A buggy whip.

Simply because a product threatens your business doesn't mean you are entitled to get it legislated out of existence.

AdBlock puts out a product that saves people bandwidth and filters out all sorts of noxious, potentially dangerous content.

However, there ARE ways around AdBlock. At the root of it, your ads simply CANNOT utilize any of the aforementioned noxious, potentially dangerous means to FORCE views.

If this breaks your business model?

Get a better fucking business model, as the one you're using now sucks.

Also, end users VOLUNTARILY install AdBlock. It isn't a default install anywhere. So these are people who have made a choice NOT to accept traffic from your crappy ad network. AdBlock didn't FORCE their product on ANYONE. Again, you don't have a right to force people to view your content.

The DMCA needs to be thrown out with a bunch of the other fecal detritus that's been inserted in modern US law, to the detriment of everyone.

And, well, fuck the non-disparagement agreement. It's not disparagement to post factual information.

I'd say that Hughes didn't do a damn thing.

You had a bunch of journalists who didn't identify with the pablum the new owner was puking. So, to send a CLEAR message, they quit.

An unusually direct show of integrity in today's era of spineless, jellyfish-like hack wannabes.

So you're trying to say there's no difference between a grid that's set up for power transmission only from utility-based sources and one that's set up to allow customers to push power back upstream?

Uh. I think you're full of shit.

You may be paying equipment and install costs on YOUR end.

But the utility has to have the equipment and infrastructure in place to accept transmission BACK from you as well.

I *HIGHLY* doubt you're paying for the upgrades to your local substation that this requires. Even the connection fees you're paying are only a token against these costs.

Wait, WTF?

From your first link:

But while Isaac is a Joyent employee, Ben is not—and if he had been, he wouldn't be as of this morning: to reject a pull request that eliminates a gendered pronoun on the principle that pronouns should in fact be gendered would constitute a fireable offense for me and for Joyent.

That's some rather petty bullshit, truth be told - by all parties involved, including the author of that blog entry. Now if they were fighting over something, you know, *technical*, I'd be more sympathetic, but really - ideological bullshit like that? Call me when the dude added some actual code to the damn thing and got rude treatment.

No. If an open source project's leadership accepts monetary or other sponsorship, then the leadership of that project has to do the corporation's bidding. The other contributors can still do whatever the fuck they want.

To be honest, unless there's a contract (with a term) involved, the project's leadership can change or reject the terms at any time, and can definitely negotiate or even reject any changes (proposed or actual in their relationship with the sponsor.

Finally, this is a two-way street - the sponsor must accept that the project they took on simply is what it is.

I disagree over the degree of which this would be a problem - think of it more like the free market. Under ideal conditions, the best ideas with the broadest appeal tend to win, grow and evolve, while the worst ideas with little appeal tend to fade away relatively quickly.

It also provides a very useful ejection seat of sorts in case of corporate asshattery (see also OpenOffice/Libre Office), patent follies, or worse. Also, consider this: Closed-Source/proprietary software can be just as prone to this kind of internal dissent as OSS, but you the end-user will never have a say in the results.

Forking is awesome to have as an option - either as a threat or as an actuality. A company who knows that their shit could be forked will either behave themselves, or they will lose control of their product. IMHO that's a damned good thing.

Agreed, though it brings up a bigger (albeit personal) bitch-n-moan on my part...

We went from zero to Moon in about 24 years (1945-1969), but then did approximately bupkis in the realm of manned exploration for 45 years after that (okay, Space Shuttle, ISS, etc - but we're talking manned planetary exploration here, not just repeating the same shit we've done over and over again with only trivial increments.)

I remember as a kid anticipating a shot of going to distant worlds as an adult, but damn - by the time they *finally* get around to putting someone on Mars, I'll be damned near retired (and definitely too old for consideration of such a thing.) I just wish NASA would have gotten their shit straight and kept pushing, instead of dropping it in the early 1970s and deciding 'hey, let's make this shuttle thingy!'

Some of us would have wanted to see things happen faster, and sooner - I know I'm not alone in thinking this...

Fair call, but consider that it costs a pretty penny to get an app into any of those marketplaces, and they're almost orders of magnitude smaller than even Blackberry's App store...

I, for one, LOVE the fact that my local FOREST PRESERVE bought a bunch of M60's.

WTF is a Forest Preserve unit doing with M60's?

Simple fix: don't ever set your voicemail password.

I went over 10 years without enabling my dreaded voicemail, some people complained but I never budged. My current Director told me to set it up about six months ago. I did and used a random integer set from random.org as the password.

I can honestly say "I forgot my voicemail password" and let the thing fill up.

Try actually READING what I said.

Nowhere did I say we should give up on policing crime.

But I draw the line at forcing people to pay to surveil themselves.
Or forcing ISPs into law enforcement, unpaid, when THAT IS NOT THEIR JOB.

My comment about piracy always being a factor is simple recognition of human nature.

Basically this structure is all finacial-penalty for the the ISP.

It's in their interests to minimize their cost outlays.

In this case, it's cheaper to grease political palms to be left alone than actually invest in a surveillance system.