A person or two mentioned Conway's Game of Life. Unless I specifically say so, I am not binding myself to only mentioning that one thing and never moving on to any related ideas which happen to be outside its scope. And I didn't specifically say so. Therefore I see no value in pointing that out.

Am I the only one who thinks the entire notion of a "class-action lawsuit" was a bad idea?

If a company materially harms 250,000 individuals, let them defend against 250,000 individual lawsuits. That would be a massive disincentive against harming people. Having to pay lawyers for that many separate lawsuits would be a lot more like the predicament (during a standard isolated case) of the one individual trying to have a legal battle against a huge multination corporation. Seems fair to me.

Plus in many class-action lawsuits, only the lawyers really win. The former customers might get a $10 coupon or something like that.

Is there any chance that the lawyers who knowingly and intentionally come up with such ideas and try to implement them could be disbarred? Few measures would more effectively discourage the practice.

The difference being, there is some chance the Slashdot user was actually involved in producing that software (or has enough expertise to competently discuss its merits and faults). There's also a chance they're responding to people who chose to use shoddy software when better alternatives were available, and are now complaining about the results.

That depends on where it's located.

If you took it upon yourself to assume "right next to the machine being backed up" or "running on the same machine to be backed up" then don't ascribe to me your own assumption. It was no accident or omission that I said no such things.

Right, just like a pilot's license is useless to someone with no access to an aircraft. Personally I deal with that by running the file server 24/7. When you enable various power management options and have a clue about SSH and your favorite shell, it's really not a problem. If that doesn't describe you, find another solution. Simple and much more productive than complaining that there is no Final Ultimate Answer that is 100% suitable for all people at all times.

Is that done in hardware? Is there a performance penalty?

A related question about the programs you tried: were these computationally intensive games, or things like office apps and file managers?

Or ... get a free dynamic DNS hostname (there are still plenty available) and take a few minutes to learn about SSH/SFTP (and SSHGuard if you are using passwords) and set up your own personal file server. It doesn't have to allow shell access.

Now the companies can do whatever they want because you did the little bit of learning it took not to care.

It makes perfect sense. What if your concept of absolute determinism as implied here is actually not absolute and has limitations? That's what he was saying, at least as I understood it. That would mean that some subset of everything would be steady, regular, unpredictable, and unsurprising. The rest wouldn't.

An analogy could be a program that takes certain actions based on the output of a high-quality random number generator of some kind. The compiled program code itself is completely deterministic, behaving as designed each time it is run. The randomness adds an unpredictable element; it determines which of the predetermined (that is, available or achievable) outcomes actually ends up happening. You can't break fundamental rules of physics but plenty of other things could play out in myriad ways.

... caused by a false belief in an inherent benevolence of government, compounded by this denial-apathy thing concerning the casual lies coming from every major institution and corporation on a regular basis.

If you imagine for a moment that there were aliens observing the earth, you could not blame them for refusing to initiate first contact.

... and as long as that never changes in the future, and nothing you do today that is considered harmless enough is later perceived to be suspicious.

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?