I say screw the big government-loving liberals that control Hollywood. They've spent the last 50 years pushing an anti-property rights, pro-tax, government-worshiping (ever notice how most non-comedic TV dramas are about cops or lawyers?) agenda. Boo freaking hoo that they're IP rights are being violated. That creaking sound they're hearing is the roof about to cave in under the weight of all of the chickens roosting on it.

You'll see that the main reason they went after him was because he took the source code in order to use it for his personal profit, and it hadn't gone through the proper channels to make it public-ready. In other words, what he did with the accounting software was roughly equivalent to taking classified missile control software home in order to either start a competing business or use it to help his current one. Technically, the software is "public domain," but the Federal Reserve had not actually gone through the process of making it ready to be released to the public.

I have no problem with him doing a few years for that because what he did is no different than taking a work-for-hire work home to use for a customer who didn't pay for it nor was authorized by the paying customer to have it. That's for-profit copyright violation in the private sector, and since he intended to derive private benefits from it, I don't see much of a difference. It's not like he took it home, modified it to be attractive to the Department of the Treasury and tried to demo it to another part of the government (since the Federal Reserve is a quasi-federal agency, taking their code to show to the Treasury would have been less legally problematic)

The Federal Reserve is actually a public-private corporation that happens to do some important Treasury-related functions. They're not an actual federal agency like the US Mint.

$37B is also, IIRC, about equal to the annual income of both the recording and movie industries combined in the US...

I suppose this number has value for making a point, but in terms of practicality it is barely more meaningful than the "studies" which assume that 1 download = 1 lost, guaranteed sale. Why? Because if the legal regime were even remotely positioned to impose this sort of cost on free services, they'd fold overnight. Larry Page would be booking 100mph from his office to their nearest data center in his Tesla to personally shut down Youtube post-haste.

I get and sympathize with the propaganda value of this "study," but let's be realistic:

1. Probably only about 25% of all pirates have both the means to buy a good and would buy it if piracy weren't an option (contrary to the views of both sides).
2. In the real world, Google would either fold its operations at YouTube or would simply ratchet up the automated scanning algorithm to "guilty until proven innocent via human review."

(and 2b, Google would buy out half of Congress to make filing a false DMCA complaint be strict liability, that is absolutely no criminal intent required in order to do hard prison time for "getting it wrong.")

The Obama Administration, like the Bush Administration, commits more heinous violations of life, liberty and property every 6 months than Google has in its entire lifetime so far. Cry me a fucking river over the open wifi connections. Turn your attention to the President who claims the power to assassinate Americans abroad, who continues most of the War on Terror policies and whose Attorney General is such a contemptible scumbag that he sacrificed hundreds of Mexican civilians' lives to influence domestic gun policy (a move so cynical, you almost can't even see the average neocon supporting something like it).

Shit like this, which the Supreme Court has already taken a dim view on constitutionally needs a new amendment to 42USC1983:

The enactment of any policy or law by a state or municipality which alters or abolishes any right, privilege or immunity acknowledged by judicial precedent shall constitute a deprivation of liberty under color of authority for the purpose of this section. Enforcement of the same shall be considered a deprivation of liberty under color of authority.

The Nazi leadership had more in common with renaissance fair nerds than science and engineering geeks. The People's Republic of China and Iran, meanwhile, actually have a lot of engineering-trained leaders. For pete's sake, Hu Jintao, one of the most powerful leaders in the world right now has a degree in hydraulic engineering. The President of Iran is a civil engineer who actually still teaches a class or two on civil engineering at university.

Is that enough for you or do I need to drive a few nails into the clue stick for you?

Here's the workflow they should have done:

1) Start with Metro-driven login screen.
2) Show the user a panorama of Metro for a minute and ask "do you want this or the traditional windows experience on start up?"
3) If they want classic, login takes them back into the desktop like they're used to.
4) In classic, the effin start menu works like it did in Windows 7.
5) Metro apps can be launched seamlessly from explorer with Windows shifting effortlessly back and forth between metro for metro apps and explorer for everything else.
6) Windows key + tab shifts between the two environments like alt-tab between windows in explorer.

Microsoft's only hope in fighting Apple in the integrated PC/tablet/phone market is to make Windows be more open and more "whatever you want is cool with us." That means they should be planning RIGHT NOW how to make Windows on PC behave in a totally laissez faire fashion in UI and have a touch UI system for traditional Windows apps so that businesses that don't like Metro can recompile for ARM.

You know who has societies where "geeks" (engineers, mainly) are highly placed throughout government? China, Iran and many other closed societies run by authoritarian states. Geek arrogance toward the common man combined with political power is an extremely dangerous combination. Thanks, but no.

"Scientific government" sounds great until you realize that in practice it'll be run by people who think statecraft and philosophy are nearly worthless endeavors and that it'll likely have an attitude of "hey, let's try this radical restructure of people's lives because the theory sounds great and looks applicable on paper."

This actually seems like a pretty sane plan for most people who aren't diehard pirates or Netflix users. Most users don't use 300GB. If Comcast is smart they'll use this as a basis to actually fund the development of a more powerful and competitive network instead of just milking it for short term gains.

We pressed him on this. Michel conceded the problem was less that it was too anecdotal and more that he disagreed with the book's premise—that high litigation costs were a sign the patent system wasn't working.

If the cost of enforcing the patent equals or exceeds the recoverable benefit, you have just conceded the fact that the benefit no longer carries more than marginal economic value to the alleged beneficiary. The best that could be said here is that it distracts a competitor. The worst (and probably closer to reality) case scenario is that the pursuit of marginally valuable patents creates a perverse incentive that distracts a company from more useful economic activities.

It's really hard to take seriously someone who says they're all about facts and figures, but then jettisons economics because the economic aspects of his preferred system are abysmal. There will come a day, at the rate we are going, where the rule of law will be formally dead in the US similar to how it is in Russia because the legal profession (and judges and prosecutors in particular) have made the cost of participation so high from various factors ranging from failing to sanction frivolous lawsuits and criminal charges, to allowing blatant corruption. As it currently stands, it's on life support.

State and federal spending rules are designed to be penny wise and pound foolish. They'll imprison a contractor who charges 5 hours of lunch breaks to a contract but won't even fire an employee who wastes several millions of dollars in a spending spree so ludicrous that no reasonable person would have charged forward on that. So the Verizon contractor who skips an hour a day but costs the tax payers a few thousand dollars at the most is more likely to get prosecuted than the high ranking government employee who just spent $25m when $2.5m (parts and labor) was likely the true ceiling for legitimate costs.

But most of the jobs recent grads are getting are more likely to be closer to wait staff, manual labor or some other position where you don't even submit a resume to a HR department.

If I am going to be using the laptop outside of a dimly lit room, give me the option of buying a quality matte display. I don't care if it's an extra $200. Just give me the damn option. My comfort and ability to work in public without feeling like I'm staring into a mirror is more important.

Let's consider what college now means for many millennials:

1) Get a degree with minimal job applicability.
2) Go tens of thousands in dollars into debt to get it.
3) Get a job that requires no more skills than the degree imparted (and that pays ~$10/hour or less)
4) Find out that the federal government and private lenders put in all sorts of riders ranging from rising costs of holding the debt, to "we can arrest you if you are delinquent on your federal loan."

Anyone advocating making it easier to fall into the student loan trap is morally analogous to a drug dealer.