Thank you. Too bad my mod points expired a couple days ago. In any case, I'm glad at least one other person noticed the new Slashdot low of the article not RTFA it's talking about. Didn't only not read it but completely missed the point of it. She was saying the she and her generation were not all that interested in owning Physical Media. She never said she wouldn't pay for music. In fact the whole point of her article was that there needs to be a service that made having access to songs easy and able to sync with any device While paying the artists! I know nothing of David Lowery prior to this but he now strikes me as a reactionary prick with low reading comprehension. He's a perfect example of my biggest pet peeve. People who don't read what you wrote or listen to what you say but instead read or hear what they think you were going to say. And it seems like 95% of people who do that are unwilling to go look at it again because "I already know what it says!" Whew, got a little ranty there.

An undemanding task that lets the mind wander... I think they're not wanting to come right out and admit that most people do their best thinking on the toilet.

Already happening and mentioned on /. http://politics.slashdot.org/story/12/04/13/1248221/us-unhappy-with-australians-storing-data-on-australian-shores

It is libel and defamation. That is what the judgement against her was for. http://www.scribd.com/doc/74870113/Crystal-Cox-Opinion http://blogs.seattleweekly.com/dailyweekly/2011/12/crystal_cox_oregon_blogger_isn.php

Actually they would've shown up like that from the first call. When you call and there is any indication that someone is trying to break into your home with you present, they will respond swiftly indeed. It's something else entirely if you call to report that a burglary took place while you were gone and the thieves departed before you returned. If the scenario of the joke were real, things would quickly turn sour for whoever failed to dispatch the officers and they would find themselves under investigation for failure to perform their duties with a reckless disregard for the safety of the caller.

There's a long list of scientists that are also science fiction authors. Many of the best and brightest scientists were inspired to become scientists by the fiction they read. Even so, science fiction has long been treated as an unwanted step-child by both the literature and science crowds with neither taking it seriously. It's nice to see serious science magazines recognizing and supporting that important link.

More methods of emergency notification are likely to the good. Cell texting of emergency notices is good and my girlfriend's college does just that. However, claiming that TV is a ridiculous notification system because people turn it off is, well, a bit ridiculous. Aside from there being many people who do have their TV on for long periods of time either actively watching or for background noise, many people will turn to TV to find out how serious a situation is. My mother still calls me from several states over to tell me there is bad weather in my area so turn on the TV to find out if I need to take precautions. New ideas are good, but I don't think it serves the good to dismiss what's in place and known.

I believe in the UK they pay an annual license fee to watch tv broadcasts. So even though it's not 'critical', they'd better make sure they're providing the service. And if they've done something to disrupt that service themselves, they need to go to extreme lengths to fix it where needed. Oh, and television serves as an emergency notification system. So yes, some people might die without it.

Congrats! You are monitoring your legal legitimate harmless innocent activities out of fear of your government. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chilling_effect_(law)

It's common idiom in English too. Why would a translation cause you to think it was meant literally? For example if the non-idiomatic translation were, "I want you to go out and explode company x.", That still reads like corporate marketing speak not terrorist mastermind ordering the troops. Changing it from "blow away" to "explode" doesn't make it seem sinister at all.

While you're somewhat correct in that US courts (and lawmakers) sometimes act as if digital content is real property and that there are laws against unauthorized access to password protected content in the US and UK, what does that have to do with anything? The post to which you replied, and the article to which he refers, don't mention either country nor do the events related in the article take place in either country. There isn't even any mention in either of them about unauthorized access to password protected content. You could have responded with the proper care and feeding of goldfish and no matter how correct your information was, it would have been just as irrelevant.

Ability to recall is not ability to think and is not an indication of superiority. I once knew a complete idiot with tremendous recall who told me he had a photogenic memory. I told him to recall the definition of photogenic and he turned very red. He asked me what word he was trying to think of and I told him to recall the words that started with 'photo' until he got to the right one. He paused for a second and said 'Oh, photographic!' While I sometimes envied his recall, I never envied his cognitive ability.

I don't think length of the class is the problem with students falling asleep so much as their interest in the subject matter. People generally don't have a problem staying awake for a two hour plus movie despite that it was once thought ridiculous that an audience would sit still for that long. I think the issue is that most people approach learning before college as preparation for college and approach college as vocational preparation for a job. Learning is a job to them and they don't really care about the subject. This is why some people pick their school based on its sports team or party atmosphere or anything that has nothing to do with the education they will get there. Geek culture is changing that to some degree, but not all that much.

If you think other attorneys will get the message, you vastly underestimate the ego and chutzpah of the average lawyer.

I'd highly suspect that they got permission to do so in all cases. The named individual probably even got the service in exchange for the publicity as it mentions they contacted him after reading about his problem in the paper. If there was not a prior agreement then I'm sure there will soon be an article on Slashdot about the lawsuit. Your comment isn't insightful, it's silly. Many companies give away their services or products in exchange for the right to publicize. And considering that your average Joe on the street assumes that a dead drive means all information is lost forever, as the aforementioned comedian did, then I can see why this company would want to shout from the rooftops that their service even exists. People don't look for what they don't know exists. If the company followed your advice their client list would be limited to only technologically adept people and that would rule out the vast majority of people using computers.