http://www.sfbg.com/39/31/cover_spying_on_the_government.html

There is a guy named Trevor Paglen who takes photos of secure military installations like Area 51 (seriously!) with telephoto lenses. He is legally justified and never been charged because he stands on public property to take the photos. If it is secure enough for Area 51 it should be secure enough for ATMs. The ATM photographer was on public property, acting within his rights.

Rageahol!

Funny you should choose recipes as an example, since they can't be copyrighted and are by definition, free.

An AGPL torrent tracker that is completely node based and can be run on peoples' home computers is needed. There has to be something out there that is close enough to be forked.

Taking the P2P idea to its extreme, you could cut Pirate Bay, Mininova or other public trackers out of the transaction completely. The individual person's computer could self-publish all of its currently available songs to other computers directly in the form of a searchable list it would be as easy to use but not require any choke point of legal encumbrance.

The CCSA is backwards compatible with the GFDL.

I think the source of the confusion Thomas identifies is the ambiguity between a critique of a particular Gnu/Linux distro and a critique of the Linux community.

Many people critique both the distros and the community. If you are critiquing a distro specifically enough, people won't get mad. But it has to be in the right forum. The critique has to identify something about a particular distro or application that needs fixing. Critique fanboys in a bug report and you will get flamed.

If you critique a Linux community, people will rightly take offense. Similarly, if you critique the LGBT community, people will rightly take offense. Which leads me to my second point, please don't use the term "fanbois" spelled with the "boi" to make your point. The word "Boi" originates from AOL screen names, when the term "boy" was banned from the screen name process, probably because potential racist overtones associated with it. Gay men claim "Boi" as marker of queer identity, so to glom it together with your loathing of fanboys is disrespectful to both groups -- of which I am a member of one.

TFA be damned!

Not all music, just the music that requires money to get it. Too bad artists. This fight has gone way beyond "supporting the artist." We are propping up a failed institution. Artists, you weren't going to get that hit album anyway, just keep driving the cab -- I know that's what I will be doing to pay the bills.

Music is not food, shelter or clothing. You can live without it. Don't buy any music affiliated with the RIAA and they will cease to exist/be assholes. I am going to start a band that makes songs that are almost the same as hit popular songs and give them away online as mp3 and ogg torrents. I kick ass at music production, so the copies will be good. I will study the law just enough to make copies that fall just outside any laws that say you can't copy a song. Change a note here, some lyrics there. Catch me if you can! All the kids will be dancing to my songs in the clubs and on the subway. In fact, that's a good hook. I will use that...

Why are all the hot guys gay?

Sigh...

Please jump in if I am misinterpreting, but I can't seem to see it any other way. Google offers a developer edition of the Android OS for a few extra dollars. It boasts a, "SIM-unlocked and hardware-unlocked device."

If this phone is only available to people who register with the Android Market, doesn't that mean that the regular consumer version is SIM-locked and hardware-locked?

If so, that would make it non-free software.

Aargh. I wish. The moment I can run Ubuntu on a mobile phone and still make GSM (regular phone) calls on it is when I will buy a new device. For now I have a cell phone for GSM and a laptop for everything else.

No, no--totally right! I had a friend send me a Facebook request and I swear we would have never actually hung out if I actually used Facebook.

I sent him an email explaining my concerns about using Facebook and we actually ended up going out for a beer. It was great and I really enjoy facetime with someone as opposed to having a mechanistic, tit-for-tat, "I can friend you if you can get me a job" type relationship.

If you are paranoid, don't opt-in and switch to one of the unsupported phones.

The SEC filings in the original post are from 2004. Not the most current evidence damning MS. And since I am all in favor or said damning, here is a quick tutorial on how to search SEC filings using the EDGAR database.

In the "company name" field, type Microsoft. Only two choices there, since it is a pretty unique name. We are going to look at the entity known as "MICROSOFT CORP."

Here is where a lot of people get messed up. You have to look for a form called the "10-K" by entering "10-K" into the "Filing type" text field. That is where all the dirt is, any good corporate researcher will tell you.

From there you have to click on the link in the "Document" column that corresponds with "10-K." After that you just choose the most recent 10-K (annual report), and there should be lots of juicy evidence against the company, written by its very own lawyers.

For example, I just did a simple text search (long document) for the term "open source."

I love doing this: From the MS Annual Report under "ITEM 1A. RISK FACTORS", "To the extent open source software gains increasing market acceptance, our sales, revenue and operating margins may decline."

Mmmmm, original reporting...