He made them an offer they couldn't refuse.

Like ... how? Tip off Snowden that he's wanted?

Who claimed that?

With enough money to get you into the right schools you can get the best jobs, but that has little if anything to do with intelligence. Or education for that matter.

40 years is already more than what's sensible. Imagine I invented something that ensures I'll get more money than I could sensibly spend per month. Where's my incentive to invent again instead of spending the rest of my life in a hammock?

I am interested in watches.

Whether or not a smart watch is worth it is an open question. If they can provide me something that I think I need with it, then sure. I've outlined a list in comments on previous stories, for quasi-trolls that were about to lash into me for being so general.

But I wear an automatic mechanical beater right now—specifically because it's virtually indestructible, represents only a minor investment (and thus financial risk), and requires no maintenance, attention, or battery-swapping. It's accurate to about 2 minutes per year, which means that about once a year I tune the time on it.

Most of the stuff that smartwatches are currently being said to do I either don't care about (fitness tracking, health monitoring) or currently use a smartphone for with far less hassle (bigger screen, more natural UI) so it'll be a stretch. But I'm open.

I just know there's a homeopathy joke in there somewhere...

You call that counterbalance?

What's keeping me, a rights owner of a movie that's a real stinker, from silencing everyone who dared to do a negative review of it by carpet bombing any and all media pages with takedown notices for those reviews?

The US learned that it's more profitable to wage than to win wars. At least for the elite few. It's really win-win in every aspect. You get the masses occupied with an external foe, you get the rabble off the street by dumping it into the army (and at the same time make them feel important because they're doing something important) and you can make the elite rich at the same time.

The US also has the economy to fuel the whole shit, unlike Germany in WW2. And also unlike Germany in WW2, they're not dumb enough to actually engage in a war with anyone who could actually fight back.

Really?

Fuck, the terrorists won, they're all over the US already!

Considering the price to develop something (along with the price of training the guy), I prefer a bunch of low cost religious nuts with AKs in their hands.

Hey, that's today's naming scheme. You take the meaning of a word, twist it around and create something that confuses the hell out of someone reading it.

It's called "political correctness".

The odd thing is that it is actually even likely that it's going to be more secure.

Once I have to turn for a communist country to get freedom I guess it's time to start drinking heavily.

Dear US: If you want to spy on yourself, more power to you. But we're not as dumb as you are.

signed, China.

Is it me or is the mere fact that they automated the takedown notices speaking volumes of how frivolous the whole matter has become? Take them all down and let God sort them out, or how is that supposed to be?

Am I the only one who thinks it's about time for some (serious) fines for frivolous takedown notices? It's not like they don't cost the media providers anything.

You could simply shoot whoever comes closer than the "stop and don't come closer or be shot" signs.

KISS, not everything needs a technical solution.