I used the "fullsize" iPad, and it is that bit too heavy to be comfortable holding it at a good angle to avoid a cricked neck for reading over longish periods. That being said, the retina screen was beautiful to read on, and I miss that on the Mini — perhaps enough to make me return the Mini, and put up with the extra weight.

I think a huge chunk of this is "what works for you." My wife hates reading on the iPad, and loves her Kindle; I'm struggling with the Kindle, but like reading on the iPad, even though I previously enjoyed reading on eInk devices. Without annotating, I don't retain as much information, or have thoughts easily to hand for reference in the future, so that kind of makes my decision for me anyway, until better annotation support for eInk-based readers is available.

There's always a trade-off — for me, I'd rather ensure I was reading in good lighting conditions, and reading for reduced periods and taking regular breaks, but with the ability to make annotations and the like easily, than to be able to read for considerable periods and lack that support. Without annotating, I'd end up reading things multiple times, which wouldn't work so well.

(I really, really wanted to use an eInk reader for studying, having loved reading fiction on them, but I found that they just did not work for me, hence getting the iPad. Now, having got myself a Kindle for my leisure reading, I find I struggle to read on it, and would rather read on a tablet screen, as I find reading far faster. Two and a bit years ago, before having used a tablet for all the reading for a reading-heavy course, I would have pushed an eReader too — having seen what worked for me, I've got a slightly different view.)

I use iAnnotate rather than GoodReader, and the annotations are added to the PDF directly — open the annotated PDF on my computer, and the annotations are there. There is also an option to export the annotations on their own — I've occasionally used this when I have highlighted key parts of a text and wanted to extract these to a new file, for a quick reference / summary.

iAnnotate was the reason I bought an iPad — I just wanted a tool for reading and marking up hundreds, if not thousands, of PDF documents. I've been hugely impressed, not just with the software, but also the support*. I use it multiple times every day, and am a huge fan.

I use owncloud on my computers, to keep everything in sync, and, since this can expose things via webdav, it makes syncing with iAnnotate trivial too — it all fits together really rather well.

*At one point, after their support team had dug into an issue caused by my own stupid fault (incorrect permissions setting on my server, which was causing the synchronisation to fail), I tried my best to convince them to accept a donation, pizza, cash, whatever, to say thank you for their time, as it was worth way more to me than the $10 purchase price, and yet they declined. I could not convince them to accept anything for their efforts.

iAnnotate PDF — looks like there is an Android version coming soon too.

I can't say what is right, but, having finished a masters in law via distance learning, with all my reading done on my iPad, I could recommend this as a solution. iAnnotate worked incredibly well for me, as a tool for reading and annotating PDF documents, which I then synchronised back to the server so they were available for access, including the notes, on my computers for actually writing things up. I'm now testing an iPad Mini, to see whether that offers a better experience — the lower quality screen is bugging me at the moment, but I do like the lighter weight.

I found the backlit screen irritating at first, but considered it a necessary evil for the benefit of having the annotation functionality, which my previous eReaders did not have. I bought a Kindle a couple of months ago for reading fiction, and found I really struggled with it — I'd rather read on the iPad (via iBooks, usually via DeDRM and Calibre). Perhaps oddly, I find I read much faster on the iPad than on the Kindle, without a noticeable impact on understanding — I wonder if this is due to me being able to scan large blocks of text quite quickly on the iPad but not on the Kindle for some reason. Suffice to say, having been really looking forward to a Kindle — going back to an eReader, having previously have a COOL-ER and a Sony PRS-505 — I was disappointed. My wife, on the other hand, hates reading from a tablet, and carries her Kindle pretty much everywhere.

My pleasure. If you do read the Usedsoft decision, there's a good chance you'll find it pretty impenetrable, unless you are familiar with the computer programs directive — I prepared some slides for a friend's talk on Usedsoft a couple of weeks back, which you might find helpful alongside the decision. (Listed as (c) to me (ironic, given the thread here) but, as far as I'm concerned, treat as CC0.)

Distribution might be where GNU GPL 2.0 kicks in, but copyright certainly kicks in to prevent you from just taking code and putting it into your own project, at least in Europe — the restriction on "copying," for example. (You might have a defence of fair use in the US, but that's an affirmative defense, not an absence of copyright.)

Whether anyone would find out, or consider it worth suing for, is perhaps another matter, but copyright is not just limited to distribution.

I'm not sure that Usedsoft applied common sense, but rather some convoluted reasoning, but the outcome seems sensible enough. Picking on rulings relevant here, I think the US court's decision in Wallace v. IBM was common sense, as was the finding of the German court in Welte v. Skype.

Perhaps look also at Griggs v. Evans — a pragmatic decision on the facts, to my mind.

Sure, there are some odd judgments, but there are some sensible, practical judges out there too.

Agreed, although it does claim to be a platform for "social coding," and that it is "the best place to share code with friends, co-workers, classmates, and complete strangers," having been founded "to simplify sharing code."

I am not reading the article as anything more than "if GitHub wants to promote sharing of code, make it easier for a developer to specify licensing terms" — and that seems imminently sensible to me.

4. Get annoyed that a court finds the existence of an implied licence, or, in some nuanced cases, that the action is prevented under the principle of non-derogation from grant. Assuming the defendant can afford to argue.

your chosen licence"

He's not saying that the lack of licence information is GitHub's problem, nor that it's unique to GitHub. Rather, he's saying that there is a problem — code without clearly attributed licence information — and, whilst each would-be user could contact each developer and find out the licensing conditions, GitHub could make a simple tweak to their platform to encourage developers to select a licence.

I would not favour pre-selecting a default licence, but rather having a developer presented with a set out option, perhaps with a tool to help aid selection based on requirements. No requirement, no default licence, but just a helpful reminder — if someone wants their code to be reused, but didn't know to think through the legal aspects, this would help them out, without harm to anyone who would rather not specify a licence for whatever reason.

Sounds sensible to me.

Absolutely — there is a transition from the role of citizen to the role of law enforcement. Where I struggle in this case is the line:

It seems that the transition did not take place in this case — an ongoing role of parent, rather than a transition to FBI agent.

I was originally going to post that TFA makes it clear that this was a case of a person who happened to be employed by the FBI, finding himself in this situation, but is just described by TFS as "an FBI agent" — it made me wonder whether someone should be defined by their employer.

It rather broke down for me when TFA starts saying how he got "all flashy with his FBI badge" to investigate, rather than just reporting it to the police — is this really still just someone acting as a father?

Pretty much any anyDIY store will have them :)