But instead, Microsoft set it automatically in their browsers, prompting most websites to ignore it, since it no longer meant anything.

It never meant anything anyway, but that as an aside...

No, Microsoft did not 'automatically' set it. Though that may depend on one's definition of 'automatic'.

Does an installer 'automatically' install adware, if you miss unchecking the option "Install Slowbar for Chrome"?
If yes - you have a point.

If no - then there wasn't anything automatic about it. Enabling Do Not Track in IE was one of the settings explicitly listed in the Express Settings screen, and users could certainly choose the Customize option to disable it.
http://core0.staticworld.net/i...

The W3C, after Yahoo's complaints, decided to clarify that it should be the user's choice.

Of course the next question then becomes whether opt-out still implies a user choice just as much as opt-in would be.
I.e. did the user actually read that line, did they actually understand what it meant, and did they consciously decide to continue with the Express Install with said understanding in mind? If yes, then the user made the choice.
If no, then it could be argued that Microsoft had made the choice for the user.

But even if that is the case - is that a bad thing? To draw a parallel - almost every browser now blocks pop-ups. By default. Without even asking the user if they want this behavior. Do you honestly think that if there were an X-Do-Not-Popup header, sites would honor this setting - and we would now not be subjected to pseudo-popups (content inserted into the DOM and drawn on the center of the browser client window)? And do you blame browser makes for making the choice for the users regardless?

Maybe Microsoft did deliberately sabotage it - but I welcome their sabotage as it merely accelerated the natural process.

DNT was DOA.

What site in their right mind would actually honor - and I mean fully, including through any third party content (and yes by that I mean ads) or 'accidental' methods via supercookies / sharing of information at the backend of several sites within one's control - something that's merely a 'request' by a user (regardless of whether they were semi-automatically opting into making that request) and has no legal stick behind it?

If anything, Microsoft making it the default in Windows' installation express settings just exposed exactly this issue when sites started saying they would ignore the setting "because Internet Explorer". That was always a completely transparent bullcrap excuse.

Just have a look at what countries with strong 'cookie' laws have going on. Are there some sites that do disable the tracking cookies while leaving cookies for functionality up? Sure, of course they exist. And for every single one of them, there's dozens that will throw a banner in your face suggesting that you have a choice: allow the tracking cookies, or piss off.

Some might say "so piss off and go to another site" - except there often is no such other site, and most people given the choice between being able to consume and not being able to consume at the expense of intangible tracking will happily be tracked so the sites never feel it in their bottom line either.

This is the sort of thing that I would expect to happen with DNT as well: A banner with something like "You currently have DNT enabled - to access the rest of this article, please disable DNT or click here to allow our servers to store information about your visit this once.", which eventually gets old and users disable DNT.

And yes, that sort of thing is facilitated in the DNT spec: http://www.w3.org/TR/tracking-...

DNT was never going to get anywhere particularly useful for end-users while adding a layer of headache on the server side. Browsers' default behavior and browser extensions have done far more to inform users of the issues of ads and tracking and how to mitigate those issues.

Having googled around to find his address ( I was hoping to find out the antenna location for the microwave internet provider, to see who's blocking the signal ), I can tell you that he chose a house smack dab in the middle of nowhere.

The photo makes it look like a run of the mill driveway to a house, but really it's a small paved area that leads into the woods (which surround the house on all sides - I'd be surprised if line-of-sight solutions actually worked because there is no line of sight to anything but trees), exits lord knows where onto a single-vehicle-wide apparent dirt road that finally exits onto a double-lane road that is still only a secondary road.

Run own cable? Where to? There's certainly other businesses well within 2500 feet - I wonder if they have internet. Or his neighbors (as others have mentioned). But certainly any remotely densely populated area is more than 'a few blocks' away, not to mention that you'd probably have to lay it all weird (no straight line through the woods for you) if the county has any say in it.

Hopefully some of the people who contacted him can hook him up, 'cos the end-run he's been given is deplorable, regardless of the choice of location.

Oh yeah, absolutely - but you know there's gonna be people complaining about measured responses too :)

How about they not take anonymous calls like that so seriously?

"An investigations\ by NBC reveal that the police department was alerted anonymously, with the caller informing them that the suspect possessed several types of firearms and had expressed their frustration with the victim numerous times. When asked about this apparent warning, the commissioner declined to comment. An officer working the case who spoke with NBC on the condition of anonymity revealed that they did not take the warning seriously, citing many cases in which police were sent to a location based on such warnings only to find that the warning was a hoax, leaving bills in property damage and unknown damages in lost time and personnel availability. A spokesperson for the family of the victim has stated the family's intent to sue the police department for gross negligence in this matter, and NBC has learned that the caller - later identified as the suspect's brother - is also seeking legal recourse."

'The boy who cried wolf' tends not to apply to law enforcement, because they get run through the wringer when they decide to ignore the boy.

I'm sure Magic Leap's tech is wonderful. But I can't help but be unimpressed by any "What it might look like" videos.

Compare the video in the article with that from the March 18 Project Tango story's video which doesn't show "what it might look like", but what they've got working right now.
http://hardware.slashdot.org/s...

That's a lot more impressive to me than any video with a bunch of VFX.

You want to know how to handle it properly and prevent crime? [...] disband the entire Taxi Comission and remove any extra restrictions on the normal cab companies

So, to prevent crime... make the thing that was criminal, no longer criminal? Brilliant!

Not saying it's a bad decision, mind you.

So we would get to watch games that aren't highly subject to genetic differences, but ones purely based on training and skill? Tempting - where do I sign up?

Yes, but where did that lawsuit (from 2002/2003) go?

Aside from the "We want $500,000,000!", and later a judge imposing an injunction "Pull the products or slap a sticker on there giving credit", I couldn't really find details on the case.

There's an interview with the singer from 2012, which includes:

DX: $500,000,000 seems so excessive. Thatâ(TM)s a crazy amount of money.

Truth Hurts: It was a crazy amount that they never got. They didnâ(TM)t get not a penny.

http://www.hiphopdx.com/index/...

There's also this article, which seems to claim that copyright was filed - but said copyright filing itself had issues:

I found one legal document pertaining to the case, from August 07. It names Lahiri and Saregama as plaintiffs (not Mangeshkar) and discusses the interesting fact, which the defense â" for Universal / Interscope / Aftermath / Dre â" attempted to use to its advantage, that the two parties (Lahiri and Saregama) each separately filed in early 03 for the US copyright to âoeThoda Resham.â I have read in a few places that both claims were settled out of court.

http://wayneandwax.com/?p=100

And then there's this article which seems to go into a bit more detail from a legal standpoint:
http://www.lexology.com/librar...

tl;dr: I highly doubt the Indian authors (whoever gets to claim 'authorship' there) got out ahead, and - more importantly - it bears little semblance to cases where no copyright was filed in the U.S.

I've noticed a lot of uncreative rap musicians directly copying tunes from music from other countries and just adding boring rap lyrics and bass on top of that. Maybe they should get sued next.

Good luck with that - those original artists will have to register for copyright in the U.S. first, if they want to have any chance at preventing it:

On June 7, 2011, the case of Kernel Records Oy v. Mosley ended with the court deciding that Kernel Records had failed to register for copyright in the United States.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T...

Of course even if they do:

In case that the artist decides to pursue the matter further, it's on him to go to America and confront them with the local use of law. It will require a considerable amount of faith and, of course, money

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T...

And that's in a case of pretty blatant copying colloquially known as sampling. Never mind if an artist copies 'the feel of' some existing track.

There's a few reasons why the Marvin Gaye estate won, and one of the main reasons is due to the 'estate' part. Guy himself has been dead for over 30 years.

Transmission is the way to go these days.

http://www.transmissionbt.com/

Any thoughts on Deluge?
http://deluge-torrent.org/

Is it bitcoin or some other altcoin?

parent anonymous poster should be upvoted - GP makes an assumption that it's mining Bitcoins, and not some altcoin.
I don't think anybody's analyzed it yet just what coin, if any, it mines - the list of things it's associated with include other potential for monetization.

I showed them how to tracert the IP to find out the ISP and then told them the could get the ISP to give them the person signed into the account at that time.

In their defense, there's dozens of ways in which - a lot of people on Slashdot, but also judges, will argue - an ISP should deny any such request, as IP addresses do not point to a specific computer, never mind to a specific person - and they feel that the account holder should not be held responsible for any and all traffic that goes through their line.

You don't see the humor in changing a hilariously bad kids show into a very serious adult movie?

I see the humor - but just because the idea is humorous doesn't mean that the production in and of itself can be labeled a parody. Look up some definitions of 'parody' as it pertains to fair use cases.

So, basically, we should all start watching The Last Ship? :\