If you want to specify what I can do with a copy of your software, write a contract and make me sign it.

If you're selling me a box (with a computer and a copy of the software inside it), then that's a sale. Maybe if your website said "click here to buy a computer and enter into a license agreement regarding a piece of software", you'd have an argument.

If you're calling it a sale, then it's a sale, and first-sale doctrine should apply. That means I own the copy of the software that you sold to me. I can do whatever I want with it.

Unless you're new here, you must have heard this argument against EULAs before.

Your argument against net neutrality would only make sense if the ISPs competed in a free market, which they don't. Like you said, they have been granted regional monopolies by governments. People can't ditch Comcast for Google if the local telco also blocks Google.

In an already-heavily-regulated market, net neutrality legislation is actually a deregulation. Pairs of ISPs are given ultimate control over entire regions through regulation; net neutrality would undo some of that regulation by restricting the power of the ISPs.

Your solution for us who are indeed stuck with only two available ISPs is to be screwed until technology advances or regulations disappear (good luck on that second one). That's not really good enough. Net neutrality is regulation, but it benefits individuals at the expense of government-assisted corporations. Your libertarian principles should tell you to be in favor of that.

The latest release always loads the interstate_commerce and necessary_and_proper modules, but the rest are hit or miss.

Even the summary says that test runs will start soon. It's only the "high power collisions" that will wait until December, at which time the LHC will be fully operational.

It's not the ominous-looking clouds that worry me. If you read the article, the first line says "In hill country from Iowa to the Scottish Highlands..."

The sudden and inexplicable appearance of hills in Iowa will keep me up all night.

You're assuming that devices are limited to omnidirectional transmission. What if they were all fitted with tiny phased arrays? It's conceivable that they could keep the beam pointed toward a single base station, and interfere very little with the space around them.

I don't even know if this is a plausible solution to your problem, but it's the first thing that came to mind. I'm not prepared to predict that innovation will stop.

And new installations of $app don't work either because users are never told they need $bar. This is a fairly obvious bug that gets noticed, and an update for $app adds the dependency to $bar.

Sure, I'm assuming that someone will fix it, but you're assuming that someone will goof up in the first place. Seems fair.

(This space reserved for another physics nazi's relativistic corrections).

Almost. The kinetic energy of the car is proportional to the square of the velocity. So, if the energy goes up by a factor of 1e17, the corresponding velocity increase is only by a factor of sqrt(1e17), or about 3e8.

youkeepusingthattag

I got three days using my public-school arithmetic, but just because you got the right answer doesn't mean you're better than me.

Instant? New Slashdot has been pretty sluggish for me in 3.0 for Linux on a decent dual core machine. While that's hardly the browser's fault, I say bring on faster Javascript.

This isn't evolution, it's just God applying a patch.

Are you sure that wasn't "Bad news, nobody"? Why even say anything and risk your nerd card?