Wow. Talk about ignorance aloud. And on Slashdot!

The "issue" to be addressed is the need for a way to uniquely identify a device as distinct from other devices. This is accomplished by the use of a number called a MAC address. Because it uniquely identifies a device, it can be used to (gasp!) uniquely identify a device.

That's what Renew (the company in question with the "smart bins") was doing... logging MAC addresses announced by wifi cards as they try to moderate a wifi connection.

Really?

Tell that to Netflix? It's all 100% DRM and at $8/month is demonstrably reducing the piracy rate.

Microsoft has a long standing, dominant set of softwares (Windows/Office) that has been its cash cow for longer than many of us have been old enough to vote. It's the classic case for disruptive technologies:

1) The old, highly profitable incumbent using old technology and charging pretty pennies for it.

2) The new upstart technology, able to do similar stuff in a new context and dramatically cheaper.

3) Incumbent tries to mash its old technology into the new context to preserve its margins.

4) Incumbent dies a death of a thousand paper cuts as the new context, typically more nimble and with an entirely new, cheaper cost structure, slowly peck at the old incumbent until it's irrelevant.

Many of us old-timers remember when IBM ruled the roost for the PC. Some of us remember when DEC was the dominant force for mini computers. A few of us remember when IBM ruled the roost for computing mainframes, before the mini computer took sway.

We should give Microsoft lots of credit. Microsoft had a *long* time at the helm. It was able to cash in on the entire PC revolution, and even much of the Internet revolution, until the Mobile revolution, which it foresaw a decade or more in advance and tried hard (but hardly) to embrace.

For me, going from Windows Phone 6.1 to Android 2.2 on a Motorola Droid 2 was like going from a rusty riding lawn mower to an LXi Convertible. It's sad, really. Microsoft had its part in the mobile game for several hardware generations, and they were beaten so mightily that they are now basically the upstarts trying to be a halfway, third place contender.

Admire what they've done, but this mobile situation is just sad given how hard they tried.

How is a "mesh network" (which is typically high latency) going to help latency when local bandwidth is seldom a problem?

This is drivel, makes no sense, and is just a bunch of buzz words thrown together by somebody who has no clue.

I'm an ex Verizon customer as well. If they hadn't just made up fees to put on my bill, I'd have happily paid their stiff phone prices. Switched to Metro PCS, saving money to not worry; never going back!

The fact that an airport as busy as SFO doesn't have VASI/PAPI lights strikes me as fundamentally stupid. This is one of the busiest airports in the world. Yes, pilots should be able to land the sucker without lights, but SFO airspace is very busy and very dense. It's silly to think that not providing something as basic as approach lights will have no effect.

A quick google for reveals a cost that might be $50,000 which, for something as busy as SFO, probably compares to the toilet paper budget, or the cost of waxing the floors every week. I've flown (small plane pilot!) in the SFO airspace and ANYTHING you can do to reduce pilot work load is a good thing. Certainly, the cost of fixing the !@#$% lights pales compared to the cost of an emergency response.

Oh, but we have figured out how to create a sustainable self-enclosed biome. Running for over 50 years, it's one of the Science community's longest running experiments... .

OMG! Crazy conspiracy theorists can build bad guns with printers!

BOLLOCKS

Anybody can go to their local hardware store and build a zip gun for as little as $10.

Quote: Keep in mind this should only be used in extreme situations, survival situations, or simply having fun. This homemade 12 guage is simply awesome!

Dunno if you ever noticed, but the "let there be light" happened *before* the sun, stars and planets were created...

Where did that light come from?

All this banter about the NSA = bad or Echelon = bad or the requirement of warrant is entirely missing the point. The truth is that this fundamental lack of privacy is guaranteed to happen. We live in an era when recording data is so cheap and so easy that it's happening accidentally, automatically, as a daily part of living life. Last time I had contact with the police, my phone recorded the entire thing from my pocket. Audio quality was quite good, too. With 32 GB of space on my phone, I could literally record my entire day, every day, and keep days worth of audio on hand in case something "interesting" happened. Oops! What happened to the privacy of those around me?

But, the problem isn't the computers recording your every move, it's the secrecy with which it's being done and the lack of accountability that secrecy gives rise to.

This was predicted years and years ago and the brilliant, understandable answer to avoid abuse is simple: transparency .

I don't think that cops should have the option of wearing cameras; I think that no arrest should ever be done without them, and simply lacking the arrest footage should be enough to dismiss the case. Any and all public places should be open to be recorded without further notice. And all recordings of public places or of public officers in the performance of their duties should also be public. (with an appropriate time delay)

Some areas are already experimenting with these ideas and the result is nearly 90% reduction in police misconduct complaints. The privacy of our actions is far less important than the abuse of the information collected.

Because it's highly relevant: Good morning Baltimore!

Isn't it sad that somebody thought about putting javascript into PDF and concluded that it was a "good idea"?

The fact that you would even state such abject stupidity means you don't understand the simple, salient point that has long ago been made. You would do well to avail yourself of the reams of tired, boring, and utterly meaningless conversations in the past where I eventually explained the simple point so that a moron like you can stop wasting all our time in the here and now.

If you want "maturity" as defined by some passive aggressive type of niceness that comes when you don't ever say what you are actually thinking, you are in the wrong place. We're here to get something done and you can take your sissy, pandering, liberal business-speak ethos and cram it into some corner that doesn't involve the rest of us who are trying to get something valuable done.

Ha ha! That's rich!

I mean, that's rich, and so's Linus, but you aren't. Rich, that is. Working from home in your bathrobe and getting rich doing it providing something of such valuable that it's used practically everywhere you turn is hardly the hallmark of a loser.

Now, if what he primarily produced was sarcastic Starcraft II commentary videos, that'd be a different story...

An article that decries all the valuable, important stuff that could have been brought up, but then doesn't bother to bring them up and/or discuss them in any detail?

This article was a waste of my time. I wish Slashdot had a thumbs up/down on articles.