No, the worst possible thing already happened, thats the content of the letter.

A slight exaggeration perhaps, but it's beside the point. It's not a competition of who can be more wrong; the fact of the matter is that it's possible for two parties to be in the wrong. And in principle, how wrong one party is should not affect how wrong the other party is.

Think about all those legal penalties for spying, warrantless searches, torture, and all those other illegal methods for obtaining potentially valuable information. Not only do we punish people who use them, we refuse to acknowledge, in court, the information obtained using them. Why? Because if we did, then people would continue to do them, regardless of the penalties. It's not enough to say, "Whoops, my bad, but at least you caught the serial kiddie-fiddler due to my illegal search!", and walk out scot-free. Regardless of how useful the information exposed, we know that the methods to obtain said information are evil, and we do our best to ensure they don't happen, even if it means ignoring valuable information. Basically, as far as the courts' are concerned, the ends never justify the means.

(Now, I don't mean to suggest we should ignore what Snowden turned up, just that we shouldn't allow the magnitude of NSA's crimes to blind us to the issue of whether Snowden himself has done wrong or not.)

Only when "propaganda spin-meisters" are crowing away to all who will still listen.

So, your reason for ignoring this part of the debate is because the other side are smelly poopy-faces? These may not be your exact words, but it's certainly the gist that I take from it.

It is not a debate when discourse limited and narrowed to concentrate on the messenger rather than the much more important message.

If you re-read my post, you'll see that I was not even remotely suggesting this. There's nuance here. No, the debate is not entirely the way you want it. No, by debating all of the issues raised, that does not mean we only debate the ones you don't want to. It does not mean we are deflecting the real issues, just addressing the other ones that you don't want to address, which is fine, because the "other side" doesn't necessarily want to address the issues you want to address. That's why you address them all.

Seriously modders, shame on you! I would think directly discussing the topic "The Death of Nuance" would be illuminating enough to stop you modding such dreck up, at least on this story!

What do you think this is, a site for techies?

What you're describing is the use of implicit meaning in language in order to convince people of a point. Such a technique is known as rhetoric, and it's been around roughly as long as language itself.

I disagree. A large part of the debate is about Snowden's conduct; whether it's right to share state secrets, given what the NSA is doing. Note that this is an issue not entirely dependent on whether the NSA is justified in their actions or not.

Focus in the message that is by far the important thing.

The message is extremely important, yes, but so is his conduct. That's what half the debate is about. He may be the mailman, but if he's opening the mail and delivering it deliberately to the wrong hands, the message itself is not the only relevant factor.

I wanted to dislike this movie

That's an odd attitude with which to approach a movie.

Actually come to think about it, I do have one concern, which is the problems it could create with third party upgrades. Something to keep an eye on, I guess.

This isn't like software where you're not shipping some bits, or even if you ship them and selectively enable or disable. These are physically manufactured components. The parts have to be physically manufactured and installed.

This reminds me of the furore there is every time a game company releases day 1 DLC, sometimes included on the physical media no less (Bioshock 2, IIRC). In the latter case, this is pretty much directly analogous.

Look, you have to remember that, in a capitalist system, the question of physical presence is hardly the point: they charge a price, you decide if it's fair. If the cost of the base model is inflated, compared to the competition, due to the extra hardware, then just buy the competition instead. If the price is comparable, then how exactly is it skin off your nose if they include disabled extras?

TFS takes the right attitude, IMHO. What I see here is a convenient and instantaneous way to deliver extras, with very low time and money costs, if it is indeed feasible. I don't see what there is to dislike.

I once got asked a question which I found hurtful and offensive, and felt tempted to 'blow up' the interview at that point. Fortunately, I resisted the temptation. As it turns out, the question was his way of introducing the next thing, which was telling me that he was offering me the job.

Here's my report on the actual ruling which is being reviewed: 2nd Circuit affirms denial of plaintiffs' preliminary injunction motion in WNET v Aereo

I guess it would take a litigator to notice this, but it's quite unusual that a preliminary injunction denial would be getting this kind of appellate attention.

In the first place, it was unusual for an interlocutory appeal to be granted from the denial of the preliminary injunction motion. In federal court usually you can only appeal from a final judgment.

Similarly, apart from the fact that it's always rare for a certiorari petition to be granted, it's especially tough where the appeal is not from a final judgment, but just from a preliminary injunction denial which does not dispose of the whole case.

I think one of the takeaways from the survey may be that formal intellectual property protection isn't always valuable to most businesses, even though intangible things like reputation may be very valuable.

You do realise that trademark protection exists with or without registration, right? Registration confers additional rights to your trademark, but even without registration, other businesses are not permitted to imitate you.

Therefore, even without taking the step of registration, there is still formal intellectual property protection, which the GP is correct in saying that businesses that trade on their reputation rely on. If a business wasn't able to have exclusivity over the name tied to their reputation, such a reputation would be very difficult to foster in the first place. It's easy to take things like the concept of a business's reputation for granted when we are so used to the idea of a trademark.

Funny, I had the same reaction when I read it. He seemed like a salesman for Google or something.

Dear Prince Bernard, If you're talking about my bank account, you're barking up the wrong tree :)