We've tried banning fermentation, narcotics, and various forms of love making. Most were designed to please a well funded, politically loud group of dunces who falsely believe we can promote social good or common good by merely passing a law and putting violators in jail. Yet none of these bans have worked. To ban gun printing would be to expect the police, FBI, ATF, etc to bust down every door in the country looking for illegally printed weapons. The Brits do this with their television license, spending quite a few pounds developing roving vans to bust violators.

Is this the kind of country we want? I'd vote for "no."

Windows 8 is not "New Coke." For this to work out as well, M$ would have to have a Pepsi-like product. On the desktop, that doesn't exist. New Coke was an attempt to re-make a flagship brand. To appeal to changing American tastes for a sweeter product. Windows 8 isn't that product. Consumers weren't clamoring for a touch screen desktop. They accepted touch on tablets and smartphones because it works on handheld devices. It doesn't work well on desktops. Look at the Windows 8 commercials. You don't see office work. You don't see email or composition. You see touch applications, and that's the point. When you buy a laptop, you expect a keyboard. You expect to type. When you buy a tablet, you expect to touch.

For this to work, Microsoft has to have a Domino's moment. Admit you were wrong, then come out with a truly well designed and well made product. I'm not seeing this happen with Blue. I hear about Blue on sites like this. I don't see M$'s corporate face on Blue. Blue feels like a politician's half-hearted admission of guilt.

I predict the business world will continue to adopt Windows 7 and skip Windows 8. If these same IT shops adopt Office 365, Windows may fall off the desktop. A web-based office automation product doesn't need expensive desktop licenses. That change could make "the year of the RHEL desktop" happen.

As someone who works in a data center, I'd add a few things:

1. Paint the walls some sort of "sand" color. It'll lower the emotional temperature in the room.
2. Keep a budget for swiffer wet pads and have a Friday "GI Party" for clean up.
3. Rubber pads for assembly. Nothing sucks more than a lost screw.
4. Hearing protection and wipes for the ear muffs or a few big dispensers with ear plugs. These rooms are LOUD.
5. Task lighting and hand sanitizer. Keep the squinting and the sick time to a minimum.

Agreed. Open Source was never meant to be a top-down heiarchy. Its history will tell you that. Some of RMS' rants speak volumes about how Open Source, like life, tends to break out and do its own thing. I'm all for competition in this category. The major distros will adopt one or the other, or both! The two projects may merge (un-fork?) and become stronger than either could alone. In the meantime, we have Xorg and it works well enough.

So let the strongest triumph over the weaker project. We could have a Street Fighter style "Finish Him" video to hail the end of the lesser. What do you think?

One big difference between torrents and a Darknet -- torrents, like social media, are meant to be open and easily shared. Darknets are designed to deny by default, allow only if invited. The total opposite of the open Internet we have today. So no, I'd not worry if I primarily operated on a properly run and maintained Darknet.

I still don't trust the government. If this was to track malware, botnets, or attempts to attack vital parts of our infrastructure, I'd be all for it. However I also know this will be used to clandestinely monitor everyone's communication. While I fall into the "nothing to hide" category, the definition of "nothing to hide" is flexible and ever changing. The truth is, in a way, I do hide. A lot. I don't mouth off on social media sites. I don't put my political opinions into forums. I limit confrontation to in-person or via telephone communication. We already live in an age of online surveillance. This new level of government surveillance is just the next step.

I look forward to the rise of the DarkNets!

After nearly 20 years of life in data centers, NOCs, etc with the constant droning of fans in my ears, I couldn't tell the difference at all. Heck my ears are already ringing just thinking about it.

Hey anyone old enough to remember "modem taxes?" Governments have been looking for ways to tax online activity for years. When I was in college, someone proposed a "stamp" fee for every email sent. Then there were micro charges on a per-packet basis. Ugh!
At least a sales tax is easily added to existing point of sale portals. With the amount of free shipping available to me, the slight increase in cost will not deter me from making online purchases.

A few more thoughts:
I'd prefer paying state sales taxes over federal sales taxes, since I'm pretty sure state sales taxes won't go to stupid things like foreign aid to France.
While I know this won't be used to balance the Federal budget (no one can do that), I think this is a test bed for a national sales tax. Question is, what will this partially fund? It certainly won't be used to pay down out growing debt! That's just crazy non-partisan independent thinking at work!

I wonder how much Google would charge? $50 per year? I wonder if it would seriosly hurt advertising revenue? Google didn't start out selling this information, they made a fortune hooking up "looks" to "finds" so it may be a viable business model. The downside? Admitting they were "evil."

I stand corrected. But my point remains - yes you can own such weapons, but now you need paperwork and permission. In the Thompson's heyday, it was sold in friggin magazines. Not many people wanted to own one. It was the social turmoil of the 60s and 70s and the availability of cheap pisotols that drove a sharp rise in gun ownerships.

True, this is well within the limits of the law. In fact, this guy is attempting to obtain a federal firearms license. He isn't subverting the government. He's wriggling through the holes in the legal system to do what he wants. One of these 'wants' is to show that the government isn't quite as high and mighty as many believe.

For me, this is further proof that a new "assault weapons ban" will be as useless as the previous ban. Gun related hommicides didn't decrease, only those involving so-called assault weapons. This doesn't include the full-auto Uzis, AK-47s, and other military carbine rifles that the ban didn't cover because they were never available for public purchase in the first place. The last man portable fully automatic weapon sold to the public was the Thompson sub machine gun. The current debate has nothing to do with military rifes. Instead it's about semi-automatic rifles which look like miliary rifles. The ban wouldn't stop gun manufacturers from producing semi-automatic rifles. The Tech-Point Model 995 is an assault weapons ban legal semi-automatic rifle. Identical to an AR-15 in operation, but different in appearance. The TEC DC9? Same thing.

The fact that you can "print this gun" proves that a ban doesn't mean the end of the semi-automatic rifle. Any gun is a machine constructed from a piece of machined steel with a few springs and pieces of plastic to make it into an operable weapon. 3D printing is neat, but you could "print this gun" using an auto-lathe for most of the machining and 3D printing for the non-working parts. You could set up shop in Mexico and "print" AR-15s all day long. Ditto full-auto M16s. Sneak them across the border and you're in business. This is something the Democrats aren't talking about. Instead they're focusing on magazine capacity and how the gun looks. Then again, DC politicians aren't the best and brightest people. They are merely popular, wealthy, and easily manipulated.

This treaty appears to limit governmental actions, not the actions of private citizens. This reads more like a conservation and good behavior contract than an outright ban on for-profit activities like mining or private colonization. It may prevent nation-states from setting up colonies, but how relevant are governments anymore?

Don't do anything which might give this guy a case to counter your actions. Set up a new WiFi router and move your equipment to this new system. Use a super long key. Something that will take him a long time to crack. See what happening on the 5Ghz side of things, and maybe move operations there.
Then set up a little monitoring software and see what you can find out. Maybe you can discover who this person is, and send him a cease and desist letter. It's shocking and unexpected. Log everything with date/time stamps in case the leech attempts a confrontation, but that's unlikely to happen.

Weapons can have all of the safety features in the world, but the ultimate safety feature will always be the person holding the weapon. If the person in question takes a weapon, loads a round, points it at someone, takes aim, and pulls the trigger none of these measures will matter.

No one talks about suing GM because a distracted driver causes a 10 car pile up. No one wants to sue Ford if they fail to get the oil changed. They can, but they will never find a judge willing to take that case. In these cases, we make the car owner not the company, responsible.

Am I calling for weapons bans? No. If the safety features prevent accidental shootings, good. Limited magaines -- infeffective. Ever see "The Outlaw Josey Wales?" Clint Eastwood's character had multiple revolvers and plenty of firepower. As assault weapons ban? No. CnC milling machines and 3D printers have never been cheaper. If you can buy the steel, you can make the weapon. Heck you can invent your own designs.

Plus banning something for the good of society never works. Alcohol in the 30s and narcotics in the 60s both created enormous criminal empires with the resources of a small country. In the case of narcotics, they have threatened the governments of Columbia and Mexico. Heck diamonds destroyed major parts of Africa and they are legal AND highly regulated. People were enslaved just to mine diamonds so First World people could look pretty and thugs could make war.