Wow vigilante hacking with no legal burden of proof and so they can run a shakedown racket?

Sorry, this is an asshole copyright troll, who has consistently demonstrated they lie about owning copyrights, who make illegal shakedown requests, and expect to do this with zero evidentiary standard, and have ISPs put in the infrastructure to support it.

Sorry, assholes. You have no legal basis to do this, and if you do it's hard to see how this won't get you some actual criminal charges. They want to make claims for which there is no basis in law, and for which they do not have a legal right to make.

Then again, putting these clowns in jail under a RICO conviction would be awesome.

These guys can't even convince judges they're not a scam, because they are a scam. The idiots who run Rightscorp are nothing more than crooks and thieves abusing the legal process to send shakedown notices about infringements they aren't in a legal position to be pursuing.

They're lying bastards, and any ISP which lets them tie into anything is likely going to open themselves to some major legal action.

This is just delusional bullshit PR by a company who greatly overstates their legal position here.

This mostly sounds like BB trying like hell to stay relevant.

Which is pretty much what they've been trying to do since Apple and Android phones came onto the market.

They may have created the smart phone, but they've subsequently had their market share taken away by other companies with products consumers want more.

I'm just not convinced they're succeeding at staying relevant. The only people I know who use BB stuff have been using it so long they're saturated with the koolaid.

Once they rolled over and started caving on security to governments around the world, their claims about bring more secure can't be trusted.

I'm just not seeing them recovering enough to matter much.

Well, except it's not FUD. It's fact.

What they fail to tell you is they have no intention of letting you use those speeds for anything more than a trivial amount of data.

The ad campaign is always "look at all the super awesome stuff you'll be able to to", and the fine print basically says "well, you can only do a little of that before we change our minds and restrict it".

They say "wow, you can totally stream 4K movies" or whatever the lie is this week, followed by "well, streaming on 4K movie will go over your cap in the first 12 minutes and then you'll need to spend hundreds of extra dollars".

They do it with broadband. They do it with mobile.

Your average telco marketing is lying bullshit which makes it look like they're selling you far more than they really are. Followed by the other shoe dropping and them saying "OK, not really, that's just marketing, we're not actually giving you that".

Which is why every time they roll out new networking technology and tell us a) how awesome it is, and b) that we should splash out on a new phone to use it ... that I have no choice but to think "yeah, sure, in theory, but you'll never upgrade your system to allow anything like the demo".

Every time they tell us how awesome the network is, how fast it will be, and all of the cool things we'll be able to do with it, they then turn around and say "but you can't really use it because if everybody did that the network would collapse".

This stuff is pure marketing lies. They're never going to give you even a fraction of what the marketing campaign about how awesome it is tells you you're going to get.

If they showed you what you'd really be getting, they'd be advertising a Ferrari, and giving you a Ford Pinto. It's all lies. I just have no idea how such blatantly false advertising is even legal.

The bad news is provisions in the USA FREEDOM Act actually allow the US government to tap digital encrypted communications

Which should be limited to empowering, but not to include forcing companies to make the technology or make technology which even they can't crack.

The problem is that what they say will only be used for national security today, will in a short time be used for every form of law enforcement some asshole deems "legitimate" ... because that's exactly what they've been doing already. This week's "only in case of national emergency" is next week's "well, or drug charges, or tax evasion, or copyright infringement".

Giving this to them now pretty much guarantees they'll demand it all of the time.

And without someone putting very hard limits on this, you will have a situation in which the government can demand any and all records just because they feel they need it.

At that point, the US will have truly become a country with its own Stasi, and you can give up any pretense of living in a free society ... and don't give us that bullshit that if you have nothing to hide you have nothing to fear.

Oh, and if the US keeps on this path, every US tech company might suddenly find the rest of the world has to start pulling back and saying "sorry, we can't use your shit because you're the enemy of freedom and liberty and we can't trust your asshole government".

We wouldn't trust Iraq, Russia, or North Korea with this stuff. Don't act like we should trust the US.

Mark my words, this will become something police forces just expect to demand and get without oversight. Because that's what they've done with every other form of information which was supposed to be highly restricted due to how it breaks civil liberties and bypasses the law.

This will be no different.

You know you wanna:

They have a stock, unmodified class? 'Cause that sounds too awesome to click the link.

Well, here's the abridged version:

BELOW ARE SOME VEHICLE SPECIFICATIONS
OF CURRENT NMMTPA CLASSES

PRO STOCK TRACTOR: Originates from 1/16 scale 2 wheel drive tractor
WEIGHT CLASSES: 3lb. & 5lb.

TWO WHEEL DRIVE: Replicates 2 wheel drive road vehicle
  MAX. WEIGHT: 4lbs.

SUPER STOCK TRACTOR: Originates from 1/16 scale 2 wheel drive tractor
MAX. WEIGHT: 5lbs.

FOUR WHEEL DRIVE: Replicates 4 wheel drive road vehicle
MAX.WEIGHT: 6lbs.

OPEN MODIFIED "HOT ROD" TRACTOR
MAX. WEIGHT: 6lbs.

SEMI "BIG RIG"
MAX. WEIGHT: 7lbs.

I'm not affiliated, never even seen it, I literally found that site from googling after the poster I replied to said "I want to see a micro-tractor pull." Google for "micro-tractor pull" and that site is literally the first non-youtube link.

I believe they could well be almost as awesome as you want them to be. Because the limit tire sizes, wheel base, engine size ... so, yeah, they have a version of a "stock, unmodified".

Unless the site is en elaborate hoax (which is a really strange thing to hoax about), the awesome you hope for may be real.

Yeah, no shit, Facebook is an ad and marketing company masquerading as a social media site.

They have one product: the collection and sale of your personal information.

That's how they make their money. The need that to make money. They exist to make money.

So, as usual, fuck you, Facebook. Not interested in your crap, not going to let the bullshit embedded tracking in web pages I didn't consent to to happen, and sure as hell not every going to use any of your products with an EULA which says "all your base are belong to us".

All companies these days are overreaching assholes, and Zuckerfuck is one of the worst.

I'm not surprised at all that Facebook are doing shit like this. This is just one more reason why they can piss off, and why I'll keep blocking their crap at my firewall -- no, you can't post to Facebook while using my network. Boo fucking hoo.

Why am I suddenly picturing a bunch of Linux geeks in black satin jackets and a red Huggy Bear hats?

Just me then?

Best ... prank ... ever.

Yo, Dawg ... I hear you like Red Hats ... so I got you a Red Hat so you can Red Hat while you're Red Hat'n.

Are you getting paid by the Red Hat? Or do you just really like typing Red Hat?

It's Red Hats all the way down, bitches. Because Red Hat!

Why would this be an April Fool's joke?

Because this is Slashdot, and it's April 1st, and I've learned that makes for a combination requiring some distrust.

I know these kinds of things exist, and people are building them. I have no idea if this specific story is fake or not.

Giant floors in huge megaliths dedicated to food production sounds reasonable.

I'm not disputing that, I actually agree this is cool technology which needs to exist, and I know people are working on it.

Whether or not, today, in Berlin there's little tiny huts in grocery stores growing fresh herbs? I hope it's true.

Who the hell said anything about solely surviving on salads? I'm a vegetarian, but I'm not a fucking cow.

Green leafy things have lots of other nutritional stuff as well. Which means while they may not provide all of your calories, they might provide some valuable nutrients. Oh, and they're tasty. Which is why you'd also grow herb.

Now, imagine, you're a researcher in the arse end of the world ... oh, I don't know, Antarctica maybe. How happy would you be to have a salad once or twice a week instead of whatever can O stuff you have left?

I bet if you stood up in the cafeteria in the period of time when they can't get new supplies, and all the fresh stuff is gone, and offered to sell a fresh head of lettuce you'd have no problems. In fact, I bet you'd have a bidding war or a riot on your hands. Now imagine everybody can have a little lettuce.

There are a LOT of places which are hard to get to, have a lot of cold and dark, and where fresh produce is either non-existent or incredibly expensive. In those places, the ability to grow these things indoors and have them more during the year would be a hell of an improvement -- both mentally and nutritionally.

Hell, a little fresh basil and a side salad could probably make chipped beef on toast better if that's what was left in the provisions. Certainly compared to NOT having a little fresh basil and a side salad.

Stop thinking in terms of getting all of your calories from lettuce, and think in terms of getting fresh local produce which is out of season, especially in places where you'd almost never see it.

ANY degree of putting some food production local is a good thing, if for nothing else than you can have fresh, quality stuff which hasn't had to travel halfway around the world.

All valid points.

BUT, the kind of thing this article is talking about is indoor growing, not out in the wild, and with a significant amount of automation ... you know like this.

The statistics for this incredibly successful indoor farming endeavor in Japan are staggering: 25,000 square feet producing 10,000 heads of lettuce per day (100 times more per square foot than traditional methods) with 40% less power, 80% less food waste and 99% less water usage than outdoor fields.

So, really ... are you so sure about what you said? Because it sounds like the technology to start doing this on a sizable scale already exists.

And you racist a-holes call India a corrupt country!

India is a corrupt country. America is an unjust society.

These two things are independent of one another.

Sure, but TFS says this:

Imagine a future where cities become self-sufficient in their food production

It didn't say "this will make cities self-sufficient".

And any degree to which you can grow locally instead of importing adds a degree of "self-sufficieny" and is stuff you don't need to import, and which doesn't need to travel thousands of miles.

I'm assuming TFA is an April Fool's joke ... but the idea isn't so crazy.

Hell, at one point this year cauliflower was something like $11 each. For ONE damned cauliflower. Because it all came from the same place or something like that. Shielding yourself from huge fluctuations in the price of produce which needs to be imported from around the world is definitely a step forward.

If the German's can build this awesome transparent factory for cars, I can imagine the "lettuce tower" and the "herb district" if the technology was right and it was cost effective.

Dammit, Germany ... get on with that, will you? We totally need that.