Well, somebody needs to play Devil's Advocate here, so I will. What if onboard vehicle computers truthfully are (or soon will become) so complicated - and so integral to the functioning of the vehicle - that an untrained hobbyist screwing with it could cause injury or death? What if some homebrew-loving gearhead hacker decides to roll his own firmware for the car because he thinks he can squeeze some extra MPG out of it, and instead it zeroes out the odometer due to a glitch? Or disables the seatbelt warnings? Or randomly cuts of f the engine in the middle of the highway?

Yes, it can be argued that negligent behavior causing death or injury already has penalties, but those are after the fact. We all understand how easy it is to screw up software. Do we want to be reactive or penalize it in the first place? Might it not be reasonable to say in effect that cars with owner-modified computers are fine but are no longer street legal?

P.S. No, I don't work for a car company, I'm not a shill or a troll. In fact I generally find cars quite boring. But I find Slashdot even more boring when nobody attempts to find merit in a contrary opinion...

Absolutely none. He has no legal requirement not to publish the classified information of another country, as you pointed out. But that's not what he is in legal hot water for.

When someone can offer some proof otherwise - "zOMG Sweden must have made all this up this because the CIA has nude pictures of their bikini team and I heard this is 100% true from a dude on reddit" does not count - I will gladly listen.

I think you're missing the point of why this is being done in the first place. Hint: you're right that this is being done to "find something more useful to do with the FM bands" but not in the way you imagine.

Like in the US and many other countries in recent years, spectrum is being cleared out so it can be leased to cellular providers. This is in theory because the demand for wireless voice and data continues to rise rapidly; the demand for FM radio not so much; therefore the spectrum is better used by someone who is delivering what people are asking for more of rather than less.

This is licensed spectrum though, so there will be no room for individuals to screw around with broadcasting on those frequencies. As Charles Dickens - or maybe it was Spock - once said, "the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few." Given how many people listen to licensed FM radio today and the pain this shift may cause them, would the "needs of the many" actually be served by turning this spectrum over to everyone and their dog to play around with backyard broadcasting? And, honestly, is there something individuals want to do that they can't already accomplish with the ham and unlicensed Wi-Fi bands that are already available?

I don't think you actually remember what Windows Mobile 6 and BlackBerry 6 were like. Yes, the iPhone was the first mobile device that had a browser that wasn't painful to use, as you point out, but the user experience was RADICALLY different in many ways. Yes in 2007 when the iPhone launched, it wasn't unique in having a touch screen, but BlackBerries not only didn't have touch screens at all, they were controlled either with touchballs (that sounds weird) or scroll wheels(!). Most Windows Mobile phones were near-impossible to use without a stylus. And it wasn't just the touch interface... remember "pinch to zoom" before the iPhone? No? That's because it wasn't there. How about visual voicemail? Screens that rotated aspect quickly and easily based on orientation? A smartphone that worked with an online music store that didn't blow goats? You get the idea.

Not so much, amigo. In 2007, at least in the US, unlimited smartphone data plans were very common. This was for the simple reason that it was f*$%ing painful to use more than a couple hundred MB of data on a BlackBerry or Windows Mobile phone with a 2G connection - 3G was very new in the US then, and the original iPhone only had a 2G connection. When people started to actually USE mobile data because the iPhone's browsing experience made it not painful - and it kicked the ass of AT&T's 2G network as a result - that was when capped plans became the norm.

I'm happy as the next guy to pillory Halliburton, which deserves little but scorn for its shocking profiteering in US government contracts. But you probably don't want want to cite dated Chavezista leftie Froot-Loops talking about how the rapidly disintegrating former Venezuelan economy is a model for anything except citizen outrage.

Just ask the folks living in the former Socialist Paradise where condoms now cost $755/pack on the black market because the Bolivar is worth less than toilet paper and it turned out that Chavez was mortgaging his country's future to buy temporary popularity with oil dollars.

Additionally, the Slashdot story is disingenuous (shocking!) when it brings up Microsoft's opposition to Washington proposition I-1098 a couple years back. Yes, Ballmer was a big contributor against the initiative but it was widely unpopular across the entire state, failing at the polls by a 2-to-1 margin.

Quick recap on what that was for non-Washington residents: WA is one of seven US states with no personal income tax. Sales taxes vary by locality, but in general they are higher than average in WA in order to make up for the lack of a sales tax (in Seattle, for example, sales tax is nearly 10%).

I-1098 proposed that individuals making more than $200K/year or families making $400K/year pay a state income tax, with a higher rate applying to those above $500K/$1M. Given WA's economically skewed demographics, the tax would hit many in the greater Seattle area (around the top 3% including Microsoft, Boeing, Amazon, Google, Nintendo etc. employees), while outside Seattle it would be more like the top .01%.

Interestingly, Bill Gates was a visible I-1098 supporter, while Steve Ballmer was a major opponent. But keep in mind the above: the demographics of Washington State are such that had this been an issue of just Microsoft and other big corps fighting it, or "rich Seattle" against the rest of the state which is not so full of rich techies, it would have won handily. Instead, it lost by a 64-36 ratio because voters across the entire state, including a majority of Democrats, thought it was a backdoor way to introduce a state income tax whose threshold would conveniently be lowered by the state legislature whenever it found itself in a money crunch.

So long story short - it may very well be true that Microsoft is dodging state taxes that it should be paying. If so, it should definitely be held to account. However, the fact that Ballmer or Microsoft supported a widely popular anti-state income tax initiative is not related to whether the company is shirking its tax duties.

The irony here is that capitalism actually provides the most direct way for workers to own the means of production - through holding equity in the company. The ownership of any individual is miniscule (other than founders, executives, etc.) but there are numerous examples of "employee-owned" companies in which the Marxist ideal has been more fully realized than in any Communist nation to date.

There is also an inherent contradiction in every attempt to date to implement a Communist government. As you point out, if the government owns the means of production, the workers don't own it in turn unless they have control of the government, which can only be accomplished through Democracy. Every Communist government established during the 20th century was a single-party or totalitarian state, but arguably that's unavoidable because you will never find a Communist government (not talking about Socialist, but Communist) that is freely elected by a majority of its citizens because many aspects of Communism involve taking away property, land, etc. from the people who currently own it in order to "share" it among the population. Communism has historically always come to power through revolution or outside imposition, and human nature makes it highly unlikely for those who have won power in that way to ever risk losing it through enabling Democracy.

So I think history tends to prove for us that the ideal of a Communist state on a large scale achieving its original goal of worker ownership of the means of production to be inherently flawed. Then again, it can also be argued that the Marxist idea of Communism was a response to an Industrial Revolution status quo which has changed dramatically in the past 150 years and needs to be largely rethought to have modern relevance anyway...

My understanding - and I don't remember where I read this, I wish I did - is that it isn't actually that much of a threat to big buildings either. What I read was that skyscrapers and other tall buildings are just too big to oscillate in harmony with the quake waves in a way that compounds the stresses, and that essentially all of them have steel frames anyway that allow the buildings to "bend" rather than "break." And single-story buildings don't have much of a problem as long as they aren't built from unreinforced masonry or something that won't "give" either. Instead the real "danger zone" is for two- and three-story buildings because their height is just right to sync with the timing of the waves and amplify their effect, regardless of their construction material.

Can anyone who has a better understanding confirm or clarify the above statements?

Alaska actually has the most restrictive alcohol purchase and consumption laws in the US outside certain areas of the Deep South. There are 96 communities in Alaska that prohibit sale of alcohol, and 34 of those even ban its possession. This is because in much of Alaska, there is f--k all to do except drink, and alcohol abuse is endemic enough already, even without the legal restrictions. The state even has a law, which is actually enforced that makes it a crime to be drunk in a bar. (Yeah, I know.) So while you might think that Alaska would be a "gubmint keep your hands off my guns and booze" state, it turns out to just be a "hands off my guns" state.

For many (most) traditional four-year college students, the primary value of the experience is something that a MOOC or Khan or whatever online can never ever replicate.

College is for many kids the first time you will live away from home, with all the distractions and temptations of the real world - but without losing your job and ending up homeless if you get too drunk and are too hung over to go to class the next day. It is a concentrated social mixing bowl where members of the opposite (or same as it may be) sexes come together with no parental supervision and have to figure out how to deal with each other - but also surrounded by a throng of peers to help them figure it out or support them as necessary. It is a halfway transition period between full-time schooling in which you are expected to learn and recite facts obediently and a world where you are expected to challenge authority figures and be fully responsible for all your own decisions.

It is, in short, the real world but with "training wheels" on.

I can't speak for anyone else, but four years of training wheels after high school just barely got me to the point of being a functional adult who didn't melt down when exposed to reality. (I also really, really, enjoyed it too.) Away from home, full-time, co-educational college is an experience at that period of life that I think is irreplaceable and can't ever be matched by a different model.

I understand this comment is actually a rhetorical question to comment on the morality of the Allies in the Dresden firebombing. (BTW, Dresden was never intended to be "Dresden." It was an area bombing with incendiaries and was thus expected to cause indiscriminate damage to civilians alongside the military targets; but nobody involved had any clue it would turn out to be the indescribable charnel house it became.)

But in case anyone is interested in the actual question for purposes of historical context: there was a putative purpose for the Dresden bombing, and two actual audiences that were supposed to receive different messages.

• The purported message of Dresden to the world was "Dresden has some military targets of benefit to the Wehrmacht, and we will show you that the Allies can always find and destroy them. This is part of an ongoing program where we will continue to find and destroy everything in Germany that has any military value. Please understand how fucked you are and save lives by surrendering."
• The actual intended message of Dresden to Germany's leadership was "Yeah, you have figured out that our bombers can't attack from a safe altitude and hit the broad side of a barn. But that doesn't mean we will just give up. Instead, we can and will fuck your cities up to the maximum imaginable degree by bombing far and wide, even though we know lots of civilians will die. We claim that's against our principles, but you know what, Hitler? Given what you have done so far, we are not going to lose any sleep over any collateral damage in order to get you, so please leave some Earl Grey in Berchtesgaden for us."
• The third message was from "Bomber Harris" and the RAF to SHAEF and Churchill - "Look, we are doing stuff to Germany that is visible and makes Allied civilians feel like Germans are feeling the pain of retribution. Oh, and by the way, look what a great job we're doing so after the war we should be a Very Important Branch of the Military." This, by the way, was pretty much the exact same message that Curtis LeMay's firebombings of Japan were intended to deliver to Roosevelt and then Truman.

I think the response unintentionally betrays sexism but at its root merits a direct response. At least to me, the whole "booth babes" thing is pretty simple.

Human beings like the "OOOOH SHINY." It distracts and engages us, even if it is not necessarily going to lead us to buy something as a result, but it does cause us to want to stop and engage our attention. The same is true whether it's a person, a free popcorn machine, a magic show or a huge display TV.

If you are a heterosexual male, an attractive woman is OOOOH SHINY. This is regardless of the state of her (un)dress, technical acumen, or anything else. It could be a stripper draped around a pole or Marissa Mayer in a smart business suit. You will have an involuntary response and may be "turned on." But the real question of how people react to this is one of intent.

Nobody seriously objects to the presence of attractive humans in almost any context. The objection comes from those who are made uncomfortable with the presence of people who are there (and dressed so as to make this obvious) solely for the purpose of eliciting that OOOOH SHINY MUST STARE AT BREASTS reaction.

Some men will ask, so "what is wrong with that?" which, unlike what many progressive/feminist-minded men think, is not an inherently offensive question to ask. To me, the first answer of course is that it is unprofessional unless you are at a swimwear or porn conference. But the issue most people will react to - knee-jerk, positively or negatively - is one of sexism.

Is this something to be offended about or not? For me, the simple test for me is for you - assuming you are a heterosexual male - to imagine walking around a tradeshow where most of the exhibits had buff, oiled-up dudes in speedos standing in front of the booths in Speedos. Would this make you in any way uncomfortable, want to avert your eyes or not want to stand next to them in that booth? If yes, then you need to put yourself in women's shoes and understand the objection to booth babes. If no, then, okay, you can make a straight-faced argument that there's nothing to be offended about. But that still will not prevent others from having a different reaction.

So let me get this straight. I have been kidnapped in my home by a lunatic who threatens to kill me if I try to call the police or escape. I manage to call 911 for help, and your suggestion is that the police call me back or ask permission to enter so that the kidnapper can make good on their threat to kill me.

Or... none of that happened and it's just a swatter dickbag!

How exactly do you propose that police differentiate between the two? This is why "swatting" is such a douchetastic offense that should be rewarded with hard time in pound-me-in-the-ass prison: like people wearing fake cop uniforms to prey on victims, it corrodes the (already strained) bond of trust between the people that need the police to protect them, the people who have to respond, and the people on the other end of that police response.