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Are you an American? I ask because I cringe when I see this type of comment from a people who should understand what freedom and limited government is supposed to mean.

We don't use a metric of what I 'need' to do to determine what freedoms I should have. I don't need to purchase a 64 ounce mountain dew. That hardly means that I should be protected from doing so if I choose to. It's not exactly analogous to the drone situation, but it's a good representation of why the metric you propose is NOT one than anyone worried about personal freedom would ever support.

I don't need to make an argument of why I should be able to do something. You're trying to put the onus on the users, when it fact the onus is ALWAYS on the person trying to take away. Do we have systems in our cars that prevent us from crashing the gates at the White House? Do we have systems in our phones that prevent us from abusing the 911 emergency line?

I could continue, but frankly if you don't understand or agree with the argument it's pointless to go on. You comment regarding the United States being 'not so different' that China is fairly telling. It's not based in any semblence of reality. Censorship? Political arrests?

You argument is completely nonsensical on both counts.

I didn't know that. It actually bothers me that they would intentionally make their product un-flyable in areas to 'prevent' me from breaking the law. Is it a law that they have to do it? I'm looking at car manufacturers: how would people feel if they governed their cars to the posted speed limits on the roads? A lot more analogies can be drawn. I'm not surprised that a Chinese company took this route: it's par for the course in China to be under the governmental thumb.

China is preparing for a cyber war. They've watched what happened to North Korea. Having more direct connections to the net both prevents you from being DDOS'd as easily and allows you to counterattack. It's a simple numbers game. The person with the biggest pipe is going to end up winning the fight.

1. Don't actually develop technology
2. Hire another company to build smart phones with no particularly compelling features
3. ????????
4. Profit!


Exactly HOW does that bring a company back from irrelevancy?

Unless they are planning to acquire some whiz-bang startup with new tech or a new social paradigm that is going to make them stand out, this will just continue their slide into obscurity.

I've said it before and I'll say it again. People act like this sort of thing is new. But every single industry has the same problem with the same kind of thing. Telling your kids not to go into your field is pretty much a 'grass is greener' viewpoint. Take it from someone who works in automotive, you don't WANT the solutions that people propose. You're going to end up going to sensitivity training, diversity training, business relationship training and sexual harassment training. When it's all said and done the only thing you'll have learned that you didn't already know is a new repertoire of jokes about the topic. Note: When you're in sexual harassment class and they ask you what you would do if a girl with nice donuts walks by, the correct response is not "eat them".

Actually, that's where you're wrong. Americans hate each other. We treat each other like crap. Here's the thing though: anytime ANYONE not from another country tries to fuck with us we immediately band together. We may not get a long, but we have a nationalistic streak a mile wide.

So, rather than just selling them on the exchanges, they're pricing them in huge blocks that only the wealthy can afford. I mean seriously, how many folks here have $150k burning a hole in their pocket that they want to plunk down for some bitcoin? I truly hate our government. These bitcoins are going to be sold a huge (unrealized) loss to the wealthy, who are going to turn a giant profit. Fantastic. No wonder it's 'closed' bidding.

I don't normally reply to my one post, but here's the key take away from that article:

Codecademy is also hoping to convince employers that completing one of those programs is a meaningful qualification for a job

I.e. - create a new certification that companies can require. Then profit from it.

Where you have to list assumptions for your problem statement. For instance: 1. We're assuming that the 'beginner' already has a functional knowledge of more advanced math. 2. We're assuming that the 'beginner' already has a functional knowledge of computers - things like screen widths And so on. Yeah. I can grab my 7 year old, plop him down and teach him to write basic programs like 'hello world'. But he won't have the background in all the other subjects along with the critical thinking and problem solving skills that are required to actually be a good programmer. THAT's a skill set that takes way more than 3 months to teach.

Because I'm 100% sure that a couple of government 'visitor' types stopped by to help Stripe make this decision.

Yep. And fan pages, or personal pages that might come up will be totally buried because they won't have corporate legitimacy under this search engine.

That is only true because this is still a novelty. When other people and companies jump onboard, google will be deluged with hundreds of thousands of requests from everything from microsoft to restaurants to politicians. At that point no one will be paying attention. This needs to get fixed, ASAP.

Can we please retitle this story to "Armchair Quarterbacks Randomly Decide They Don't Like Curiosity"? Because, in all seriousness, do you think a that a bunch of rocket-scientists and engineers are like "nah.... let's just point the camera at clouds and do nothing with this huge multi-million dollar rover". Far more likely that the engineers behind the project are doing everything they physically can with curiosity, but this review panel doesn't like the reality of what can be done. I can think of a great Dilbert comic or two that cover this.

Actually, the article doesn't say anyone has been banned using the data. It specifically says that NO one currently knows what happens with the data. So that's a pretty large red herring. That doesn't negate the heinousness of them tracking the websites you visit *just* in case you might cheat. Very NSA-esque.

He didn't say most phones. He said HIS phone. Nice try at changing the conversation once you realized you've lost.