I see you're a person who fundamentally doesn't understand people. Who writes or thinks like that? About half of the population. In terms of personality Slashdot is an echo chamber of the technical stereotype, and as such it often boggles the minds of people here that words and thoughts trigger their creative side rather than their logical one. Here's a trick you can play at your next company meeting when you're bored and out of ideas. Get people to write words about snowman. Don't tell them to describe them, or define them, just to "Write about snowman". Engineers and the like will start throwing adjectives out "cold, wet, white, sticks for arms", but people with other personality types come up with all sorts of stuff. Last time this exercise was done at a shitty team building event I was forced to go to, one person wrote a poem about children building a snowman, the other only described what he felt "joy, happiness, Christmas, etc" So next time you start a sentence with "who the hell..." remember *you* are unique and the quite likely answer is "any number of the 7.529 billion people on this planet that aren't you".

You must be a lawyer. Everything you posted is factually correct but completely useless to the discussion.

I've had many cats over the last 40 years. It depends on their intelligence. Most recognize their name. Some don't at all. Some are REALLY intelligent enough to understand some english. I have a cat now that in addition to his name, he learned the words "food" and "hungry" to which he would respond by nudging his head against me, then lead me to his dish as I walked to the kitchen.

The smartest cat I ever owned actually understood English - I swear he did. I had stayed with my parents for a short while due to being displaced by a flood, and was talking to my mother about where I was going to move to. I looked at my cat and when I asked him if he would like to come with me, he reached up and nudged me in the face! My parents had this one cat who was really mean and was a real p!sser. I didn't like him, and neither did my cat. When I found my bedroom slippers soiled with cat urine, I banned that p!sser from my bedroom and told my parents that if my cat got in a fight with the p!sser that I was not going to stop him. And my cat was the reigning champion in the house. Well somehow my cat intuitively understood my wishes, and he guarded my bedroom from the p!sser. I actually witnessed this when the p!sser snuck in the room, unaware that I was laying on the bed. As he was about to crouch I warned him don't even think about it. He immediately turned to leave, and found himself face to face with my cat who snuck in behind him and had a serious look of disapproval on his face. My cat had an intimidating "look" that would command respect, I've seen it at work many times (he was a "shepherd cat" he could sense attitude and was not afraid to confront it, and was happy with other cats who were behaving). P!sser was so terrified that he attempted to go around him very slowly, and every few inches he advanced my cat moved to his lead. Over and over this happened until he reached the door. My cat was smart enough to know when he didn't have to fight, he knew his "look" was all he needed.

I used to get lots of AOL CDs in the mail which made great drink coasters. I'm getting low on coasters so I need to give Netflix my address.

We needed a special research team and all that computer equipment to tell us what gardeners have known for DECADES? CENTURIES?

When I buy a potted basil plant, there is a tag encouraging plenty of light. Gardening books spell out the care and feeding of all kinds of plants.

Seriously, ALL THAT MONEY AND TIME was spent to do nothing more than reaffirm what we already know. Great big DUH!

Huawei's "big ambitions" were not without controversy. The director in the interview conveniently neglected to mention that they are under investigation for wire fraud, money laundering, and evading international sanctions against Iran, have been caught red-handed engaging in industrial espionage, and has a bonus system for employees who engage in theft of US trade secrets.

And Facebook is NEVER to blame for all the ads they push onto member newsfeeds without their consent? I absolutely despise those intrusions and I do everything to make the moderators' job as miserable as possible by vigorously reporting the ads, especially the scams like junk health treatments. Advertising storage units? Reported as "s3xually inappropriate". Restaurants? Reported as "political issue". Entertainment? Reported as "prohibited content". And yes I exclude as much personal info as possible from my profile so that FB can't exploit it for targeted marketing.

I don't like unsolicited ads consuming my internet monthly usage. Get in my way, and I will dish it right back where it hurts. My Facebook friends picked up on the tactic.

The SCOTUS case TC Heartland vs Kraft of 2017 ruled that patent litigants can no longer "forum shop" for jurisdictions that are friendly to their case, they can only file patent infringement cases in jurisdictions where the defendant has a physical presence. This ruling was aimed squarely at non-practicing entities (the polite term for "patent trolls") who almost unilaterally selected East Texas district or Delaware to file their infringement cases.

Apple won't admit it, but the closure of the stores in the East Texas district was a strategic legal move to exploit the SCOTUS precedent and shield themselves from the patent courts that are all too well known to rule in favor for patent litigants - and for the patent trolls Apple is currently battling.

The link to the story reminded me why I stopped reading BBC News online. Too many video ads, and when you scroll down they keep interfering with the text I am trying to read. Too disruptive, I closed down the webpage quickly.

a few hundred thousand more crooks to catch

They can start by publishing the former director's phone number.

See, now this is the thing. Crohn's disease doesn't kill you. I have it, and as you can imagine I looked into what it does that will eventually kill you. It doesn't.

I have Crohns Disease and yes it CAN kill you. I had a flare up some years ago that no medication would deal with. It was attacking my piping and cat scan revealed fistulas developing in more than one place - leaking fecal matter into my bloodstream. Had that gone untreated, sepsis would had set in and killed me.

The disease may not directly kill you, but it can trigger a chain of events that leads to death. Colon cancer does the same thing.

The key is seeking treatment when symptoms are serious enough. Ignoring them or hoping they will go away on their own can be fatal.

I no longer believe ANY polls, regardless whether or not they align with my preferences. They have been manipulated way too many times.

What the authors of the website-blocking approach conveniently neglect to mention is that other countries do not possess the 5th/14th amendment protection that government cannot deprive any person of "life, liberty, or property" without due process of law. Website-blocking violates these amendments, which is why the public at large objected to SOPA and PIPA in the first place.

Attempts to criminalize copyright infringement by proposing felony penalties have never succeeded because copyright infringement is a civil offense not a criminal one. There's a fine line between them, and not every foreign country recognizes that.

The authors have banked on the short term memory of the public, but they have sadly made a bad gamble.

Maybe it's time for IP property holders to pay a tax on their property as well. Any IP whose tax is unpaid reverts to the public domain, and the pool of IP taxes collected can be used to defray the costs of protecting paid-up intellectual property. Go ahead, shoot holes in this modest proposal!

When the authors of the copyright/patent designed the IP system, the only role they assigned to the state is judicial recognition of valid copyright. In exchange for a temporary monopoly granted by the state, the role of enforcing IP was assigned squarely to the domain of the holder(s). In other words, the copyright holder doesn't get a free ride. Nowhere in copyright law is the state obligated to provide corporate welfare through subsidizing IP enforcement via taxation or any subsidy, and to suggest otherwise would conflict with the "life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness" clause in the US Constitution and the 5th/14th Amendment that government cannot deprive an person of life, liberty, and property without due process of law.

I live in rural boondocks and I'm currently on satellite ISP. I refuse to subscribe to privately owned broadband after seeing the arrogance of Charter/TW, AT&T, Comcast, etc. The only thing that will get me to leave satellite is municipal ISP. Fund the municipal infrastructure - the privately owned companies have already demonstrated that they can't be trusted with it!

IBM is the biggest patent troll of them all. Traditionally goes easy on open source projects but some flipping idiot might decide at any time that monetizing patents is the new get rich quick scheme of the month.

How quickly you forget that IBM, Red Hat, and Novell teamed to soundly defeat the much hated copyright troll SCO over Unix/Linux Copyright Disputes