I'm paying my ISP for a service. I'm not paying google for gmail or google+

So, let me get this straight.

Joe goes and buys seeds from monsanto. They belong to him now, as he paid for them. Mind you, he didn't loan, rent or anything like that.. he BOUGHT the seeds. So how on earth does monsanto get any say in how Joe uses HIS seeds? Something's very very wrong here. Patents are not EULAs (and for the record, I also think EULAs that dictate how you can use your own bought copy of any software is also bullshit. You're restricted by copyright law, meaning you can't redistribute without permission and some limitations like that, but otherwise it's YOUR copy and once you bought it companies should have no say whatsoever on what you can do with it in your own home as long as you're not violating copyright law).

I'll take a biased article in which the bias is explicit, and just work with it to extract any interesting information (and opinions) I can from it, over an imaginary "unbiased" article (which has never existed anywhere) any day. Bias is not a problem, it might even be argued that it's sincere. Trying to pass off anything as completely objective is imho much less honest.

why? the title says it: "attempts". Censorship doesn't need to actually succeed to be outrageous.

Wait, you mean there was a debate (I assume there was some kind of public, but I didn't RTFA, this is /. after all), and NO ONE recorded it? No one posted it to youtube? is that even possible nowadays?

Mine is a netbook, an Asus Eeepc 1201PN. It's a bit old, but I use it to watch movies on the tv (connected via HDMI) and browsing, and maybe some very light gaming (like, say, quakelive), and it works perfecly with ubuntu. I've set it to suspend on closing the lid, except when plugged, because then I use it closed down to watch tv and navigate with an usb-to-IR remote I bought for next to nothing on dealextreme (and I've already ordered the remote-keyboard). Great buy!

But as I said, they're netbooks so if you really need a full blown notebook, look elsewhere.

I was going to suggest SSDs too. What's the life expectancy for SD cards?

Besides, in most countries, it goes like this:
Constitution > Laws > Contracts.
Laws are above contracts, you can't just sign your rights away, no matter how it's written. And if the constitution says you have a right to sue, then the contract can say whatever sony wants and you can sign it in blood, it's still void (at least the part that says you won't sue).

Exactly: We could take another hard drive and copy the first one over to it, then BAM! we've got ourselves 10M bucks. Then another and it's 15M. If we do a couple hundreds, we could actually end world poverty!!

The concept as I understand it is that the fact that just producing a copy of a disk can instatly create 5M dollars worth of anything is incredibly wrong. From there you can start deconstructing the whole business interpretation of copyright.

Same here, I can't remember whan I first started reading /. but I've been visiting daily since then. I managed to get my username, but I missed the 5-digit UID threshold by 1462 registrations =P

Bye Rob, and thanks for all the fish!

And that's assuming there's no third-party GPL code used in his project, because that would make the whole thing GPL regardless of who did it or who it belongs to.

So, I think the first two questions the OP need to answer are:

1) Did he use any third party GPL code in his project?
2) Was the project done 'for hire', and if it was, was the contract free of any licensing restrictions? (e.g. the company didn't ask for ownership of the code produced)

If the answer to any of the above questions is "yes", then he has a case, and he should seriously consider getting a lawyer (and/or the EFF?) to take a look at it.
If the answer to both is "no", then he'd be hard pressed to prove the GPL license was legitimate to begin with, but that will depend on the fine print of local laws I'm not familiar with.
Honestly, in any case he should seek advice from a lawyer, but answering those questions would give a better idea of how solid his case might be.

(of course, this is just an opinion, IANAL)

Well I haven't heard of those gadgets for a few years, but I think back then it was some of the people going through the accesses to the general part of the stadium (called 'popular' in argentina). Not 100% sure though, and they can change that procedure any time they like. I worked for the company that built, programmed and sold the stuff, not for the police (I've only talked to them so I know how it went, but not down to every last detail).

Sadly, the police usually knows who many hooligans are (which usually even brag about it and have connections with the clubs directives and usually go in groups). For the rest ftey profile on many things, and I'm sure you'd be able to get your own idea if you ever come see a match here.

In any case, the point I was trying to make was that first: nobody gets thrown in jail or his license cancelled automatically (but they do, as you pointed out, miss the match and spend a few hours at the station for a check), and second: it's an improvement over taking people *only* because they look suspicious.

Yeah, they take them to the station against their will (very few people go there voluntarily as you can imagine). They only miss the match as these checks are mostly done on hooligan groups and they all have club memberships (which many of them don't even pay) . Again, I didn't say I like it, but It's still better than picking people off because they look like the face on a wanted pic. or more-or-less match a wanted description.

Who said anything about imprisonment or fines? they just get their prints checked by an expert to confirm the match. It takes at most a couple of hours.
I'm not saying I like it, but it's far from letting an automated system put you in jail or taking your license away.

Actually I got the number wrong, it was 99.99% accuracy. Still not 100%, though, and it'll probably never be. Haven't worked on that field for at least 5 years now, so I dunno how much those things have improved.

I used to work with fingerprint identification systems for some police forces, and that's how they do it. AFIS systems are only a tool to narrow down and (enormously) speed up the candidate search process. The decision to declare a match is ALWAYS up to a human expert, after careful review of the results from the system.
The only kind-of-exception to this are from portable devices the police uses for example at football matches, on which they have loaded the patterns for wanted persons. They scan everyone going into the stadium, and if they got a match (automatic, 99.9% accurate, but false positives ARE possible), the person is taken into the nearest police station for a more serious AFIS check, with an expert determining if there's a match.

Instant revoking of licenses or serious decisions like that shouldn't be left to automatic systems, no matter how accurate they might be. This has to be always a human decision, and one of the main reasons is that humans have to take responsibility for their actions and can be held accountable. The identification system is just a tool to help people do their jobs better/faster (not to do it for them).