By being born, you chose to "play" certain games, including taxation and representation. Sorry, but that's the reality you need to deal with.

I'm amazed at how skillfully the finance and corporate community has ingrained "identity theft" into consumer's minds. (And yes, I'm using "consumer" instead of "citizen" on purpose.)

If someone uses a fake credit card to buy items from a store, they have defrauded the store and the credit card company. It should be irrelevant whether the name on that card is fake, or belongs to some other uninvolved third party.

And yet, the industry has managed to redirect the mindset and conversation to shift much of the blame onto that uninvolved third party, making them feel like they are the ones violated by this process, and leaving them with the mess to clean up while those defrauded only write off their losses after the third party goes through hoops to "prove" their own innocence. Meanwhile, there's rarely effort to go after the actual criminal at all.

I understand the reasons why there is a credit market, but I reject the notion that what was once called fraud, perpetrated against a business that is responsible for their losses, is now theft against an unrelated third party that is guilty until proven innocent by the corporate megaliths that run the financial world.

And lest someone rebut that email in 1995 was open, remember that only the subset of people who had chosen to "log into cyberspace" or "take the on ramp to the information superhighway" or whatever other stupid phrase was used at the time had access to email. Even then, unless you knew someone in person or had some other means to contact them (like the postal service), there wasn't an easy way to know what their email address was.

I don't think I know the email address of any non-work person I've met since, say, 2008. I either know them through a message board and contact them that way, or through Facebook, or exchanged phone numbers so we could text.

That's like saying "the postal service is not going anywhere", because you need a mailing address to get a credit card, and you need a credit card to pay for internet service, and you need internet service to access your email. Sure, that's all true, but postal mail is clearly no longer the relevant means of communication for almost anyone. Given the general disdain for it among many people of even my generation, one might even argue that "postal mail is dying" despite it being a standard, universally used, and still necessary for vital functions.

To paraphrase the summary, written in 1995:
"Postal mail is actually a tremendous, decentralized, open platform on which new, innovative things can and have been built. In that way, the mail represents a different model from the electronic-only ecosystems like email we see proliferating across our computers and devices. Postal mail is a refugee from the public, accessible, more private 'pre-web world we lost'. It's an exciting landscape of freedom amidst the electronically walled gardens of email and AOL."

So if I'm commenting on a movie, and I talk about the motivations of the character, it is infringement to show a clip of that character doing something? I'm talking about the actions of the character, not the angle and lighting at which they were filmed doing it.

By your logic, video would never be subject to fair use except when critiquing the cinematography. That is clearly not true.

In my non-professional understanding, the only way to get a flute up to $50k is to go for solid gold, compared to the solid silver of a $25k flute.

Solid gold is a much softer timbre. But no, I doubt anyone who was not listening to a head-to-head comparison would know the difference. Then again, I doubt 99% of the audience at any classical music concert would notice if one instrument was slightly out of tune, or if a few notes were played wrong here and there. That doesn't make being sloppy acceptable to the musicians, any more so than it should for any other (semi-)professional.

You are wrong with regard to item 2), as my statement indicates that, regardless of which case he chose, he was supporting a representative that supported the embargo. I think you didn't fully read my post as I said exactly what you think I got wrong.

With regard to item 1), abstention is support. The unnamed fourth option (to candidate A, B, or none) is to run for election yourself, and vote for yourself, while advocating a different policy. That's the option where you clearly distanced yourself from the status quo.

And, sadly, that's world we live in.

So turn the monitor on its side, then fine them. "But it's horizontal, not vertical" sounds like the type of bogus technical argument any competent judge would throw out.

So when I get LTE on T-Mobile, as I am at this moment, it's magic, since the phone doesn't support any T-Mobile LTE band?

The facts speak against you. Sorry.

Speaking for U.S. law, you understand copyright wrong. The fair use doctrine allows for use of copyrighted works for the purpose of "criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, and research".

Part of the criteria for determining if use of a copyrighted work is fair use includes the "amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole", so, for example, if I were to post a Vine video of a goal, along with commentary like "Manchester United played a great game today, with three goals including this exciting one by Bob Smith", then I am (your pick) commenting, critiquing, or reporting on the entire hour and a half game, while posting a five second clip of that game. In the U.S., that is clearly fair use unless the other side's lawyers have more money than you do.

I realize this story is about England, but I'm relatively certain that every Slashdot commenter including the parent is discussing this in terms of U.S. law, so I did as well.

You'd never get that double blind, because a bad flutist wouldn't have the depth of skill to create the detailed intonations possible with the good flute, and the professional flutist would be able to produce almost as good of sound from the cheap flute (but have to work much, much harder to do so).

My wife replaced her ~$2000 high school and college flute with a ~$25k one a few years after college, when we were both well enough off from our day jobs and she became active in the civic orchestra. She received a degree in flute performance with that $2k flute, but as she put it, a lot of her time was spent "fighting the instrument" to make things sound right; with the professional flute she could spend more time on other things like listening to the rest of the orchestra or reading ahead to be a better sightreader.

Not if it costs 1000x more to create the technology than it does to counter it. Nor if the money to build it was borrowed in part from that potential enemy.

You were presented with a candidate slate containing Candidate A and Candidate B. You chose to vote for Candidate A, or Candidate B, or not to vote.

In any of the three cases, you were electing a representative that voted on the embargo for you.

Not that I think one is wrong against Russia right now..

So..in other words, they advertised 1080p and are delivering 1080i, but presumably at a 1080p frame rate instead of the usual, faster 1080i rate.

I think you're trying to argue that it's still 1080, and it is, but it's still not what they advertised. No, this guy shouldn't be suing them. The FTC should be fining them for false advertising.