[hat type="SEO"]
It's novel in the sense that the links you buy come from a now-prominent .org and don't have "nofollow" on them
[/hat]

But how difficult is it to rent the equipment necessary to dig a spike-filled pit? Riddle me that, mr smart-guy.

...yeah. That's what I thought!

*flexes his mind muscle*

Now if only we can trade them for some yamok sauce...

You know, I hadn't thought about the corporate licensing angle. Many businesses could be huge allies in the fight against copyrights. Every bar, elevator, mall, waiting room, that even plays a radio broadcast is breaking the licensing terms. Replaying a radio broadcast in a business or public setting isn't covered under the radio's broadcast license so the business playing the radio needs a license. Same for streaming, playing CDs, having televisions in a sports bar. Hell, the ASCAP site makes it sound like every cover band playing an ASCAP artist's song in a bar requires that *bar* to have a license or they're liable rather than the band playing the song.

The only reason bars, restaurants, malls, etc aren't sued as often as individuals on the Internet is that they're harder to track down. This almost calls for a "public good" group to document these infringements and submit them to ASCAP, BMI, etc... maybe then they'd sue enough people with money that we'd get a lobby to revoke their power?

I think most people would agree that those governing should be representing the governed. In the case of a foreign power governing another nation, this is not the case. The underlying problems with putting the root db into the hands of the UN or any single government is that none of them represent every nation of the world. The Internet requires a "United States of the World" to govern it and that body simply doesn't exist yet.

So far we've gotten around the issue by mostly avoiding the governing of the Internet, except on a country-by-country basis. The majority of the backlash over SOPA, PIPA, etc isn't just due to the bill's provisions - it's due to the scope of the legislation. The right way for effective legislation of this type to evolve is to first establish a governing body that can enforce it. And that's still an ongoing struggle. We've discussed and worked towards it for over 100 years but it's a difficult thing to accomplish.

"I represent a party which does not yet exist: the party of revolution, civilization. This party will make the twentieth century. There will issue from it first the United States of Europe, then the United States of the World." - Victor Hugo (1942)

Love. This.

I'm really liking Construct (http://www.scirra.com/construct2/) at the moment. It's an HTML5 game engine that's easy enough kids should be able to pick it up and it has the added bonus of being free for non-commercial use. If you want to see it's capabilities, I threw together a little game in around 5 hours of work to learn it's functionality and it turned out ok. You can view it here (http://jemjensen.com/caversrevenge/)

http://sadtrombone.com/

I smell a class action lawsuit!

Holy shit!
~Anonymous Coward

I agree, you *do* solemnly swear

I think he's referring to the "Self-support" option ($349)

According to the rider, he doesn't like egg yolks unless they're completely hard-boiled so eggs for breakfast may be a no-go.

Has anyone actually tried installing this add-on? I figured I'd give it a shot but it just downloads the XPI file and FF mobile won't open them - the 'open' button has no associated action. I've looked around to see why FF would do such a foolish thing but no solutions, only aggravations. Anyone else in the same boat?

Michael Jackson behaving admirably... http://i.imgur.com/Okk86.jpg

There's really no reason why this couldn't have been spun into a positive. They're effectively reverting back to the DVD-only plan they had 3 years ago because the streaming service got too big. And they're even dropping the price of the old plan despite inflation and higher postage. That's a lot of room to spin. Whoever wrote their announcement needs a new career if they can't even spin that into something that resonates empathy.

It's entirely possible to spin something like this without alienating their partners or customers. It would've been a simple formula to do this gracefully. Admit the change isn't great for everyone, (empathize, dammit!) remind everyone that three years ago it was $9.99 without streaming, (this whole thing has been a free add-on) and cushion the blow by making price changes look like price drops for most users. Example:

Thank you to all of our loyal customers who have followed us through our experiment with streaming these last 3 years! Through this time we've seen Netflix Streaming grow in new ways - from what we thought would be a small complimentary service into a product all it's own. All along we've tried to add new value to your Netflix subscription without raising prices but streaming has become too large of a product to make that possible. Starting on (DATE), Netflix Streaming will become it's own stand-alone product, available for $7.99, and will not be included with the classic DVD service. We understand that some might see the reverting of the classic memberships to their original form as a loss of value; after three years of receiving the free streaming add-on, you've come to expect more from your subscription than the DVD-only plan of the past. That's why we're pleased to announce that we're also dropping the price of the classic membership from $9.99 to $7.99.

Tag on a little rally cry or another thank you to the end and you've got some calmer customers. You'd think this would be second nature to PR and marketing people... I'm typecast as an antisocial Java programmer and I understand people better than they did... O.o