It always seems that when companies start trying to branch out into wildly dissimilar industries, it's a sign of trouble within the organization. Do what you do well, figure out how to do it better if things aren't going how you'd like them. Don't try making sushi if you've always sold donuts.

The "jump the shark" moment for "WMD" was when the surviving Boston bomber was charged with using a WMD. Horrible, yes. Evil, yes. However, it's not a nuclear, chemical, or biological weapon. I'm wondering how long it will before assault rifles or 3d printed handguns will be labeled "WMDs."

And, optionally, you try not to be the guy whom the legislative hammer is brought down on by politicians looking to make a buck, which is the other side of the coin. But, yes, when I hear people complain about the "free market," they obviously have no idea how our current economy functions.

You actually do make some good points, and I've found that the majority of people really aren't douches. My issue with the original post/story was that it seemed like this piece probably belonged somewhere else besides Slashdot. After all, most readers here live/breathe/eat tech on an insider level, to where we have a tech life, as opposed to a tech "lifestyle." We generally engineer the hardware and software that other people write about and use. The psychological dependence on tech, in that losing an item would be such a traumatic experience, is not something many of us necessarily identify with. Most people here are cognizant enough about the issues of security and trust that it really comes sense nature to use not to leave our data in a vulnerable state. At the most, we're reduced to the physical loss of the item, as opposed to feeling like we're losing control of our lifestyle because of it. Truthfully, I can see the same sort of connection with the anger over Beta -- Slashdot represents a very niche and unique perspective (again, people whose life, not lifestyle, is tech) and trying to alter that brings a great deal of discomfort because of what someone is trying to imply about us.

For anyone who is complacent or unconvinced about the value of the internet in terms of providing a meaningful political dialogue, political education, or otherwise serving as a tool of the people to at least aid in political expression, look at the places where it is controlled and how politically repressive those places are. If nothing more, it should show that attempts to restrict or regulate it may indicate that those parties attempting to do the restriction or regulation may not have your best interests at heart.

I misplaced my cell phone the other day. It also upended my existence. Then, I found it and restored faith in myself. In other news, some bears crapped in the woods.

While the Republicans probably have a lot of catching up to do in the tech department, they're still clueless as to why they are losing in the political arena, and it has nothing to do with tech. They've long since given up their founding principles of being pro-liberty (remember, most Republicans voted for the Civil Rights Act) and internationally cautious and have instead become a hangout for corrupt Beltway extortionists and moonbat crazies in recent decades. When they do offer a political position, it's about 75 percent of what the Democrats offer, so what's the point of supporting them? Finally, dislike of government is a prominent Republican theme, but they've never seen a defense program they didn't like (by and large). All that adds up to a brand which is more damaged than New Coke and would take a cold, hard look in the mirror before it can ever expect to be resurrected, which they are not capable of doing. In ten years, the GOP will have largely gone the way of the Whigs, maybe winning some local elections, but increasingly irrelevant on the national scene.

Old Steve Jackson game supplement, but it was very interesting in terms of speculation with how real-world interactions would probably go between permanent moon settlements and earth. The arc of independence almost seems inevitable once there is sufficient development and an inability to directly control events happening in a distant location, not unlike what happened with British colonization in America. Of course, long-term habitability of the moon remains to be seen, although it seems likely people are going to give it a shot at some point.

Good points. I'd also add that universal education simply makes it so that a person has to get more education in order to improve their chances of landing or retaining a job. Teachers, for example, generally have to get a Masters, which is completely useless to most of them. At least in programming, there's not as much of this, although I did lose out one time to a person who had a Masters' degree.

Someone probably already wrote a sci-fi story along these lines, but I can easily see someone with an artificial heart, pacemaker, or some other medical device getting a phone call threatening to shut their thing off unless they make an extortion payment. While I think most of these are air gapped at the moment, it's inevitable that they will become more interconnected, especially as a means of delivering diagnostic information (aka "heartbeats", heh), at which point it will be possible to run exploits against them. Even if a person's devices aren't experiencing a legit attack, I can also see plenty of people being scared into coughing up dough because they won't know any better.

Subject line says it all.

Someone tries to rob or kill you for your phone, you switch from "Safe" to "Fire."

Well, guess I'd better use my mods points before they're worthless, huh? Anyway, Russia banning Bitcoin should remind all the Obama-haters and Putin-lovers that Russia still somewhat on the authoritarian side. I've never gotten the mindset that just because Putin likes to stick his finger in the American Empire's eye, that he's a strong supporter for human rights, liberty, etc. I will say that America probably has surpassed Russia in lack of real liberty in recent years (yeah, they'll throw you in jail for exercising free speech, but we're drowning in laws that we often don't know we're breaking until we get arrested and our lives ruined; they have an incarceration rate that is half of ours, etc), but that just means we're worse, not that they're better.