The Win8 interface is only an improvement if you use a touch screen. It's intellectually dishonest and blatant corporate shilling to make a factual assertion that it's an improvement without qualifying for which use case, because for non-touch mouse and keyboard, whether it's an improvement is anything but objectively true. What's particularly sad is how many people would mod that up. In the old days that would have been modded into oblivion.

Assuming you can view every page and do what you need to do without ever turning on Javascript. Which is quite the tall order. For example, there is no e-mail service on this planet that allows signup and use without JS turned on for at least one step or payment (this sounds ridiculous, but go and try it. There used to be. They've all been changed or shut down.). And it's been clearly established all it takes is one malicious script to unmask your IP while on tor.

Actually they would have a picture of your face and could go from there. A component serial number is discovered, which leads to the manufacturer, which leads to what store sold it; then their inventory systems can tell you what time it was sold, then you can match that up to security camera footage. This has been documented with burner phones, no reason it couldn't be done with computers.

It's like you missed the last year and still think this stuff is the fantasy of conspiracy nuts. Or work for the NSA and want to lull everyone into thinking they're safe.

Yes because that's the weak part. *sigh*

It's a real shame that the original Visual Basic lineage was dumped in favor of .NET. It's like Windows XP... there's still plenty of people using VB6 to this day. I'm one of them. People never fail to underestimate the power of that language. The last version was released in 1998; yet I'm here on 64-bit Windows 7 and finding not only does the original stuff still work, but I have no trouble using API and Type Libraries to access all sorts of new Win7 things like libraries (music, docs, etc), damn near any other interface, and the latest common controls. Hell there's even a way to include straight assembly code if there was no other way for something. And adapting this ancient language to work with modern features is still light years easier than learning .NET.

We were hit hard by Hurricane Sandy. The power at my house was out for 6 days. But cell towers were up the entire time (the closest one was down 12hrs, but calls could still be made with a weaker signal), and as soon as the water allowed physical access, Verizon rolled out trucks that parked at a few places in the neighborhood from 10am to 10pm where people could plug in power strips. About 100 people plugged in at any given time. Gave us a chance to talk to our neighbors, and recharge our devices to get on Facebook, which was the major method the city government used to communicate with us. Power updates, food/water relief, shelter info, transit updates, etc were all on Facebook. Not just government updates either; updates from people around town in the comments were critical. Phone numbers always had outdated info.
I used to live in a more rural area. Yeah we had working POTS, but nothing else. Hurricane Charlie hit us hard there; I wish we had cells and local government on facebook. I think people really overestimate the value of POTS, especially if you don't know what numbers to call or local government sucks at providing info. The resources used to maintain POTS could be put towards emergency restoration of more useful services.

Are you talking about quality? Because if you think Netflix 1080p (where they even offer it) even approaches Bluray quality, you've obviously never had experience with top quality viewed correctly (screen size/distance, etc).

But beyond that, even if Netflix did offer true 1080p, they still fall way short of what pirates offer:

• Selection Quantity. Netflix's selection is the widest, and is still god awful by any reasonable measure. Legit music stores have finally exceeded pirated selections. Why can't movies/tv?
• Permanence: If you only ever watch a movie or show once, this might not matter, but lots of people want to actually buy a movie or show so they can watch it again. Whenever. Nobody offers a DRM-free download of top quality besides pirates.
• Offline: Guess what? Sometimes I want to watch without being online. Maybe I'm traveling and a steady fast connection isn't there. Nothing beats a portable local copy that can be easily converted to any format. I have a 60Mbps connection in a major city, yet am still plagued by BUFFERING like it's RealPlayer ReBorn.
• Availability: All the legit players are constantly changing whats available. You see shows you like, you pay to subscribe, then at some point they just decide to stop carrying it. This is absolutely unacceptable.
• Experience: No legit store can compete with the quality of experience of downloading a file with no hassles, no drm, no ads, no previews, no commercials, no Silverlight bs... just download and play from a huge selection of formats and subtitles.

It took a long time, but legit music offerings are finally all around better than pirate offerings. And it's been a fantastic financial success. It's crystal clear what gets consumers to pay. Netflix is nowhere near satisfying for anyone who values the things I listed, which is a non-trivial percent of people. Everyone who comes over my house is absolutely astounded that I have 80+ full TV shows (nearly 1/3rd in HD, mostly because HD sources are not available) and 500+ HD movies all able to be played any time, on either my monitor or the tv, or copied to any device, going straight into the program, with a single click. They've never experienced anything like it. And there's no amount of money I could pay to have it legally. (although few consumers would even want a setup that requires 12TB of disk space and NAS, but they certainly would like the benefits on a smaller collection).
And right there is where they could rake in the cash from even a dedicated pirate like me: Offer me the dozens of shows in HD that aren't able to be pirated, and the other dozen that need remastering in hd... and I'd pay. I have paid. Unfortunately it was to a cyberlocker because no public torrent existed, no paid legit offer existed... but there it was, 5 seasons all in full HD, on uploaded.com.

What you're speaking of is jury nullification, something which is extraordinarily rare these days. If a juror indicates he's aware of it, he's dismissed (they WILL ask). If it comes out that he lied about awareness of it to get on the jury, it's a mistrial. Same if a lawyer for either side brings it up, which they don't even try because they'd face trouble. Judges are explicitly dishonest and instruct jurors they are not allowed to return not guilty for disagreeing with the law in general or the law in this case. If you tell a juror about it, or hand out literature where a juror is likely to see it, you can be arrested for jury tampering among other charges. All of these things have stood through appeals. The right to nullify is still there, but good luck trying to get off on those grounds.

I see you've had very limited interaction with the police, and certainly not outside of a majority white middle to upper class environment. If anything it would be underreported out of fear of retaliation.

Comments like that tend to get modded down because they're WRONG. Most cops are NOT good people. First off the notion that cops become cops to bring flowers and sunshine to the world is incredibly naive. At *best*, they're there to catch 'bad guys', not help their community. But motives aren't really important, actions are. All cops arrest and support obtaining criminal convictions for victimless, consensual acts at some point in their career. People like to say 'well, that's the law'... that's no different than 'just following orders'. It's wrong, period.
Even if you disagree with that point, you need to consider that while not all cops perpetrate illegal acts or civil rights violations, you better believe they know at least one other officer who has, and kept their mouth shut. Covering up for someone else's abuse makes you a bad person.

These cameras need to be on every officer, always rolling, and most important: if the camera "breaks" or the footage is "lost", the version of events given by the civilian should be considered more credible.

An important, relevant detail you skipped is that, to be held accountable in reality, an officer's behavior has to be so outrageously over the line, with overwhelming evidence that's not just civilian witnesses, that a normal citizen would get 30+ years for it. Then, MAYBE, the officer will be fired or sentenced to 5 or less. And holding an officer personally liable in a civil case? Even higher burden.

I think you're really overstating the significance of MtGox. BitInstant was a much bigger deal for me and most other people I know, and that incident didn't destroy bitcoin. In fact there's also several other incidents that were a much bigger deal.

I'd imagine it falls under the commerce clause. Remember, the drug war and countless other prohibitions is based on the fact that the government can arrest you for something you grow in your house and consume only yourself, because that affects interstate commerce since you might have otherwise bought it from a source that might cross state lines. Given that expansive interpretation, which the courts have upheld every time except one, how is everything that happens on a plane actually crossing state lines not fair game? And you might think this is wrong and support pot legalization, but it's also equally applicable to cocaine and heroin. Which come from plants, by the way. Plants which I can grow entirely on my land, extract alkaloids, sell to no one, and be thrown in prison for the rest of my life for.
But guns on the other hand... perhaps someone can help me reconcile US v. Lopez with the constitutionality of the CSA as applied to wholly intrastate actions.

This.

How's about a poll about whether or not to go forward with beta? Then you can show us just how much everyone loves it and only a tiny minority wants it scrapped entirely! Tiny incremental improvements will change all our minds right!

So where's the poll? Oh that's right, having a >90% against it will make the opposition even more clear, and get the casual users wondering why something so horrendously unpopular is being shoved down everyone's throat.

Just like dashcams right? Instead I think we'll just see 4 Google Glass fail at the same time instead of 4 dash cams failing at the same time, at the exact time abuse is alleged to have occurred.

As a 6-digit user I resent that. The beta is terrible and needs to be entirely scrapped.

And the absolute worst part is this bullshit they're feeding us about how they're listening to our feedback and making incremental improvements. It's fucking insulting. 99% of commenters seem to want the thing gone entirely, but they're not listening to us. They're shoving a horrible design down our throats and completely disregarding everyone that doesn't agree with them.

I guess the >95% of people that want the whole thing scratched, taking a tiny amount of time, are being contradicted by the tiny minority that wants a new, dumbed down design, which takes a long time. And you listen to the latter. Fantastic management.

You can stick all the flowers you want in a pile of shit, it's still going to smell like shit. GET IT THROUGH YOUR HEADS: INCREMENTALLY IMPROVING SOMETHING THAT EVERYONE WHO CONTRIBUTES WANTS ENTIRELY GONE WILL KILL THE PART OF THE USERBASE THE REST OF THE WORLD COMES HERE FOR.