Yes, I realize, I'm way too late in the game to matter, but..

Am I the only one appalled by a private company (American, of course) deciding one day Justice is now simply dispensed by those with the deepest pockets? What, no Law any more? No due process? No Judges? No Jury? No 'Innocent until proven guilty?

"12 Angry Men" my ass! The USA has got to be the only country I know that has legalized corruption to the point where private companies are just openly taking over the Law from the Government.

This can only end one way: in revolution. And expect no 12 angry men, but at least 120,000,000.

A far more intriguing experiment was that of a mouse I recently read about. Basically, its artificially severed optic nerves were 'guided' to heal again (this can be done with humans too, to a certain degree). Afterwards the mouse's vision was totally garbled, though, as the wires were all crossed, as it were.

Here, however, nature applied a brilliant trick to solve the cross-wiring, fully automagically! The idea is based in a simple physics. When one of the retna's photoreceptor cells 'fires', it does not fire entirely exclusively, but other rods around it are lit up as well (be it at lesser intensity). The math behind this physical phenomenon is pretty straight-forward and predictable. So predictable even, that the mice's brain could already 'ungarble' the cross-wired signals after several weeks! Because if you light up a single rod, and other rods light up as well, but now enter the brain seemingly all across the board, but all still in diminishing intensity consistent with placement of what should have been a nice 'corona' around the main rod, then the math for 're-wiring' them back to their should-be locations is fairly simple. Re-wiring is a bit of a misnomer, actually, as technically not the nerves themselves get re-wired, but how the brain remaps the rods' signals and their corresponding coordinates, so to speak.

So, for connecting artifical eyes to a human optic nerf, it stands to reason our brains will learn the same trick reasonable fast too, and 'auto-rewire' the impulses on their own, without us having to figure out what goes where exactly!

"so now cancer sufferers are willfuly producing cancer genes, in violation of patent law."

You gotta wonder: if you get caught producing cancer genes and/or cells (= derivative works?) without a license, does that also mean the companies and their 'correctional facilities' will seek to cure your cancer?

Why are IP-rights so out of whack? Because all y'all in the US have allowed a political system in which rich, and even richer, folks can buy legislation. In other parts of the world such a thing would be called outright corruption. Not in America, though. You people have legalized corruption.

And i was downright appalled when I first heard the Department of Homeland Security had seized 77 domain names, because of alleged copyright infringment. Yes, that's right, The Department of Homeland Security, created after 9/11, to keep America safe from terrorist attacks! Yep, the very same DHS, grossly abused by none other than Obama, no less (really wish it had been Bush; but alas) for something as banale as protecting the profit margins of the content industry! What is next? Will you deploy the US Army to protect your IP-rights?! The tragic irony, of course, is that a country so focussed on greed would indeed consider copyright infringement an 'attack' on their nation. Holy cow! Can't you people see how insane things have gotten?!

So, my question to you, Mr. Derek Khanna, is whether you think any form of real progress can be made without limiting (or downright outlawing) the buying of legislation? If not, I fear only a full-blown revolution will be able to turn the tide.

It's very simple: "Don't fix it if it ain't broken." Going beyond is an extra (unnecessary) risk.

Whether a slashdot editor having a few bad experiences with BIOS updates is worth a whole featured /. article, is another matter.

Zactly. I remember VALVe's Gabe Newell saying, at some point, he wanted to make games for handhelds too. I grumbled, as I do not like this new 'my life thru my mobile phone' generation. But at least he had the foresight to recognize the different platforms. Microsoft, on the other hand, in what will likely soon be called one of the greatest blunders in the IT industry since decades, with Wiindows 8 tries to be a handheld device AND a regular PC at the same time. That spells fail on both ends.

More epic than the utter fail of Windows 8 is MS' monumental state of denial, though. I mean, you take away the START button, tell people to just find stuff by hand if they really want it on their desktop; then you make said desktop only accessible thru a few extra, convoluted steps. And then, when they're finally there, you offer it stripped of Aero to boot. And then you wonder why no one will touch Windows 8 with a 10-foot pole. Or rather, then you start blaming the PC manufacturers for your own fail. Tsk.

I think this is a perfect case for Massachusetts prosecutor Carmen Ortiz. Charge the guy with stealing "Sloppy code worth millions of dollars!" And, by all means, go for that 50 years!

I love it when you Americans all go pseudo-responsible on the rest of the world: "He knew what he was doing; he must face up to the consequences." Yeah, you're the man! /sarcasm

YOU: "OMG!! He downloaded files, with the intent to distribute! Off with his head!"
SANE PEOPLE: "But he had legal access to them; and he didn't even distribute them yet."
YOU: "I don't care! I'm an American! When I foresee that I might possibly lose a buck, I must exercise the most harsh penalty I can think of under the Law, and have his ass thrown in jail for 50 years!"

Well, Sir, let me tell you: you are insane. Not criminally insane; no, you reserve the word 'criminal' for things like 'criminal copyright infringment.' You are insane nonetheless. And why? Because you have lost all sense of perspective, all sense of proportionality, and common sense. Blinded by the whole greed, and nothing but the greed, you have lost all touch with reality.

The bitter irony of it all is, that, from your perspectives of greed being the prime motivator behind everything in your lives, something as silly as copyright infringment really must look like a capital crime to you. So I guess the joke's on me.

With all due respect to your wife, 'fun' is not the standard by which everything ought to be measured. Crime and Punishment isn't fun; Macbeth isn't fun, etc. Yet these are all great works. And it's okay for your wife to walk away when it's not sufficiently light entertainment enough. Personally, though, I applaud it when something is NOT about fun, for a change.

And no, the absence of fun does not mean it's "great if your a Sci-Fi nerd who want's a dark and gritty," but is simply for people who want something serious.

Am I to understand you're inferring that you thought Caprica was some sort of intellectual show? LOL. Well, I suppose, in a Kindergarten sorta way, they tried to be philosophical; but, of course, failed miserably because A) they couldn't get the science right (not even enough for a suspension of disbelief); and B) because said attempts at waxing 'philosophical' (like Dr. Graystone wanting to teach his A.I. wife, Amanda Graystone, new tricks) were based on the same bad science. Or absence thereof, rather. Just telling your A.I. wife that she needs to be more 'real' is not being philosophical -- that's just being stupid.

Heroes -- Simply ended with Season 1. The rest was drivel.

Caprica -- I saw Caprica's cancellation coming from the first episode aired. Why? Because it's premiss was based on a level of science that would embarrass even a 2nd Grader. To accept Caprica you had to be incredibly dumb and paranoid: "Yeah, let's just collect all data from you on the Internet, put it together inside a chip, and, tada, we have an A.I. with an almost identical personality to yours." Riiiight. Like I said, in reverse order, you'd have to be pretty paranoid to think that much data is available online about you; and you have to be pretty dumb to believe you can create an A.I. like yourself from just your Facebook data and such. Get real.

Of course, Caprica never recovered from its inherently flawed premiss. The Tauron 'mafia' plot was mildly amusing at times, but you can't carry a whole series on that. I'm surprised it hung in there as long as it did.

But we all know the truth. It's 30 year old lardballs who still live with their parents that play this game. The lack of friends and human companionship drives them to seek out online communities where they can be accepted as who they portray themselves as rather than for who they, unfortunately, are. Seeking companionship is one of the most primal of human urges.

You're working this deal all backwards. It's real life that allows people to portray themselves as someone they, unfortunately, aren't. The cute girl with her hot body, the salesman with his endearing smile, the exec in his spiffing suit, it's all covering the inside. If we'd ever got to see who these people really are, we'de be running away screaming half the time. In worlds like WoW, however, such physicalities have fallen away. What you call 'pretending' is, in fact, often the opposite: that sweet girl you're talking to, well, she really IS sweet. That's who she really is. It's YOU, used to judging people by their outer package, who concludes she's pretending to be something she's not, should it turn out she's fugly in real life.

In worlds like WoW, the avatars notwithstanding, you are what you write: your inner thoughts is what attracts people to you (or repels them from you). There's no cute body to help you out. You can't jiggle your boobs to get your way, or bat your beautiful wide eyes at that policeman, and have him tear up that speeding ticket. It's all just you. Now, if that allows some people to be highly more successful, or popular, than they are/would be in real life, then only so because there's no (sometimes plain, ugly, or plain ugly) cover to judge the book by. That's a good thing, BTW.

You are now beginning to witness the folding of American law and justice. This is where someone in a movie once said that in the future, they abolished all lawyers. Hmmm; could there be some credence to that thinking..??!!

"The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers". - Shakespeare, King Henry VI (Act IV, Scene II).