Considering how many things are straight-up clones, especially in the Android market, I wouldn't be surprised if it was a handful of companies that pump out cheap (to develop), crap, copy+paste games and put this kind of stuff in them.

I am imagining a Drone-seeking Drone. Something larger and faster than the average "consumer" "drone", which ideally can capture a drone, bring to police, and they can impound it; or (if unable to catch it) has a tethered stun net it can use to shoot at, disable, and pull in the offending drone.

That goal might be a technically sound one, but I don't think it's politically viable.

But it is an economical one.

Once self-driving cars have a track record proven to be at least as reliable as a human's (and likely not even then, probably when it's 50% more reliable) and the cost of such vehicles has dropped to a middle income range, insurance policies will start favoring them. Self-driving cars will cost them far less (so long as the self-driving car records actions taken in manual mode, if one is provided), so the rates for manual-only vehicles will increase quickly. The rich will be able to afford them, but it might come to the point where insurance costs more per month than the vehicle covered. Insurance rates will force wide adoption of self-driving vehicles. (I also think that insurance companies will become, at least in part, a car rental-like place where the insured can summon a self-driving vehicle and use it for a limited time as part of their package.)

I expect that existing manual-only vehicles would be grandfathered in so as not to create a huge onus on the poor/lower class (likely forced through government regulation). Probably also less for those living in the country/rural areas, where self-driving cars might have less reliability.

I believe the quote goes:

Any sufficiently understood Magic is indistinguishable from Technology

Advanced technology can be incredibly hard for all but a small group to understand, hence magic. Magic that can be routinely, consistently applied at a basic level is understandable by most, hence technology.

While the reasonable forces behind increased gender parity in tech/gaming are dwindling, I don't think "Social Justice Warriors" are going to go away anytime soon. But, as you say, there is actual social injustice in America and the world over. Those who actually work towards equality will unfortunately get lumped in with that label.

I would like to propose a new term for such a group, those who use "social justice" as a battering ram to force others into submission, get attention, or otherwise cause unnecessary problems: Totalitarian Imperative for Equality (or TIE, for short.)

(Slashdot and SourceForge share a corporate overlord, as well as a fair bit of infrastructure.)

Nice to see that blurb of text again. Can we get this to happen every time you post a Nerval's Lobster/Dice slashvertisement, too?

I read (some of) a sociology paper that looked at violence in legalized prostitution. One of the things that struck me as odd was the explicit declaration that STD transmission, whether intentional or not, was investigated as a form of "violence". While getting an STD is a real concern for that industry, and not a good thing in any way, I think that labeling it as "violence" does a huge disservice to those who suffer actual violence. It's not that much of a stretch, I suppose, as harm is actually inflicted, but then you could define a pop fly ball hitting a fan on the head as violence, or parking in a handicap-only spot and forcing someone who actually is handicap to park farther away (a douche move, but not violence.)

So the staff at Reddit don't even need "subs which we don't like", they can just start labeling things they find uncomfortable as a definition of "violence".

I've always thought that an almagamation of the generic up/down (shown as Ars Technica does, where you see cumulative, total up, and total down) and Slashdot's karma system would be best. The up/down would show the overall approval or disapproval of a comment, but the Karma moderation is what hides it or brings it to the front. Thus you can understand the overall community's feelings (if that matters to you) but still have unpopular-yet-interesting posts rise. Up/down would not affect a user's Karma in any way.

This might have the extra benefit of making people use Offtopic/Troll for their actual purpose, rather than using them as "-1, Dislike". Won't stop that completely, but giving them a more representative outlet would likely lower such antics.

Read his comment again:

it's been for things that are actually non-factual and fact-checkable

That is, if multiple "facts" given in a comment can be easily disproved with a quick Google search (with results that aren't Wikipedia) or, better yet, involve incorrect math (which many /.ers can correct/verify without having to search Google), then it's not "opining" anything.

"Yo momma is so fat she sits around the house" is likely non-factual, but it is not fact-checkable since we do not know who your mom is to even search for information. (If this is the basic premise of the post, I think the "overrated" mod still fits, but only if it's been rated up.) "Hillary Clinton is so fat she is incapable of sitting in a normal-sized chair with armrests" is non-factual and is easily fact-checkable with a quick search of any news site for recent images.

Australia has a ban happy nanny-state government.

You forget, this plan is targeting rich Americans, who will then become rich Australians. I'm sure that the rich in Australia are just as capable of making laws not apply to them as they are in America.

In some states in the US, laws allow a left on red if given conditions are met. The conditions are some mix of hours (generally late night, when traffic is much less), ability to view oncoming traffic, and how long you've waited at the light.

Yup. Having lived in very rural areas of Iowa, the speed limit on dirt roads was "whatever your vehicle can do so long as you can see enough road to completely stop". After harvest season you can easily see a mile in all directions for many stretches, so the risk of something going onto the road (outside of small critters) was almost nil.

I wish my company's India group only had problems you describe. When we give them a simple task, like including a keyword in an e-mail subject so, they completely botch it up. Respond back with some odd error that would never happen if they followed even half the instructions, find out they were doing something completely different, and tell them to read the instructions again.

Honestly, I think about half of our local team's time is spent cleaning up after the India group's time. It would probably easier and cost the same, if not less, to replace the 20-odd people there with four or five half-competent people here; at least the language and time barriers would be (mostly) removed. But our owner isn't great about people management...

(My personal goal, as someone who writes and maintains all of our internal software, is to render the employees in India unnecessary.)

Are you talking about the telescope protestors, or Congressional Republicans?

until politicians learn to trim their twitter and facebook timelines when they run for office

The internet never forgets. Even if they learn to purge/hide their stuff, it's extremely likely that it's referenced or stored somewhere else, especially if the person had some level of notoriety before running for office.