Considering how *ahem* clear and reasonable copyright law has always been, perhaps I can understand why someone might not be eager to do this...

But your payment does reward the company and its staff. There is no way around that. They don't deserve it, their shoddy work hasn't earned it, and no fringe benefit of extra database access is enough to convince me otherwise.

Your value system may vary. I for one was speaking for myself.

It wouldn't be possible to provide only a binary patch that contains just the modifications to said files? That would also infringe copyright?

This kind of poor quality work is what long ago dissuaded me from ever paying for a Slashdot subscription. I block ads, too, since before my karma level gave me the option of having Slashdot do it for me. That was all before Malda sold out to Dice Holdings. It's not improved since.

Apparently lots of people did and are also griping about it. Are Slashdot "editors" capable of feeling embarassment?

Back to the discussion...

Unless these third-party patch vendors are claiming to be Microsoft then they're not in any way "bootleg". If Microsoft no longer wants to do this but someone else does, what's the problem? How would this be different from (i.e. less legitimate than) publishing a device driver, AV suite, or other system-level software?

Do the submitter and "editor" not understand what the word "bootleg" means, or is there a real problem here I'm just not seeing?

Yes I am sure they'll put on a nice show and make a phony speech or two against it. Truth is, the corporate sponsors, bankers, and financiers who own both parties will be pleased and they're the ones who matter.

I'm ignorant about the back-end of credit card systems, so this raises a couple of questions for me.

While you can get a CC under the age of 18, doesn't the credit card issuer have information like your date of birth? Can merchants request this information if they can uniquely identify the account (by the CC number and expiration date, say)?

Or is the whole thing complete bullshit?

It often happens in a conversation about one thing, particularly a complex and nuanced thing, that it will bring up other similar things because they are related in some way. The resistance of some to this natural conversational process never made much sense.

I could speculate that you have a loyalty to Google that you cannot realistically expect them to reciprocate (you do know that, right?), except I've seen lots of people display this tendency who obviously had no such motivation. Some people just like to complain.

A person who merely possesses a high IQ is not actually intelligent, not until they learn how to make accurate observations and call things what they are.

"Garbage in, garbage out" still applies to even the finest reasoning process.

If you want a real conspiracy theory take a very close look at how precisely Google received its initial start-up money and what government agency was involved. It's not really so absurd to posit that the government makes "investments" in things it believes will serve its interests just like businesses do.

And if you want Google search without Google tracking, try using Startpage. They conduct Google searches on your behalf and act as a proxy.

I simply use an alternate user to arrange this. In my case, it's the Windows games I run via Wine. I don't trust them and I have no need for single-player games to connect to remote servers.

So I create a user named "winegames". I run all Windows games as this user. Then I add a simple iptables rule:

iptables -A OUTPUT --match owner --uid-owner winegames -j REJECT

Now nothing run as "winegames" can connect anywhere. A few games will briefly complain that they can't connect to the server so that people who don't care can see my in-game achievements but that's alright. Also, I use REJECT instead of DROP so that the programs get an instant error when they try to connect. If you use DROP they will waste a lot of time waiting for a response that will never come.

Incidentally, if your distro does not provide this, you will need to add a line to your PAM config to allow alternate users to open windows on your X display. For my distro (Gentoo) the file is /etc/pam.d/su. I simply add this to the file on its own line: "session optional pam_xauth.so". Now the alternate user "winegames" can open new windows on the X server started by my main user.

The second mouse gets the cheese.

Only if you have no belief whatsoever in the power of your own example and your own message. In that case, I suppose you would want to use some form of coercion.

But then, I question your true motives for believing what you believe. Is it to join the majority and avoid the shame and invective of being accused of intolerance? Or is it because you truly believe that tolerance is superior? If the latter, why not act like it's superior and let it stand on its own merits? Why not show everyone a shining, pure, hypocrisy-free example of what real tolerance is?

See, what many of you really want is is to issue righteous judgment against those who disagree with you. You think the fact that you are right excuses this desire. You still haven't performed the introspection and the difficult internal work of overcoming and transforming your own hatred. You think espousing the correct doctrine makes you superior, but you did not eliminate your own hatred at all. You merely found a socially acceptable way to channel it. This still fails to reduce the amount of hatred in the world. Hating evil does not make you good, no matter how desperately you want to feel self-righteous.

The failure to comprehend this is not because it is so difficult to understand. It's really simple, in fact. No, the failure to understand this is the same failing behind most of the vices that remain today: it raises too many difficult and uncomfortable questions concerning who you really are and why you believe what you believe. It's so much easier to find something external to yourself to hate. Isn't it?