Simple, really. Because property rights allow individuals to move up in the world. Take Africa, for example. They are VERY RICH in natural resources; but there's no property rights. So the farmer who could setup irrigation on his field and feed his/her family won't do it, beacuse as soon as he spends all the time and effort to do that, someone will come and take that away from him/her by force.

There is poverty in Africa because it lacks good property rights.

"Rights" to basic food, shelter, job, and health care create AN ONEROUS RESPONSIBILITY ON PRODUCTIVE MEMBERS OF SOCIETY AND ALLOW UNPRODUCTIVE PEOPLE TO LEACH OFF SOCIETY.
Property is sacred because it's the fruit of human labor. It must be protected in order to encourage productive people to produce. I guess they don't cover that in communist-sponsored leftist schools.

Food, shelter, jobs and health care are noble goals indeed, but are best left to CHARITY, to which you are free to contribute. But do NOT use FORCE to force people to GIVE UP the fruits of their labor to others any more than is necessary to protect property rights. Strong property rights enable everyone to succeed, and allow you the CHOICE to contribute to charity.

Because the group of individuals known as a government can't protect your "right" to health-care, basic food, shelter or a job without taking those things from other individuals under threat of imprisonment if they don't cough up. So a "right" to food means someone else has to grow it on their land and hand it over, either being paid with money that been taken from *other* productive members of the village or point blank stolen and handed over to the person asserting their "right". Some right ey?

The right to "basic food" means the right to take something that someone else has put a lot of effort in, what or who gives *you* that right just by virtue of being born? And what if ther people growing their food stop growing it and demand their rights too? Property rights are the core of all rights, without being "allowed" to own any singular item or piece of land how can one be at all free? Given the track record of societies that don't recognise property rights but *do* recognise the "right" to strike, housing, healthcare and food *cough*Eastern Bloc*cough* there's an extremely strong historical argument for the basis of what the libertarians are saying.

I'm not even nearly a "lie-bertarian" and even I understand that....

Its just a box, as bland as the next guys.

Now, real honest to god typewriter has character, every one is unique.

See: TFA.

This is insane. What reasonable person would assume that a box left at a parking agency was a weapon of mass destruction? What terrorist bombs a minor college parking station?

Goddamn.

Well yeah. A program and procedure designed to keep the weaponry usable successfully keeps them usable.

Glad to hear that guys. Way to go. Good work telling everyone that fixing things fixes them.

Look, the reason these machines are failing more readily really isn't that complex. The market for netbooks is effectively a competition to see who can produce the cheapest functioning computer that can connect to the internet quickly. That's all it is. When companies aim to reduce retail cost of their products, they begin cutting corners. They buy cheap parts, they rush production, they slap things together that they know don't work as well. It's nothing amazing or surprising. Netbooks are just cheap.

My tot is going on two years, and I've decided that as soon as he's old enough to be out alone without adult supervision, I'm more than happy for him to carry a phone.

He mightn't be old enough to use SMS, but I'll make sure he knows how to call me on it, and also make emergency calls.

This isn't about being a control-freak parent, in fact the opposite. This is about giving the young one a degree of freedom to discover the world on his own terms, while keeping a safety net in place in case anything goes wrong.

Okay, fair enough, Manu Smriti, samgrahana (2.8.359), combined with the rule that same-sex couples cannot marry.

You would be correct that this does not equal punishment by death for homosexuality per se. It would be the same as the old English law : you can be homosexual all you want, as long as you're celibate, but any actual homosexual act results in the death penalty.

And yes, you'd be correct that this law is not part of the Indian penal code. You will find, however that the same applies in muslim states, there is no law, in the majority of muslim states, that homosexuals should get killed. Regardless of the national status of this law, there are regions of India the size of Canada where you really shouldn't try it.

Unless you count a single reference to islam in the law system as a law that prescribes death to homosexuals, which, of course, just about all muslims do.

Well, to me as an engineer, "tend to" means "inevitably will - just a question of when". Sure, we *could* run a large organizaion on rainbows and unicorn giggles, but in practice it ain't so. There have been a few large corporations, here and there, that had great cultures that treated employees and customers well and generally did things right, but that always seems to be a window of a few years in a company's history. Organizational entropy wins in the end.

Weel ma man. Fit dae ye dae gin ye're nae fasht aboot aebody at cannae spik yer leid? Dae A hiv tae scrib yer "right" English jist fir yir notion o purity? Just because you can communicate on a certain level (and I do for the benefit of /.ers who don't come from north of Berwick) doesn't mean that the way I can and do write in other contexts is any less valid, but.

Braid is fun times. There are plenty of others. Spelunky and Dwarf Fortress come immediately to mind. The guy that writes Dwarf Fortress supports himself on donations, which is pretty cool.

This story makes me see these women as just incredibly lonely and desperate for 'motherhood'. It's the same as the lonely guys that are so desperate for female companionship that they purchase realdolls.

I am not a lawyer, so take this advice with a grain of salt. I sincerely doubt that these folks will ever press charges, even if they do have a patent. This sounds like a typical letter designed to scare you away from doing any competing business, and "automatic port forwarding" on google pops up 360,000 results. Their patent is basically wholesale worthless anyway.

That said, it might be worth paying to consult a lawyer if this company continues to press the matter. Aside from that, I'd keep working on that software and be glad that you can stick it to an apparently fairly asinine company at the same time.