But your cellphone is not broadcast. The signal travels over RF as a broadcast, but each individual packet is intended only for one recipient. Encryption and signalling ensures that the data/call is decipherable only by you. There are pretty specific laws about when it's legal to receive telephone data that is not intended for you. A cellphone is, in effect, narrowcast.

The same could be said for anything travelling over secured wireless network. Unsecured wireless is another kettle of fish and I will not speculate on what sending broadcast packets to an unsecured WiFi router would be considered as.

*grr* I sooo moderated in this, but I couldn't let your comment go to waste.

Sony will get nothing of what I so dearly wish they had coming to them without a huge smack-down from the courts.

A lot of these so-called "techies" have kids, partners or both, who will beg and nag and want PS4 for $LATEST_SHINY_REHASH_OF_GAME.

Have you ever tried to tell your wife she can't have something? Go out and get a wife (or husband, but it's not quite the same) if you don't have one and then try tell them that they can't have something they want. Now imagine that they want it because the kids are dead-set on it. "No! Dear, I run the tech in this house and you are not buying Sony! The foot is down!". Tell me how that works out for you!

And a cat in both states is better: Zombie cat!

It wasn't my cat, but Schrödinger might be a bit miffed since he preferred it both alive and dead at the same time.

The fundamental difference is that I didn't outlay $600 for the console then another $100 for a game when I was playing in the arcade. I just shoveled "quarters" into the machine.

The WoW model works well - you buy the game disc (albeit at a fairly discounted rate) or download for free and then pay a monthly subscription to play. Seems a lot of people shovel money at that model. I don't get why the /. community is up in arms about what is essentially a variant on the WoW model, but with the "subscription" included in the original disc purchase and available for a one-time fee for non-original purchasers.

"People I am not: Brian D. Foy, Assistant Professor, Department of Microbiology, College of Veterinary Medicine & Biomedical Sciences, Colorado State University"

Hmmmmm

Yes. Your health insurance (assuming you have it) will pick up the bill and it will sue (on your behalf) the insurance of the party at fault. If you don't have insurance you're welcome to bring action against the party that was responsible for your injury.

What is amusing is that you've hit the nail right on the head. I am sitting here writing this post and looking at my Facebook chat list. Most of the people who I used to be out with on a Wed night are online on Facebook. More to the point, things like MSN and ICQ that used to be busy aren't. All those people moved over to Facebook as soon as it had chat because it has "games". I bet if I actually bring up the page I'll see dozens of game updates and other nonsense from them.

Another point is that the Internet brings easy (free!) access to content. You can download a movie in under an hour and queue up 2 or 3 more while you're watching the first. I have friends who literally have piles of terabyte hard disks with all the crap they've downloaded. They invest countless hours into devising cataloging schemes so they can know they have something and not download it again (not so they can find it and access it).

These were the very same friends who used to go out instead of sitting home watching downloaded crap.

And yes, I'm aware the irony of pointing out online that everyone is online and not going out anymore.

This is far different. This judge was not once a lawyer on a bunch of "random" cases. This judge invested considerable time and effort into becoming an RIAA lobbyist before taking this position as a judge.

From the torrent freak article:

That's a hundred grand a year to lobby for the industry. It smacks of bias to me!

In fact, my car dealer would love it if I put diesel in the tank. It damages the fuel pump, filter, injectors so badly they need to be replaced. That's a time consuming and costly exercise and they make a fortune from you when you do it.

See here:
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2046324&cid=35567912

28 components use GPL, 5 use LGPL, etc.

But, Android is more than just those components. The glue that holds them together is not licensed under a GPL-style license. That glue is called "Android".

From http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/open-enterprise/2010/09/android-opening-a-digital-pandoras-box/index.htm

The bits of Android that Google created or could change the license on are APL. But there's still a lot that's not.

I should have pasted the whole of section 4 of the LGPL, which also makes it clear that you must provide all information required for the user to reinstall the new shared library of their choice.