That's *exactly* why the telco has taken this to the supreme court. They were concerned about the taxpayers' money!

$423,500? They must be joking. They'll never get any firm results unless they come up with some hard, pulsating cash.

Geez, I should stop whistling popular tunes to myself while in public areas. Bad, bad habit! Some RIAA or ASCAP jerk may overhear me and sell me into slavery to the Third World. On the other hand, there I'll be allowed to whistle at least!

You must PAY to use a patented format, such as jpeg or mp3 or mpeg-4. In practice, the maker of your DVD player or your video camera, or the company making the software or ripping CDs, or your content provider, will have paid that "tax" in advance -- from your pocket, of course. That way, everything gets a bit more expensive than it should be. Players, cameras, computers, software, everything is encumbered with this "tax".

It also means that, if the patent holder decides to prosecute us users tomorrow (just as RIAA is doing today) and they find a jpg, or mp3, or mpeg-4 file on your computer that was obtained without paying for the royalties, using patent-circumventing means -- which roughly comprises ALL free software and many OSS phones/players/PDAs -- they may sue your ass off. That's why license matters.

If I were to choose between a proprietary, obfuscated, possibly patent-encumbered format and an open, free, community-geared format, I'd always choose the latter, without all that nitpicking about performance and technicalities. In the end, it all boils down to whose interests you want to support -- those of a patent holder who's gonna charge you every single time you watch a video, or your own.

On the other hand, consumers are strange and bewilderingly uninformed creatures. They rarely choose what's in their best interest (as shown by the mp3/ogg controversy, by the wide acceptance of DRM-ed content, and so on).

Well, I, for one, migrated from KDE to Gnome precisely because of this "innovate at any cost" philosophy in KDE. KDE4 was introduced far too soon in the major distros and even promoted to the "default" Desktop Environment in some of them, while still being horribly buggy and crashing all the time. The haste to make the GNU/Linux desktop look cool just made it look bad.

If I could sort of understand this innovation hype while I was a Windows user (novelty sells), I really wish GNU/Linux developers would slow down "innovation for innovation's sake", and invest their energies in making things work smoothly first. Personally, I'd be more than happy with a Desktop Environment that was, say, 5 years old, without bells, whistles, or Compiz, but was *maintained* well -- nay, maintained *aggressively* -- in order to have almost every bug squashed. The only time I'm glad to see innovation is when it's related to new devices/hardware support.

That's just my opinion, of course.

Good point! You're purchasing nothing more than a "permit to listen". I wouldn't even go as far as suggesting to buy it once: better wait until they come up with a "product" -- "permits" are usually not worth the paper they're written on... But, hey, these are paperless, so let me guess how much must THEY be worth?

Decades ago I had close to 3,000 LP's. To preserve them from wear, I copied many of them to blank cassette tapes (which, IIRC, included a special overprice to cover "copyright damages" incurred by taping music). Then the CD arrived, with allegedly better sound, so I re-purchased many of the albums in CD format. After that, downloadable DRM-ed music came out. Hmm, that would be like re-purchasing the same music for the (counting the "copyright tax" on cassette tapes) FOURTH TIME OVER??? I said no, thanks. I prefer to buy CD's and convert them to ogg/mp3 myself. I'll never buy a DRM-ed piece NO MATTER how perfectly DRM is implemented. Does this make me a consumer that has learned or...?

I'm not arguing for Ray or against him, it just makes me think: if the rule of law has been overridden in specific cases (such as possibly in the said trial, or in certain interrogations of terrorist suspects that have supposedly taken place, or, more prominently, in the case of the Guantanamo prisoners) -- can it still be called "rule of law" at all? Or, to put it the other way round: how many such exceptions to "due process" must occur before the "rule of law" should stop being called that? It's a lot like those girls who take it in the mouth and in the ass and elsewhere -- but never in the pussy, so that they can go on calling themselves technically "virgins".

Don't know about yoga, but bars are OK. You actually don't need friends for that, I go to bars by myself all the time. Over time, you get used to it, particularly if you stick to the same bars. At first, you can just sit there and drink, and subsequently you may try to approach a girl, particularly if she's been eyeing you a lot. Remember: genuine (not fake) interest about her life will get every girl talking eagerly to you in bare minutes.

Another great venue is online dating - just by putting your profile on dating sites and the like will get ladies to send you mails. Just be honest with your profile, and try to sound interesting/funny. And some photos are a must, of course.

A good point! And not to forget that the best encryption is achieved by pressing the OFF button and leaving it at that. Surpassed only by the act of removing the battery altogether... ;)

Exactly! Moreover, there is always the possibility of the government simply SCRAMBLING or even SWITCHING OFF all cells (or WiFi spots, or Internet providers...) on their territory. They could always fall back on some sort of military grade communications, satellites or the like, whereas we, ordinary citizens, could not.

That makes me think that this is a legislative, not a technological problem. We should pressure the powers that be to let us participate in law-making through public polls or plebiscites. The legal system as it is is extremely obsolete and is expressly made by anyone BUT the people, for anyone BUT the people. THAT'S the front we should be fighting on, methinks.