From the article the grandparent obviously did not read "Glantz showed a simple one-line Linux command and then jokingly walked away from the podium stating "That's it, thanks for coming," as the audience erupted into boisterous applause.". So in fact top notch people skills.

Also if people are actually serious about a solution to global warming, sea level rise and the collapse of property values for underwater front properties, we are going to need loads of energy. So what to do with all that energy, desalinate sea water and pump the fresh water inland to irrigate the worlds deserts. With cheap energy, you get cheap water and with that you turn dust bowls into carbon vacuums, plus of course benefits of albedo affects and water retention away from the sea. Green ex-deserts can of course produce an income to subsidise the cost of the water but the key is lots of cheap energy, so nuclear is required to fix the current problem.

At least it is now recognised that the key to better management of energy requires better energy storage. Renewable require better batteries to really make a difference. So likely more targeted funding is required in association with governments and an international treaty. Patent free research into battery technology, so researchers can grab information from every source free of charge and attempt to apply it to the best possible solution. Once the solution is obtained, they can commence production whilst patent issues are resolved via a specific government/industry body established for this key purpose.

Augmented reality glasses with a simple connection to a smart phone, smart phone does all the processing and supplies power, are very much more likely to be on the scene before they sort out insurance on automated vehicles. Most likely around the time it is legislated that only licensed opticians can fit and supply augmented reality glasses. It should not be up to tech companies to finalise the design of that particular bit of kit but up to Ophthalmologists and Optometrists.

What the hell is wrong with that, hmm, doctors, dentists, school teachers, road laws, aeroplane laws, ship laws, gun laws (in sane countries) just some that spring to mind with regards to doing what ever you like but you are responsible. So hmm, whom do you sue when they blow themselves up as well as others?

The price of taxi licences comes about from not what you implied, "Drivers spent their entire life's saving enough to buy their own license", a wildly false claim but the from the reality of companies buying up all the licences, limiting availability and lobbying to prevent more licences being issued, so they can pay minimum wage to new immigrants to drive those taxis whilst charging a fortune to customers. Higher insurance comes about because the poor wage slave gives not one crap about the taxi.

So want cheaper more accessible licences, simple law change, ONE PER CUSTOMER (the customer being an operator who must operate that licence and vehicle at least some of the time), get em while their hot. Set a minimum price on that licence and auction them off, when the bids drop below the minimum price no more licences are issued, say $5,000 (used in an industry fund to pay for victims of bad operators). When you no longer want you licence you return it for a refund at the minimum price and it goes up for auction again (you have an initial allocation and more are added every year in set blocks as long as the minimum price is achieved).

Here are some statistics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/..., clearly the current methods are pretty sucky because they are not doing enough to limit deaths, let alone ten times that in major injuries and hundreds of times that in lesser injuries. You know what, no matter how many people, scream 'IF ONLY' and, no matter how many times they say it, it will have absolutely zero impact on the consequence that results in the 'IF ONLY'. Solutions have to be actual solutions not just empty complaints. Likely smarter solutions, slower more boring ego less cars (the vehicles first priority should be safe driving and not maximum horse power nor highest speed possible or loudest exhaust, the more boring they are the less they will be used), lower speed limits, vehicle location awareness with warnings for exceeding posted limits.

How about over other people's property without their permission. How about around public roads, keep in mind to penalise people for poor behaviour, you need to go through all the legal gymnastics of defining exactly what is illegal versus the simple expedient of it all is illegal (this up to clarification for manslaughter and homicide should a drone crashing into a vehicle cause the driver to lose control and crash).

Next up public parks. Now consider the sound principle of law for a public recreational spaces, those who have the least impact have the greatest priority. Easy example, take a lake, a popular swimming lake. Now up turns a douche ski boat operator on the once swimming only lake, no law bans his boat screaming around the lake driving all the swimmers from the water and deafening all nearby residents. Ski boat douche expects to clean up renting rides as the only operator on the lake, public park lake, why should the one ski boat operator be denied their chance for profit ahead of say a thousands swimmers, swimming for free. America of course, yeah profit, screw the swimmers and residents. Rest of the world, well, no, those who have the least impact when using the 'SHARED' resource get the priority because others can still readily use it versus the ski boat operator who presence actively denies access to others.

So for drones in public parks, well, there use will interfere with the people's uses of the park. In terms of noise, annoyance and risk of injury. So drone parks, basically use only in parks where it is specifically allowed versus non-drone parks as in all parks where the use of drones have not been specifically allowed and sign posted. Public roads absolutely not. Over other peoples property without their permission, again, logically strictly forbidden. Use over your own property, no problem at all. These are not high altitude devices like planes they are low altitude devices, hence huge restrictions.

Because moving from one proprietary language/library ecosystem to another proprietary language/library ecosystem is somehow an improvement.

Fuck them both. We have truly open ecosystems like C++, and I would encourage any sensible developer going forward to move away from the likes of Java and the .NET ecosystems, now that the Supreme Court has essentially turned them into perpetual litigation machines.

But cleanroom implementations are meaningless if copyright can be asserted over the API. Clean room implementations only work because it has been generally understood that an API itself is essentially a directory listing, like a phone book, that in and of itself does not constitute some sort of creative work. Before the Oracle case, it was assumed that it was the code itself that constituted the intellectual property. But that is now apparently no longer true, and thus the Win32 API has gained the same level of protection as the source code.

If this stands, and is not corrected either by a lower court or by Congress, no one will every try a clean room implementation of any non-free library again, because there's a real likelihood that you would find yourself sued into oblivion for breach of copyright.

Wine may be safe because MS is being constrained by future potential anti-competitive suits, and of course Samba is protected because of a deal cut with the EU. But from this day foreward, clean room implementation of proprietary APIs, and I assume any other software spec (document format, communications protocol, etc.) will have absolutely no protection under the law.

Would you contribute to a future project like Samba or Wine now?

It certainly is looking that way, but there is the whole notion that what amount to call tables can be copyrighted. What the supreme Court has done here is basically unravel the common understanding of the difference between spec and implementation, and if Java is the most obviously vulnerable, in a very real way it means any number of APIs that have been re-implemented (like the standard *nix set of system calls) could suddenly be plunged into a purgatory-like nether world. I made vulgar jokes about using stdio.h in C programs, but that's the real question. Considering that in many cases header files and libraries whose origins go back decades in many different languages and on many different architectures could become low-hanging fruit, and since copyrights are in most industrialized countries are essentially perpetual now, big software houses now have a far better club to beat competitors with than patents.

Do you think another Samba or Wine project could happen if the lower courts rule for Oracle? Who would be crazy enough to even try?

Fucking hell, I guess I'm utterly fucked, because pretty much every C program I've ever written includes #include <stdio>. Here I thought I was invoking a free and open set of library functions passed on down since the 1970s, and now it turns out I've been stealing someone's hard work in creating a standard set of functional calls. I'm dirty fucking thief.

If specifications alone can be copyrighted, then the software industry is in for a world of hurt.

A function name and parameter spec is now "someone's shit"? Oracle's position is about as sensible as SCO's was.

Funny thing is, those terms and stickers don't even always hold water.

There was a hilarious case a while back where some PC manufacturer lost a lawsuit where they had refused a warrantee repair. Basically the courts told them PC buyers expect to open the case so you can't refuse warantee service over an expected operating condition, but, they can require the customer to revert any changes they made before they qualify for service.

Didn't stop the proliferation of stickers of course, because they may not actually void anything, but they may make you decide not to try a warantee claim.

Hell my monitor has an ugly bracket for the stand on the bottom, if you want to put it on an arm, you have to either leave the bracket sticking down off the bottom, or, remove a sticker to get it off.... lol, sticker removed.