestation, as per 2G specs, then it doesn't really help. It wasn't until LTE that this finally started happening.

I'm not sure what impeachment would have to do with a SCOTUS ruling, but it can be checked by a constitutional amendment, or a future SCOTUS ruling.

You're more than welcome to get emotional about whatever you like. But, you are in the minority of popular opinion on this matter. Even among those informed enough to have looked into the concept, they appreciate that it is an implied power of the court (all the courts, btw, not just the supreme), it is a reasonable implication, and consider it congruent with the intentions of the drafters of the constitution.

I'm not sure I follow your claim about it only applying with the supreme rulers of the land decide it does. Not to say that various leaders didn't overstep their bounds. An easy example is Lincoln suspending habeus corpus, and then ignoring the judicial review against him on the matter. But this merely requires improved enforcement of the checks and balances in the system.

"This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land; and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby, any Thing in the Constitution or Laws of any State to the Contrary notwithstanding. . . . [A]ll executive and judicial Officers, both of the United States and of the several States, shall be bound by Oath or Affirmation, to support this Constitution." If the constitution is the supreme law, and the judges must support its supremacy, the only way I can perceive of upholding this is by way of judicial review. It might not be explicit in the constitution, but this is a very strong implication.

It's a....It's a.....It's a rocket ship!!

Thank you for that :)

But it is nice be told what realm the product deals with beyond "Microsoft", "Linux", "Server", "Cloud" and "Enterprise developers" (terms like "Container" and "application" are far too generic, and have far too many meanings within the realm of software engineering, so that means nothing to me without more context). By providing such a background, I can know without reading the article if it is something that is likely to be of interest to me. At the very least, the first linked article should broadly describe what the product is before leaping into the announcement. Instead, I find myself scanning the article, getting confused, glancing around the website for useful links, finding a "what is Docker" link, scanning that, and still being a bit confused as to how this is different from virtual machines, despite having a section titled "How is this different from Virtual Machines?"

Don't you just love it when Slashdot summaries talk about some niche product without introducing the topic, just assuming everyone knows WTF it is?

Even TFA mentions research that goes all the way back to 1990. I'm all for progress in this field, but every time I seriously look into it, I see people who are "5-to-10 years away from practical applications" which continues to be the company line for decades on end, or companies that claim to do something truely novel, yet for some reason can't seem to get enough funding to avoid bankruptcy or support any further research. All this just reinforces the, "please tell me when something NEW happens" attitude. And they would do themselves a huge favor if they at least made an effort to not bury such a lede in a headline that sounds like old old old news.