Even worse than that --- I have a number of friends who's rooftop solar produces more energy than they consume.

For them - the energy is "free" so nothing's wasted.

But instead they're forced to use the more environmentally harmful mercury-filled incandescants, or e-waste-with-dirty-manufacturing LED bulbs.

TL/DR: with rooftop solar, they banned the most environmentally friendly bulbs.

Isn't this almost exacty what Eminent Domain laws are designed for. If some private company's blocking use of resources important to public or civic use (those cable right-of-ways) the government pretty much gets to take them and pay whatever it says they're worth. Or do they only use those laws to kick out poor people for huge corporate developers?

I'd rather see "click-to-pay" the default for javascript.

It's been many years since I've been annoyed by an irritating java applet, and there a few I find useful.

But ugh - so much javascript, and so many sites that practically require it.

I imagine it's more some turf war / battle over budgets.

Remember back in in 2008, when the FBI wanted the right to monitor all internet traffic ("The surveillance should include all Internet traffic, Mueller said, whether it be .mil, .gov, .com--whichever network you're talking about.")? Apparently the NSA got an even bigger budget for that project than the FBI did, and I imagine the FBI's been jealous ever since.

Ever since news about how guys like Chalabi would play the State Department, Pentagon, and CIA off of each other, I've wondered how many of the world's conflicts are actually DNI(CIA) vs DoD(DIA)

Applies even more to internet hacking, where 4 of the 10 biggest hacker groups in the world are almost certaily DNI(CIA), DoD(DIA), DoJ(FBI), and DHS(NCSD). (probably all working under the alias "anonymous")

Imagine a world where one buys drugs on Silk Road's successor; and instead of addresses delivery is by drone to some GPS coordinate.

The drones are cheap enough compared to the product, you don't even need to worry about recovery.

If it had an unlocked bootloader; and I could find a Debian / Mint / etc port for it; I probably would have bought one.

At least then if (when) I noticed RT sucking I would have known I could fall back to something I could use.

But they didn't. So I didn't.

You're welcome to submit the patch yourself if it bugs you that much.

Or you're welcome to pay someone to do it. Even them - and if you paid them enough, people'd complain less about the ratio of revenue they get from google.

And if the "bug" doesn't bug you enough to do either of the above, it's not really that important, is it?

I worry about the fumes of a makerbot in the poorly ventilated classrooms in many schools.

At least if they put the 3D-printers in a shop class, they surely have better airflow.

So, fork it and run your own fork.

If enough people think like you (and think you're better than Linus), your fork will quickly reach a critical mass. Then you can either hire someone to deal with Linus, or ignore him altogether and let his followers seek out your patches to pull the part they want..

(and if you think I'm being sarcastic - I'm not - this is pretty much how a lot of the major distros work)

Opium production in Afghanistan has been on the rise since U.S. occupation started in 2001. Based on UNODC data, there has been more opium poppy cultivation in each of the past four growing seasons (2004â"2007) than in any one year during Taliban rule.

If its CIA - for doing their own drug smuggling, it's unlikely they'll blow their cover by sharing with your Oregon's PD.

If it's NYPD - they won't care outside of NY.

If it's NSA - they won't blow their cover for fear of more bad PR.

And that's just US agencies. Even if it is government, it's just as likely it's China's government. Or Singapore's. Or Russia's.

Or Afghanistan's, now that someone stopped the Taliban who were cracking down on Heroin.

And even if it is - wouldn't buyers and sellers take precautions to keep their privacy even from the guys (who are very likely criminals) running Silk Road anyway?

If I have a password on file at Adobe (and I think I do), it's probably "password". And that's not a bad thing.

My email there is probably some variation of dontSpamMe@spam.la (that was such a wonderful service while it lasted); or some throwaway like adobespam@[my-own-domain].com.

And there's no way I ever gave them a credit card (or real name, etc).

TL/DR: password=password doesn't neccessarily imply insecure