Funny you say that, Mercedes has multi zone thermostats and fan controls with an auto setting. Getting this right is not that hard. They have been doing this since the 90s and it works quite fine even in their lower end cars. The only thing that boggles my mind is that they think you can have one side of the car at 18C and the other at 25C. I always put them at the same setting. Now that they are digital (HW knob & LED display) they could offer a sync option...

"A method of rendering a 3D animation in real time on a computer monitor is patentable subject matter." Just because you don't understand the subject matter does not make it patentable. Your example is a really bad example because it takes 2 coordinate transformations, one linear interpolation and 2 comparisons to go from geometry to pixels. From that point on it is just copying them from video memory to a screen. To anybody with a math background these are a really old hat and just because two specific matrices does not mean it is patatable. Computer graphics are a really bad filed for patetens because you are either in the field of basic math or trying to replicate physics.

Although I don't think that patents are inherently bad, the current burden of proof for software patents are inherently low. As being listed as inventor on two patents and having seen a few others, you can not claim that I totally do not have a clue how the system works. How I and few of my colleagues came to being "inventors" was, we just did out daily work of solving mediocre to boring problems and then someone comes along and is awed in his naivety and pushes us write a few pages about the "invention". This goes by lawyers and a few months later you are an inventor on the patent. To this day I have never invented anything, I just look around me and into other fields and am quite good at applying new ideas to old problems.

Maybe the LZW patents and similar groundbreaking algorithms may be worthy of a patent, but the current status quo you can throw out 95% of the patents, because any person with a modest intellect will come up with a similar solution to the given problem. The only difference is that patent holder had the problem first.

A cease and desist letter does not have to be threatening at all. For example take this C&D letter from Jack Daniel's to an author that used an JD inspired book cover: http://www.buzzfeed.com/bfeld/...

Just because you have a certain legal requirement to do something, does not mean you need to be a total prick about it.

I don't think he was referring to the area around Gitmo and towards the soldiers on guard duty. Sure the "inmates" have a hard time, but the soldiers are on a tropical island and have off duty hours.

Only if you can handle the keying material properly. The problem with one time pad is that the keying material needs to be as much as the message to encrypt. Now if you want to transfer 1 GB of data you need 1GB of keying material. This material needs to be shared with the receiving end. Although a one time pad is mathematically proven safe, the burden is shifted from the problem to keep the message safe to keeping the keying material safe.

You mean like France that totally does not have nuclear ICBMs and of the fiercest special forces or the UK with still entertains one for the largest navies of the world and operates one of the few VTOL aircraft with lot's of operational flexibility or Germany with Tank battalions few can rival technologically and operates sizable air defense force. Just because European nations don't hang out their military dong all the time does not mean they can't be reckoned with. The US military primarily only serves as pork barrel spending and has only little real geopolitical meaning. Sure the US invaded two countries in the last decade, but on a political scale that rather backfired. Also putting 300 $ more in education of civil infrastructure would not hurt either.

I would like to watch Game of Thrones, here is a reasonable amount of money. To watch Game of Thrones you need an HBO subscription, go buy a HBO subscription. Ok that is a bit pricey, but fine, I would like a HBO subscription, I currently live in Germany. Sorry, you must live in the US to get an HBO subscription. Ok, is there a different way to watch Game of Thrones? You can buy the DVDs. OK do you have region 2 DVDs? No we only have region 1 DVDs. Ok so my options are paying you money and circumvent the region coding, aka "copy protection" and potentially get 3 years jail time and not paying you money and torrenting / downloading the movies and potentially get 3 years jail time. You know there are occasionally situations where people will outright refuse to sell you a legal copy.

I would disagree with you, the classical term hacking is used for any mode penetration. The difference between the late 80s/early 90s and today is that companies have started to implement reasonable procedures, like changing default passwords... Remember most hacks are still done through some sort of social engineering.

You know what also reduces crimes? You will find a significant better correlation between wealth disparity and crimes. If you want to fight crime, you should focus on getting people off the street and humane living conditions. But you know, that would be evil and socialist...

Although I generally agree with you, the Swiss example is slightly misleading. Yes almost every Swiss male under 30 has an army issued assault rifle at home, but not the ammunition for it. They used to have a problem with homicides where enraged husbands shot or threatened their wives. They used to have one or two clips of ammunition with the rifle as to be combat ready any time. They figured that any invasion would not happen so sudden and as a result the ammunition is now stored centrally and handed out on demand. The result is a significant decrees in homicides.

Or ditch batteries altogether and fill a tank of hydrogen and run the electric car off a fuel cell.

You mean like a powered landing? Ok that thing is a prototype, but it looks like it will be in service within this decade. Elon Musk is a genius when it comes to reducing operational costs. Sure they build on top of existing technologies, but they have surpassed them and are stepping into unknown territory. With the combination of the Dragon 2 and the grasshopper we may see launch vehicles and space ships that are fully reusable, similar to how planes are today. Refuel them, maybe spay on a new layer to the heat shield and off you go again.

I basically agree with you, but the statement "But automated factories need to get considerably better before that's a reasonable scenario" is outdated. Have you been recently in an automobile factory? Up until almost the end of the production line there are no humans involved. The couple humans that run around are only there when something goes wrong and the tolerances for that are awfully low, often the robots will stop in an error condition and the human reviewing the issue can not even see what is wrong. In most factories the end of the line, that is most steps to assemble the interior, are done by humans. This has absolutely nothing to do with technology and only something to do with costs. To do the jobs by a robot you would need a higher degree of tool development and more complicated product designs. This bring the development costs up and in these cases it is simpler to have humans assemble the car. In addition many car companies have additional benefits to retaining humans, they get tax cuts and other incentives to retain humans factory workers. But the current status quo is about economy not technology.

This is what whitelists are for. Almost all websites I regularly browse are on the whitelist. The few exceptions are those that have annoying adds, I regularly unblock them, just to see, no they are still have annoying ads.

Except that with DNSSEC you have authentication, just not bundled around the HTTP protocol. How you solve the encryption and authentication does not change the situation, that when communication with parties that you wish to exchange session keys with, you need to authenticate them. You could also use a previously shared key for that, but that would not be feasible for the web.