hmmm...the not doing polls part makes me wonder who the dumbasses really are... ty /.

I always thought nerds were the really smart people that were smart in all subjects and geeks were nerdy people but with a narrow focus, e.g., math geeks, science geeks, literature geeks, etc. Geeks are really good at one thing and know a metric fuck-tonne about that one area, but aren't necessarily smart at other things. Either can be equally socially inept or adept. I know plenty of wicked smart nerds and geeks that are full-on members of society and the A-list types, so the common social stigmas don't necessarily apply to all really smart people and should not be used solely to classify geeks and/or nerds as I've seen in a lot of comments above. There are plenty of socially inept dumb people, too, but they have different labels like "dipshit" and "dumbass" and don't do polls.

Ok, first, the government cannot give you Rights. Rights cannot be taken away. (see YouTube for George Carlin) I know, it's called the Bill of Rights, but it's not. It's a list of vaguely defined privileges each citizen is given and can be taken away. Yes, legally taken away through the Courts or legislation. Sorry, it's true.

Everyone deserves to have the same privileges, the problem is not everyone wants the same things and not everyone can (as in "able to") exercise their privileges either by choice, illness, injury, birth defect, etc. Are they being oppressed or denied anything? No, they just don't want or can't use a privilege granted them by the government. To use your example, the guy eating peanuts in a public place with no expectation of privacy or primacy can do so unimpeded. If someone gets near and has an allergy, you already gave the civil outcome to that, he moves away from the peanut source and continues exercising his privilege of being at the same public event. The guy with the allergy has to be more aware of his environment, but his "rights" are not impinged because someone else at the same public event is eating peanuts. There's no law against eating peanuts.

Finally, can there be a balance? Sure, as long as all parties get along. As long as people are educated about what their PRIVILEGES are and what the difference is between them and RIGHTS. They learn to find ways to live with each other rather than kill each other. They mature in their world view to incorporate the viewpoints of others. We the People are the government in the United States, something our recent political discourse seems to have forgotten to mention. It's not an US versus THEM situation because WE ARE THEM AND US! We just need to find a way to protect our privileges without wiping out all the ones that protect our freedom.

I do not like what's happened to the United States since 9/11. I think we went completely off the hinges and instead of pulling back once the major conflicts were over we plunged deeper into the paranoid abyss. When FISA gets taken out of the picture something bad is going on. BTW, the NSA can break just about any commercially available encryption out there (Hi boys! [waves]), so the "goodluckwiththat" tag for this story is absolutely fitting. You'd be better off hiding data in wheels of cheese like the guy above.

"Typically, the duration of copyright is the whole life of the creator plus fifty to a hundred years from the creator's death, or a finite period for anonymous or corporate creations."

It's not too late.

Do you know what copyright even means?!?! Clearly you don't. Copyright is how you secure credit for something you created. You boys are DENSE.

Ok, again, for whom is InkScape good enough? The casual graphics user/sysadmin? Sure. For the professional designer? Hardly. How does InkScape interoperate with other design applications? How well does it support large format printers from multiple vendors? Does it support the PANTONE color matching system (this is a BIG one for us)? Does it support PostScript Level 3? If any of the answers to those questions is negative, it's a no-go.

InDiesgn on the Mac, for one. I'm not in a Windows-only shop. I am in a design school. Inkscape is NOT as good as Illustrator, despite your and others' assertions. There are no mature tools for HTML5 development as HTML5 is hardly mature as a standard. I have used multiple audio tools over the years, but that's irrelevant as I am not in the audio engineering/music department. Most of what my students need are in the Design side of the house and I'm sorry there aren't a lot of choices. I know, I have been looking for months, since the stirrings on campus about the Adobe license changes. Just looking at feature sets for apps isn't a good comparison in and of itself. I need to know how the apps interoperate as that is critical to a designer's workflow. I need to know what things the students AREN'T going to be able to do without the Adobe product and determine the impact that will have. You make it sound like, "Oh just switch apps and everything will be fine," uhhhh, no not so much. You're talking about changing an entire workflow, adding layers of support and dealing with multiple vendors (if any as FOSS has none). Plus, I have no idea what effect this will have on the output side as the students will also be printing from all these new apps on a regular basis to large format printers. What features are they losing there? I can tell you that Adobe has put considerable resources into the print process features in their design apps and that replacing those features is going to be much, much harder. At least one department I support grants professional degrees (B. Arch.) and the students are required to print a book. Other than things like Quark Express (Windows only) and TeX (not gonna happen for these kids) there isn't much option.

I agree with most of what you said and I would add that I would explain to the client that the actions of their new developer have put them in an actionable (take you to court) position as well as the new developer that is clearly in deep to the count of fraud and copyright violation. You need to speak with a copyright lawyer, pronto, to understand what your options actually are. I know you're not looking for a fight, but it seems one that's worth fighting has found you. As a developer the most important thing to you is your code. If someone is stealing that and claiming it as their own they are burying you if you don't fight. I assure you if the places were reversed you'd be hearing from a lawyer.

Well, that all depends on what country you're in now doesn't it? Since the entire world doesn't live under one set of laws your assertions are invalid.

You mean like we've been hearing how Gimp will overtake Photoshop for more than a decade now? That long I'm not willing to wait. It's not an "if" in this case. Adobe *IS* moving it's applications to the cloud. That's not the problem. It's what they're charging that's got the community in an uproar.

Ummm, you still download and install the application locally, it just needs to phone home once a month or every 99 days for users to stay active. Don't know where the digital download resale laws stand. Me thinks you are still screwed in that respect as you can only subscribe for up to a year at a time of use billed monthly. Trust me, I work in education and we're very informed on this new change and don't like it one bit! Costs our students $360 a year instead of that for a perpetual license to the entire suite. Oh, and they upgrade about every two years, sometimes sooner if you're lucky. Certainly not often enough to justify the additional cost.

It took you this long to figure out the polls have been gathering marketing data? Some were way more obvious than this.

I write a lot of web apps, middleware and little utility scripts. Not really into the "look-at-me-and-what-I-did" aspects of life. I just do good work and want to be compensated, and sure recognized for accomplishments, but not really wanting any kind of fame or celebrity status. I learned the price of fame and I'm not willing to pay it.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0708414/

...still get walked in on by Mom.