Lots of people by televisions and game consoles. These cost considerably more than $500 and arguably do a lot less. What's your point again?

$500 is an affordable price for a pretty large segment of the population. Couple that with the fact that there is so much software that you can get either for free or very inexpensively and you end up with a pretty cheap device that does quite a lot.

Buy a PS3 or an XBox and check out the price of their popular titles. Lots of games are $50 or even more. When I buy a game for my iPad, I consider $5 to be expensive.

I agree, there isn't going to be a hard and fast answer (at least, not one that's real). However, there is some number of pirates who would have bought your game, which is the real cost of piracy on your game.

The best you can do is get an upper and lower bound on the number, and compare that cost of lost sales to the cost of DRM. I guarantee that's what the game execs are doing right now.

The problem, as /.ers from time out of mind have pointed out, is that Congress is bought and paid for by the telecom and cable TV industries - who are the very folks you're proposing the FCC ask them to regulate here. So - good luck with that.

It's important to understand that the American system of checks and balances is tripodal, and that the FCC is a quasi-independent function of the executive leg of that tripod. Congress makes the laws, but, by design, the executive branch implements those laws. One of the most important ways in which the executive branch performs that duty is by creating a regulatory framework that defines the specifics of how the laws Congress passes will be implemented. And it's absolutely vital to understand that the executive branch is not subordinate to Congress in this regard - and, for the checks and balances system to actually work, all three legs of the tripod have to push against each other. Congress must assert its authority to make law, the executive branch must assert its authority to parse and implement those laws, and the judicial branch must asset its authority to test the validity of those laws. When one branch allows itself to become subordinate to another - as happened with Congress during the Bush years - disaster inevitably ensues (Patriot Act, anyone?). So, in the absence of specific direction from Congress to the contrary, the FCC is absolutely within its mandate to change its mind about how to regulate a particular segment of the communications market in this country, just as Congress would be within its mandate to provide specific direction on the issue (and note my point above about who would most likely dictate Congress' lawmaking in this regard), and the judiciary would most definitely be within its mandate to rule on one, the other, or both assertions of authority.

It's messy, it's frustrating to observe, and it's inefficient as all hell, but it's the system we've got. And, bellyaching from those who dislike its outcomes in specific cases on specific issues, short of a serious Constitutional revamp, the system will continue to sort-of-work this way for the foreseeable future.

I know this is the sort of thing that goes on at black hat conferences, but could this guy potentially get in some sort of legal trouble for demonstrating what he has found?

I would think only if he shows himself, either in pre-recorded video or live, actually performing the hack on a real ATM. At that point, he could be charged under the computer fraud and abuse act. But simply doing a presentation on the topic, with details of the hacks? No, I don't think there's any law, yet, that makes *that* illegal, and any such law would likely be unconstitional in any case (pesky first amendment and all that).

There are 10s of thousands of apps on the appstore hosted by Apple that generate no revenue for Apple. They get nothing on free Apps today. iAds will not be required for free apps, and people will still be able to host free apps even if they use other ad solutions.

Your argument makes no sense.

Nowhere in that quote does it indicate that the accounts were administrator users. They could have been read-only users, or users of a router that was less important in the network.

That is questionable in the quote. They could have been read only users, or else why would they need the router passwords if they already had administrators.

Access != Administrator

Because those applications probably still make a lot of assumptions for running on x86. I wouldn't even think that windows could be compiled to run on ARM in it's current state. There's probably a bunch of assembly thrown in for optimizations. Windows hasn't run on anything but x86 since Windows NT4. A lot has changed since then.

You don't want to wait that happen. Eventually the government will become having a face so thick that they just outright lying to the citizens. China has already set the example, and I surely you don't follow the shit.

http://zh.wikipedia.org/zh-hans/%E8%BA%B2%E8%B2%93%E8%B2%93_(%E7%B6%B2%E8%B7%AF%E7%94%A8%E8%AA%9E)
In 2009, a 24yo Man died while being detained. In the press release, official stated that the suspect died from head trauma by hitting the wall when playing hide-and-seek.

http://news.mylegist.com/1604/2010-03-01/21338.html
Two months ago, another man died while being detained. This time the reason given were he drank too much water - despite that there was a hole in the head, nipple and gential showed signs of abuse.

I am picking the two most obvious and well-known cases, there are many more unbelievable cases like that happening frequently. Although for both cases, the department in a higher hierarchy later came up and clarify the truth. But nevertheless, IMHO they crossed the line. Yet the Chinese couldn't really do anything besides chatting about it on the net. There is no way to replace the official, the government or the party without bleeding.

Going back to Australia and the other countries, you don't want to let your country to step out the first step - please defense your rights.
The "think of the children" is pointless, the child molester will find their way to get the actionable material no matter what, you think a filter or two will stop them? They are driven by the sexual desire and nothing can stop that - human is just another animal. Nor the filter could cure them either. Just like lock can only keep honest people honest - Internet filter in the national sense could only make your Internet experience more trouble, not those child molesters.

Once the government wins this, they will take a even more aggressive step and when you finally find out it's outright unacceptable - it will be too late - and welcome to join the Chinese.

Exercise your right while you still have it, and please protect it, treasure it.

Disclaimer: I'm a Hongkonger, but living in Shanghai.

Don't look at them like demo versions, they're more like stripped down versions that don't have all the crap you don't need. I'll take that bargain for a free tool. I use logmein's free version to support clients. I don't need file transfer or printing, I just need an easy-to-set-up remote access product (with no port-forwarding requirements) that's cheap. Free is cheap.

No, they waste it directly with cars. One big problem with the energy discussion today is, that all people think of replacing only the power plants of today but they only make up 1/3-1/2 of the total amount of energy consumed in a western country. And yes there are 122 (if I did not miscount) fossil fuel based power plants.

but the center of my argument is: Instead of hoping we are able to find a nuclear based replacement for all these plants + all the electricity for transportation and household heating, we should use the technology at hand, which works, because we do not have to time to wait. And as a side effect of that strategy we get a decentralized energy system which is more reliable and blackouts will not be so likely to happen, like today.

California Civil code, section 2080, outlines the following procedure for dealing with lost property:

1) Find lost property;
2) Do I know who owns this?
If yes - I must make a reasonable effort to return it to them.
If no, or you know who the owner is but cannot contact them - continue on to 3.
3) Is the item's value more than $100?
If yes - I must turn the item over to to the police who have jurisdiction over the location where I found the item.
If no - I commit no crime by keeping the item.

I have no firsthand knowledge of anything PS3, but according to the court document the inability to upgrade to 3.21 will affect quite a bit more than access to the PS3 Store.
Your attitude is dismissive of something that affects others but not yourself. I am sorry to say that you are not the only person that purchased a PS3.

I didn't know Sony had a slashdot account!

Lets take a few situations and assume the law will be followed properly by law enforcement officers. 1)Brown person gets pulled over for speeding doesn't have ID gives police insurance card, ssn, address and other corroborating info police checks the info and it is correct brown person gets on his way with a ticket
2)White person gets pulled over for speeding doesn't have ID gives police insurance card, ssn, address and other corroborating info police checks the info and it is correct white person gets on his way with a ticket
3)brown/white illegal gets pulled over for speeding doesn't have ID gives police insurance card and and other fake identification police checks the info and it comes back incorrect person is arrested for providing false information to police and is later charged with being an illegal.
4)brown/white immigrant gets pulled over for speeding doesn't have ID gives police insurance card and and other identification police checks the info and it comes back that the person's visa expired but the person says they have reapplied for visa. Now unless the police officer can prove any wrong doing he must lets the person go with a speeding ticket because they are here illegally, the officer would see when the visa expired and be able tell if there was a small lapse which is common or a large one

I'm not seeing the problem that is causing everyone to act like lunatics, the only problem is a cop with a chip on his shoulders, which would be a problem anyway and the Arizona law does not change that is just gives Arizona police the ability to ask for ID and detain if it they are here illegally.

My point needs no answer :) It is simply an observation.

That said, I would like this thread to be stored for posterity. One day, when copyright is abolished and private companies are free to take all the open source code they want, put it in proprietary software and resell it - I would be interested in revisiting the topic ;) (Though none of us will probably live that long)