Clearly they're curious as to what they might use a computer for. And the only way to figure that out is to get one. But, sadly, they shall never know.

Agreed. And if you can't do any project on your own, from your own house, without having to see people for three months straight, you're just a slacker.
</sarcasm>

We value collaboration in the workplace, because it allows us to do great things. We should also value collaboration in institutes of higher learning.

... well shit. Cursory research to fix knowledge that "everybody knew YEARS ago already" is not in the preview button for a comment.

There actually WAS a court case that was predicated on this point, where a farmer claimed cross pollination happened. It turns out he had sprayed roundup on a patch of crops near a farmer's field that did have "Roundup Ready" plants growing. So he knowingly attempted to get the seeds without paying for them. The court found he had been attempting to use their patented seed illegitimately, but he didn't have to pay anything because the benefit obtained was too insubstantial. So, similar, but there actually WAS nefarious intent on the part of the farmer.

Also, some farmers have sued Monsanto over the same thing happening (Roundup Ready crops out-competing non-RR crops), although I'm not sure on the status of that.

The point is that the farmers in question DID NOT SIGN ANY CONTRACT. Farmer A has Monsanto corn, Farmer B has traditional corn. Season passes, cross pollination occurs. Farmer A has to buy more Monsanto corn, Farmer B just picks the best growing corn from his field, saves that for seed, and sells the rest.

The next year, Farmer B plants out his saved seed, and Monsanto comes-a-knocking that Farmer B is using Monsanto-patented genes. From the cross pollination. Monsanto sues, wins, farmer has to pay up loads of money.

See where this is going wrong?

That's why it'll also be used for automatic fining of traffic violations (ostensibly for safety, actually for cash), and fraud detection. Lucrative.

And if the next xenophobic dictator arises in Europe again, presumably to track and round up minorities with ease.

Sounds good, but then electric vehicles won't get taxed. Everyone will go to those, which sounds like a win, except for all gas stations, and Royal Dutch Shell. Oops.

Currently only a fraction of the collected road tax is actually used for road improvement. Something like 20%. The rest flows into the general budget. Right now we just pay road tax depending on the weight of our vehicle, and regardless of usage. That seems fine. Reduce that by 80% and I won't complain.

Gas tax sounds good, but doesn't work, because it would force a move to electric vehicles (and the Dutch economy relies in part on Royal Dutch Shell doing well, so that would be bad).

Change your OS? Only after shredding the mainboard and getting a new PC. If you're paranoid or in a high-money environment, that is. There is malware that nestles in the BIOS, and can install keyloggers or network sniffers before the OS is even allowed to boot up.

Road tax per kilometer driven. By having a tracking device in every car. This has already been discussed in Dutch parliament, and so far has been rejected, but it probably won't be forever; I know people who are actually in favor of such draconian surveillance.

Of course, a decade after that it will be used to collect speeding fines on all roads. Which makes sense from a government point of view, but would be a practical nightmare.

Then again, ever increasing circles of concentrated power are also not doing the world much good. For example in Europe, where my national government is being slowly but surely usurped by the undemocratic, costly European parliament.

Smaller communities care more about the people living in them than supranational trillion dollar organizations. While I see a good use for national governments (healthcare, public transport), most power should probably belong with the municipalities.

Explain to them that you're not accepting the position due to their stalking tendencies. Or move to a country where people are less retarded.

If noone complains, nothing will change.

I'd call the cops if there was debris lying on the road.

Last time there was part of a car door on the edge of the road. They said they'd already received reports of it, and had made sure a road maintenance and cleanup crew were on their way.

If you see/hit shit in the road, it's nice to get it removed, so other people don't hit it.

A main problem with that line of reasoning is that they're wearing a camera.

Yes, how horrible, posting a photo of a social event to a social media page. Jesus fuck, people, it's perfectly normal to be seen acting social.

If some corporate human resources unit is unable to empathize with how pictures of social events work these days, and they'd attribute a random picture of someone holding two glasses of wine as a sign of rampant alcoholism, it's not a company you want to work for (and they deserve to go out of business, so that a competitor can take up the slack without being a sack of retards).

Especially channels amenable to spying on US citizens, we would never have heard of Snowden or the spy programs. If he had then tried to publish via other means, neither would his family.

At the risk of Godwin:
If you were, say, a German administrator learning about the death camps and being absolutely appalled, reporting it to any senior Nazi official wouldn't do much good.