Excellent post. Even though I don't necessarily agree with you I appreciate the well thought out perspective.

One criticism: I am tired of hearing the argument used "Car insurance is mandatory in the USA." It is most certainly NOT mandatory. First of all- only liability insurance is mandatory. There is no parallel with health insurance.
Secondly a person doesn't have to drive a car and could live quite legally with no car insurance.

I recommend T-Mobile's prepaid phones.

I use their pay by the minute plan and put $100 on it. The calls are $.10 a minute and don't expire for a year. Even then you can put $5.00 on before the year is out to keep it from expiring.

I use all of 10 minutes a month or so and this is by far the most economical arrangement I have found.

That makes sense to me.

Thanks for the clarification.

While I respect your opinion and enjoy your comments- I disagree with this one.

Honesty is not a two way street for me. I try to be honest in my interactions regardless of the behavior of others.

Or as I would think of it- why would I give a crooked employer the satisfaction of tainting my character?

I don't see anywhere in the GP post where he mentions the law or the fear of punishment from it.

I hope I'm wrong but your post seems to be implying that limited term copyright is somehow dishonest.
This is exactly the misconception that the GP post was trying to correct. He is saying that authors cannot own words and that as a society we have granted them something they don't naturally deserve- a temporary monopoly on that expression of human thought.
You seem to be implying that putting pen to paper means that authors naturally and for all time own that portion of humanity and that anyone who thinks otherwise is dishonest. This point of view (while promoted heavily by media corporations in recent history) is not historically accurate and would undoubtedly harm the whole of human art more than it would help the enriched author's descendants (or publishers).

Pointing out the temporary nature or history of that very-unnatural monopoly by no means implies dishonest intent.

If I misunderstood your post I sincerely apologize.

Not trying to be confrontational but I don't understand your comment and hoped you could explain further.

I took your comment to mean that even though there were better formats available, MP3 became standard because it was open.

My confusion is thus-
1-when MP3 first started being widely used (I started using it extensively in 1997) it was competing with WAV files. There were no better formats.
2- MP3s are only 'open' in the sense that they don't have embedded DRM. It is still a proprietary format with license fees attached.

It's ok. The grandparent was speaking sarcastically and referring the the ./ groupthink on the subject.

Either way- the discussion about Flash on Linux with Adobe as the villain is not unlike Flash on the iPhone with Apple as the villain.
In both cases a corporation is leveraging a proprietary platform to the detriment of some customers.

It doesn't really matter that Flash is terrible and useless- it isn't Apple's place to tell me what I can or can't do with *my* phone. I may be an outlier but I won't be a customer as long as Apple behaves like they maintain some sort of ownership over their customer's possessions.

This is some guys blog and even the comments point out that he is wrong and it isn't reproducible.

But- I suppose nonsense posts still get the Google haters and Google apologists such as myself to view the ads.
Well done Slashdot!

I disagree with you completely.

It is impossible to guarantee that a journalist is going to report an event with a bias in your favor. You can't expect it now from traditional journalists- why would you expect it from bloggers.

It is not the responsibility of the police or event organizers or the people who issue press passes to evaluate potential biases in the journalists.

It IS the responsibility of the readers of those journalists to identify their biases and accept or reject their reports accordingly- just like it always has been with reporting.

I think you misunderstood. Craigslist hasn't done anything illegal.

They meant:
"...measures that have been taken to minimize illegal behavior of people who use our service."

I would guess quite a few. :)

That is actually a good idea.

By loading cached pages they test the speed of the renderer and not the speed of the server or internet connection.

Wikipedia provided me a definition of ex parte and I'm somewhat familiar with the RIAA's approach, thanks to you. What I haven't been able to find is a succinct explanation of what particular legal approach the RIAA takes is unconventional.

Is it simply suing a group of unknown defendants before doing discovery with the ISP to find out who they are suing? That seems to be what ex parte means. (For whatever the wikipedia article may be worth.)

Thanks for being Slashdot's resident legal counsel. (In a non obligatory and legally unaccountable way, of course.)

"Adobe has taken its time with the patch"

Of course an independent research company was able to get a patch out quicker- they didn't have test their "fix" and they won't be held responsible if it breaks something else.

It is very naive to say this every time a patch for something is released by a company that "Slashdot" doesn't approve of. If I didn't know better I'd think the editors were just trying to get a rise out of the more childish component of their audience. (I know, I know, I must be new here.)