How much are the people whose salaries our tax dollars pay costing us to spend their resource going after this guy for a 40-yr old camera? This is important enough that it has gotten to the top of someone's list of things to do? And we have to pay for it?

Exactly who does this help and how?

... in a vacuum. they must have employees and there must be some folks around here that work for them and are (possibly) closer to the top of the food chain.

If you work for PayPal.. care to explain why I can't just call up a person on an 800 number like I can my regular bank and have that person take care of whatever?

Can someone who works there explain any of the info here?

Why? Why would it do anything more than incite a few unhappy folks to burn some bibles and/or some effigies of Mr. Jones?

Are these folks so incredibly insecure and violent that they will kill people over a simple book burning? To me, that in itself is the point of this: to emphasize how ridiculously out of proportion the reaction is and to make anyone who would even THINK of killing someone for burning a book look even more stupid than the book burner.

I seriously doubt that Mr. Jones will kill anyone he hears of burning effigies in his image or burning bibles as a rebuttal.

The original poster is entitled to their opinion, even though it is the wrong one. I create a lot of content, and I give it away too. These are HD videos that I shoot with a Sony HDR-AX2000 ($3500 camera) and stills that I shoot with a Canon EOS-7D (another pricey piece of photographic equipment). Because my material gets exposure from me giving it away, I have gotten more paid work offers than I can possibly manage. I've done magazine covers, full portfolios, and just fun (pro-bono) stuff. People who see my work often times ask to buy prints. I give them a CD with their prints. They can copy it all they want. If there is video of the event, I put that on the CD too.

Why? What advantage does Sony get from this action? It costs them money to do this and it alienates some (many? few?) of their customers. How can this increase their profit or give them a business advantage? I may just be not seeing the forest here... so, please enlighten.

If someone is using a comma as a decimal point, what is used for a comma? Does such a person simply eschew the use of commas to separate thousands?

I'm not nearly as concerned WHAT the standard is, just that there would be a single standard and everyone would follow it for stuff like this, and for the exact reason we see here. Sometimes a single standard is a good idea. In this case, I believe it would be an especially good idea.

Thanks everyone. I did know that it wasn't straight interpreted but rather JIT compiled. Mentally I still just separate static/native compiled versus not.

The shocker for me (thanks for the wiki, abigor) is that a really good JIT compiler can often outrun a good static-compiled program. I'd never have thought that possible.