And in a court of law, they are. But while from your point of view, there's a difference, think about it from the artist/label's perspective. Either way, someone is taking something that doesn't belong to them, be it physical media or access to the data.

I'm getting tired of this complaint. From Merriam-Webster online, definition 1a of steal (transitive verb): "to take or appropriate without right or leave and with intent to keep or make use of wrongfully <stole a car>" You're conflating the definition of stealing with robbery. "rob" implies physical property. Steal doesn't.

Theft is a little more complex; by definition, applies to "stealing", but specifically that of property.

Why does #2 apply in this case? If I slap a copyright on something in the public domain, it doesn't fall out of the public domain. If I can con you into PAYING for it, there's a problem...but I'm not preventing you from accessing the property. I'm claiming you can't, but my claim wouldn't hold any water in court (I hope). Additionally, why would #1 hold here either? If something's in the public domain, the fraudulent entity IS legally authorized to obtain the property.

No, "stealing" is no more a good term here than it is in the copyright domain. "Fraud" makes far more sense.

At least according to the arguments that always show up here, "stealing" requires something physical. More to the point, someone who KNOWS this is public domain could use it safely. If they get sued for copyright infringement, they can fight it and (one hopes) win, since the copyright they're violating isn't valid.

Be careful with "D) nothing is precluding you and your friends from developing a new idea/concept while working for megacorp". A lot of companies will basically have you sign something saying that ideas you come up with/develop while working for the company are theirs. It's hard to prove the "come up with" part of things, but if you spend 2 years working there _AND_ on your pet project, you'll likely get a visit from megacorp's lawyers.

Of course, you can negotiate things when you're selling to them, but make sure to watch for things like that.

*YOU* may have determined that the Constitution doesn't force you to reveal your password, but if the Judicial Branch doesn't hold with that interpretation, you can probably be held (indefinitely?) in contempt of court. I don't know what the current rules are, nor if a case has made it to the SCotUS, but unfortunately, an individual's interpretation of the Constitution isn't going to hold water all on its own.

Why? Let's say I have a list of comics I read. And I discover that I'm no longer reading one of them because I find it boring. And I remove that link. I haven't suppressed/deleted it because I find it objectionable, I've removed it because I find it boring. I'd agree that if I linked to the FEMA site, and I removed that link because their linking to this book offended me, that would be self-censorship. But why is removing something I have no need for censorship in any sense of the word?

So? The title is "Why There's No iTunes For Movies." It's not "Why there's no iTunes-like infrastructure that works on every platform and isn't made by Apple."

Not liking Apple is fine by me (I like them, but to each his/her own)....but there definitely is an iTunes for movies, as pointed out, it's called iTunes.

I'd love to be taxed less as anyone...but compared to a lot of other countries, our taxes are lower. See Wikipedia and note that we're 8th from the lowest of the countries they're listing.

If he'd wanted to promote digital delivery, he'd have bought a movie off iTunes, or reviewed Hulu, or, hell, reviewed streaming from Fox. He was trying to get a scoop, pure and simple.

Um, what's your point? The reviewer did something illegal. Whether or not you think the movie's worth your money and regardless of what you think of the MPAA, it's not exactly legal to go download it. Admitting you did so is dumb. Admitting you did so when you work for a company that makes movies is idiotic.

I'll agree with your second point (about managing resources), but not the first, unless I'm misunderstanding you. In general, unless you're doing an operating system or something ludicrously performance sensitive, knowing assembly coding is overkill. Knowing how to read it might be useful down the road, but it's not important for a first step. It leads to attempting to optimize your code off the bat for the processor...and remember, the best way to write code is to write some thing simple that works first, and then worry about optimizing.

Unless you're indicating that he should have some basic grasp of what assembly is, I'd say learning assembly (much less acquiring a "strong grounding" in it) is not necessary; if you need it for a job, they'll expect you to acquire it on the job.

I was using it as an example to the original question ("Do you know language <X>?"). There was also supposed to be a paragraph break before "Be honest.", but the system ate it.

This is a helluva way to get knocked out of contention. I talked to a teammate who interviewed someone (I'd interviewed them as well, but my area of expertise is different). He asked if they knew pthreads programming, and they said yes. He then talked to them a little about it and it became painfully obvious he had no idea what he was talking about. Be honest. Saying you know something you don't is a good way to come across as untrustworthy. Saying that "I don't know Python, but I've got some experience in other scripting languages and can probably pick it up pretty quickly" is much better. (Yes, I know nominally anyone can pick up Python quickly. It was an example.)

I call bullshit. We've been inoculating our son in accordance with the AAP's recommendations, and one of the vaccines he gets is...guess what! A polio shot!