Regulation in the modern US is not about a level playing field, it is about corrupt businesses and corrupt officials using regulations as an excuse to persecute competitors.

Look, it's obvious that this will cause an absolute flurry of lawsuits so deep that it will become the new record holder for the world's tallest mountain.

I don't think anyone seriously doubts that.

However, if enough geeks and nerds back up enough of the films each, it could become another DeCSS John/Beowulf moment, where the status quo (who aren't currently in this collection) is untenable and a new dynamic is forced on the industry. It's blatantly obvious the industry intends to be stupid and naive, and learn only through pain, misery, and suffering on all sides, but we can at least TRY to reduce the trauma as much as we can on our side of the equation.

The addictive nature of social media is a serious problem, but it is not the fault of social media companies. It is the fault of local and national governments in failure to maintain services and failure to actually meet the costs of having a society. In the end, the price will be paid, but it has been paid through mental health.

Enough is enough. The sheer incompetence of successive administrations is a disgrace and a dishonour to this nation. The government should pay the bill for having a functional society, not create a pit of despair and then blame corporations for society jumping in. This is nobody's responsibility beyond Number 10.

Sometimes it is the right and appropriate thing to do, but I'd hardly call it "first response". The Snowdrop Petition circulated after Dunblane, but not Hungerford. It took the repeated failure of government to actually do anything useful that caused society to demand a ban.

After the Traveller threre-day festival in a farmer's field, the UK government tried to ban going places for a common purpose. A man claiming to be the reincarnation of King Arthur sued on the grounds that he couldn't join up with his knights if that was illegal. The UK courts determined that he was vastly more credible and overturned the ban.

In the 1950s, when the government restricted freedom of movement, the Mass Kinder Trespass forced a right to roam act.

In short, we don't give a damn what the government wants, and never have. We know our rights and defend, whether that means increased freedom or introducing bans. The rules are decided by the public, the government has really no say in the matter and never has had.

There's a problem with that -- it fools those whose opinions are irrelevant, but masks the presence of those whose actions are extremely relevant.

There is absolutely nothing easier than hiding in a group of nutters. With surveillance for the last 50 or so years being mostly remote and passive, that's all they need to do. As long as the signal-to-noise ratio is poor for those trying to maintain secrecy, but exceptionally good for those trying to steal those secrets, then such efforts are counterproductive.

The F-117 and B2 were so well-known to just about everyone that model kits of it were being sold in stores for 20-25 years before Congress were officially told of it existing. Why? Because the only thing the lies achieved was a total inability to detect that detailed plans were circulating amongst the public. By the time acknowledgement existed, the source of the leaks was so well-hidden by time that we will never discover how Airfix and other modelling companies were able to get the blueprints.

A glorious achievement of lies this was not. No, if you'd wanted to hide the program, then the USG needed to make this boring. The more boring and mundane the better. Make it such an utter snoozefest that the spies and nerds would stand out like a sore thumb, not be totally drowned out by the crowd.

The reason it worked is because it was organic to the storyline. It did not feel like a forced situation. If it had not felt organic, then it would have repulsed most people. Not because two different races were kissing, it is that norms were being violated just for the violation.

Say what? I might go with "progressive" as a description, but it is a strange claim that is is Left. It all takes place in a Military Authority structure and the rules are strictly enforced without allowing excuses. That is so much not-left, that I am uncertain how you even begin to claim it is Left. Because they are not close minded closeted homosexuals they are Left? What is your reasoning here?

JJ Abrams ended the Star Trek movies. He made beautiful, but ultimately forgettable movies.

The first problem is signal to noise ratio.

That sort of disinformation ramps up the noise fast. The signal then merely needs to look indistinguishable from the noise. It is so so much easier to hide out amongst freaks, geeks, and weirdos. Even Johnny English could hide out in such a crowd and not remotely stand out.

Nononono. If you want to pick out the signal, you need to reduce the noise in both quantity and volume. The signal then has nowhere to hide.

The second problem is the advertising.

What does it really require to monitor an aircraft? Active RADAR? No. Passive RADAR using civilian radio transmissions would be undetectable and can be done in post-processing as long as you have a good enough recording that's adequately timestamped and location stamped. And if it's stealth? Then detect it by the shadow. A marked dip in cosmic rays coming in from a narrow point where your passive RADAR shows nothing wouldn't be hard.

Throw in thermal cameras and you've got the temperature of the engines. Recordings through diffraction gratings will tell you what molecules are in the exhaust.

And what's needed to do all this? Well, as long as you record the data at the site and process it offline at someplace like GCHQ or the equivalent in other nations, then it requires very little on site. A motor home would likely be big enough to lug around what you need to do the recording side and who the hell is going to notice one motor home amongst a group of thirty?

No, advertising is a very poor way to do anything because you can potentially learn most of what matters both passively and remotely.

A claim I have heard numerous times on Reddit and a few times here on Slashdot is that there are no ethical billionaires. That is not an "average" view. That is a strongly politically Left view. Anyone who views themselves as strongly Left or Right is likely not average. The average is FAR more nuanced than either Right or Left allows. Which is intentional.

You are missing something. The government is too corrupt to handle the upgrades. Billions get sent to certain people and garbage is produced. This has been observed constantly from the 1980s.

I seem to recall two attempts at updating ATC systems in my lifetime. Both ended with absurd amounts of money being flushed into some people's pockets. There is too much money at stake to update them as there is too much corruption and the money will be wasted.

The situation is certainly not as black and white as people appear to make it; however, when I wanted to go to college, I would have had a helping hand throughout the entire process, from filling out forms to requesting money if I were a female. As a male, all I received was, "we have plenty of males, we need to stimulate female accessibility".

You also appear to forget about Affirmative Action.

These programs were absolutely necessary to kickstart some amount of diversity; however, these programs did explicitly discriminate against white males regardless of how much you deny it. Which is why they were, theoretically at least, ended. Artificial discrimination is a terrible thing, even when it is used for "good". It is like murdering part of the population to make everyone who is left feel more equal.

However, we have to factor in that we cannot evaluate the relative credibility of sources if ALL of the sources are outright dishonest.

Should we expect honesty from the MOD/DOD? If it is to cover their backsides due to wilful incompetency on their part, then we should require them to be honest, yes. They are in an extreme position of trust, where one wrong move could easily endanger the safety (and possibly lives) of everyone in their respective countries. These are not establishments where failure has any business being an option and face-saving exercies are not helpful.

But it gets worse. Those face-saving exercises have led to a slowly-building but now almost unstoppable wave of induced delusion, paranoia, and psychosis. This, in itself, is creating enormous dangers. During the COVID epidemic, it killed half a million in the US alone. The US life expectancy is plunging. Gun crime in the US is so bad that mass shootings have risen to between 2-3 a day. THAT is the consequence of a system that puts ego and vanity over and above trust and wellbeing.

The UFO case is a very minor piece of that jigsaw, but it is symptomatic of a completely degenerate philosophy where image matters more than anything else.

So you forgot about the KDE/GNOME transitions from version 2 to version 3? The interface has been a mess for both since then. And then you propose another proprietary solution when they are trying to escape proprietary solutions? I suspect you may need to rethink your position on this matter.