The first time you get a name collision and the spy gets his/her real name assigned randomly, expect sparks to fly

I'm going to try using "007" or, in case they insist on words, "Bond, James Bond" next time I'm in that silly place :p

In the US, this would be "Google Maps Reveals Widespread Tax Evasion"

In the UK, even before Google got in there, the government was using spy satellites to check on things like farm subsidies: when a farm submits a claim saying there's a 100 acre patch empty (to claim "setaside" payments) or has a highly subsidised crop growing, it's quick and easy to check a satellite photo and know if it's really only 90 acres - or if only the strip nearest the road is as claimed, with a big patch of some more profitable crop hidden inside. Compared to the cost of sending someone there by car to inspect the whole field on foot, using satellites (which of course they had in orbit anyway, for more predictable purposes) apparently it saved a fortune.

My /. account still works. Havent' used it in ...err... a few years.

Just here to bump this article for my friend Mike and his fantastic work on RC.

"the neoliberal consensus is called a consensus because it turns out a lot of people agree with it." Among the Very Serious Persons, for sure. It's just a shame it completely clashes with real economics, but what's ten more years of economical stagnation at this point?

Not only that, aside from Fallout, they're all from the last year or two. I can't believe a working person explored them all by now.

It should be the car that is disabled (or your license taken away)

Exactly - as they do already in the UK: get caught driving while using a mobile phone, you get 3 penalty points. That puts your insurance premiums up in itself, and if you reach a total of 12 points, no more driving for a few years. The penalty may be increased to 6 - in which case, get caught driving on the phone twice, you're in the passenger seat for several years. If someone's been caught driving on the phone (whether texting, talking or reading Slashdot), why let them continue driving at all? Will disabling the phone stop them driving while fiddling with the radio, eating, shaving etc? Of course not - so get them away from the wheel and let them text all they like as passengers.

It is against the law pretty much everywhere. However that law is enforced pretty much nowhere. It is just simply too difficult to enforce it, as a police officer has to catch the person in the act to even write a ticket. And then the ticket is so laughably small in terms of the monetary penalty as to be pointless to even write.

Here in the UK, the penalty is that you get one-quarter of the way to no longer driving (3 penalty points, where 12 means a driving ban); the government announced earlier this year they were considering doubling that to halfway, i.e. get caught doing it twice (within 3 years) and you won't be driving again. However small the risk, I suspect that's a big enough deterrent to scare many - particularly since it would often mean losing their job too. You don't have to be caught red-handed, either, just suspected enough for the police to investigate, then they check the network usage logs and confirm you were using the handset at the time in question. (Or get seen on a traffic camera, of which there are many.)

The idea in the article is just silly, though.

Crazy, isn't it?

Evidently, there is some unwritten law that states that Geolocation by IP address shall override any and all set preferences by the user on their device, and ignore any possibility that barring or redirecting the user makes no sense.

I get a version of this periodically on Spotify, where I'm informed that the particular album or single I'm looking at can't be played because it isn't licensed to my region. And of course there's the small matter of my being IP-blocked from Pandora Radio for the same reason.

I ran into a particularly nasty geolocation issue back in late 2012, when I was informed that I couldn't access my National Lottery account because they no longer believed that I was accessing it from the UK. Went back and forth between them and my ISP (VirginMedia), with each blaming the other for the problem.

I've also heard of situations where people have found the books on their Kindles vanishing because they're holidaying in an area where said books aren't licensed.

If Kickstarter terms aren't good for you, there's a lot of other sites like indiegogo that you can go to.

Stallman has stated before that he's ok with proprietary games since they're not functional software.

The difference is that phones are small and you only need to stock a dozen models to serve most clients.

Only a dozen? Let's see... within the iPhone 5S range in the US, we have 3 different storage capacities (16, 32, 64 Gb) in 3 different colour schemes, with 4 different network setups (Sprint, AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile/unlocked). That's 27. 40 more for the iPhone 5c (5 colours, 2 sizes, 4 networks). The iPhone 4S is still for sale, but "only" 8 options there because it's 8 Gb only now - except the 3 larger ones are still under warranty, so make that another 32. Then we get the 4 and 3GS - but I'll stop there, because we're already at 99 different handsets for the iPhone alone, before we get into Android handsets! Call them $333 each on average, that's $33k of handsets you're mandated to store but not sell. That's insane - just to avoid a 24 hour wait to Fedex a replacement handset to you!? (Not to mention I'd rather have the replacement shipped to me next-day anyway rather than spend hours travelling just to collect it myself.)

Also, I seem to recall some of the Apple fan sites actually monitor stock levels in Apple's own stores - it usually takes a while for stores to have stock on hand after a launch (while customers buy up stock as soon as it arrives), then once a model is old they start running down stocks to avoid being left holding old kit. So, even Apple themselves don't actually carry stock on the scale the poster seems to be demanding, let alone 3rd party repair shops/vendors!

A few years ago, my MacBook Pro's Superdrive failed. Standard part they'd been using for years ... the Store would have a spare in stock surely? No, I had to wait a week for them to get one shipped from Panasonic ... then I was told I'd have to leave the MBP with them for up to another a week to fit it. Of course, by the time I add up the travel costs alone for 3 visits, I'd have spent the price of a brand new external drive, even before factoring in the c 10 hours of my time spent going to and from the Apple Store, so I told them to install the replacement drive somewhere it wouldn't fit easily and bought an external drive.

So, this legislation would be a hugely expensive "solution" to a trivial problem - and, of course, there's no guarantee that on the day your pink 32 Gb iPhone Verizon 5c happens to need replacing, someone else won't already have claimed that one replacement unit, so you can't have it anyway. Would the legislation somehow guarantee a quick replacement of the replacement by Apple, too? Or it would have to mandate everywhere having two of every handset, in case the first one's already taken ...

Yep, once we hit 6 Mb per screen we should be all set... that's the speed compressed HD video moves at at most. Anything that moves faster than a 1080p screen can't be represented by humans that fast, until we get to 4Kx1080.

That's something that hit me quite recently: with an 80/20 Mbps VDSL2 line, I can honestly say it's "fast enough" for everything I do. My satellite STB has a semi-streaming mode, where it downloads a whole show and will start playing once it has enough to play through without pausing for buffering - and it always starts in seconds. Big downloads, I'm almost always limited by the far end anyway; they tend to take longer to install than to download anyway - so if I had the option of a faster link, would I actually get any benefit at all? Previously, I jumped on every increase: from dialup (pricey, even a 30 Mb download was an ordeal) to half-megabit cable modem (yay, I could grab hundred meg files overnight), to ADSL, ADSL2+ (nothing big enough to leave downloading overnight any more), 50 Mbps cable modem, getting a big improvement each time. (I even have the option of upgrading to 330/30 if I want, for a price ... and it really isn't tempting, in the way I would have jumped at any chance of better speeds before.)

The funny thing is, I recall a Labour MP here in the UK saying something comparably dim back in 1998! At that point, all we had was expensive metered dialup; I was in a group campaigning to change that, and happened to meet him at some event. His reply was that he "didn't think the Internet was a good idea". One of those moments I really, really wish I could have recorded!