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Comment Re:Predictable (Score 1) 484

But this inadvertently prevents people from renting very small apartments (i.e. the size of an antenna is too small to be an apartment). Apparently an apartment must be over a certain size to be allowed to watch TV without violating copyright. The next loophole would be to rent cheap apartments in the cheap areas in town (an apartment that fits a bed and a TV and a DVR). I'm not sure if this could be done for $8/month, but maybe it could. If I rent an apartment in some city for $8/month that happens to receive OTA broadcasts and I have a DVR and set it up, would I be in trouble then? If not, does that outlaw renting apartments? I can rent apartments, but I can't provide a DVR or cable TV as terms of the rent?

Comment Dice Trolls Slashdot User Community Again (Score 1) 222

Clearly this summary is trolling for posts. Robots have killed, and there is a compelling reason to be wary.
http://www.wired.com/2007/10/r...

Not because robots are going to gain self-awareness and kill mercilessly, but because the human beings using robots for killing are way less careful than they should be. To the fighters in Yemen and Afghanistan, whether the drones are self-aware or not doesn't make a difference to the fact that they are targeted for termination. This is the life they are born in. They are fighting robots which are trying to wipe out their albeit misguided way of living.

Right now people are making the decisions, but what if people lose the stomach? What if the President had the capability to deploy drones which could discern on their own which people are likely to be a threat to US interests? This is almost too close to reality. In fact, the false positive rates of the robots are likely to be lower than people who may be impacted by seeing firsthand what has happened to their fellow soldiers. But does that make it any less worrisome?

Comment Re:Remember pay toilets? (Score 1) 135

I think pay toilets are bad and am thankful of groups which did away with them. However, even though I avoid using WIFI at the airport because I'm cheap and/or have a hotspot, I don't see a competitive reason not to charge for the wifi at the airport. People are not there that long, it's not like we need a bunch of hipsters hanging out at an airport to use the free wifi. I'm not annoyed by hipsters at the neighborhood starbucks, but bringing more people to the busiest airport in the world who might not be flying seems like a bad idea. I guess they'll make up the difference in price gouging foods, but I have no doubt that Uber will soon have food trucks pulling up at airports for hipsters and everyone up in arms. Not that I don't aim to be a hipster.

Comment Re:Driverless Cars Are Boring (Score 4, Funny) 255

...They don't cut off cyclists in the bike lane. They don't get impatient. They don't get frustrated. They don't get angry. They don't get sleepy. They don't get distracted.
"[they] can't be reasoned with, [they] can't be bargained with [they don't] feel pity or remorse or fear and they absolutely will not stop. Ever. [They just drive, in a deliberate, controlled, and entirely boring fashion.] Until you are dead."

FTFY

Comment Re:FCC (Score 1) 173

Well, you see, when I retire from the FCC, I will have a paid position at AT&D and as a consumer I will be able to have more choices. And my money trickles down to the rest of the country, growing the money supply for everyone. This is how capitalism works and I can't really see how blocking the merger would benefit anyone. It clearly wouldn't benefit me. -- Any FCC Commissioner

Comment Re:Comply with the law (Score 1) 370

If your information is out there, it's out there whether Google indexes it or not. This is an unenforceable law. It's as simple as that. I mean, I could mention somebody's name right here and say they went bankrupt. We all know who I'm talking about. Should slashdot be shutdown as a result unless they remove my post?

How about you comply and delete your comment? I don't like it. Even though you posted before me, and had no intention of addressing it to me, it is insulting to me and I don't wish to see it ever again. It pains me. If I lived in Europe and asked them to remove your comment, would they do it? I'd argue they shouldn't. But it really does pain me.

And finally, if I do business in Europe, how am I supposed to know what I can publish? Am I allowed to publish everything and just wait for the requests to come in? Or will there be some list of facts which may not be published on the internet? I wonder if anyone, such as yourself, could compile such facts into a book, or some sort of index of some sort to help new businesses comply with the law. Such a list would surely help prevent people from publishing facts no one needs to know. Oh the irony!

Comment Re:probabilities? (Score 1) 238

That's what I don't understand. All this metadata, and yet they couldn't prevent Boston bomber? This is a guy who got away with murdering people. He should have been in prison. Instead "statistics say we need to invade everyone's liberties". I haven't seen a single reporter ask about the metadata they had on the Boston bomber. If they couldn't prevent that attack, what attacks are they actually preventing?

Comment Re:Cloud needs server huggers (Score 1) 409

Instead of "server huggers" we think of cloud sysadmins as Lakitu, a helpful koopa that rescues your applications when they've gone off track. Lakitu also throws spiny eggs at those suspender-ed and unshaven hackers who try to penetrate your kingdom's defenses. True, Lakitu can be knocked offline allowing such hackers to steal your bitcoins easily while your cloud floats along unattended, but this rarely happens. Given the success rate of Lakitu in the literature, I think we can easily agree that it's koopas all the way up for cloud computing.

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