For all its servers and software, Google does not have an Army or a Navy.

They've been upset for a long time, about doing secret, unapproved missions. It's a snowden LEAK that make their discontent ... public knowledge.

Meh. I disagree - I think most NSA employees love that they get to do something really james-bond-ish, get a blank-check budget, and have essentially unlimited power over everyone else. There is no doubt a strong voyeuristic angle to the whole thing. They're also, by and large, getting paid obscene amounts of money.

I've met a number of people who work government jobs with clearances and they all act so goddamn smug about it, I've wanted to punch them in the mouth.

I think they were all quite happy nobody knew the power they had; they were "getting away with it." Now that we do, they're demoralized because they don't get to lord over us with the mystique. Plus, robbing the cookie jar isn't fun when everyone sees you do it.

Fuck 'em. I hope the place becomes a miserable place to work and the whole thing falls apart at the seams.

This wouldn't -- no counldn't have happenned in the days before computers.

Eventually, I think centralised computer control is going to go the way of semaphore. It's too easy for a centralised computer system to glitch, break, be shutdown, and then screw up the lives and functions of millions.

What we should see is decentralised systems run using independent computer systems.

This is not a failure of SSDs; it is a failure of the vendor you bought your SSDs from. HDDs could just as easily suffer from firmware bugs.

No need. Orcs mostly speak the common tongue or else their own tribal dialect. The Black Speech -- as devised by the Dark Lord in elvish runes -- was a failed attempt to linguistically distinguish his followers from those of the Alliance. It didn't take among the Orcs, but strangely the East End London accent did.

The journals of course are businesses and quite reasonably want to stay in business and make a profit.

Sadly I don't have a good idea for a solution.

Nationalise the journals.

This isn't an anti-patent troll bill. It's an anti-small inventor bill.

If so, good then; the sooner the myth of patents being for the small inventor dies the sooner everyone will finally be rid of the impediment of patents forever.

It's another FU to small inventor, just like the last patent reform.

The small inventor, and the little guy in general, has been FU-ed out of the game for a long time now. Patents are now all about legal fights and trolling, not innovation or rewarding it. It's time for them to die.

or in gaol or hanging separately:

http://kieranhealy.org/blog/archives/2013/06/09/using-metadata-to-find-paul-revere/

Financial penalties should be proportional:

  - how many others participated in this DDOS? divide by that number
  - how long were other machines involved in this? divide by that time
  - how fast was his internet connection in comparison to the others? divide by that

He admitted to guilt, but it's not fair to hold him completely financially responsible simply because he was the only person they were able to catch and was honest enough to confess.

Exactly. For content consumption, small and mobile devices are very convenient.

Who exactly spends all of their time simply "consuming" on these devices? It's virtually impossible to spend more than a day online without feeling the urge to add to the conversation, and all iDink devices and touchscreen interfaces do is get in the way of that (2-way) conversation with the outside world.

As to the consumption itself, as far as I can see, everything is clunkier on touch device. Everything. Designers are having to make buttons and icons cartoon sized in order to accomidate simple viewing on these "computers".

I simply cannot accept the proposition that people are -- willingly -- going to accept a future of either creation or consuption on these restricted devices. Even if the whole industry collectively decides to abandon PCs, in a decade or so the current infants playing with iDinks will manage to "rediscover tactile touch based text input devices once called 'keyboards' " as a faster, better method of interfacing with their computers.

Eventually, some of them will even rediscover the command line as well.

When you talk to managers, you need to talk business. Throw every reason you think important into the trashcan. Then build your case from the ground up as a business case. Show that it saves the company money or increases productivity. Basically, make the case that your proposal == more $$$.

Essentially, you must dance the corporate Dance of the Seven Veils, in order to entice managers in the only language they are able to speak.

The last time I looked at the statistics for this, a bicycle rider involved in a collision w/ a car at highway speeds was a fatality 96% of the time --- I can't think of a single sort of car accident w/ that sort of fatality statistic.

There was a lengthy discussion about this here on Slashdot a while back, but oddly, it's not linked at the bottom of the page at the moment.

If I had mod points, you'd have one.

Our local PBS affiliate (the only channel I watch) switched early and broadcast at full power initially --- I was able to get the signal in my basement w/ rabbit ears --- until the other stations switched over and they also reduced power --- can't pick up the signal in my basement so had to run a line up to the living room and build a digital TV antenna:

http://www.current.org/wp-content/themes/current/archive-site/ptv/ptv0821make.pdf

When the weather is bad I have to pick it up from behind the couch and place it in the window.

If you're in Australia, beat the rush and grab any parts you need before the rush (or go into business making and selling them).