You completely missed the point. I'm saying that if even the simplest video codecs involve hundreds of patents, the bar for getting a patent is clearly far too low. Patent pools can reduce the symptoms, but it doesn't address the underlying problem of "HOLY MOTHER OF FUCK, EVEN A CHIMP COULD GET A PATENT!"

That MPEG2 had hundreds of patents would suggest that there is a problem. That makes it sound as if basically every step had at least one patent, possibly more. If that's the case, then meaningful competition is going to be impossible.

No, I'm 'relativizing' them to statistical probability, both globally and within the US. Within both realms, ISIS and Ebola are not threats. If your village is taken over by ISIS or has a severe ebola outbreak, the stats become a bit different, but that's the exception, not the rule. Also, a good share of the groups fighting ISIS end up causing similar death tolls.

I'm not downplaying their struggles at all. I'm just normalizing them against global threats, and also against the threat of Americans in particular (since we are discussing a US agency, and that agency is nominally focused on US threats). You. however, seem to be focusing entirely upon acute threats. That's actually the easy stuff to focus on, but it often has much less of an impact than less exciting threats. You can empathize with someone without agreeing with their conclusions. That's why, while 9/11 was an awful tragedy, it wasn't worth passing the PATRIOT Act for, especially since it didn't really result in us being safe. I've seen claims that the decrease in flying due to the TSA's security theater has actually caused more deaths than the terrorism it's supposed to fight because people opt for car travel instead, and cars are more dangerous than planes.

Look, it's an easy mistake to make. The human brain is awful at scale, and thinking on scale feels dirty to us. But we've got to at least try to be rational if we want to make sensible decisions.

Malaria kills a lot more people than Ebola, even in West Africa. Ebola is all kinds of nasty, but it's not nearly as contagious. ISIS is a big mess as well, but their scale is relatively small, and they exist because we arm rebels and ask questions later. Look, I realize that these things are scary as hell to our brains. Our brains have a lot of difficulty with grasping relative risks on scales beyond the scope of a tribe. However, that doesn't change the reality, and the reality is that bathtubs kill more people than terrorists.

Actually, ISIS and Ebola are far more bark than bite. Putin is a serious concern, mostly because he's the same kind of paranoid dickhead as our leaders.

Yeah, it's not an easy fight. It never is. That doesn't mean that we should give up like cowards, though.

or are they just being racist and assuming that they are right, being protected more by the incompetence of most terrorists than their actual techniques?

Except that I'm far from alone, and more people are starting to get concerned. I think that this kind of insane bullshit is exactly what Hawking was talking about regarding aggression being a threat to humanity.

Except this windmill is one of if not the closest thing to a dragon in this world. The stupid paranoia of incompetent spies has come close on a few occasions to causing enormous damage to large chunks of human civilization as well. For the sake of species security, the spooks need to go ASAP. Fortunately, they aren't useful anymore, and their utility was pretty limited to begin with, and they were probably always a net liability.

TSA policies are security theater. Film at 11.

So because I find your 'everybody's doing it' argument an insufficient justification, you suggest that I kill myself? You're certainly a champion of intellectualism.

That's a ridiculous argument, as surveillance has a chilling effect. It's not a hard restriction of freedom, but that doesn't really make a difference, and soft restrictions are easier to hide and deny.

I actually have been having difficulty posting. /. incompetence or grand conspiracy?

I actually can't seem to post right now. Probably just /. issue, but I'm looking for black helicopters.