Where's Edison's WD40?

Perhaps I've missed something, but Edison just did a few odds and ends that are just electric versions of things people have done other ways for years. Take the light bulb for example. That's just basically a candle that uses electricity.

Put another (non-sarcastic) way, you've missed something.

Well said.

That is perfectly true and I don't dispute that. What the blogger did in my example was wrong and illegal, but it is certainly not a black and white case of theft as some of the ancestors in this thread would have you believe.

No, it is not. Say I follow a blogger and they repost something from the Dallas Morning News' website. I'll probably read it on the blogger's site and may click on an advertisement on that blogger's site.

I don't regularly visit the Dallas Morning News' website, so if that blogger had never reposted that article, I would have had no idea of its existence, and I would not have visited the Dallas Morning News' website and they would not have gotten any ad revenue.

So:
Blogger re-posts?
Blogger: $0.10
Dallas Morning News: $0.00

Blogger does not re-post?
Blogger: $0.00
Dallas Morning News: $0.00

Is that stealing? No. Is it morally wrong? Yes.

Now, this logic only applies to news sites. News is fleeting, and you are much more likely read it on an RSS feed on a blog you follow or by visiting the news site directly than you are to just search for it. Now, if the reposted content is a product/service/business review or a tutorial or something else that isn't fleeting, this argument goes out the window.

http://www.google.com/pacman/

Slashdot developers are to blame, and it's not just chrome.

Bandwidth often times has little to do with internet responsiveness. The lag isn't because a lot of data is being transferred, it because Slashdot's server is taking forever to respond to your request (for some reason).

What? That was

1) A private school, not a public school
2) 3 years ago

Are you okay?

It is not society as a whole, but one school with moronic officials. I was going to high school in Texas when this law was implemented. The general idea is that the school can't sell students candy (or other snack foods with no nutritional value). This isn't and wasn't meant to be a "no candy in schools" law, just a law that keeps schools from selling pure sugar to students. No one in my school even dreamed that they would get any sort of punishment for eating candy at lunch, no matter where the candy came from. Teachers didn't even think twice about giving students candy for rewards or whatever. In fact, the school passed out peppermints on standardized testing days.

This school's administration officials are obviously off their rockers. This law was not meant to prevent kids from consuming candy, only to prevent schools from giving it to them.

http://xkcd.com/727/