I would demand a refund for any defect found in firmware/etc.

This is only going to lead to court cases where the defect report was filed during the warranty, but the fix comes out after warranty expiration.

Another way the law is like code is that legacy code and legal systems both grow more complex over time as new "features" are added, bugs are fixed, etc.

For example, compare the commandment "Thou shalt not kill" with the exceptions and mitigations that have been added over time: self defense, soldiers in war, accident and so on. The law gets complex because simple laws don't cover all the possible extenuating circumstances.

Another reason the law gets complex is because criminals are always coming up with new scams, exploiting loopholes and using the law against each other as a weapon. It's a lot like fighting malware on the internet or new requirements being generated for a program after it is released.

Actually, music has a couple of loop structures (D.C. al fine/D.S. al fine), and although they aren't traditionally interpreted to cause infinite loops or even n loops, there's no reason they couldn't be expanded upon.

Not banning it, just making it less attractive from an economic perspective. I agree with GP that the "Windows 7 support" scam is probably the primary target of this. A better approach would probably be to limit free accounts to connect to a single IP address and that IP address can only be changed to a new address for a fee. That way the scammers have to pay to redirect the service to their victims, while legit users can still access their home network for free.

Building a Steam Box would benefit Nintendo by avoiding most of the engineering costs they incur developing a new console. And it avoids the clutches of Microsoft and Sony if they abandon ship and develop for the competing consoles.

Nintendo releasing Mario, Animal Crossing, etc. for the Steam Box would cement the platform as a viable contender.

However, I would add that I endorse Mr. Hyppone's action and I hope that it starts a trend. Just because the government has a need and obligation to spy on people doesn't mean the citizens and corporations are under any obligation to help them to the extent that they mislead and lie to their customers.

Actually, I do consider it normal, though acceptable is much more debatable. Lost in all the noise about NSA and GCHQ is how many other governments have been caught with their hands in the cookie jar. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2013_Global_surveillance_disclosure shows that several countries including Germany, Israel, Italy and the Netherlands either have their own data-gathering operations, or have participated in data-sharing arrangements with the USA to circumvent domestic limits on spying on their own citizens, and vice versa.

I've considered the whole outrage that NSA is spying on allied heads of state and government officials to be nothing more than diplomatic game-playing, because given the opportunity, every government does the exact same thing. Spying on citizens is a bit more problematical, but it's not like there isn't a legitimate need for some level of this type of spying. The whole point of the NSA and similar organizations is to intercept the communications of foreign agents, terrorists, etc. "We've already determined what you are, now we're just negotiating a price."

Most folks call those edited change logs "release notes" in my experience. The list of changes, defect fixes, etc. should at least be a section in overall release notes, but they don't usually have to go into gory detail the way that the OP describes. The change or defect number being fixed is always useful, because then you can lookup the original bug report online for more details if you think it might impact your environment,.

Those are called release notes.

Unless it's an extremely specialized application that requires the customer to have expertise in a specialized field, most customers will be perfectly happy with release notes. The gritty details about changes are mostly needed for things like changes to an API, changes to an algorithm that affect calculations, etc.

Good point, except that the reduction in costs for the uninsured would be accompanied by a (smaller) increase in payments from the insurance companies and a corresponding increase in premiums. You're right that the whole "negotiated rate" thing from the insurance companies is code for "if you don't give us this low-ball rate, we won't put you in our network and our customers won't come to your office."

There's a difference between "The administration f-ed up the website and they deserve legitimate criticism." vs. "See, this proves that Obamacare sucks." There's also a difference between criticizing Fox when it really goes right-wing wack0, and just generic bashing because you don't like their slant.

Ladies and Gentlemen, you may now remove your blinders. Yes, ALL of you.

In fact, this happened to my wife before we got married. She had "student insurance" at her college, but when she actually needed to use it for surgery, she found out she'd be on the hook for half the bill -about $10k almost 20 years ago. Fortunately she found out before actually scheduling the surgery. Since she's from Germany she was able to head home and get it done under the German "socialist" program. Bottom line under the old market was that you'd pay $800/month (at least in FL) for full/platinum-style insurance that actually provides the same level of coverage as a good employer plan. In most cases, if you were under private insurance, only a major medical/catastrophic policy makes sense -- true insurance rather than health-care funding.

Yeah, retrofitting underground cables in urban areas is a nightmare, and probably not worth it. Especially in an area where the main natural disaster is earthquakes. The phone and power lines that stay down for weeks at a time tend to be in suburbia or rural areas. In those areas, right of way negotiations, work rules and routing around existing infrastructure don't get so complicated -- plus the benefits to service reliability are greater.

I stopped using C-Net when they started pulling this little trick and thought Sourceforge had more respect for open software. I can understand why they need to do this, but why didn't they reach out to the community to discuss new revenue streams rather than pull this stunt and then "reach out to the community" after the fact? Maybe they actually want to kill the project hosting service?

Sorry, guys. SF needs to back down from this before I D/L there again. I'll probably continue to use Freecode and D/L direct from the developers where possible, but even that seems like it won't last for long.

A lot of times you don't use information you have because it would reveal your methods and sources. But now that a lot of NSA methods and sources are known, they can use the information out in the open like this. Assuming the court accepts it as admissible under rules of evidence.