What can we do? Nothing. Nothing except watch Slashdot die. And given this kind of bullshit, I'm going to be chuckling and nodded my head in satisfaction.

It is exactly this kind of idiocy that has fucked up the US economy beyond repair: Let's never look beyond next quarter's financial statements. That seems like an awesome strategy to people who can't be bothered to give two shits about whether the property exists the quarter after; who only care if their wallet is slightly fatter and they can justify moving on to destroying the next property.

Tell me, oh great Slashdot editors: How do those financial statements look when nobody is left to consume your bullshit?

My search for a replacement begins today.

I would say that following somebody around and confronting them (what, do you think Trayvon Martin stopped walking and yanked him out of his car or something?), solely because they are walking in "your" neighborhood, would fit the definition of "start[ing] the fight." Particularly if you do so with a firearm.

Much as he might like to believe otherwise, this man is not a police officer. He has no right to stop anybody for anything, and in choosing to do so he took the danger upon himself. That's exactly why the dispatcher told him he didn't need to follow the kid: Because doing so could be dangerous, either to the kid or to Zimmerman himself. Turns out it was.

If Martin was armed, then I might be able to believe some kind of self defense claim. He wasn't, and Zimmerman has made no kind of "ZOMG I thought your Skittles were a gun!" claim of a mistaken impression. For that matter, Martin was shot in the back. Precisely what kind of imminent danger are you in from somebody who is not even facing you (and who may have been on the ground at the time depending on how the stories unfolded)?

While we're at it, yeah, we have to address the race question. Have you noticed how every day, Zimmerman's father comes out and yaps to the police about how innocent his son is how many black friends he has with all sorts of details he's either inventing out of thin air or, more likely, he got from his son? If you've followed the case it's hard to miss. So with all this information Zimmerman is essentially leaking, why have we not heard a single word about the whole basis for the confrontation and the catalyst for the reaction thereafter? Why have we not heard a single word about how walking with an iced tea makes you suspicious at all, much less suspicious enough to call the police about and then stalk? It's what everyone on the planet most wants to know about this case and the only thing he doesn't have an answer for. I find that highly suspicious.

Zimmerman is a wanna-be cop tough guy who had a seventeen year old kid show him exactly how fast he craps his pants when confronted with "danger." He deserves what he got and more -- like, say, a nice prison sentence.

I've been fairly friendly to Sony, at least in terms of the Playstation, even through all of their various nonsense (which I am sure does not need to be recounted in this crowd). I owned a Playstation, Playstation 2 and Playstation 3. With no details I would probably be inclined to buy a Playstation 4.

To be honest, even the DRM thing doesn't bother me that much -- I don't like it, but I don't buy a lot of used games so I don't feel a huge effect. It's one of those things I would probably grit my teeth about but push through.

But lack of backwards compatibility is an absolute dealbreaker. I'm not throwing away my previous investments in PS1/PS2/PS3 titles, nor am I keeping multiple consoles to avoid doing so. If that's what they are going to force me to do, I might as well get an Xbox or some other system--expand the games available to me and avoid incentivizing that kind of customer-hostile behavior at the same time.

I'm not some great crusader, but everybody has their limits and this would push past mine.

Reaction time is also cut considerably, as is the time it takes to physically perform whatever act is deemed the best course of action. If "slam on the breaks" is the action, the car doesn't have to lift its foot off the pedal and move it over to slam the brake -- the car's already braking.

A child running in front of a car is a recipe for disaster either way, but the kid is probably safer with the driverless.

You are only correct if none of the computer-ignorant people the OP has come across were ever successful. If they were both ignorant about computers and successful, then success clearly does not require you not to be ignorant about computers.

Quite frankly I think the lot of you should "get more training" in choosing the right words for the situation. We all know success is difficult to define much less factor, so why are we pretending that computer skills or gregariousness or connections or what-have-you are "requirements?" All of those things can be--and have been--circumvented by extremely successful people.

Some things make success more attainable. Computer skills may or may not be in that category at this point in our society. That does not make them required.

In your case, I would highly suggest skipping the snarkiness if your own argument is not going to be perfect in turn.

I've often wondered why we tolerate fine print that contradicts, in any way, the actual statements made. Whenever I see a commercial with some claim and an asterisk, my mind usually fills in the bottom portion (which typically shoots off the screen too fast for me to actually read) as "* not really."

In a way it's kind of fun. I think it gives a strange insight into how advertisers perceive us.

I suppose the problem is it's hard to come up with a hard-and-fast definition for a contradiction. Take some diet program for example. "Lose up to 5 pounds per week!" is actually a true statement because the "up to" saves them from the case where people don't lose anything close to five pounds, but if they wanted to add something like "with an exercise routine" to the fine print, is that a contradiction? It could be argued fairly easily that it's not the diet that's helping you lose weight, but the exercise, so did it contradict?

Not that I am defending their actions, but I do wonder if there is something cultural going on. Is there something in particular about Japanese culture that encourages that degree of control (or perhaps "order")?

The extents to which they are willing to go seem extreme, even compared to other companies who are charter members aboard the DRM bandwagon. Is there something more to it than just "Sony = teh sux?"

Does it bother anybody else that the source in question is as bad as it is?

I looked at the source for the claim that the US has engaged in industrial espionage, which points to a 194 page report from a European commission and which the person who made the claim is clearly hoping was too long for anybody to read.

The only point relevant to the claim is this:

The United States readily admits that some of its intelligence service's activities also concern industry. This includes, for example, monitoring of the observance of economic sanctions, compliance with rules on the supply of weapons and dual use goods, developments on commodities markets and events on the international financial markets. The rapporteur's findings are that the US services are not alone in their involvement in these spheres, nor is there any serious criticism of this.

In other words, the industrial espionage they know about is something they aren't even willing to criticize.

Further along, under a big heading "Is ECHELON suitable for industrial espionage?" they go on to explain that if it finds any, it was an accident.

The strategic monitoring of international telecommunications, can produce useful information for industrial espionage purposes, but only by chance. In fact, sensitive industrial information is primarily to be found in the firms themselves, which means that industrial espionage is carried out primarily by attempting to obtain the information via employees

(their emphasis)

In other words, they took two paragraphs and three bullet points to say "no, they wouldn't bother using ECHELON for this."

It is followed by a chart of cases of industrial espionage (with no explanation as to how they arrived at any of the entries), and the only entry that may relate to ECHELON (rather than using an agent or taking photographs) is a 1994 NSA action where they intercepted calls and faxes related to how Airbus was bribing Saudi Arabian officials to win a contract. Those dastardly Americans! It's so rude to use spy on the competition when they're just trying to bribe somebody. Gosh! And yet still, I'm just supposing this entry is in any way related to ECHELON since it makes no such claim.

I am not claiming the US does not engage in this kind of behavior; they probably do, and for all I know they've been caught red-handed at it too. But this report is not proof of that, even if we were to take Wikipedia as a great source of anything to begin with.

That was my instinct as well. They also own YouTube, which opens up some possibilities: Obviously, great video searching options but also automatic video transcripts and things like that. Once they have a transcript they can run their other algorithms over it and relate it more strongly to other sources, both video and non-video sources. If there's a G+ account to tie into, you also have all of that information.

Better search. Better recommendations. Better profiles. Better advertising placement. It's a big win for Google, and it's not like audio/video postings are going anywhere anytime soon. Now that so many people have a smartphone in their pocket, those video recordings are only getting more common.

I agree that the idea is kind of silly, mostly because it's just too much damn work to attack a gay person when there are significantly easier avenues available, but it's not as simple as you make it out to be.

If your profile is wide open to the world, then yeah, it's precisely that silly. If it's restricted to friends and family, it's still available to targeted advertising and that advertising can "leak" data. Or at least that's his premise.

Public safety issue? Not really. If you want to attack some gays, just find a gay bar or a gay dating site or something. Paying money to target advertising to leak private data so you can track them down to attack is, well, an awful lot of effort. Then again I don't understand the whole homophobia thing, so I guess the entire concept is lost on me.