Then you would be removing an option for people who are victims to tell their stories anonymously. The current system appears to be working - all of the anonymous trolls are being modded down to oblivion and rational posts are being modded up.

That is how the technology will start but as it improves, it will surpass humans. For example, we already have numerous systems to assist drivers: blind spot warnings, lane stability control, and front-end collision detection. Most of these systems have been around for several years and over time they will be refined to the point that they're better at detecting danger and reacting than humans. For the time being, I'm with you in that I wouldn't trust a vehicle to take control away from me, but we're rapidly reaching a point where we will have to admit that the technology is better than we are. But we're going to need to test the hell out of these systems to be sure that they're reliable and secure.

I know, right?! It's like the government doesn't even know the first thing about cutting-edge technology.

You either failed to read TFS or you simply glossed over the most important detail:

NHTSA believes that V2V capability will not develop absent regulation, because there would not be any immediate safety benefits for consumers who are early adopters of V2V

The point is that given the current situation, there won't be any standard because there is no motivation for car manufacturers to develop such a system since there would initially be so few cars that could communicate with each other in the first place. Even if you got past that barrier, it would require the independent cooperation of competing car companies to implement in order to build a feasible system. Worse yet, if you did manage to get companies to voluntarily cooperate, their cooperation could easily turn to collusion as they could lock out smaller car manufacturers from participating in the creation of the standard or they could develop a closed standard altogether.

No, this is the precise situation that government should be getting involved in. The current situation has little to no financial incentive to motivate the private sector to implement, so making it mandatory and letting them participate heavily in the creation of the standard is the next best option.

I think your tin foil helmet is on too tight and is cutting off the circulation to your brain. Normally I would recommend loosening or removing the helmet, but either way I think time will resolve the issue.

In addition to that, it is theoretically possible to get RDP in Wayland working similar to X-forwarding. RDP has superior performance to X since it supports compression and it can be used to share a single application or an entire desktop, just like X. At that point, X will hold absolutely no advantages over Wayland.

I am reluctantly tolerant of ads since I realize that they pay the people who provide the content I'm consuming without charge, but if I'm reading a text article and a video ad with sound pops up, I kill the sound by closing the tab. I won't tolerate that rudeness when there are so many other sources of news that don't expose me to such tripe.

The rightsholders have claimed copyright on birdsong, a public transmission of the space shuttle launch, and many other claims of complete nonsense, proving that their algorithms are way too aggressive in flagging videos and that they can't even be bothered to review the "infringing" material before issuing a takedown notice. So who wants to bet that the legislative resolution to this issue has nothing to do with harsher penalties for fraudulent requests and everything to do with harsher penalties for "pirates" who happened to have a radio or television playing in the background when they caught something unusual on video?

It's even worse than that. Some companies don't even want to sell their products in the U.S. out of fear of patent litigation. I had a feeling this would eventually happen, but I didn't think it would happen this soon. The U.S. is losing ground in the tech sector and the worst part is that it's our own fault.

Well yes and no, patent protects innovation because you have a monopoly on your idea.

While I agree with most of what you have said, I have to make a pedantic statement about a common mistake that you have made that infuriates me - you can not patent an idea! You may patent an implementation of an idea, otherwise known as an invention, but you are not supposed to be able to patent the underlying idea.

You're never forced to patent your idea tho (see Coca-Cola, never patented, receipt never given).

This is true, although you've used a bad example since recipes are not eligible to be patented. But otherwise, you are correct - unpatented ideas can be protected as trade secrets.

Many people do not understand the nature of a "free market". To help them put it into perspective, a "free market" means that the players in the market are free to screw over each other and their customers as much as they want. If you don't like it, your only option is to start your own company assuming that the established players haven't already cornered the market or the infrastructure required to bring the product or service to market. However, healthy and fair competition is rarely ever the result of a free market - that only exists with a moderate amount of regulation to prevent the established players from stomping or buying out the competition.

This agreement definitely favors Apple since the U.S. cases still proceed where Apple's has the advantage of strong support for their software patents as well as home court advantage. I can't help but wonder why Samsung would agree to this, especially the part about dropping the case in their home country.

True, but approximately 90% of businesses fail within the first three years. Unfortunately, I can't pay my mortgage in stock that's worth less than toilet paper.

Yeah, but then I'd have to live in Texas!

Where do you live that startups pay ridiculously good money? Most of the startups I've seen pay mediocre at best and provide compensation in the forms of promises that you'll be rewarded when the company "makes it big". If you want great money, medium-sized businesses are the way to go right now. They're stable and they tend to focus on taking care of their employees. It used to be the case that large corporations offered the best compensation, but many are still feeling the effects of the market crash and continue to shrink as well as put the squeeze on benefits. Since medium-sized companies don't have as much overhead, many of them aren't feeling the effects of the crash as much and are able to take better care of their employees. Regardless of the size of the company you choose to work for, it's best to dabble in the new languages and technologies, but don't put all of your eggs in those baskets - many of them are fads that are sure to fail the test of time.