If you want change, why vote for a centrist?

If you're putting enterprise-critical data in the cloud without encrypting it first, you are a fool.

Why do you think foreigners and young people in that situation in France riot? Is it because they are happy with the laws that keep them unemployable?

No, it's generally because of racism or because a cop has murdered another kid.

And your whole "freedom-to-be-exploited" argument is similarly off-target.

They do it to intimidate you, even though they know that they're not legally binding. Also, companies that operate in multiple states will try to impose terms of employment that can be enforced in whichever states are most anti-employee. If they're not enforceable somewhere else, they hope the employee won't realize that.

They really should be abolished nationwide. It's just another way of asserting control over you even when you're receiving no compensation for the restrictions they're forcing on you.

It seems IP doesn't only belong to the company- but also at least to some degree to the person who actually developed said IP.

Most employment contracts say differently. Unless your employer is less slimy than most, they claim sole ownership of everything you create for the term of your employment. I redlined my contract to say explicitly that what I create outside working hours, and not using company resources, belongs to me and me only. My main motivation for that was being able to contribute to open-source projects on my own nickel. Their legal department looked it over and they still hired me. But every time there's a revision to the terms of employment, we go through the same redline dance.

If this rebellion against copyright comes to pass, nobody will create anything as polished as what we see and hear today.

Meaning we'll have to settle for Shakespeare and do without Britney? May as well bring on the apocalypse.

I think the same should be true for the software field.

When that happens, we'll know for sure that the field is completely brain-dead.

The majority of so-called "professions" that require certifications do so precisely because they require no particularly rare skills, therefore they need further barriers to entry to protect the incumbents from competition. In the case of software, you can usually find out very quickly who's a bullshitter.

Yeah, if in the course of getting the government off our backs, we have to radically refashion or abandon copyright, fine. That's an egg I don't mind breaking in order to enjoy my omelette.

It's called the shell game.

Usability is all about making the device simple for someone with limited knowledge or experience to use.

Better to say that it's about making easy tasks easy, and difficult tasks possible. Not original, but very much in line with my experience.

In some contexts, all you have is a population of power users. Their usability requirements are not the same as those of naive users of a mass consumer item. Horses for courses, that's the ticket.

I'm glad that they've finally been so blinded by their greed that they are finally attacking people who can afford to fight back.

No, what we're seeing is a law that originates in a deep-seated fear of sexuality and the belief that legislation can control it. It's not about preventing victimization of children: it's about preventing sexual expression. Just control for its own sake. This can be seen by the inane overreaching of these poorly-formulated laws.

The whole hijab controversy in Europe was just inept marketing. It should have been called an "anti-sexual-harassment women's self-defense garment," then many European and American feminists of the uncritical kind would have embraced it.

The U.S. government has NO money.

You don't understand much about fiscal policy, do you? Or for that matter the government's role in manipulating the money supply.