That's a good point; how do you define what porn is? There are plenty of scantily clad women in photos all over the web. From a technical perspective, how do you ban a certain type of picture?... I guess when the DARPA robots with the AI neural nets are deployed (which haven't been built yet) they could actually take a stab at it. That would be too technically advanced for government. I find it more likely that they would just pay someone to watch people browsing the web, at least this way they can claim it makes more jobs...

It is if he harms anyone...

Actually, and this point is the most important of this whole case. The Police didn't catch him. The FBI didn't catch him. The city wide dragnet (let's edge ever closer to martial law) didn't stop him. No it was a home owner who noticed that the bomber was stupid enough to have disturbed the position of his boat caught him, no one else. No amount of quais-stassi police work here. Just a decent ordinary citizen. The lock down was unnecessary.

You do realize that blowing up a terrorist who has a dirty bomb, is literally the same thing as setting off said dirty bomb early?

Robots can be hacked. They also present a great disparity in power. They also have no soul; they didn't swear an oath to uphold, and defend this country, it's constitution, or it's people. For the use of deadly force on U.S. soil, give me a human to make that decision anyday. Geez, folks...I'm so sorry that robot killed your whole family...it was just this darn BSOD! We'll make it up to, we'll cover your funeral costs!

It isn't just spying that is at issue. At least with ground combat, and small arms fire an individual would have a reasonable chance of protecting themselves from abuses of force by the government, or any other entity. With drones that carry anti-vehicle weaponry, and can deliver that ordinance from the air at stand off ranges. There isn't any reasonable chance to protect oneself. To my mind this is akin to allowing Law Enforcement Officers to utilize mortars, or missiles in the use of deadly force. Can you imagine a high speed chase ended via a surface to surface missile, or an abandoned structure razed to the ground via artillery to get rid of a meth lab? If we allow the use of deadly force on U.S. soil via drones then that isn't far off either. At least overseas in the context of actual combat against an actually well-defined enemy they are to me a somewhat worrisome additional military tool. The reason they are worrisome is because of bureaucratic nonsense like this..."Yeah, let's use them at home since they work so well overseas!"...

Scarlett Johansson as Mara Jade...diessss happpppy...

I am pretty sure it will. The arrogant folks of at M$ seem to not realize that they got to their position by giving the market enough of what it wanted for them to be worth any hassles. They are leveraging people too hard, and it does drive people away. What they should be doing is trying to slow the flow of R&D dollars to anything Android or IOS based as quickly, and effectively as possible (by pleasing the hell out of their current customer base), because when the ARM architecture catches up close enough behind Intel in terms of power, and large lightweight screen tablets are available for cheap, there really isn't a reason to pay them extra for windows at all. It's more likely at that point that Android will start seeing adoption in the PC space for the same reason M$ thinks it will happen in reverse...

I personally don't mind the tile thing too much. Though it is stupid on M$'s part to not have the option to revert. I swore it off for the following:

Requires agreeing to binding arbitration. Requires opting out of any future class action lawsuit. Has no mention of upgrade on the packaging, and activates just find from the RC, but isn't legal unless you read the fine print (needing a valid previous OS). When 'upgraded' removes the right to use the OS you 'upgraded from', and it's final death knell the being not allowing me to use my Core2 class processors because they don't have SLAT for HyperV, when the server doesn't require this, and the graphics card in my FILE server has I think 32mb of RAM, it being a PCI card (not E, or X, just PCI).

I'm done with them, and the time I have invested in Ubuntu (and kvm) has rewarded me more than similar amounts of time spent learning the certification material. I'll still support them, as that is what most clients are using, but will happily replace them as often as I can.

I don't understand this lack of a line of logic. Congress was granted the authority to protect works of art & science for the sake of their authors. They were also charged with doing it a manner that actually furthers the ENTIRE country's artistic & technical development. Patents are only good for 20 years...Did you cure cancer? That'll be 20 years that your work is protected...Did you invent Disney? That'll be 90?! That is thoughtless, and indefensible.

Copyright infringement penalties of $150,000 PER INSTANCE or there about are absurd in a age where I can make millions of copies in minutes by clicking a button.

Patenting molecules for drugs that we have negligently released to the market without adequate testing it preposterous. Drug PROCESSES should be patented, NOT the molecule, as this would actually spur innovation to find a more efficient process, as well as encourage companies that have a modicum of pride in their work to test the molecule perhaps more thoroughly, as they could sell it too...

Patenting genes, and then getting to sue farmers that have copies of these genes on their land (Monsanto), because the wind you know carries things is no small mix of absurd, criminal, ludicrous, unhealthy, and apparently dreamed up by those with no respect for reality.

Anyone who actually bothers to take anything close to a fair & balanced review of our current system regarding Patents, and Copyrights will find nothing short of a full blown kleptocracy.

Alot of people do not seem to understand the reason Congress was granted this authority in the first place. It was to balance the need to protect the creator of the work, with the need for the public to have to access to it. Another example of this is that Patents MUST contain enough detail about the invention that 'anyone similarly skilled in the art can recreate it', otherwise the work is unpatentable, and is to be rejected as such. The Authors have no more right to protection of their work than we have the right to demand it for free to further the good of all. It is a balance between the two, and it is currently quite broken. As congress has engaged in nothing approaching due diligence in the matter.

If by 'democracy' you mean chinese electronics, then I couldn't agree more...

At least I took my vacation this week. I guess it's time to break out the end-of-the-world booze. Then I just have to travel to a place where you can actually see the stars at night...

His knife wasn't sharp enough, wanna guess where it was made?

Firstly the Nasa mistake was actually caused by Lockheed Martin. Lockheed's Deepwater fiasco cost an atrocious amount of money (Billions), and turned the Coast Guard's old (but still usable) cutters into scrap. According to congressional testimony these 8 cutters were unfit to gift to Panama to use in river patrol suffering from 'prematurely' cracked hulls. They would make those mistakes anyway, being (imho) the Microsoft of the Aerospace world.

As for the Tokyo incident, how do you not notice that an axle doesn't fit? If there is slop in it, it's pretty easy to tell there is a problem. The individuals responsible would find ways to make other costly mistakes. Besides these were ASIANS, come on man, if they can't do it, there is no hope for the rest of us. Unless Russians are better at math than Asians? Since we're all being so racist anyway...

I really dislike the idea of America having such racist standards, and it isn't that I am one of those double think monkeys, that loves the idea of celebrating our diversity through being 'Politically Correct', as celebrating diversity by removing it is impressively thoughtless.

Costly mistakes happen regardless (page iv)

I do agree that the metric system is a better system to use as it's flexibility, range, and ease of precisional use keep things more straight forward. I use it myself whenever I am calculating something that matters. I however recognize that it is a person's free choice to use whatever system they prefer. I don't believe in government mandates, I would rather have inefficiency with my freedom, so I won't gripe about it, and overall? It isn't that big of a deal. Converting from one system to another is just one small hassle of an engineering challenge, and life is not ideal. Think of the many many times that people throughout the world convert from one system of calculation, or measurement to another without error.

The biggest problem with our educational system is the way that we are taught. We should be presented with concepts, and have a very firm grasp of them BEFORE vocabulary is introduced. This gives the human mind (at least mine) a firm handle to actually conceptualize, and retain the area being studied. It is a lot like learning hands on for it's effectiveness. It needs to be known that understanding the concept is 90% of education. The vocabulary is necessary, but without a firm grasp on the concept, there is no foundation, and the inextricably linked series of memories that we like to call 'education' will be washed away, never to return. In our current state we would be far better of by polling people who have exited K-12 schools 5 years down the road, and only teaching the things that those people remembered...

I think that was the navy...