If they asked for evidence, they'd become liable for any infringement. This is all controlled by the Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998. Under DMCA, when they receive a notice, they have to remove the content. If the other side sends them a counter-notice, they have to put it back up. If the complainant then notifies the carrier that they are filing suit in federal court, the carrier takes the content own again. If they choose not to follow this procedure, if they set themselves up to judge the evidence, they then become liable for any infringement. In other words, if they are going to judge the evidence, they better get it right 10% of the time, always coming to the same conclusion that a judge or jury does later. Otherwise, Google would be liable for any instances where the court disagreed with Google's decision. The problem is that DMCA doesn't effectively provide penalties for filing bogus notifications. You can send out completely false notifications and have things taken down all day long and nobody can do anything to stop you (almost). DMCA does one good thing in that it allows Google (or a web hosting company, or Slashdot) to operate without having their own internal court system to decide these things. The problem is that it requires Google to do the claimant's bidding without any cost or risk to the claimant.

DMCA is 1998, so Bill Clinton.

There is that. I just clicked on your post history and saw that your last few posts seem to be quite reasonable and level-headed. I guess that means I won't have the opportunity to use this joke. If you were a goofball extremist, I'd have to reply to one of your comments by saying: What are you, stoned out of your mind?

Oh Ganjadude. Never mind.

Ps, International Rivers is a good place to start if you want to know more about the environmental damage done by dams, particularly large dams as used for hydroelectric power. They are advocates of course ; just as the ASPCA isn't objective about animals, International Rivers isn't objective about rivers. They advocate for what they believe is right, but each is a good source of information about their side of the side of the issue.

I don't have figures for birds specifically handy, but I can tell you the best and worst for wildlife generally. Ignoring minor things like tidal power, the two best are geothermal and nuclear. It's too bad that geothermal is limited to certain geological areas, because it's pretty good on all measures. It releases some greenhouse gases and often requires fracking, but it's pretty safe for wildlife and generally a good idea. Nuclear is quite clean, except of course on the two instances of a major accident.

The worst for wildlife are coal and hydroelectric dams. Hydro surprises some people, but in the best case a dam starts outby destroying a large swath of habitat, then permanently disrupts fish migration and the ecosystems dependant on the waterway. In the worst case, Banqiao. The Banqiao hydroelectric dam disaster was far, far worse than any nuclear accident ever has been.

That's true, they have little reason to care about serving the customer. All that does is help them upsell to a more expensive package, voip, etc. There's no competition , due to legally enforced franchise monopolies.

    Some people correctly point out that in a perfect world, with perfectly unselfish people, and people who all have identical preferences, it would be most efficient to have only one company providing lines to each home.

That's true of course. In a perfect world, it wouldn't make sense to have two cell towers covering the same area. It would be more efficient more Verizon to build towers in one state, Cricket to build towers in another state, and Cricket to cover a third state. Of course, people are not perfectly unselfish, and people do have preferences. Because Boost Mobile doesn't have a monopoly, because other companies have towers covering the same homes, Boost has to compete on price and service. It's not perfectly efficient, but it works much better than an "efficient" monopoly like cable.

Come to think of it, it's pretty inefficient to have two grocery stores right next to each other, Whole Foods and Walmart. It would be more efficient for one store to serve the neighborhood, getting rid of the duplication. Rather than arbitrarily allow one company to run the store, we could have the government run the store in each neighborhood. Like the USSR. It sounds stupid when you replace "cable service" with "cell phone service" or "grocery service", but the facts are the same- avoiding duplication would be more efficient. It only works well if people are perfect, though; perfectly competent, perfectly unselfish, and if people don't have different preferences.

I want a strong signal on my cable modem, so it is very reliable, and fast response to problems because I rely on my cable internet. For my phone, price is more important. Your preferences may be the opposite. That's fine, I can use Boost Mobile because they're cheap and in the same place you can whichever company gives you what you want.

I can't wait until Google fiber comes to town and the cable company has to start competing on speed, price, and service.

In my business, about 90% of customers who called to cancel ended up buying more, and leaving happy.
The difference is, we solve their problem, make them a HAPPY customer, THEN see what more we can offer that further meets their needs.

Here's a typical call:

Customer: I want to cancel.
Me: Sure, no problem. While I do that, I'm curious, is there something about the product that wasn't meeting your needs?
C: Your product doesn't do X.
Me: Oh, yes, that is important. Our product can actually do that for you, one second ...
[keyboard tapping]
Me: You're now configured for X, and the cool thing about the way we do X is ...
C: Oh, uhm, that's cool I guess.
Me: If you ever want to do X++, we can certainly do that for you too.
C: That's pretty cool. I never knew you could do that.
Me: Our product has a lot of features that aren't immediately obvious, so if there's ever anything you need, just let us know and we can probably help you.
C: Hidden features? Like what?
Me: Y, and Z are kind of handy. Come to think of it, since you said you want to do X, you might want to do ABC with that. Last week we just released an addon that does ABC.
C: Gee, I could really use ABC. How do I get that addon?

That's interesting. Last year Microsoft bragged that they'd reduced its boot time to 8.5.

User-uploaded CSS would be interesting. I bet I could figure out a way to do the following in pure CSS. Right now it's a user.js file.
It sets display: none on any posts by APK so I don't have to scroll past his spam on my phone. // ==UserScript== // @name NoAPK // @namespace http://yoursite.com/ // @include * // @version 1 // ==/UserScript==

if(window.location.hostname.indexOf("slashdot.org") > -1)
{
        var xpath = '//li[contains(concat(" ", normalize-space(@class), " "), " comment ") and contains(., "hosts file") and contains(., "apk") and string-length(.) > 10000]';
        apkposts = document.evaluate(xpath, document, null, XPathResult.UNORDERED_NODE_SNAPSHOT_TYPE, null);
        for ( var i=0 ; i apkposts.snapshotLength; i++ )
        {
                apkposts.snapshotItem(i).style.display = 'none';
        }
}

To make it easy, here's a picture of the "centuries old" technology in a 2010 model John Deere 1910E.
https://c1.staticflickr.com/5/...

> Farming has been stuck in a bit of a rut, ... farming has been using techniques that have been handed down from centuries ago.

Apparently this author's understanding of agriculture is based on cartoons. Self-driving cars are a brand new thing; largely self-driving agricultural equipment is not so new. Have a look at the cockpit of a modern John Deere in working trim. Better yet, come on down to Tecas A&M (agriculture and mechanical) and we'll show you some things. It's no coincidence that A&M is a leader in drone research too.

Somewhat off-topic, TFS mentions the penalty is up to six months in jail or a $2,500 fine. I've noticed recently the fine vs jail time often seems quite out of balance. Somewhere I saw 1 year or $1000. I'd rather pay a $1000 fine than spend a WEEK in jail, much less a YEAR. Does anybody know why the fines are always so low compared to the jail time?

I'd think it would be in the state's interest to do the opposite- collect a $5,000 fine from someone rather than housing them in jail for six months.

It occurs to me that we on Slashdot are a knowledgeable crowd. I was thinking about how many person-hours we've spent on saying "fuck beta". In a small fraction of that time, maybe five minutes each, we could suggest some CSS tweaks that would freshen the look (what Dice marketing department wants) without getting in the way of functionality (what we oldtimers want).

If they can make their 2015 machine cold boot in under four seconds, and come up from suspend in under one second, it'll be almost as good as a 2013-2014 Chromebook. Here's to hoping Microsoft can catch up.

What you say is true, but it's funny in a way that reminds me of something I'd do.

Ac: They shouldn't be connected to the internet.
            -> Sarten-X: They need to be connected to the internet in order to be connected to each other.
                    -> raymorris: They can be connected to each other without being connected to the internet.
                            -> dutchwhizzman: Paragraphs of unrelated commentary