No, no you don't. And you sure as hell have nothing to do with what's going on at 200, let alone 400 feet.

And for YOUR benefit, if you have enough discipline to run your own business that happens to use the same type of technology. I suppose you consider the wireless connectivity you use every day to be a "rape of the commons" every time you connect to a web site that runs advertising in order to pay for their operations? Rape! Rape rape rape! Eeeeevil businesses doing things like ... delivery antibiotics to your hospital. Rape rape rape!

You're so right. Only people who HATE businesses should be recommending regulations. Only people who've never had the energy to organize a croquet game, let alone the biggest retailer in the world, should propose changes to a huge body of regulations. A fine idea.

Hopefully the new platform will still support irony.

It's a radio transmitter feeding a closed waveguide. One has to ask: why haven't we seen evidence of radio transmission providing thrust before, when it's been feeding an open waveguide?

Extreme claims require extreme evidence. People who have made extreme claims before without much evidence at all are rightly categorized with the boy who cried wolf.

Just pop up a little lead umbrella so there's a shady spot.

Just like in the good old days!
s/spammers/bad guys/g
s/spam/autonomous weapons/g

Dear Musk, Woz, Hawking, and Robotics/AI Experts

Your post advocates a

( ) technical (X) legislative ( ) market-based ( ) vigilante

approach to fighting autonomous weaponry. Your idea will not work. Here is why it won't work. (One or more of the following may apply to your particular idea, and it may have other flaws which used to vary from state to state before a bad federal law was passed.)

( ) Bad guys can easily use it to harvest weapon designs
(X) Defense systems and other legitimate uses would be affected
( ) No one will be able to find the bad guys
( ) It is defenseless against brute force attacks
( ) It will stop autonomous weaponry for two weeks and then we'll be stuck with it
(X) Users of weapons systems will not put up with it
(X) DARPA will not put up with it
(X) The military will not put up with it
(X) Requires too much cooperation from bad guys
(X) Requires immediate total cooperation from everybody at once
(X) Many weapon producers cannot afford to lose business or alienate potential employers
(X) Bad guys don't care about illiegal weapons in their arsenals
( ) Anyone could anonymously destroy anyone else's career or business

Specifically, your plan fails to account for

( ) Laws expressly prohibiting it
(X) Lack of centrally controlling authority for weapons
(X) Open relays in foreign countries
(X) Asshats
(X) Jurisdictional problems
(X) Unpopularity of weird new treaties
(X) Public reluctance to accept weird new forms of arms control
(X) Armies of worm riddled broadband-connected Windows boxes (!)
(X) Eternal arms race involved in all filtering approaches
(X) Extreme profitability of autonomous weaponry
( ) Joe jobs and/or identity theft
( ) Technically illiterate politicians
(X) Extreme stupidity on the part of people who do business with bad guys
(X) Dishonesty on the part of bad guysthemselves

and the following philosophical objections may also apply:

(X) Ideas similar to yours are easy to come up with, yet none have ever
been shown practical
( ) Any scheme based on opt-out is unacceptable
( ) Blacklists suck
( ) Whitelists suck
( ) Countermeasures should not involve wire fraud or credit card fraud
( ) Countermeasures should not involve sabotage of public networks
( ) Countermeasures must work if phased in gradually
(X) Why should we have to trust you and your treaties?
( ) Incompatiblity with open source or open source licenses
(X) Feel-good measures do nothing to solve the problem
(X) I don't want the government limiting my arsenal
( ) Killing them that way is not slow and painful enough

Furthermore, this is what I think about you:

( ) Sorry dude, but I don't think it would work.
(X) This is a stupid idea, and you're a stupid person for suggesting it.
(X) Nice try, assh0le! I'm going to find out where you live and burn your
house down!

Don't worry, NuPlayer is sure to have its own unique collection of buffer overflows!

Let me guess, that's a vague, hand-waving reference to the states that are disinclined to take on the new medicare mandates? Yeah, maybe they weren't charmed by the bald-faced lies that Obama told about that piece of legislation and his counter-constitutional, politically-driven, capricious execution of it? I know, how could anyone not like it, right? After all, if we want to keep our doctors and our previous insurance, we can, period. And our rates are going to go down an average of $2500 per family, right? Yeah. Lies. Exactly the sort of state-in-the-camera-and-lie stuff that DOES make people blame the government for mishandling their trust, their money, and their well being.

Because when you buy a television and are forced to pay a tax that finances, under penalty of winding up in court, someone else's programming choices ... that's different than buying a television and NOT being subject to that tax. How is this not clear?

Other than the part where it's the government that runs the court system that enforces your having been forced to give the BBC money whether you want to patronize them or not.

What? It can't even work without the direct involvement in the government running the courts that are necessary for the BBC to collect their unavoidable TV tax.

Here's a way that the government could be even less involved: don't DO that. Let people who want to show programs to a large audience find their own way to fund the production and dissemination of that material. Say, by selling ads or attracting sponsors, etc. Remove the court system and penalties under law for not wanting to fund everything that's broadcast from the equation entirely. Why should someone who doesn't want to fund a given program be forced to, under penalty of being dragged through court? I have zero interest in watching our many all-sports programming options (ESPN, etc). You think the "best system we have" is for the government to be the enforcer in an arrangement where I'm forced to give them money anyway?

Governments don't always suck at providing services, you know. The BBC is one of the only major news outlets that does actually try to be unbiased, even if they aren't always perfect at it.

Ah, so in Britain the government isn't involved in tax collection and enforcement. They don't do the collecting, they don't penalize people who don't pay, and they don't get involved in picking and choosing who receives those funds, or have any say, whatsoever, over how that money is allocated. That is an interesting system indeed! Who handles all of that, if not the government?