This is a specious and disingenuous argument. As a long-time user of Newzbin2 I was really sad to see it go. However, I would compare them to someone who publishes and charges for an online version of the "map to stars homes" in Hollywood, except it's a "map to unlocked houses".

They aren't precisely condoning theft, but they are knowingly making it easier for thieves to plan jobs, even if their goal is to simply let people know where they can find a welcoming place to crash.

They are listing all the unlocked houses, including ones owned by people who welcome visitors, and some honest people probably use their map and don't steal anything. But we all know that some people are using it to find easy scores.

Are the owners of the robbed houses entitled to recompense from the map makers? I don't know. But let's not pretend we don't know what's happening.

Yes I know, property rights don't correlate directly to digital creations, etc, etc. it's the closest analogy I could draw.

Is this a chicken or egg problem? Providers don't switch because the software is overpriced and crappy, and the software is that way because there's no competition, and there's no competition because not enough providers are switching?

Sounds like Linus Torvalds, Apple, and Microsoft need to get in a development war in the healthcare space so we can get some decent software :)

I guess I'm not the only one that finally finished watching the recent season of Homeland. Internet controlled pacemaker, anyone?

Just to play devil's advocate, compared to most current robots 8' is awfully tall. That's like twice the height of Asimo, right? The supposed "giant anaconda", which may or may not exist, is only purported to be twice the size of the regular ones. And Andre the giant wasn't 80 feet tall :)

I think for now, giant could apply to an 8' tall robot. Hopefully we'll see some of those, as opposed to the ones in that photo.

I need to start watching WWE!
Seriously it's funny to me that the the opening paragraph hypes the "eight-foot tall robots" under a photo that was probably purposefully staged to not make the host look smaller than the bots behind him so as not to bruise his ego or something.
Pure speculation on my part of course. Don't bring your WWE robot buddies to my house to beat me up, Mr Jericho!

They didn't say they want Mr Hamill to be the central character, geeze. Any information coming out at his point is going to be very preliminary. Let's not get our nerd rage up just yet.

I just used their reimbursement calculator, and they say I should expect about $67 back. Hey, it's better than nothing, but my own conservative calculation indicates that if I was getting 25mpg instead of the 20 I'm getting, they'd owe me over $450. Oh well. At least my wife's Tucson gets the mileage we expected.

I bought my 2011 Elantra in great part ot the claimed MPG rating, and have been sorely disappointed. I consistently get 20-21 MPG while the rating was in the mid 30s.

I admit I do almost all city driving, but my 1999 Civic got 29-30 mpg for its life doing basically the same thing for 11 years, so it's not a hard number to hit.

I've complained to the Hyundai dealer and everyone I speak to gives me a different answer: "lying salesmen", "break-in period", "cheap gas", etc.

I've tried cheap, mid-price, and top-end gas for extended periods over the 12k miles I've driven it and the mileage hasn't improved one iota since the day I drove it off the lot.

The mechanics have "checked it out" twice and both times said it's working perfectly.

Needless to say I won't be buying Hyundai again unless they cut me a check to cover the lost 100 miles per tank. If I'm lucky I expect I'll get a tenth of that.

Anyone that's used the Redbox rental kiosk by my house has seen this. That thing is never calibrated, and the cursor is well over an inch from where you touch. It's so bad that you almost can't hit the scroll arrow on the left side of the screen because touching at the very edge of the monitor barely gets the cursor to the arrow graphic's right edge.

The summary says November 3rd, but the linked article says November 13th. I'll assume the original article is correct.

And how could you not mention the confirmed upgrade to the Nexus 7? That just moved it from my "interested" to my "must buy" column.

"Google is also upgrading the Nexus 7 tablet. The 16GB version of the 7-inch device is now $199, and is joined by a 32GB version retailing for $249. There’s also the option of HSPA+ mobile in addition to WiFi, which adds a bit of cost. Like the Nexus 4, it runs Android 4.2." (http://slashdot.org/topic/bi/google-rolls-out-new-nexus-smartphones-tablets/)

Questions like this just demonstrate a failure to understand the basis of monotheistic western religion. The christian god doesn't "circumvent" the rules, he *makes* the rules. He could snap his fingers or wiggle his nose and the whole universe would spring into or out of existence instantly. He could, just by thinking about it, make every human on earth suddenly believe in him wholeheartedly and without doubt. He simply chooses not to.

Too bad he's kind of a dick.

No, it's everyone's job to fight injustice. It's the government's job to enforce the law.

You are conflating justice and law in the same way that some people cry "censorship" when a web site deletes their post because the mods don't like it. It's only censorship when the government prevents you from communicating your message. When a private entity doesn't let you use their resources to communicate, it's just them conducting business as they see fit, which they have a right to do.

It's not Visa's job, nor their duty, to be a "common carrier" of financial transactions, neutral and blind to who uses it. Unlike the phone, wireless, and cable companies, Visa doesn't have a government granted monopoly on a limited resource. Therefore they have no duty to the people to provide their service to all comers.

Your argument goes wrong for a variety of reasons. First, it's based on an incorrect premise. Visa and Mastercard don't have a "more or less monopoly" on electronic transactions. You mention Paypal, which is an alternative, and there are a number of other ways to pay online, like Amex, Dwolla, Bitcoin, PayByCash, Noca, WorldPay, etc. Visa and Mastercard may currently have the bulk of transactions, but I suspect that would change pretty fast if they started cutting off payment access for political speech or other groups that take donations, as opposed to illegal activity.

Second, while your point about Wikileaks is an important one, but it’s not as cut and dried as you make it sound. Wikileaks does indeed encourage illegal activity (as opposed to a PAC), which is against Visa’s EULA. But that’s partly just the justification they needed to use. If a series of three-letter agencies come knocking on your company’s door “asking” you to stop doing business with someone they've branded a criminal, most people won't blame you if you do as “asked”.

If you don't like the fact that leaking state secrets is illegal, then complain to your government, not the businesses that the govt pressures to shut ‘em down.
However, while Visa can hide behind legality in the case of fraudsters, scammers, pedophiles, and leakers, they can't use that same argument to stop payments to racists, sexists, or communists, because none of those things are illegal in the US. There could be issues in places like France and Germany, where certain speech is illegal, but you have to respect the wishes of the people that choose to outlaw such things.

I don't see a slippery slope here, I see the slightly fuzzy lines that exist in every international business situation between legal and illegal activity.
Finally, comparing a business decision like this to vigilantism is ridiculous. If I own a store and I don't want to do business with the neighborhood drug dealer, I’m not being a vigilante; I'm exercising my freedom of association. Visa isn't hunting down scammers and breaking their fingers so they can’t type. They are simply refusing to do business with them as any company has the right to do.

Exploits are like weeds. If it's my garden and I don't want it growing there, it's a weed. If it's my computer and I don't want it running there, it's an exploit, or a virus, or malware, etc.

We all know of the dividing line for free speech where you maybe don't allow people to yell "fire" in a crowded theater because it causes panic and someone might get hurt.

Well, if people weren't stupid, they wouldn't panic, and this situation wouldn't arise, right? You could yell "fire" in every crowded theater in the country and people would simply stand up and file out in an orderly fashion and then get annoyed that their movie was interrupted.

But that's not how people work, even in a highly civilized and educated country, so we use the law to help accommodate the ignorant behavior people are prone to.

No one seems willing to admit that maybe there's a corollary here. We know full well that some ignorant people will do bad things when you yell "Allah rapes babies in the name of Muhammad" and put it all over the internet. Does that mean people shouldn't be allowed to do so?

I don't know. It's a slippery slope. But maybe even free speech purists like myself need to look at the fact that we don't live in a perfect world where everyone can be expected to behave rationally, and we need to make adjustments for that fact.