No, wait, on second thought, he probably realized they were slashdotters and figured it was perfectly save.

Or that they were lying, and no way a pre-beauty queen would invite them. Cop probably thought "these kids, it's not april fools".

1) Because it is a deterrent (there are people who won't d/l due to risk, people who won't u/l due to risk, and organizations such as Napster that had their original model shut down for a legit model
2) Because they may not collect $1,000,000 from the defendent but collecting $1,000 will still hurt some peoples wallets - and enough to get some parent to ground their kid for a year or five
3) Because you need to keep protecting your IP or risk setting precedent that you are OK with people stealing your IP

I enjoy people's arguments that pirating is not stealing because it does not deprive anyone of the material (meaning they still have their own copy of the music). Stealing of information by copying has been punishable by law for many years - way before the Internet. It is a flawed argument to think stealing information is not a bad thing. Information theft is big business and very punishible. Many companies have their entire business model setup on proprietary information - the people here a /. may not like this - but guess what - the people here at /. were not the ones investing tons of money/time into those soft-products. Also, that nice new fancy drug that you or your family/loved ones are taking to save their lives...that formula is most likely (for new drugs) a closely held secret by a company that spent many millions in R&D. Without these copyright protections said companies would have no reason to create life-saving medicines. Just like drug makers have to protect their recipies from international infringements so do people who want to profit from their music.

Nothing wrong with a copyright music owner protecting their property.

I know this is /. and people like to be assinine devil's advocates but maybe you should rethink your question and try again.

But they can ask you to be discrete about it - and you should show some discretion.

I am down for women being naked, but I understand not everyone wants to see that. It's not appropriate in public. Maybe you don't get offended by it, but a lot of people do. So why do something to deliberately offend people? You are not being repressed so it is not a statement of civil rights. Being tactful is not a crime.

Breast feeding in public is required for your baby to eat. That is fine - though you should be discrete - you don't have to be totally topless. You can keep yourself covered enough that nobody can see your chest unless they are at an acute angle.

As for posting the picture on the site - guess what, it is not required for your baby to survive to post a picture on the site. You are doing it for a personal reason. Well that is fine - except Facebook is owned by someone(s) and they don't want it. If you do not like it you can delete your account. By not respecting their rules you are in violation of their TOC and you are wrong.

Just because your work area does not involve SQL does not mean it is not commonplace. Small/medium businesses actually prefer to not use SQL because of the expense of setting everythign up (Windows server, SQL Server Enterprise, then probably Exchange to have a good e-mail system) but they use it (I did work for a company that does custom software for small/medium businsses). TO be honest the owners/managers didn't care about the programming language - only the price tag. Then again...spending $300,000 on custom software makes the $20,000 investment in MS server products not that painful. Its also buried in the price "Yes to make you a custom app will cost $320,000 for everything."

For a business that gets custom software the added expense of the MS products is not that much...the custom software is way more expensive.

I now work for a huge company - and yea .net and sql all the way with the exception of legacy apps - but they are being re-written.

Yea but the republicans actually hurt things.

Yea thats all well and good but does it come in 2 carret, D color, SI1 clarity? My g/f is demanding.

If the warranty was from a 3rd company you should be OK. Desktop components are easy/cheap to replace. Laptops are not so easy.

Is WASD really that hard to use?

Teaching my g/f how to play WoW. She doesn't play video games at all. Yes it is that hard to learn to use. I had to explain she can press forward and right at the same time to move at an angle, but pressing forward and backward at the same time does nothing.

I play WoW and was excited to get this. Driver software (provided in CD) does not work with Vista 64 premium - constantly get an error when trying to load it. The keyboard works - but without the software you can't remap the keys and this is bad joo-joo magic (WoW reference).

So I went to their website to download the latest software hoping to fix the problem....site does not come up. Tried it from a different computer at home....site still does not come up. Tried it from a different network AND computer.... yup no go.

Tried searching for software on the net...after 30 minutes I gave up.

Went to Google cache and found an 800 number....they are closed until Jan 5th (I called them on Dec 22).

So are they going out of business? I don't know...but I am returning this product from a company that takes at LEAST a 10 BUSINESS day vacation during the biggest shopping season and their WEBSITE is down (it may be up now, but since I am returning it there is no point in me trying).

I will stick with my G15. Now waiting for my WoW mouse to get off back-order.

We can make antimatter fuel it's just so insanely expensive that without a major technical leap you aren't going to be powering a car much less a starship with it

We can? Link to article?

try to make that charge stick in court.

It is illegal to acquire (most likely knowingly) this kind of material. This is always after-the-fact since there was no product for him to acquire until after-the-fact.

Really - a semi-decent attorney doesn't have to try to hard.