But without a big explanation, it doesn't look like you're attemping to point out that the actual name is a deceptive ploy to obfuscate what DRM does. It looks like you've made an embarrassing mistake.

People love writing off people who make silly mistakes as nuts.

Look at my post above - typed it on a phone, full of typos and grammar errors. If I was trying to argue something important there, anything that could be interpretted as error on my part invites ad hominem attacks which are always good for swaying the opinion of the masses.

calling it 'restrictions' is petulent and confusing. without a verbose disclaimer about what you mean and why youve corrupted the name it becomes confusing.

arguments against DRM are just as valid whilst avoiding cheap shots.

Calm down polemics aren't much use if you don't address the facts.

Seems to have strong evidence this chap new the laptop was stolen, even if he didn't steal it himself.

Laptop belongs to the insurance company now. It was insured.

"What's the ideal number of options in a /. poll?"

Yes. It wasn't always terminated.

"But this is a fundamental change in the data model and means touching nearly our entire code base"

Red flag. Badly designed system.

"if we treat animals in inhumane ways, we become inhumane persons. This logically extends to the treatment of robotic companions"

Non sequitur, surely.

Clearly they were so overwhelmed by their success with OpenOffice they want to replicate it with MySQL.

Most people I see on Slashdot, whether they think piracy is great, terrible or anywhere in between don't think the damage it does warrants special laws or draconian civil penalties. Reading anecdotes like this makes economic arguments for additional copyright legislation harder to swallow.

Saying piracy is theft confuses it with a completely different thing. Only good to call it that if you are looking to confuse people.

You (I guess?) live in a country where your copyright on what you create outlasts anyone alive when you publish it. Madness to think this is a good thing.

Generally, for those who don't get it: don't explain.

Is this the same as asking if their genetic makeup influences a person's chances of having kids?

I've thought of myself as a kind of series discrete moments of conciousness. Every instant I'm alive, I'm sitting on the top of a whole history of these long since finished moments. Moreover - this moment now, will be gone in an instant, and they'll be another moment of conciousness which claims it as part of it's history.

Here today, I think I'd consider myself to be still alive at any point in the future where someone exists who claims to be sitting on the top of my entire history of moments of conciousness, and this current moment of conciousness that I'm experiencing.

Are you thinking of RSA SecurID? That is something quite different.

If you want to log in to my SSH server, then in practice you need a private counterpart to a public key which you have added to your authorized_keys file.

The story is real, the Slashdot summary is utterly incorrect. For example, from the article:

"A new law ... would not allow GCHQ to access the content of emails, calls or messages without a warrant"

Also it doesn't say anything about trawling stored data, or proposing a requirement to stored data, rather that with a a warrant, GCHQ must be able to access data in real time.