Funnily enough, I have the exact opposite experience...

I was given a windows-only mp3 player and have never been able to sync it with Windows. I plug it in, windows then tells me I need to install drivers so I install them. It then tells me to reboot, so I reboot. I launch WMP, then after clicking all over the place I finally find the device to try and sync it with some playlists. At the end of the sync, WMP tells me "there was an error please try again later". I check the player, nothing on it... the damned thing spent a good 20 minutes churning away to do nothing. I plug it into a Linux box, a pop-up comes and asks me if I prefer to use Rythmbox or AmaroK to manage the player. It syncs no problem. After asking on forums, I'm told I must be some kind of moron or my windows installation has a serious problem (or both) as those devices are plug-and-play. Or maybe the device is defective... but it works 100% fine with Linux even tho it is a windows-only mp3 player. So I try on another machine, same result. A third machine with a more recent installation of windows, same result. A VM with a fresh installation of windows and all patches applied... same result.

Last week, I bought a random cheapo no-name USB wireless stick. I plugged it on my Linux box and it worked directly. Windows required me to install drivers.

That part would be a problem... we're talking about a lawyer here...

You may want to check mtDna and the retrovirus marks. Not only do we have retrovirus leftovers from our primate relatives, those leftovers allow us to trace the branching of our family tree.

I signed up just in time to start my first two modules towards a postgraduate degree this semester. While the cost is higher than the local uni, OpenU has two advantages: it's in English and it fits in my professional schedule. If everything goes according to plan, I'll have the postgraduate degree in 2 years and my Msc in about 37 months.

Maybe, but Germans are still trying to find their nuclear waste that East Germany "treated" before the fall of the wall. They do know it is buried somewhere, nobody has a clue where.

And it may come as a surprise to you, but not every computer user is a gamer

Neither does the German law, obviously only a judge can compel the ISP to hand over the account details. The agent of the copyright holder goes to the judge with all the evidence collected at that point (file, torrent hash, IP, MAC associated with that IP, time the infringement was noticed) then gets granted a court order for the ISP. You are contractually and legally responsible for any infringement committed through your connection point, so they pretty much don't even need to prove you personally downloaded the file. They just need to establish that you own the equipment used for the infringement.

Now, the "funny" bit is that while some German states do not consider filesharing illegal... the defendant doesn't pick the state where the case will be tried, so if it ever goes to tribunal you're most likely toast. Sending back the form and not paying is exposing you to an additional fine for breach of contract. Not sending back the form will get you done for aggravated infringement.

Or they could do it like they do in Germany... lawyers contact copyright owners and make a deal (percentage of the money recovered), then they connect to the various trackers to find content belonger to their customers. Once said content is found, they check if there are German IPs in the torrent. If they find German IPs, they go to the judge to get a court order to force the ISP to reveal the account information for that specific IP, with that specific router MAC address, in that specific timeframe. Finally, you receive a nice letter, with a copy of the court order and all the documentation that goes with it... you have one month to sign a form and pay a "small" fine (500 to 1000 euro), after which they are entitled to go after you for a far larger amount in a court of their choosing. Get caught a second time, the fine is multiplied by 10. Get caught a third time, you'll probably need to sell a few body parts to pay the fine.

2012 will be the year of Linux on the deskop^w^w^w^wthe last nail in SCO's coffin.

Well, the words of the accuser seem to make a better case than the words of Gibson "we are targeted because we donated to the Republican Party"... you mean, like the majority of companies in Tennessee?

Also, I don't know about the US but in the places where I've lived to date... you tend to have to show the proofs you've already collected to the judge in order to get the authorization to raid and search premises.

Also funny, from the Gibson press release: "This law reads that you are guilty if you did not observe a law even though you had no knowledge of that law in a foreign country.". Isn't one of the principles of the law that ignorance of the law is no excuse for breaking it?.

Even if it was the case in this instance, which I don't believe, why would they lie about the content of the parcel if it was perfectly "legal and trivial"? Why would a company take the risk to mislabel goods knowing that they would would get investigated and fined when caught? Especially after being raided a previous time and thus probably kept under watch?

In this case we have vendor in India, transporter, customs broker with goods mislabeled to clear Indian export customs, company in Germany, transporter, customs broker with the same goods mislabeled to clear US import customs, customer in California, transporter, customer in Tennessee, transporter with properly labelled goods, Gibson. We're talking about 1250 boards, not a couple of boards. Why would a profit-seeking company use so many in-betweens, each taking a commission that will eat in its profit margin, when it could "legally and trivially" order the 1250 boards directly from a supplier in India?

Then why did Gibson go through such a convoluted delivery route with so much incorrectly filled paperwork? I mean, if they don't care and it is trivial, why take the risk to lie on the customs declaration?

In this case, it would be "your underage girlfriend carrying fake ID you made " for the analogy to work.