mcb3k's comments

I think a modified version of a line-item veto, where the president would be able to cross out the offending lines, and then send it back to congress for them to vote on the modified version of the bill could be useful. I think it would be significantly less dangerous than having a normal line-item veto.

I don't really think it abuses the term, since it doesn't require a backlight to display things, it is technically correct to call it e-paper. I also remember the people at Pebble discussing the differences between e-Ink and e-paper when it first came out. It's not like they hid how the Pebble's display worked.

Besides, an e-Ink screen would be a horrible experience given how the display gets used in the Pebble watch.

e-paper, or electronic paper, is a generic term for any kind of display that doesn't work by emitting light, which the pebble, the popSLATE, and ereaders like the nook or kindle do. What you are describing is e-Ink, which is a specific implementation of a non-light-emitting screen generally used in ereaders.

That being said, it does seem that popSLATE is using a screen like what is used in an ereader, and not like what is used in the pebble.

Well, it's TPB. They might not have had much of a choice about what ad networks they were allowed to participate in. I mean, if you're running an ad network, you need to appear respectable to get respectable clients. In that case, running ads on a torrent site is the exact opposite of what you want to do.

Most companies are not going to want to be associated with TPB, so most ad networks are not going to want to assocaite with TPB. So, the bottom of the barrel, scummiest ad networks are going to be what it would have to use to keep the lights on.

Just my two cents though.

You can actually use an unactivated copy of Windows 7 for longer by using "slmgr /rearm" in cmd (which needs to be run by right clicking cmd.exe and choosing the "run as administrator" option). You can extend the license 3 times (leading to 120 total days). It should be noted that you can apply it after the temporary licensing has expired.

I'm not sure if this applies to Windows 8 or 8.1, however.

There might be a different documentary/biopic/film, but there is currently Minecraft: The Story of Mojang[1]. It only really covers the first year, however.

1: http://www.2playerproductions.com/projects/minecraft

I'm not sure if you're aware of it, but Mojang recently (within the last year or so) started a service called Realms[1] which is exactly what you mentioned: hosted, invite only Minecraft servers. The only difference is that it's 13.99 a month, although it's cheaper if you do a longer term (3-month or 6-month). It'll let 10 players on at a time, with a 20 player white list. I'm not sure what their current implementation for Realms' backend is, but if it's not on Azure or another cloud provider, moving to Azure would probably cause a decrease in price.

I do agree about improving performance and presentation within the game though. My understanding is that there is a lot of room for improvement.

1:https://minecraft.net/realms

Have you looked to see about renting the equipment or finding a service that will help you do this?

Am I right in thinking we can still do automatic copyright assignment, even with your proposed hybrid system? One could just check the registry, and if the work is not present in the registry then it can be assumed to have the 20 year lifespan.

I still think we need to make sure that we keep very good records with this registry, however. I could foresee more instances like we have with Happy Birthday if we don't do a good job of it.

I had never thought about it like that before, but that is a great point!

I think that having an exponentially increasing renewal fee seems like a good idea on the surface, but makes things more complicated than they should be.

In order to do that, you have to have a central authority that actually keeps track of copyrighted works, who owns the rights to it, if they've been extended, if the fees have been paid, etc. On top of that, you need to think about the broke independent author who can't afford to extend the copyright on that 5th year because they got a divorce, got in a car accident, and landed in the hospital. Or the high schooler who wrote a book for NANOWRIMO, self-publishes it, but doesn't know the first thing about copyright law or needing to continually do extensions. The copyright inevitably lapses, and some publisher finds it, likes it, and starts printing copies and selling them because it's in the public domain.

I really, honestly believe that we need to reform copyright, but I also think we need make sure that it doesn't favour people with money and people with access to intimate knowledge of copyright law. I think everyone probably has at least one copyrighted work to their name, so we should make it a goal that just about everyone should be able to understand copyright.

Another good point is that for every book, movie, song, game, etc. that is very popular and keeps getting re-printed, re-published, re-released, or ported to new platforms, there are tens to hundreds of books that do not. Having long copyright terms makes the chances of vast swathes of works stop existing entirely, simply because of the decay of the medium that they are produced and stored on.

I think that using just the fixed term would be better, just for simplicity's sake. How would it work if you have a collaborative novel? One author dies, the other continues living. What if the author goes missing? Changes their name, moves and leaves no forwarding address? How much effort do you need to put in to track down an author in order to re-print their works, or to tell if they're in the public domain?

It's much easier to just do a standard, fixed term for all copyrights.

Are you giving him flak for misspelling Ellsberg? Because otherwise Daniel Ellsberg was the keynote speaker at HOPE X (which the keynote was right before Snowden's talk), and was the one asking the questions to Snowden.

When a document stops being a document and becomes a record, it should be saved in a format such as PDF/A for longevity, and not a binary format. That would be regardless of if it was created in libreOffice or Microsoft Office.

Note that Tesla owns the super charging stations, and is also aiming to stand up a large scale battery production facility. Assuming that the patents would lead to other auto-manufacturers to use the same standards that Tesla uses, this would mean that the would need to either build their own batteries, or buy them from Tesla. Since Tesla is making the Gigafactory so that the price of batteries will drop, it's likely to be cheaper to buy them from Tesla than standing up their own infrastructure to handle it. So, even if they aren't selling as many cars as the big automakers, they can still sell batteries and access to the super charging stations to the big players.

In any case, I think a sufficient amount of people would probably still buy a Tesla because of the brand recognition, even if the big auto-makers were making solid electric cars.

I will not comment about finances, but the idea behind starting at a community college isn't that an associates degree will prepare you for something like the CPA exam, but that it will help you satisfy degree requirements for a bachelors degree without spending as much money as doing all four years at a public four-year institution.

The tuition for a community college, per year, is about 1/3rd [1] the cost of a year at a public in-state 4-year college. If you live at home, you possibly save another couple grand a year. Factor in that some states have Guaranteed Admission Agreements [2], it can make community college an attractive option.

[1]: http://trends.collegeboard.org/college-pricing/figures-table... [2]: http://www.nvcc.edu/current-students/transfer/Search/GAAAdmi...

Many of the lower-end Steam Machines should be capable of doing this, as well as some HTPC implementations (assuming they can run Steam, so not a Roku or AppleTV or such). I'm betting the SteamOS system requirements[1] would be a decent proxy until more information is released, although I doubt that you would require a hard drive that big and a graphics card that powerful.

[1]: http://store.steampowered.com/steamos/buildyourown

Have you taken a look at LibreOffice[1]? It forked from OpenOffice a few years, and my understanding is that it is much more actively developed than OpenOffice.

[1]: http://www.libreoffice.org/

This service isn't really meant for storing things like your music and video collection, or even your day-to-day chats. I think the analogy of a safe-deposit box at the bank really describes it well. You wouldn't keep your DVD or CD collection at the bank, because storing it would be expensive and your collections are most likely easily replaced. But you might want to keep your wedding pictures, the video of your kid's first step, birth and death certificates, love letters, and important legal documents in a safe deposit box at the bank. You might even store something like your great-grandmother's wedding ring and other historic documents. Essentially all the stuff that would be difficult to replace, and would be worth keeping for the sake of posterity.

Given this, I think 100 GB is probably an acceptable amount of storage for this day and age. That may change in 5 or 10 years time as technologies change and the size of images and videos expand. But in 5 to 10 years time, services like this will probably have changed to keep up with the times.