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Comment Re:Shocking (Score 0) 117

"Point us to an post about a guy given a job he is clearly unqualified"

That's literally my point -- the post isn't about the person in charge of the ministry! It's about them testing Collabora and the users just having too many issues with it. I guarantee if it was the same exact story and the minister had a male name none of you would have done this deep dive and criticism.

And why do you think she is unqualified? The Minister of Digitization doesn't need to be an expert on digitization, they need to be competent at high-level management and understanding how laws and policies work. Did she do something wrong? Would someone else have somehow convinced the 37 or however many employees who tested it not to hate it?

Comment Re:What's The Average? (Score 1) 97

How long before we start deploying remotely piloted and full autonomous drones to fly escort missions for cargo runs? There have been numerous instances of cargo theft from trailers, or hijacked full loads when drivers were doing their mandated federal rest stop. I would assume things would eventually escalate to wifi and anti-drone jamming for higher value loads, but those are extremely visible attacks (the signals equivalent of taking bolt cutters to your power line). At that point, you'd have actual armed security (possibly being provided by insurers) guarding high-value convoys against hijackers...

https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.transportation.gov...

Comment This has been around a while (Score 4, Interesting) 141

The DOD/DOW have been working on this for a while. They discovered, early on, that the device had a propensity to cause permanent nerve damage.

It's very unlikely the US have fixed that, as they'd largely sidelined the work as a failure. However, at 36%, Trump needs something he can call a win, no matter what the long-term consequences.

Comment Finally, we can afford ad-blocking classes (Score 2) 29

I love the idea of Facebook money being used to teach kids how to block advertisements. $25B should be enough to teach every single kid in New Mexico how to do it, going forward forever, as a permanent addition to public school curriculum.

I was going to suggest that maybe we could even use a tiny portion of the money to establish a state DNS server that blackholes the adservers the way pi-hole does. Then kids stuck running proprietary "apps," instead of accessing things through their Manifest-V2-compatible web browser, wouldn't have to install their own DNS server.

But then I realized the aforementioned ad-blocking curriculum ought to have resulted in every kid building their own pi-hole at school anyway, so a state pi-hole is unnecessary.

Comment Re: Yes (Score 1) 202

"And the UK handed you the brand new computer industry on a plate by destroying all the computers it had built during the war while not requiring that you do the same with the licensed copies you had built."

The UK decided to destroy its computers on its own, don't blame us for your idiocy. "Require"? What were you going to "require" we do? And how were you going to enforce this "requirement"?

And what licensed copies are you talking about? Britain shared the Bombe (which was basically an upgraded version of the one the Polish built, but of course Brits insist they're the geniuses who broke Enigma), but ENIAC was a US production.

Comment Re:"if you pay for it, you own it" (Score 1) 152

Normally, you don't license media (whether it's digital or analog is irrelevant). That CD or tape or vinyl record is sold, such that you own that copy. Title is transferred just exactly the same as how title is transferred when you buy (not license) a loaf of bread, or a screwdriver, or a book. (WARNING: Though I say "normally," what's normal does change. I'm aware that a lot of people use proprietary streaming to consume media now, instead of playing locally-stored purchased copies, and those people likely did agree to a licensing contract rather than purchasing anything.)

But with software, they've been claiming that a piece of paper that they inserted into the box, retroactively causes the sale to not have really happened, even though the information that the sale was a fraud, is hidden inside the box until after the fraud has been perpetrated. The customer thinks they bought the box rather than licensed it.

There was some monumental decision reinforcing this a while back. I'm not sure this is the best example, but it's well-illustrated in this decision in favor of Blizzard against a cheatbot named Glide, where the judge supports the outrageous assertion that WoW purchasers actually did not purchase what they thought they purchased. And then instead of throwing Blizzard's executives into prison for a decade to deter future fraud, he found in their favor instead. Dirty judge. He actually fucking says this:

section 3 of the EULA provides that Blizzard explicitly retains title to “all copies” of the game client software

[emphasis mine]

For whatever reason, nobody's tried that outside of software (that I know of). I still haven't seen a EULA packed in a loaf of bread or a music CD case. But maybe some day....?

You wouldn't necessarily be wrong to expect this form of fraud to happen some day, so perhaps you're right that Congress should nip it in the bud ASAP. Sure, ok. But Congress is normally reactive so it also makes sense they're seeing it just as software problem. None of their constituents are complaining about media companies defrauding them, just software companies.

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