I don't think that it is cool at all but rather a capitulation to fear of lawsuits. If I were one of the legitimate students I would be enraged that the cheaters were being given a second chance after getting caught. The message the university is sending is that if you cheat, get caught, and say 'aww shucks, I promise not to do it again' that you can get away with it. This isn't going to be the first time these students cheated and if it is the last it is only because they are scared of getting caught not because they recognize the value of hard work or that it is wrong. I suspect that the majority of these students will cheat again if given the oppurtunity, obviously not using the publishers key but by some other technique.

Academic censure or expulsion are the only acceptable outcomes for clear cut cases of cheating. Unfortunately I suspect that the truth is that their certainty of who the cheaters are is rather less than the claimed 95% and their ability to prove it is almost non-existent so this approach is being taken to avoid the inevitable lawsuits that would occur with an expulsion. Hopefully they take the data from the new exam and cross-reference it with the old results to improve their identification of cheaters in the future at least.

If they arbitrarily lowered HRC's pagerank than it would definitely be an abuse of their monopoly. On the other hand if they altered their algorithm in a way that negatively effected HRC's pagerank, but also collaterally altered other sites rankings it would probably be ok. As long as they can make a straight-faced argument that their change somehow improved the accuracy of the system then they would win any lawsuit that could be brought agaisnt them.

Presumably Amazon. If it is just as easy for me to pirate the book in the first place than to strip the (unethical) DRM from it, I'm likely to just pirate it in the first place. If I do that then Amazon loses out on what I might have shelled out for that.

I don't think that premeditation evens gets close to 'thoughtcrime'. If you think about doing something and never actually do it then it is entirely irrelevant, if you think about something and take tangible acts to further that (illegal) plan then you can get into the realm covered by 'conspiracy to X', and if you think about something and take acts to prepare for a criminal act that you complete then you are looking at premeditation.

The reason that I feel that premeditation is a valid is that it reflects on your intent to cause the harm and the opportunity to recognize that what you are planning to do is illegal. This is why we have different statutes for 1st degree murder and manslaughter because while the victim may be just as dead either way it is considered more 'evil' to plot someones death than if it occurs in an accident that wasn't intended to cause their death.

In most countries where there is gun control (most Western style countries other than the US) it is viewed as a modifier of intent which is why it is treated more harshly by law. The attitude is that there is little to no justification or use for a gun other than to intimidate with or actual cause harm and thus having a gun implies premeditation - even if you grabbed the gun from your drawer the instant before firing.

I think you answered your own question there. Also add the fact that Firesheep is intended partially as a publicity stunt so it has higher visibility than the standard 'hackers' who are trying to keep under the radar. The author has given interviews on it to several sites and articles detailing its use and the general inseurity of session based cookies have been a coordinated part of this publicity push and a natural consequence of it being popular enough that articles on it garner pageviews.

I'm not an expert on wireless encryption but doesn't WPA encrypt using a specified key for all users of the same wireless network rather than providing specific individual keys on a per user basis?

Wouldn't that mean that anybody able to access the access point could still harvest the un-encrypted cookies using Firesheep given the primary demonstration of the problem is with public wireless networks at coffee shops and airports?

The main idea is that DotA is hamstringed by being built over the (now outdated) Warcraft III engine. Because the engine is developed by a seperate entity and no longer recieves updates it is often difficult to develop new concepts properly and it has begun to look old visually.

By rebuilding it on a new engine it gives control to allow them to maintain a higher level of visuals and they can modify and expand on the engine to allow possibilities that are blocked by engine limitations.

Frankly though I don't know why anyone would bother remaking DotA other than as a vanity project. Heroes of Newearth has already done a faithful rebuilt version of the game with new graphics and League of Legends has taken the genre and made it much more fun and accessible.

Honestly I'm surprised that Valve would dive into such a legal quagmire. DotA was developed by 3 different people, uses proprietary blizzard graphics (in addition to personally developed ones), and has taken submissions from the community which puts the direct copying on shaky ground. S2 when creating HoN decided to remake everything even if keeping it almost the same, despite very clearly attempting to make DotA2, because of the legal issues.

With Guisoo (the original creator of DotA Allstars, which Icefrog continues to develop) working for Riot Games on League of Legends, a game that directly competes with DotA, I would not want to risk the hassels of having Riot send their in-house legal counsel after me like Valve is risking.

Both your math and logic are profoundly flawed.

The fees do suck and do significantly reduce your actual rate of return from what is expected/advertised. However you can't just calculate the fees seperately from the interest since they are contingent on it and growth in the investment also increases the amount of fees you pay and the amount the fees amount to in reference to the original investment is completely irrelevant.

Capital gains taxes are generally not applicable to low-moderate income persons because they are spending the bulk of their money on their necessities and lack the free money needed to invest in hopes of realising a capital gain. For the wealthy who are the ones who actually have the money to invest the rate on capital gains is dramatically lower than they would be paying if their wealth were from earned income (rather than inheritance) which has a lot to do with how and why high-end jobs have their payments structured.

Getting rid of capital gains tax is an idea that only the wealthy and people with a poor grasp of economics like because it continues the ongoing shift of the tax burden to those who can least afford it.

Not terribly different in this case.

In order to use Ebay you must accept PayPal which forces you to have a PayPal account. Since you can not control which form of payment a purchaser chooses to use you may be forced to attempt to retrieve your money from the clutches of PayPal. If you attempt to use Ebay you must use PayPal if you want to guarantee that you will actually ever get your money.

To me (and many countries legal systems) that sounds like it is forced and illegal collusion.

The historical reasoning is that it is in the banks financial benefit to have the cards be accepted everywhere with few obstacles. In order to convince merchants to accept their cards they credit card companies had to agree to cover any fraudulent charges because initially the merchants had no incentive to go to all the trouble involved with accepting a rare new form of payment which (especially prior to wired connections for credit card charges) was subject to difficult to verify forms of fraud. Credit card companies have opposed all reasonable measures to ensure consumers are not being taken advantage of and oppose any changes to increase security for cards if they determine that it makes them more money than they lose (a very different proposition for merchants). If the risk were shifted to merchant overnight we would see every merchant stop accepting signatures as a means of verification for cards.