If I create a simple, one page site the terms of service of which simply say "you are not permitted to use this web site unless you are Rinisari", I could turn them over to the authorities because they've committed a crime?

The burden of preserving the "sanctity" of copyrights and patents has always fallen on the holder. This ensures that the holder is earnest in keeping their government-sanctioned property to themselves. It's simply a problem of our court system that enforcing these rights has become very expensive.

Are they going to airdrop people who can teach them how to use this technology from the heavens? Some tools are intuitive. To people who have never seen a computers or even really much technology at all, computers are not.

It's not perfect anonymity, but there are ways to stay safer by using multiple BTC addresses and such.

https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Anonymity

No one should have thought that this We the People thing would bring about any measurable change. It's an exercise in false hope of efficacy in the legislative/executive process. 150k signatures supporting marijuana legalization/reform and the best answer they could come up with is a bunch of scare tactics and anti-drug rhetoric based around studies that were ineffective and the lack of studies because of the nature of the substance being tested.

You want real change for marijuana policy? Run for local office, get people to support you, and defeat the incumbents who stand in your way. Get the local laws to support your goals and work your way up the chain.

As for the education funding reform response, it's just pushing the Obama administration's education agenda. The petition signed by 32k visitors called for a bailout of recent graduates as the best economic stimulus possible for that generation. The response is nothing more than what you'd expect to receive from a Congressperson when you write vehemently in favor of or opposing a piece of legislation: the Congressperson will summarize the bill, summarize their position, and essentially say "thank you for your feedback".

Again, if you want real reform, get elected and don't let yourself get corrupted. Good luck; you'll need it.

I for one would like to see an objective comparison of the two. I mean, I'm not about to re-rip everything I have as FLAC using ALAC or convert from one format to the other unless there are significant advantages.

I don't know about the BATFE, but I know that the TSA is out in his plan. It'll be privatized, or, really, returned to the airports and the airlines' responsibilities.

Let's assume 25M subscribers at the standard DVD + Streaming plan, which I believe was $11/mo. We can chop off a few zeros and still get the same effect, so let's do that and keep our math simple.

25 * 11 = 275

I think the cheapest is now $16 for both, so let's figure out what they'd be making if everyone who stayed kept the same plan at the higher rate.

24 * 16 = 384

Let's derive a quick formula.

(24 - x) * 16 + x * 8, where x is the number of people who choose DVD /or/ streaming.

24 * 16 = 384 = (24 - 0) * 16 + 0 * 8

Now, let's solve for 275, to assume they'd be making the same amount.

275 = (24 - x) * 16 + x * 8

I put this into my handy equation solver because I'm too lazy to work it out in my head and can't find paper/pen...

x = 109/8, or 13.625.

Netflix could go down to 10.375M users of the DVD+streaming, and have 13.625M users of one or the other and still make the same amount of money.

Methinks Netflix did their math beforehand. They're going to be making bank, and savvy shareholders are buying now on this dip on bad news. Happens every time. Netflix is here to stay, for as long as the content owners will allow it to exist.

Thanks! Slashdot has touched many lives, including mine. It's all because of you and yours.

P.S. I have never before seen so many 2-, 3-, 4-, and 5-digit UIDs in a single thread.

I would pay extra for it through not cable. If I could drop another $2-3/mo on my Netflix subscription to have Syfy's entire back catalog and new shows available day-of-release on Netflix, I'd do it in a second.

And I haven't had cable, thus not watched Syfy except at friends' houses or on Netflix since 2007.

There was that story a while back about some physicists figuring out that they couldn't send email more than 500 miles.

Back on topic, I'll bet VPNs throw wrenches in their methods.

If /. had upvotes, I would give you one.

It's the HAMs -- the MacGuyvers of the radio world -- who all we computers geeks will turn to when the shit goes down. We could get packet radio up and running in days together, and have our own twitter.

I yield to this explanation.

It seems that "first to file" places a burden on inventors to patent as soon as they can, which may be very, very expensive.

What happens if I invent something and show it to some friends, then one of them takes my idea and patents it before I can because of whatever reason (he has money, connections, etc.)? That seems dreadfully unfair to me, especially if I can demonstrate that I had the idea first by showing recordings, demos, etc.

I see it like this: IIRC, Franklin didn't patent his stove design. What if he'd sold one to someone, they quickly realized he'd not patented it, then they patent it. That gives them a right to his profits, without having done any work, all because he neglected to patent his invention before selling it.

It seems this "first to file" thing is going to clog up the patent office even more, while potentially costing rightful inventors their hard-earning rewards from their ingenuity.

I would love to have a trial run of this scenario.

The goal would be to get an Internet connection from outside the US to a city well inside the US using nothing over which the US government has control. E.g., from Clifton Hill, ON (Niagara Falls) to Pittsburgh, PA. Or somewhere in Vancouver, BC to Portland, OR.

This would likely necessitate the use of strategically positioned WiFi access points and lots of cantennas or similar directional devices. Exceeding the wattage cap could be considered in-bounds if its detection is difficult or detection of the detection is easy. Multiple routes would be nice, but even a single connection is better than nothing at all.

This could help the public (eh, mostly geeks) develop a plan to Internet the US if the gov't gets ISPs by the balls or cuts cables. Plausible deniability would be built in later somehow.