and now retroactively Oracle can claim copyright on it?

No, there's no retroactive claim necessary under the Berne Convention - everything anybody ever writes is automatically copyrighted. All expression is by default subsumed by the State under that treaty (so cut the guys going apeshit over TPP some slack).

You wanted the government controlling every aspect of human interaction, you got it. Now the US software industry can proceed to burn in flames, the way the democracy wants (hence the term democracide).

If there's a silver lining, it's that this will breed further contempt for the law among the educated. As they flee its jurisdiction.

The idea that we can not produce enough "green" energy is simply idiotic, and certainly not insightful.

Can vs. should. Many more people are dying falling off roofs installing solar panels than have ever died from a nuclear power plant. Fear is a motivation that achieves terrible results.

"Oh, it's just human lives - I'll take my fear, thanks" seems to be the current attitude of the econuts. We can't call them 'greens' or 'environmentalists' because they're really just supporting coal power, empirically. Real environmentalists rationally seek solutions that minimize environmental impact. Unless depopulation is also a goal, but why would they want to depopulate the solar installers first?

Covering 1/4 of New Mexico has been proposed as well - fewer roof-fall deaths, but an ecological disaster to fence of that much environment (not to mention the impact of the rare-earth mining in China that fuels these things).

Maybe Gates will come up with the needed order-of-magnitude improvement that we need. But it won't be on rooftops because the very best we can mathematically hope for is a low single-digit multiplier (3 would be *amazing*, 4 approaches impossible).

I'm one of the people who voted to shut down Rancho Seco back in the day,

And "thar's yer problem". Energy problems are all political at this point, not technical. Nuclear plants are less dangerous than other forms of power, even including the crappy old light water reactors we have to deal with (and which should have gone extinct by now, except for politics, especially the dominance of public nuclear insurance).

One thing Gates could do, that would be really good, is to advance the progress of superconductors. It already is cost-effective to run superconducting cables for power, if your demand is as great as NYC, but it's still only good for short runs.

With superconductors we could even deal with the political problems of nuclear power by putting most of the plants out in the Nevada desert and running the power on superconductors to where it needs to get used. For that matter, he could fund studies of a theory of gravity that might help us get to high-temp superconductors faster.

There are dozens of variables that all interplay; presumably Gates is aware of those factors and won't be too narrow-minded. A quarter billion dollars in lobbying money for the diffuse energy consumers' interests would do tremendous good in our corrupt system that's otherwise intent on democracide.

How is it that only now anyone is introducing a reputation system to this industry?

Because a reputation system would have been harmful to the cartels' profits so the politicians were well-paid to ensure that didn't ever happen?

How is it that only now the barrier of entry to this industry is coming down?

Because a reputation system would have been harmful to the cartels' profits so the politicians were well-paid to ensure that didn't ever happen?

What exactly does a stringently controlled supply of government-licensed "taxi" drivers do for the consumer anyway?

Ensure the cartels' profits, a nominal revenue stream for the city, and a stream of graft for the politicians?

Wait ... which part of this situation hasn't been obvious for 80 years? The same conditions apply in nearly every politically-regulated industry (which is why consumer-regulation is always far more effective).

they are hopelessly incapable of spotting that corruption

To call out that corruption in a different situation is to deny yourself the very corruption you enjoy in your favored situation.

The State is the great fiction through which everyone endeavours to live at the expense of everyone else.
- Frederic Bastiat, 1848

The patterning comes from young children not challenging their parents' misbehavior, for genetic fear of being left to starve on a hillside. The fundamental problem is American adults who are willing to allow themselves to be treated as children.

Why does "Nude" equate to "Rude"? Oh right, I forgot... we're afraid of our bodies and spooked by healthy sexuality.

Puritanism is the State Religion.

Can you make it snapshot anytime a file is modified? Also, can you easily find all the snapshots for a single file?

It sounds like you're looking for a versioned filesystem, not a snapshotting filesystem. The latter is a point-in-time of the whole filesystem tree, the former is file-centric. Windows derives from VMS, which did file versioning by default, so that's not too surprising.

Tux3 or copyfs on Linux might be ways to do it. A quick google said that there's a way to make Alfresco present an SMB share with versioning - I hadn't considered networking a document management system, but OK, why not?

Dude, you just got trolled by a guy stuck working for ULA. Just tell him to ratchet up the 401(k) contributions and go back to his expensive, late, old-tech rockets.

This hasty reaction to appease the angry mob

When the magician is waving his hand over here, you always have to look at the other hand to see what's really going on.

Turn your assumption on its head - cause and effect are reversed. The taxi industry paid the corrupt politicians to crack down on their competition. They promised a riot for the politicians to "react to" so that it wouldn't be quite so bloody obvious to the muggles that it's just corruption-as-usual at work.

Because what makes more sense - that politicians started to ban stuff to appease a mob? Or that they're corrupt and they got paid off? Obvious cover story is obvious.

"But look, bantha tracks, ghaffi sticks - it looks like sandpeople did this, alright."

Good luck crossing the British Channel with a jetpack while being tailed by the RAF... ;-)

Bond hasn't done a Chunnel rocket sled ride yet?

Anyway, there are much simpler ways to smuggle somebody clandestinely. It would be irresponsible to enumerate the options here, but the logistics aren't impossibly hard, so Assange must feel he's better off conducting his mission where is is right now.

possibly illegal to perform medical tests on someone without their consent

Well, here's another way for a male to do a medical test on a female for STD's - stick your dick in her and see if you get a disease.

Here's something else that's illegal: tell somebody you don't have herpes and then have unprotected sex with them. Or tell them you're on the pill and then have unprotected sex to "land" them. Or just grab the used condom out of the trash while he's in the bathroom and cram it up in there - "oops, must've been a hole in the condom".

It would be a much happier world if none of these things never happened. Given the extant State mechanisms, casual encounters have become fraught with risk and somewhat adversarial. Heck, in some US States, it's becoming necessary to have a signed consent form with a blood test first.

Maybe what we need as an invention instead is a "photo booth" with a portable blood testing microarray and legal consent validation, with results cryptographically signed onto the blockchain.

So much for just rolling around in the hay loft.

They'll probably use this to ban some app that's helping to get materials and supplies into disaster areas using the pricing mechanism. Whenever a disaster happens, demand for goods skyrockets past supply, prices rise to guide allocation and outsiders desire to risk capital and safety to get supplies in, seeking profit. Then State actors castigate them, threaten to imprison them (dog-whistle: "price gougers"), and so the supply dries up again. Every economist recognizes how this works, but politicians seek to dismiss economics reflexively.
I thought Google was smarter, though.

to play devil's advocate (for now anyway) can't State-level actors simply demand this information anyway?

I'd be happy seeing cryptographically-secure domain registrations, but I'm not sure the status quo does anything but lull users into a false sense of complacency.

People who want real privacy are using .onion domain names now, because of the current reality. Making the truth plain isn't always a bad thing.

no power, still doesn't work over water. lame.

A container is what used to be called a virtual machine running a single application which is fucking amazing, like a standardized cargo container on a boat from Hanoi to Wyoming.

TFTFY