Seeding has always been where the real legal risk is, even before torrent when people were getting stuff from IRC bots, "secret" FTP sites, etc. The person hosting the file hosts all the risks, and relatively few people can make such things work, and those that do want to limit their audience for a variety of reasons. Torrent eases this a bit in that it forced people to seed at least as long as it takes to download, although I think even that has gone away.

Warezing will live on forever in the old style of warezing networks and word of mouth, it's far too expensive to police effectively, and easier for the public to defund adequately. What TPB did: show the seeders to all the world in a public way, probably won't live. It makes it far too easy for various interested parties to find offenders without having to spend any money. The general public cannot defund law enforcement to that degree (and probably shouldn't, copyright has some limited value) and certainly can't stop civil suits.

I might too, but that doesn't make us right.

There will always be systems & embedded programming to provide the platform on which higher level languages will run, and thus there will always be C.

I've heard of a few attempts to write system level things (kernels, device drivers, etc.) in C++, but none have gone anywhere.

Not dead yet....getting better.

Calling it a hack is like listing the body count on a mass shooting, it makes great headlines and guarantees repeat business.

but...but...we clothe our women

This is a case where someone like the EFF needs to get behind any individual who is hacking in a way clearly is NOT in violation of the intent of copyright/patent protection, let someone sue the doer and get the whole thing undone. I'd gladly throw money at them for a "DMCA kill opportunity fund". Congress will never get behind removing the DMCA, both parties have been bought and paid for.

What will likely happen is any such case will be dropped, hacking will continue to be legal as long as you watch your ass, and you can't ever be sure. "Land of the free" my ass.

Ad injection, webpage redirection. "Value add" for network owners, not end-users. Fuck em.

When I was 4 I wanted to be a baseball player. I became an engineer anyway. I'm not sure that a 4yo wanting to be a princess is so earth shattering, people grow up.

Leadership skills... Sorry I agree with most of what you said except that part. Never has such a word had such an ironic meaning as the word "leadership" in context of the corporation.

Is it rating's chasing, or is it pandering to their owner's interests? I remember when I was in NY, one of the tabloids that somehow is considered a major newspaper there was perpetually running front page news that was basically a reflection of the owner's failed business decisions. I couldn't tell if the owners were mafia or libertarians, or quite what the distinction between the two were, but it was clear that the newspaper was their PR device not any attempt at reporting news.

I guess because I am an engineer and want to fix what's broke, not treat the symptoms. But like an engineer, I'm not too worried about the packaging the solution comes in, or whether non-geeks understand it.

I have another rant on /. about the evils of using banks for this purpose. The bottom line is a bank is like a surly chaffeur, you give it posession of something you value with some limited authority to use it, and it gives you a lot of attitude, refuses to do what you ask with your possession and every once in a while disappears with your stuff entirely and requires its insuring authority to provide some limited financial restitution.

All this because physical currency has a lot of inherent dangers to use. It seems like the same entity that issues physical currency would offer a 1:1 with electronic currency, the only (solved) problem is how to offer the anonymity that said entity is reluctant to offer.

As someone for whom the precipice of middle age is steps away, it doesn't bother me if something I create becomes smarter than me, surpasses me and even sidelines me in the future. I will toil away the rest of my life working for The Man doing trivial things on a game I never wanted to play, for people I wouldn't piss on should they catch fire, to further goals I don't agree with.

I would find it something of a pyrrhic victory if I created, or helped create, a child or an AI that eventually managed to escape the cycle of stupid that our so called "civilization" has constructed.

Also, I would like to point out that an AI is the least of our concerns. It may be more attainable, and more destructive to the above, should we find ways of being truly self sufficient and independent on a significant scale. The tools are around us, but for obvious reasons no one is investing in them.

Hmm they love the transaction fees they get from retailers, that in turn make you spend more money on the item you bought. I do the same thing as OP, FWIW, but the world needs to find a way to remove CC companies from the loop, it's not working for anyone.