I looked through the site and I can't find any article making this point. Last post by Adam was in January.

Actually, this doesn't have to be a solution for the entire set of issues they're facing, just for some. One of the problems this solution could solve, is that regular police wouldn't be able to go in and confiscate servers. If their website goes down, nobody can access it, not the ones in the countries where authorities get involved in enforcing IP, nor the ones in the rest of the world. So even if it's not a "silver bullet", it's still helpful for their activity. Plus, it's damn cool. :)

I see the following advantages to this solution.
1. Don't know exactly how copyright enforcement really works, but I'm guessing the military doesn't get involved in this kind of activities, and the police doesn't have the required equipment to destroy a satellite. Putting jokes aside, who's going to assume responsibility for shooting down a satellite? I doubt the MPAA and RIAA will buy the equipment for it, and I don't see the military getting involved in that unless it really becomes a problem of "national security".
2. They could set up multiple receiver points down here, in various places all over the world, and if one is "put down", they'd still have the others.

I think that's the point - these robots don't have free will, which we humans allegedly have. This is why your argument is not valid - we were not designed to get along with each other, we were allegedly designed to be free to decide whatever we like. Apparently we like to go to war with our own kind.

Paving rural roads without a plan to keep them fully maintained is like giving a school a bunch of unpatched Windows boxes. It's not long until you're spending more time working around the new problems than you would if you'd just stuck to the old way of doing things.

I think this is the first reverse-car-analogy I've seen on Slashdot - or am I too new here? :)

Believe it or not, there are roads that don't have speed limits, which is why there are car manufacturers that design and build cars that go over 100 mph. Also, some people believe that at least a significant number of roads, if not most, have arbitrary speed limits that are do not take into account the quality of the car, the weather, the quality of the road (or its level of disrepair, or age) - all of which are factors that impact safety hugely. Those people will use any opportunity to go over the speed limit, while still believing that what they do is within reasonable safety limits. And the auto industry surely enjoys that as well. Otherwise, wouldn't it be easier to just ban all cars that go over 100 mph? Everybody would use small engines that burn little fuel, and there would be no breaking the speed limits.

Well actually the people of Moldova didn't actually want to unite with Romania in the early 90s. A poll in '92 showed that 70% of the people in Moldova were against the unification with Romania.

The 'muscles' expand width-wise by about 200 percent when a voltage is applied, but are stronger than steel lengthwise.

So how does it help that the 'muscles' expand width-wise? Shouldn't the 'muscles' expand or contract length-wise, while being strong _also_ length-wise so that they'd be usable? If real muscles expanded width-wise without contracting length-wise as I've seen in the videos, they'd be pretty useless I would think.

I think this may depend on the software development model. The "release early, release often" probably works well when you just add small bits of functionality that are properly tested, and that slowly build up to a level where they collectively constitute a greater goal. To achieve this you need to have refined business requirements, properly trained devs, and a good set of check in and test procedures. I believe this software development model is called Rapid Application Development (RAD), where you have many small code-test-release cycles.

On the other side of the coin is the traditional waterfall model, where "release early, release often" creates a complete mess. Since the product is not supposed to do anything meaningful until it's all coded, pre-releases are crap, and so are intermediate releases. It only makes sense to release once you're at the end of a cycle when using this model.

And there are many examples of free software products that have clear goals, and use version number below 1 until they reach the desired set of goals, where they call their product "1.0" or something like that. In the meantime, they can still be useful. WINE is just the first that comes to mind.

About the names - MS products have no personality. As the folks on bbspot so eloquently put it:
"Microsoft leaves no doubt what their products are. If they made toilet paper it would be called Butt Wiper. Internet Explorer isn't a bad name, but it's not spectacular."
http://www.bbspot.com/News/2005/01/firefox_vs_internet_explorer.html