Does it seem to anybody else like Techdirt is actually just self-citing itself for its proof? I don't really see where it's shown that the FBI has copyright enforcement actually prioritized higher than missing persons here. I see references to people saying it's a major priority, but that doesn't actually mean it really is. I think we need some more evidence laid out a little more clearly than what Techdirt has done, at least.

Google should say, "Because it is too difficult in the United States, the land of freedom, to offer a public venue for the sharing of creative works and the preservation of culture, we have opted to shut down youtube entirely. We sincerely hope that such services can return in a time less plagued by corruption and greed."

They won't be successful at it. They can construct whatever kind of information universe in public schools, but it doesn't mean it's what people are going to learn when they get to the next, and only real significant level. This is only going to devalue U.S. public schools even further.

There seems to be two Americas based on your age. One where you are expected to be independent and enjoy the ideals of free speech and general independence (note, this argument is based on ideals), and one where you are expected to bow to authority on a wide range of arbitrarily-defined rules or face harsh punishment. In essence, we have made it OK for kids to be subjected to a tightly controlled authoritarian type of environment during their most sensitive years of enculturation, and then upon finishing public school, we jettison them out into a world that preaches democratic ideals. It's just pure madness -- by the time somebody leaves the public school system they will not be prepared for a world of independence at all. What's worse -- by subjecting kids to harsh psychological treatment in schools for dong things which adults would not consider any type of offense, we're stacking up a negative mental burden on them before they even reach the most challenging parts of their lives. It doesn't just end with jolly ranchers either, politics and policy is a taboo subject in schools, too. I seem to recall people in my school getting detention hours for questioning the DARE program, which was later dismantled as being ineffective. Unfortunately, it seems public school in the U.S. is about mentally (and sometimes physically) beating kids down instead of embracing critical thinking.

Do not use the crack and do not play the games with DRM if we want to really see an end to DRM. Even playing the game without buying it can be good publicity that generates sales for those who would complain they are not selling enough. Resisting the temptation to consume products instead of creating our own is the real problem. Instead of consuming things because we feel we need to, if we do not agree with the product we should instead work to create our own. We cannot let self-doubts and temporary failures prevent us from being creative if we are to bring about a new creative renaissance without DRM.

Any time force is threatened, the threatening party has lost moral authority. If you seek to affect moral change in somebody, then your own representation of your ideals should be enough to convince them.

Java on the desktop is really fast now. I can generate a JAR file and my application launches from that when I double-click it in about two seconds. Java applets do take some time to launch, though.

Anyway, for web graphics it seems like IDE plugins using Javascript/ECMAscript, HTML5, and WebGL will eventually make Flash obsolete, but it's still a bit early for that.

Adopting a humble lifestyle does money must be rejected, it simply means its use should tend be avoided in want of expensive or unnecessary things. While I cannot expect us to eliminate our worldly possessions, we can take steps to minimize the amount of physical things we own such that we cannot be easily controlled with threats against them (direct or otherwise). If you are unsatisfied with your job and have a few vehicles and a large house to maintain, expenses for these things makes saving money difficult, and in turn make exiting that job difficult, which makes it more likely for you to accept frustrating management decisions at work for fear of not being able to afford the upkeep for your investments in physical products. Variations of this scenario may be adapted to fit the idea expressed here, however the general argument remains the same.

This bit is more about our personal dissatisfaction with our lives, as the readers, having to do things we don't like for money. It's more about a dissatisfaction with the economic system and less about this mathematician, or ex-mathematician. This dissatisfaction leads us to react to any declination of money with shock. The real key to freedom is living with very little and very humbly such that we "work" less and live more enjoyably, where "work" is here defined as any activity done more for money and less for personal enjoyment.

Even Richard M. Stallman himself has suggested this:

"I live like a student, basically. And I like that, because it means that money is not telling me what to do."
-- Richard M. Stallman
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/fsfs/rms-essays.pdf
Pg. 164

It's hard to argue for no antivirus at all, but at the same time there have been a large number of zero-day attacks such as the ones involving the flash vulnerabilities which antivirus did not detect. Sufficiently new malicious code which users are enticed to run has the ability to go unnoticed by up to date antivirus. While running no antivirus is probably a bad idea on principle, it's definitely becoming more marginalized as malware authors continue to develop a higher degree of sophistication in hiding themselves from it.

Best practice is probably to install some kind of antivirus, but treat the PC as if it has no antivirus and develop some Internet "street smarts" -- to put it succinctly.

The Engadget stub article states that Adobe is "cut out of the loop" of GPU acceleration on the Mac platform, and as evidence links to three other articles (also Engadget):

http://www.engadget.com/2010/01/28/adobe-on-flash-and-the-ipad-apple-is-continuing-to-impose-rest/
http://www.engadget.com/2010/01/29/adobe-ups-passive-aggressive-stance-on-ipad-while-apple-promo-f/
http://www.engadget.com/2010/02/10/adobe-got-7-million-iphone-and-ipod-touch-download-requests-for/

All of which seem to detail the battle to get Flash on Apple's mobiles, and not a battle for GPU acceleration on MacOS. It would seem to me that if Flash isn't GPU accelerated on MacOS now, that they could take advantage of OpenGL to do so.

Your typing skills are sufficient, make something beautiful instead of relearning typing.

The RIAA and MPAA are still powerful because people still buy products which support them. Check RIAA.org 's list of member companies if you're buying anything music related. For movies, it's a bit easier, but the member studios are nonetheless listed on MPAA.org as well. People need to stop complaining and stop buying to starve these guys of cash more effectively.

Don't post anything related to a major music company to a blog -- it's that simple. If you don't agree with the takedown notices and the lawsuits, do some research and stop endorsing companies who do that type of thing. Stop sharing it and listening to it, because without sharing nothing can survive in the Internet age. The problem is people like music, but they've been so psychologically damaged into thinking that music making isn't a perfectly able to be learned iteratively that they feel they MUST consume music produced by these companies, and that simply isn't true. We need new musicians to make music and find ways to make money off of it through inclusion in other products such that they don't feel the need to be marketed by malicious record companies.

Can anybody provide any real evidence that nut allergies are triggered by the "smell" of nuts? I don't think so -- as far as I know they have to be aerosolized in a cooking spray or finely crushed and thrown into the air as "nut dust". I'm betting this woman is probably just a hypochondriac who thinks she's being affected by smelling nuts when she's not. This article http://www.nationalpost.com/related/topics/story.html?id=2417934 mentions that her claim is backed up a doctor's note saying that she has a reaction when in the general vicinity of nuts, but other than that there's no real evidence for this.

Air Canada and other organizations should first order complete medical studies on people like this to get the facts before taking action. Clearly, the public needs more evidence because special treatment for allergy sufferers and public bans of nuts are getting out of hand.

A quick Google search reveals the beginnings of a Britannica article which also indicates that banning nuts is a bad idea since nut allergy deaths are not unacceptably higher annually than deaths from lightning strikes and bee stings, and because banning creates a climate of oversensitivity: http://www.britannica.com/bps/additionalcontent/18/35883327/Peanut-hysteria--or-is-it