Judges from both the first case and the appeal claimed that Telenor *was* "aiding illegal copying", but that they could not be held responsible: http://www.tu.no/it/article240000.ece

Både Asker og Bærum tingrett og Borgarting lagmannsrett mener at Telenor medvirker til at det skjer ulovlige handlinger via The Pirate Bay, men at denne medvirkningen ikke er rettsstridig.

This is doublethink in my opinion. Simply granting access doesn't make the ISPs responsible. I can't help to feel that the courts should have been way more clear in this matter.

What inevitably happens, is that the media interest groups will lobby to make our ISPs liable for 'granting access' to copyrighted works. Our copyright law 'åndsverksloven' is up for reform/ratification this year. And the Norwegian Data Inspectorate's main spokesperson and director Georg Apenes is leaving his post soon, making this scenario even more likely. Georg Apenes has been extremely vocal regarding our individual rights to privacy since he entered his position in 1989, and the government resents him for it. He has been a barrier for 'progress', and I really doubt whoever replaces him will have even 10% of his integrity. Most probably they will replace him with a government-friendly, industry-friendly puppet.

Yeah, I guess OnLive will work the day we break the speed of light, or invent time travel.

Yes, but how many furlongs?

To all those who think Ubisoft should just let the pirates win... you have no idea how frustrating it is to spend many millions of dollars and several years of our life making a game, and then see statistics from our update servers that 15 to 20 people are playing pirated copies for every legitimately purchased copy.

Have it ever crossed your mind that people who buy games with draconian DRM crack the game they bought? Do the in-house statistics take that into account? I had to crack my version of Splinter Cell : Pandora tomorrow for it to even run.

But after we spend 2+ years with hundreds of people working their ASSES off to make something just to entertain people, we would like them to pay us for it. Is it really so much to ask?

Yes, selling broken software and getting paid for it, is too much to ask. If Ubisoft want money, they should do the *opposite* of what they're doing now. Forget about the pirates, and focus on the consumer and his/her game experience. You know.. the ones that pay for software? Stop thinking about "how much one *could* have earned if no one pirated games". It's a slippery slope.

As I prefer to have my office somewhere else than the roof.

The PC port of Metal Gear Solid 2: Substance was not bad, it was horrible!
You had to map the keyboard/mouse/joystick to the Playstation 2 buttons via a config tool. I also never got the graphics to display correctly.

From the movie Clear and present danger : http://www.mechcore.net/images/clear-and-present-danger-code.png

Flash works fine in the Nokia N900 web browser, and it has a touch screen.
The browser can also emulate a cursor, when it's needed.
Which is thankfully, not very often. So I think the anonymous story poster is wrong.

Software does not fail, ever

What are you talking about? Software fails all the time, and for many, many reasons. And if if a program is logically correct, the hardware upon which it must run can certainly fail to execute instructions correctly.

Formally correct software does not fail in the sense that it 'suddenly' stops working. If it has a 'bug', then the 'bug' has always been there. That's what I mean with failing, because the parent of my post made an analogy between bridges and computer programs. And hardware failure is not software failure. Bridges fail due to forces outside of your control, but well-formed computer programs do not. Changes to the platform or hardware would mean a new specification is needed, which means redesign. If the platform and hardware is static, it is possible to make a perfect computer program, but it is far from feasible. There is always time and budget constraints, (I acknowledge that, I'm not stupid) but that doesn't change that software which is shipped with flaws is per definition, unfinished, or is based on a flawed specification.

If we are going to punish people, shouldn't everyone involved share in the responsibility?

Nice straw man there. I didn't mention punishment with one word. I contested the analogy in my parent's post.

I hope you are not a software manager. If you are, you are completely and totally ignorant of modern software development processes and I pity anyone who works for you. [...] Get an education. Work in the field for a while. Then come back and perhaps we can have an intelligent dialog.

Great insults. You just lost whatever sound arguments you had.

In projects with tens of thousands of lines of code, it is unreasonable and completely unrealistic to expect every line to be a pinnacle of perfection, just like it is unreasonable to expect that every sentence in a book is completely without error.

Yes, I don't disagree. It seems people took my post a bit too literally. Given that you code against one static platform, it is possible to make bug-free software, but it's usually not feasible in practice. The poster I replied to felt that people were 'barking up the wrong tree' by blaming software engineers more than attackers. It is that part my post addresses. I'm not some nut who thinks that all shipped software can be free of exploits. But I do think that software which is not bug-free is in fact unfinished or has a flawed specification. That this happens to be the case for all but the most trivial software, doesn't change anything.

And yes, I do write code. But if my code fails, I know where to put the blame. At myself. I don't do self-deception. My applications might do their task well enough in most cases, but if they contain bugs or attack vectors, they are by definition not finished.

Putting most of the blame on attackers is a cop-out, which was my point in the previous post.

Software does not fail, ever. It either works according to the specification, or it does not. Any attack vector or 'bug' is a fault with the program which has always been there. Bridges and other structures can't be made 100% secure, but software can and should. If a piece of software is not, then either it does not work according to the specification (as in, not finished), or it was deliberately made to be faulty. This is where your analogy breaks down. A well-formed program is 'invincible', but a bridge can never be, unless someone invents a material which is resistant to corrosion, shock, extreme heat/cold, and never gets tired.

In fact, since software cannot fail, ever, designing a well-formed specification and software following that specification exactly, is the only thing you can be responsible for as a software engineer. Since the very definition of "works according to specification" implies the absence of any vulnerabilities, is it really so hard to see why the blame is put on the software authors, in addition to the 'attackers'?

Feel free to ship unfinished software, or make it insecure on purpose. But then don't be surprised of the opinion customers and your peers hold for you.

I voted logic, but what I really want people to learn is argumentation theory, rhetoric and common logical fallacies. I'm stumped on how many I discuss with who totally fail to see their own flawed arguments. Not only that, they are impossible to persuade or reason with, when or if you challenge them on this. But it's only a dream, I guess.

And banned A-cup breasts from mainstream pornography. Reason? Think-of-the-children mentality again. http://www.sankakucomplex.com/2010/01/28/australia-bans-small-breasts-as-child-pornography/ I found that both amusing and shocking. It's not about children's safety anymore, but pushing moral values and acting as thought-police.

So you think pedophilia is 'curable'? It's not more curable than say, homosexuality is. It's a sexual preference. If that's not what you meant, how do you figure that getting an outlet for ones urges somehow makes a person even more desperate? In my head, it's kind of the other way around.