Are you doing anything other than hiding behind being an AC? Do not presume to question me, AC, for you do not know me or what I do or do not do, and it's none of your business.

Translation: Give away your privacy to us, now, or we'll TAKE IT FROM YOU.

Memo to 'Intellgence community': GO FUCK YOURSELVES, ASSHOLES.

Enough is enough. This shit has to stop, now. We are free citizens of our respective countries (..well, OK, some are more free than others, some aren't very free at all. One problem at a time); we are not inmates in a prison, which is exactly how they want to treat everyone: Monitored and guarded 24/7/365, and all communications monitored and inspected. FUCK THAT SHIT!

What if I come up with some original concept (for sake of argument let's say it's something revolutionary and significant. I wish!) and I decide that I want as many people all over the world with it as I possibly can. So I post it on the Internet in as many places as I can, post it on USENET (which I haven't used myself in years, so I'll also say 'or USENET's modern equivalent). Let's say I'm very successful in this, and millions, maybe billions of people have my idea in their hands, for free. Are they saying that this still doesn't qualify as 'public domain'? Are they saying that some corporation can scoop up this idea, copyright it, claim it's now their Intellectual Property, and sue everyone else who has it and uses it? Clarification, please. I can't believe there isn't a way to do an end-run around these stupid copyright laws such that you can't intend something to be free to everyone without there being a bunch of legal paperwork 'licensing' it to everyone for free.

This is something I'd expect in a science fiction novel, not the real world, but I'm not knocking the idea at all, I think it's rather brilliant, in fact.

However: Serious technical challenges, here. In development, they'd have to find some way to simulate the Martian atmosphere; can be done. Martian gravity? Not sure how you'd do that, but let's put it aside for now. 'Autonomous' is putting it mildly! This would have to be a bit more than your garden-variety quadcopter drone. I believe we have the technology for a system to map the ground below it with high enough resolution to allow it to find flat, level ground to land on (laser and/or radar?). I'll assume there are winds of some sort on Mars like there would be on any other planet that has an atmosphere, and we've had enough probes there to know what those winds are like (on the surface, at least). Run-time during flight would be a potential problem, although the gravity on Mars is less than that of Earth so it would take less energy to fly, right? Maybe a combination of an on-board nuclear power source like used on long-range space probes, plus batteries and solar? Unused power generated from the nuclear source and solar together recharge the batteries, wasting little. Of course what I don't know here is what a nuclear power sources' mass is, and would become very relevant for something that is going to fly; have to look that up later. How about disaster recovery? One bad landing, ending up upside down or on it's side, and it's all over unless there is a way to get it to right itself reliably. How about mode of flight? I'm thinking VTOL, which would allow it to conserve power by being able to operate in fixed-wing mode over longer distances, but there's the question of overall mass, and what would the wings have to look like in order to get sufficient lift in the Martian atmosphere?

A million questions! If they did this, I'd love to be a fly-on-the-wall (or a tech working on the project) during development and production of the probe.

If I can disable it, or take my foot off the brake and have the brakes disengage, or press harder and have the brakes engage harder, then fine. If I suddenly find myself stomping on a pedal that does nothing because it has no mechanical linkage to the master cylinder, then that's a non-starter. Braking and steering systems MUST have a mechanical linkage to fall back on or I must classify such a vehicle 'intrinsically unsafe'.

Let's just train and test drivers more thoroughly to keep unqualified drivers off the road in the first place. Driving may be a privelege and not a 'right', but just beefing up the punishment side of things isn't going to help much compared to making drivers competent in the first place. We're living in an era where people are getting less and less skilled at pretty much everything, and have need to learn fewer and fewer things, because of the internet and because of more and more cheap gadgets.

I do not approve of any system that will arbitrarily override my basic controls of the vehicle, it's a bad idea. Why should I or anyone relinquish control of braking to some anonymous software writer(s) that may or may not have covered all possible contingencies properly? Just one more system to fail in your vehicle. No, I propose we educate, train, and test drivers more rigorously, and if they're not truly competent, then they don't get to drive.

Hate to tell you son, but I think that's exactly what's going to happen to 4chan. I give it 3 months before it completely self-destructs in some way or another. Most likely it'll end up subscription-only based, with traceable usernames and all that crap, like any other website. It's almost totally mainstream for quite some time now anyway, this is just the straw that breaks the camels' back. Might even just completely fold and go away (and nothing of value was lost). Enjoy it while you can, it won't be around much longer.

On the one hand: I understand your use of sarcasm here. 99.999% of all Islamic types are like everyone else: They want to live their lives in peace, be left alone, and leave everyone else alone.
On the other hand: All it takes is one asshole with a truckload of fertilizer, diesel fuel, powdered magnesium (for good measure), and a little common explosive to detonate it, to ruin a whole bunch of people's lives, permanently.
I'm not condoning politicians' knee-jerk reaction/reflexive power grab/power-grab-by-design, or whatever is actually going on here, but I'm just sayin'..

Unfortunately we seem to be living in a world and time where there are way too many assholes all at the same time, and it's wearing thin on everyone.

'Politics out of science'? Why, that's just crazy-talk! What's next, you going to insist they actually enforce separation of Church and State or something? Scandalous! What's next, cats and dogs living together? Mustard and ketchup on hot dogs!? THE WORLD IS COMING TO AN END!

So how do you do that, hmmm? It's already been established that gender and age have no bearing on this equation, nor does citizenship or ancestral background, or even what country you were born in, so what's your magic formula?

You're actually expecting the French to not be their usual passionate selves as much in this case as in any other case? And of course you expect politicians from any country at all to not have knee-jerk reactions to extreme circumstances? Come on, don't be naive.

On a lighter note: Don't know if anyone else noticed it, but I raised an eyebrow and quirked up a corner of my mouth over the use of the word 'atomic' in the summary; did we get transported back to 1945 or something while I was sleeping?

Is it really so much of a brain-drain to plug your phone in to charge it everyday that we have to be wasting our time on stuff like this?

I don't answer calls from numbers I don't recognize anyway, and I recommend everyone else do the same.

Disclaimer (for benefit of the knee-jerk-reactionaries): I passionately hate Al Qaeda, the so-called 'Islamic State', and all pseudo-religious nutcases who, for some reason, think 'God' (whoever the fuck that is) wants them to cut off people's heads 'for offending the Prophet', throw acid in little girls' faces/kill little girls because they have the audacity to want to go to school/learn to read/learn history/learn to do math/learn in general, and all the rest of the bullshit these fucking assholes are out there doing/condoning/supporting. I think they all desperately need to be brought to justice for their innumerable crimes, no question about it.

..now, that all having been said:
If you don't, for more than a second or two, think that these 'sweeping powers' they want to grab (and make no mistake, it's a power-grab) are going to end up being grossly and indiscriminately mis-used to further political agendas that have nothing to do with anti-terrorism, then you are incredibly, unbelievably naive, because that's exactly, precisely what's going to happen. Euros, you need to clamp down on this shit right now, because once they get this kind of power, they will not let go of it, ever, and they will ironically enough use it to destroy whatever freedom of speech you have in your country. Mark my words.

More likely they're wanting to increase their ability to commit cyber-espionage and cyber-terrorism and figure they need the extra bandwidth to do that.