Agree. I have 6 watches. One is a dirt cheap analog Casio which is strapped to a motorcycle. One is a dirt cheap digital Timex which is also strapped to a different motorcycle. The other four are fancier, various colors (gold & leather, aluminum, steel, copper). I might wear a watch once a week, and I pick it to match what I'm wearing.

All the fancy ones were gifts. The next watch I buy will probably be another cheap Casio to strap on my bicycle. I think a smart watch is going to be a tough sell when everyone already has what will likely be a more capable smart phone on them already.

I'm surprised you even find garages that let you in. Most garages around me (and even just lots) specifically say no motorcycles. I think it's liability fears about the gate coming down on your head or something.

Theft/burglary is extremely common in South Africa. Also, the Metrorail is well-known to be a prime location for crime. I visited a few months ago, and the advice was that the train was fine with more than a few people, but sometimes the cars will be nearly empty, and that is bad news. At the flat where I was staying, a tourist had had her baggage rifled through when she accidentally left a window open (virtually all properties are fenced in, so the burglar had to climb the fence to get in through the window).

Not at all. Remember, in addition to buying all that media, he explicitly said this:

Sony v. Universal pretty clearly indicated that building a library of tapes recorded off the air (as opposed to purely time-shifting) was not a fair use. So it's probably more like, "Sir, you are a model customer. Keep up the good work. Also, you will be hearing from our lawyers shortly. Love, the MPAA."

After all, there's hardly anyone the content industries love to sue more than their customers!

I went to a private high school. It was small and didn't have many resources. Still, I was fortunate to have a very supportive environment for my exploration and learning related to computing.

The teacher who taught programming had actually managed IT/network stuff in Micronesia, so she was not in the habit of throwing old tech out. We received a lot of donated equipment from various businesses, and she saved most of it in a storage room. When she found out how interested I was in technology, she basically gave me the run of the place - allowed me to take home equipment to play with, just hang out in there during lunch and after school, put together new machines for the lab, etc. This was where I first learned about other architectures - got my hands on an old DEC Alpha.

When she saw that I had already self-taught some programming, she allowed me to skip directly to an advanced programming course, and teach myself as an independent study.

Later, she let me set up an NT server with roving profiles and network home directories for the lab, so that students in the general office suite classes could save their work on the network, keep it backed up, and their teacher would have centralized access to it. Prior to this, they were all using floppy disks.

Without that environment I'd still have been interested and involved with tech, but it sure made it easier and more interesting, and I learned a lot. I suspect that many teachers might not have been willing to allow a student so much freedom, or that policies might have forbidden it.

That really depends on how far you have to go. In my experience, upright seating might be more comfortable for short distances, and it's probably easier to get on and off. But I bicycle to my office most days, about 4.5 miles one way (which is not long) on a road bike outfitted with a rack and panniers. It is not a "racing" position, but I do lean forward and have drop handlebars. The seat is level with the handlebars.

That position removes a lot of weight from your crotch area, and transfers it to your arms. I find sharing the weight between two areas to be more comfortable, although it requires proper positioning of the handlebars, wearing gloves, and switching grip positions to keep hands and wrists comfortable.

The view is fine, and is amplified by a rear view mirror. Also wearing a high-visibility vest will do much more for your visibility than the difference between the two positions.

Then, the nice thing is I can remove the panniers and easily ride 30 miles or more on a weekend in a reasonable amount of time without needing a second bicycle.

Trashing some mod points to post this, but here's a side-by-side comparison.

Important differences: Classic shows me the text of 7 comments. Beta shows me the text of 2.

Classic uses about 85% of the horizontal width of the screen for comments. Beta uses about 50% or less.

Those are probably the most relevant differences for me. We all come here for the comments, since the stories are by definition published elsewhere first. If a redesign makes it harder to read comments, that's a problem.

It's different because Gitmo is not a bar.

Nope. Easiest way out of this is to claim that torturing detainees is not a public performance, so the use does not need to be licensed. And frankly, that argument is probably correct. Especially if they are blasting it with headphones, which is one of the things I've read. Maybe if they're piping it to a bunch of headphones simultaneously Skinny Puppy could have an argument...

But how do you think this lawsuit will go down? The government will simply say it can't describe interrogation techniques in detail because NATIONAL SECURITY. Also, suing the Feds for copyright infringement is harder than suing anyone else, and even if you win you can only collect minimum statutory damages.

Why would anyone believe what a low-level CSR tells them in a chat session? This is like when an eBay CSR claimed that eBay did not allow the sale of Bitcoin mining rigs a few weeks ago. The person didn't know what they were talking about.

Not to mention this is Verizon, who can't tell $0.002 from 0.002 cents. Engaging them on a topic of any complexity is sure to lead to hilarity and/or frustration.

To be clear, this is not something I'm actually advocating. It just struck me that perhaps some copyright promoters are trying to accomplish for artists what pensions do for police. And as you point out, copyright is a terrible way of doing that.

I think copyright promoters need to figure out what they actually want. Do they want to "own" their "property", even if it has no value in the marketplace for most artists? Is that what is most important? Or is providing a reasonable income by some means more important than control?

Totally agree. Spreading income out over a lifetime is something that is relevant to everyone, yet copyright provides only a (bad) solution for a small segment of the population.