Do not give the police your permission for anything, ever.

So much this!

The lack of mandatory registration makes the copyright system unworkable and unfair regardless of the specific copyright term lengths.

In my opinion, that was why they pushed so hard to remove the mandatory registration that we used to have.

I'm not sure what I played into, but perhaps it just goes to prove that it really is a dog eat dog world. :)

I meant literally, not "in spirit". Mr. Sirius ran in 2000, and I keep hoping that he'll run again.

"No, hacking implies that the system was not in your control, and was taken over nefariously or by other non legal means"

Yes, I am perfectly aware that this is what many people think "hacking" means now. I'm simply unwilling to stop fighting the battle against this corruption of the term. At least until we have a new term that can replace the traditional meaning of "hacking".

Here's an excellent essay about the tradition meaning of the word: http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/meaning-of-hack.html

You're trying to inject logic into a well-established idiom like "dog eat dog". The idiom may not make literal sense (few idioms do), but that's what it is nonetheless.

The history of this idiom is particularly interesting and explains your observation of its biological inaccuracy:

Canis caninam non est is an old Latin proverb that translates to dog will not eat dog. The modern version, seen first in the 1930’s, is a play on the old one, suggesting that society had turned so vicious, that dog is now capable of eating dog.

http://barkpost.com/origins-strange-dog-expressions/

[F]rom an operational standpoint, it takes about two years to fully utilize and integrate a discovered vulnerability.

Wait a minute. The two years the authors are talking about is not the time to develop a new attack, it's the time it takes from once they have code in hand that performs the attack.

Two years? That seems like an incredibly long time. I've never worked for or with a company that would consider that acceptable.

I'm actually disappointed.

I hope this doesn't make it even less likely that we can talk R.U. Sirius into making another presidential run.

Why are you assuming that manual control will be impossible?

That is "hacking" by all traditional definitions. I think what you meant to say was that no malware was used or access controls bypassed.

My problem with the TPP is not the free trade part (which the TPP does little to address, in my opinion). It's the corporate sovereignty part that makes it completely unacceptable to me.

"Twitter et al. should let ISIS, Al Qaeda, and other groups roam freely everywhere they see fit, leverage the power to broadcast their message, potentially to millions of people, all around the world, with each tweet, with each video, with each Facebook post,"

Twitter, as well as all the other private platforms, can do what it likes.

However, I am very opposed the idea that censoring propaganda, etc., is a good and desirable thing. It's the direct opposite of that.

If Twitter (or whoever) is shutting down accounts because they're abusive, consist of violent threats, etc., then I congratulate them.

If, however, they are shutting down accounts that don't do these things but are instead run by "terrorists" or are used for recruitment, propaganda, or any other protected speech, then I condemn them.

Yep, pretty much entirely this.

As long as Oracle still has money to pay lawyers, they will never stop.

What was misleading? Everything Craig Welch said was accurate and relevant.

Yes, the treaty was secret while being hammered out, and that's bad. But that's also the past and is only of academic interest.

Now, we can all read the thing -- and I can't find anything in it that is even remotely like "backdoor gun control". Can you?

"So do I *need* cable? Not really. It's just convenient for DVR functions."

Why not just buy a DVR?

I'm certain not against Bitcoin at all, but PayPal does have at least one advantage over it: if something goes wrong, you can theoretically sue PayPal.

It would be more likely that iRobot would sue, since "Scooba" is what they call their floor-mopping robots.

I like to drive, too.

I just have problems with the expense of owning and maintaining a machine that I don't use most of the day.

Twitter can do what it wants, obviously, but I'm very uncomfortable with this business about "deleting terrorist accounts". How are they determining what counts as worthy of deletion? Twitter isn't saying, but they admit that it's a bit of a "know it when you see it" thing:

As we mentioned in February, and other companies and experts have also noted, there is no one “magic algorithm” for identifying terrorist content on the Internet.

Also, they seem to be combining two entirely different things: accounts which advocate violence, and accounts which appear to be supportive of terrorist groups. I'm OK with the former -- it's usually very clear when someone is urging violent action -- but I'm not OK with the latter. What counts as "supportive"? What counts as a "terrorist group"?

What ensures that people won't be silenced just because they express strong criticism of their government, or because they were engaging in discussion about a terrorist group?