I'm not an expert on British law

Well there's your problem.

Britain - and many other countries - have laws that say you can't DDoS.

The U.S. has similar laws;
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C...

As for the hypothetical McDonald's case - they can most certainly call the cops on you and have the cops escort you away from the premises if you're actually stopping them from entering the store, and not just trying to persuade them not to. This also applies in the U.S. You can picket - but you can't block the entry. UK law is a bit more strict and you can probably easily slip into the "disturbing the peace" clause. It is the UK after all.

Whether or not you feel that you'd be made a spectacle out of is probably dependent on whether or not this would make the headlines around the world; because the arrest of this guy wasn't exactly with a pre-planned media circus to get a bunch of paparazzi try and take pictures while they shot gas grenades through the windows, busted down the doors with semi-automatics and then triumphantly led him outside with a bag over his head proclaiming "ladies and gentlemen, we got him".
Instead, they got a warrant for his arrest, they arrested him, reported on that arrest as they would any other, and oh hey look at that - he's already released on bail. Yawn.

That's going to depend on your definition of "approach".

250 yards away - plenty of distance to come to a stop for a red light, reaction time doesn't even factor into it - and the light turns green? I'm not particularly incline to slow down unless I notice there being a situation that warrants it.

But then there's you, who apparently not only sees traffic light turning red as a "well the other directions will take some time to get moving anyway", but adds an additional "plus there's the delay, so I'll be fine running this lololol", who's going to ruin both our days :)

Now if I approached it still at 55mph at, say, 50 yards thinking it will turn green (based on experience, say), then regardless of whether it will or not - you're right, I'd be the asshole.
( And yes, I do see that in everyday traffic far more often than I'd like, too. )

the very beginning of the red (before traffic the other way starts moving).

If you're approaching an intersection with that mindset, you're already driving unsafely.

It's also making the terrible assumption that all lanes from the next direction to get a green are in fact occupied and standing still, rather than there being open lane with somebody cruising through at 55mph because they got a green and saw no reason to slow down (that reason being you.)

Or you can install a custom lock screen on Android and get the same thing.
Or use an iPhone, which I think shows notifications on the lock screen as well?

This does not prevent the "pulling out your phone" part - especially if it doesn't automatically turn its screen on, requiring further steps - and then the unmentioned "putting your phone back" part.
Unless that phone is already on the desk in front of you, of course.

As long as you accept that a free right turn, followed by a u-turn, followed by another free right turn, is faster than waiting for the light at the intersection.

on-topic: seems to me that the problem is more with the highway not being able to handle the volume of traffic. Sure, you can make it less attractive for people to use the parallel road but that does little more than shift the problem elsewhere. In addition, these measures often hinder the residents themselves and emergency services as well, and depending on the choice of measure, can even increase problems. When they put speed bumps at the intersections in our area, we started to see an increase in structural damages in houses, as buses and trucks late in the evening had no trouble getting over those at normal speed, and just transferred energy from the bump, into the ground, and out to the houses.

What I can't figure out is why they can even file a Personal Damages suit EIGHT years after the original purchase

The plaintiffs first filed suit January 3, 2005

- various sources

I guess the question would be why on Earth it took this long to get to this stage :)

years of motions, complaints, and the recusal of a judge

- The Verge

Oh. Of course.

"Plaintiffs didn't suffer damages" is a laughable reason?

Yes. No. Sort of.

It is a fact that this has *potentially* affected N million people, and it is assumed that of those N million people, some M were truly affected. The suit was brought as a class action suit, essentially representing all those people.
But a suit needs plaintiffs, and in this case the plaintiffs were not among those affected. Or rather, one wasn't affected, and the other was kinda-sorta not affected because she didn't actually pay for the devices herself.

Dismissing the case based on just these 2 plaintiffs is 'laughable' in that it ignores the other N people, the other M people, and if nothing else, the other 1 person who purchased the products for that woman.
Would it not be equally laughable to suggest that in her specific case, that person also has no standing because while they may very well have purchased the device, they gifted it away and thus cannot have been affected?

The judge in this case made the right call - there's already been effort, time and money expended to get the case this far. Dismissing it and saying "bring another suit when you have new plaintiffs" would waste resources, not the least of which being the court's.

The plaintiffs - or rather their counsel - should have done their homework better and ensured that the plaintiffs had standing, though.. and I think the judge made that very clear in their highly public statements.

Imagine if your ISP had a cap (hard cap, soft cap, whatever), and Amazon paid your ISP so that all their Amazon Prime streaming offerings would not count toward that cap - but Netflix won't or can't pay to do the same.

Would you stick with Netflix knowing that you can only watch N shows before hitting your cap, or would you switch to Amazon and watch as many shows as you like?
( For sake of argument, assume they offer the same content. )

I understand you're not the same person who complained about a story no longer being in the news, but I guess that just goes to show that for some people there can never be enough coverage, and for others there can never be too little.

If you want to talk media obsession, though... at least MH370 was still this year and was a whole plane lost under weird circumstances - and not a child abducted while her well-off parents were out partying 7 years ago that still has stories running every other week, or a president that was shot 51 years ago that has complete TV specials made practically every year.

How has 'the press' stopped talking about it, if you're reading about a related story in /.?

Even if by 'press' you're thinking CNN, Fox News, WSJ, NY Times: They all have recent articles about Ebola.
CNN: Sierra Leone: Ebola burial team dumps bodies in pay protest
Fox News: US quarantine moves hurting Ebola response in Africa, experts say
WSJ: Ebola Vaccine Appears Safe in Early Test
NY Times: Sierra Leone to Eclipse Liberia in Ebola Cases

All from within the last few hours.

Maybe some others?
Reuters: Ebola vaccine from Glaxo passes early test
AP: AT 1 MONTH, US EBOLA MONITORS FINDING NO CASES
BBC: Tracing the Ebola outbreak
RT: Reported Ebola cases near 16,000 â" WHO
Al Jazeera: Ebola workers in Sierra Leone dump bodies

Just because a new story has been found to shove into your face every 5 minutes on TV and main headlines on the internet (hello Ferguson / snow), doesn't mean that 'the press has stopped talking about it'. It just means you'll have to pay better attention or actually go look for it, rather than sit on your ass passively taking it in as if you were watching Keeping up with the Kardashians.

Of course there's places where you can find it. There's even places where you can find it in proximity to the marketing name. Neither of those are necessarily marketing material, though.
Unless you know something more about application's 'About' screens suitability for marketing and communications, of course :)

You leave yourself an out with the "to do correctly" part, as any solution proposed could be deemed to not be 'done correctly'.

If they pre-render/capture a scene at, say, 2 inch intervals in a 3D grid along where the user is allowed to go (if the user is only allowed to turn/move their head, rather than walk around, this shouldn't be a whole lot of points to render/capture from), and use interpolation between those points to construct a new view (which could entirely be done in the 2D projection space in real time), the effect should be very convincing both as a regular display and in stereoscopic (may require additional correlation so both eyes get the same interpolation).

But because it's interpolate, you may have vantage points that don't match up with what you would see if you actually rendered/captured from that vantage point, so, not 'done correctly'. Still, it's about as good as it gets, given the constraints.

I don't know if it's marketing so much as it is dev support.

Most end-users certainly wouldn't see the kernel version. Computer properties doesn't report the internal version, and certainly nowhere on regular branding would it make mention of it. What marketing material has Microsoft put out in the past that made mention of the kernel version (where that version wasn't equal to the product name anyway - e.g. 3.11)

Some developers, on the other hand, would probably be quite annoyed if there's a version 7 kernel which doesn't match with Windows 7, a version 8 kernel which has nothing to do with Windows 8, and a version 9 kernel which seems awfully close to Windows 95/98.

From that point of view, Microsoft should really have started this with Windows 7 - but Windows 10 is the next major opportunity to so after having to skip Windows 9 anyway.

But for marketing - well they can call it whatever they want regardless of (kernel) version number anyway. Me / XP / Vista.

Technically this isn't FOIA, but the Public Records Act of Washington (state).

That said... just look at the shit-ton of exemptions in there already from industries with strong lobbying groups:
http://app.leg.wa.gov/rcw/defa...

Anybody who defends this guy - his intentions are clearly not that as honorable as simply wishing to pray for these strippers - on grounds of "what are they going to block next?" should have a look at that list, and realize that their concerns materialized before they ever realized they had them.

Presumably sold off to multiple interested parties by a curator if it gets to that stage.

All of their coolers - and we're not just talking fans here, but their vast library of heatsink and heatpipe designs (both functional and aesthetic targets), cooling pads, etc. will be an easy target for either a competitor, or for a company to keep Zalman going and focus only on those. It's what Zalman's known for - to the point of their own website suggesting for the VGA products that "Zalman cooler is equipped with VGA card", rather than the other way around ;) - so that would make some sense.

The peripherals.. well, most of them can probably die off. Not too many people seem to care about Zalman mice, keyboards, USB sticks, headsets, etc. - they're either a dime a dozen or too fancy for their own worth, and only a few get to be big brand names in that arena.

There's some niche products like their virtual device storage options that would make a good complementary offering in WD's lineup.

Given their financial numberfiddling, I can't help but imagine that some divisions were used to prop up others to help make things look good - so selling it all together seems, to me, unlikely; except for purposes of selling it on again
(yes, the IP vultures, whose day job is to make up ways in which popular products violate their IP in the hopes of landing settlements because that's cheaper than bothering with the court case even if you think they're on extremely shaky ground)