But the $3k is in addition to a monthly fee for being connected to the grid, so they're double dipping. Really, they're just extorting extra profit because they are allowed to get away with it. Their profits are still increasing every year so they can't complain they are losing money over solar. They are a monopoly and as such are supposed to be regulated by the PUC. The PUC isn't doing their job, which can only be explained by either incompetence or corruption. If they were putting that money into infrastructure upgrades instead of lining their own pockets then the cost of those infrastructure upgrades could legitimately be considered by the PUC when the PUC sets the rates, but that's not the case.

Because they don't care. In some cases it's apathy and in some it's incompetence. I had my wallet and iPhone stolen, and the thief actually used the phone and tried to use the credit card. I did all of the leg work so that all the police had to do was submit a law enforcement request (not even a court order) and would have got the name of the thief, but the detectives danced around outright saying it wasn't worth 5 minutes of their time. Of course, if they caught the thief it means hours of their time to make the arrest, paperwork, court, contacting the owners of all the other stolen goods they would likely find in their home, etc.

Is that the only problem? What about the children of the deluded anti-vaxx parents? If parents stupidly expose their children to risk of death (say, encouraging them to play in traffic on the freeway) that's usually considered some form of criminal child abuse. Please explain why this should be any different.

Not borderline. She should be charged with negligent homicide. She gave medical advice without a license and that resulted in deaths. A reasonable person putting so much time and effort as she is should have known the evidence is so strongly against a link between autism and vaccines. A reasonable person should have read about Wakefield's fraud and known she was wrong. Too bad DAs are politicians and not one of them will have the balls to charge her.

How ironic that you point out Hawaii. Hawaii exemplifies the political problems moving away from oil, not the technical problems. Our PUC is utterly impotent and lets our electric utility (HECO) get away with whatever they want. For example, if you want grid-tie solar HECO charges you $3,000 for an "interconnect study" which is complete and utter bullshit. They claim to the politicians that the grid can't handle more solar or wind with no technical basis whatsoever. Why? Because of the way they've got the PUC to structure they rates, they make more than double the profit from burning oil than from anything else, because they get to "pass-through" the cost of the oil, which amounts to more profit and the customer getting screwed.

Here's essentially how it works:
Generation from oil costs them 6.5 cents/kWh, plus the cost of oil.
They are allowed to charge 16-18 cents/kWh -ish (sorry, I don't remember the exact number offhand) PLUS the cost of the oil.
They buy wind power for 13 cents/kWh.

Customer cost per kWh of oil generated power = 40 cents, consisting 18 cents allowed rate + 22 cents for fuel , of which 11.5 cents is profit (18cents allowed - 6.5 cost not including oil).
Customer cost per kWh of wind power = 18 cents, of which 5 cents is profit (18cents allowed - 13 cents they buy it for)
Customer cost per kWh of home grid tie solar = 0 cents / kWh, so they manage to charge $3,000 upfront for the privilege even though there's already a base monthly charge for being connected to the grid.

HELLO, of course they are going to lobby (or bribe or give blow jobs or whatever it takes) the politicians. The PUC has got to be so utterly corrupt, and HECO so entrenched with the legislators to allow this to happen, but that's exactly why this is a political problem and not a technical problem.

Don't get me wrong, I totally agree with you on the nuke subject, just pointing out how you don't know wtf you're talking about with Hawaii and solar+wind power. What's ironic is that people here are so utterly scared of nuclear just saying the word is worse than saying the other 'N' word, yet they revere the Navy's presence here and apparently don't realize what "Nuclear Submarine" means...there's at least 15 nuclear reactors running around the islands right now.

Even if it's not an NSA feature...of course the knew about it! They would have to be even more incompetent than we think not to. They are HUGE, with something like 40,000 employees. At least of few of those employees must be dedicated to code review of OSS looking for vulnerabilities, and more in general looking for vulnerabilities in any widely used software. And if that's the case, then you'd think OpenSSL would be one of the first things they'd look at. The fact that they didn't tell anyone though shows that the S is NSA is bullshit. They cared more about being able to exploit the vulnerability themselves than making their country's computers more secure. If they cared one shit about their country's security then they'd have big teams dedicated to finding software vulnerabilities and working with vendors to fix them.

95% of the article has no substance and is clearly a bunch of marketspeak, though it's not clear who the marketspeak is targeted at. Users? They're not gonna care about any of it because it's gonna make sense or doesn't affect them. Shareholders? Maybe.

There's really only two bits that seem to mean anything:

That's cool, and it actually means something. But do users care about this? Do investors care about this? How many Apple users know or care that Mac OS, iPhone, and Apple TV all share the same kernel? In general neither users nor investors know what a kernel is.

That's means something too, but....are you freakin' kidding me? So if I'm making an Windows app, I'm required to design it to work well on a desktop, tablet, phone, and gaming console? What if it's an awesome app that sucks on a little phone screen? What if it's an awesome app that works well on a touchscreen but sucks with a mouse? What if it's awesome with a keyboard and mouse and sucks on a touchscreen? You get the idea...this is the whole thing they're trying to do with Windows 8 and surface and they're failing to hear users screaming at the top of their lungs DO NOT WANT.

Lost public opinion? Maybe on /. but not to most of the voting public. Do you think CNN/NBC/Fox News will feature a story about this? And even if they did, would most people care? The only court of public opinion that matters is political candidates. Giving money to them means more campaign advertising for their candidate, thus is a win in the court of public opinion.

I do agree with you about calling it bribery. Why even bother using the term campaign contribution anymore? "Bribe" is a convenient synonym with fewer syllables.

You have it backwards. Those were the bogus justifications. Prior and during the war, there were two goals:
1. Let GWB power trip by taking out the guy he didn't like and naively think the world would consider him a hero for doing so.
2. Make lots of money for campaign contributors.

Seems like it depends. If you're an Oracle DBA, then a non-compete won't really matter. Your unlikely to part of the development of something that unique in the industry your company is in. Signing a non-compete would be silly and pointless, but of course you probably have to sign one anyway because your company wants you to be more beholden to them. Depending on what area you live in it may or may not be easy to find a job at a company in a different industry.

But then let's say your specialty is real-time embedded OS kernel development, and your company's industry is real-time embedded OS. If you sign a non-compete, you're probably stuck with that company and so they are less likely to treat you as well to keep you so it pretty much screws over the employee. OTOH, if there is no noncompete, then what if that company comes up with a really innovative way of doing something, then you go to work at another company and start doing it that way, then it's the first company that gets screwed. This is why it's not so clear-cut whether or not they should be illegal.

It's really a political question whether you want to lean towards socialist, where the employee and startups/entrepreneurs benefit, or lean corporatist where campaign contributors, er, I mean job creators (I couldn't keep a straight face while I typed that) benefit.

Two primary reasons:
1. Most people don't care because they don't think it affects them, you know the whole "first they came for..." thing. If they think it doesn't affect them, then they're more interested in Justin Bieber than things that confuse them.
2. For most of the people who do care, they feel there's nothing more they can do but write comments on /. Did other protests affect change? How about the Occupy thing? If a million people gathered in front of the capital building to protest, do you think it would affect change? And how would you get enough people for a violent coup to take on the US military, even if they didn't know you were coming?

To be clear...you are stating why this video may not apply to show that the Apple's patent may be non-novel, because it may be an improvement over the prior art, however, that certainly doesn't mean it's nonobvious, right?

Note: I haven't read the actual patent's claims so I have no idea if there's anything nonobvious in there (patent claims != title, unlike what most /.'ers think), but your points of "on a portable device" and "done using a single image" sure don't seem nonobvious.

FTA:

So pretty much, they say they take things that seem to have an immediacy. The thing is, not only does this affect everyone with a phone or Internet access, but it is affecting all of us right now. This is not a question over whether or not what the NSA was doing in the past violated the constitution, but that what they are doing right now violates the constitution. Thus providing an example that what they choose to allow to bypass the lower courts has nothing to do with importance, immediacy, or public interest, and everything to do with politics.

No, they are doing exactly what their puppet masters want them to do. If they heard the case then they'd have to rule and something might change, not to mention they'd have a really hard time writing an opinion that says the surveillance in question doesn't violate the constitution. Refusing to hear the case means that the status quo is maintained for a while longer.

Um, so pretty much doesn't that mean the drone was running on WiFi? So it was most likely simply interference, another device was trying to use the same channel has his device. Lesson 1: If you're going to operate a UAV over WiFi, check to make sure nothing else is on the channel. Lesson 2: If you're going to operate a UAV over WiFi, don't fly it where it could crash into somebody because you never know when another device is going to interfere with the channel you're using. Lesson 3: If something in the area interfered with it in the morning, don't fly it over humans without figuring out the interference.

Which means whatever it was interfering with was in the area you were operating it in when it crashed, not the area where you tested it.

So somebody switched on their mobile hotspot and it was on the same channel as your UAV.

Wow. Had this not happened I'd say the guy doesn't understand technical stuff (he's a photographer, not an IT guy) and that this was an unfortunate accident, but considering it happened earlier, he didn't consult with a technical person, and he still flew it over humans that's downright negligence and he should be responsible for the competitor's medical expenses, entry fee and any travel expenses. Perhaps even prosecuted for endangerment (either reckless endangerment or public endangerment, I think Australia has those laws similar to most US states).