Freaking Nanny statism is getting under my skin.

WAR IS PEACE FREEDOM IS SLAVERY IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH

ARBEIT MACHT FREI

Arbiet Also Macht Pie. And Pi*R*tasty.

Everyone's situation will be a little different, but here's how the cost of driving breaks down:

1. Costs of car ownership
   1. Car payment
   2. Repairs and maintenance
2. Costs of driving
   1. Insurance
   2. Parking fees/permits
   3. Fuel

For most people, these expenses will be after-tax expenses. Commuting daily on public transit does not affect the car payment. However:

1. The care needs fewer repairs and less maintenance because it's not driven nearly as much
2. The cost to insure the car goes down, because it becomes a recreation-only vehicle instead of a commuter vehicle
3. Parking fees are either reduced (because parking near transit is often cheaper than parking near work) or eliminated (since many park-n-ride's are free). This probably varies widely depending on where you live.
4. Fuel cost is dramatically reduced because you're not driving as much.

On top of those savings:

1. Many employers offer partial subsidy for transit passes
2. Many areas allow for transit passes to be purchased with pre-tax dollars

As an end result, my car costs went from $530/mo to $310/mo; my transit cost is only $60/mo, and that's pre-tax. I save $2000/yr, and my commute is relaxing, productive time instead of a stressful, all-consuming drive. It's not $12k, but it's still a significant savings.

You are conflating two different things.

No, I'm not - but game company managers might be.

I suggest you improve your reading comprehension before attacking people.

you dont[sic] need to understand free licences[sic] - there's nothing to stop you releasing proprietary software that runs on linux.

That's true, but unfortunately beside the point. Many product managers and the like have such confusion over the terms of the GPL that they believe any software they write to run on a GPL'd platform (like Linux) must also have a free license.

Or, at the very least, they believe that they'll be sued into releasing the source code.

It doesn't really matter that their perception is a fiction: unless people who already have these managers' attention can make a convincing case ("convincing" in the PHB sense, not the reasonable-person sense), the perception won't change. And there won't be as much commercial software for Linux.

This results in the wonderfully circuitous circumstance that consumers don't adopt Linux because the games/etc. they want aren't available for it; and those games don't get ported to Linux because there's no market share.

It's possible this "could" lead to bendable screens, but the technology isn't complete enough to be used in that way.

Saying this tech could lead to bendable screens is a lot like saying that nanotubes "could lead to" a space elevator.

"banished from correct English" is properly interpreted as a snide remark, since there's no such thing as "correct English".

Bah, "ain't" is a perfectly valid contraction for "am not", and has been since at least 1706. (See http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?search=ain't&searchmode=none) Proscriptionists object to it largely because it's often used for "is not", or "are not", which was seen as somehow "perverting" the English language.

In fact, though, "ain't" has been used that way since at least the 19th century.

About the worst that you can say of "ain't" is that it's inappropriate for a formal register, but so are most contractions.

Cheers,
Your Friendly Neighborhood Pedant

I need a definitive answer, not speculation.

You won't ever get that. If you share one copyright-protected item without permission, the copyright-holder has standing to sue you. Whether or not you actually get sued depends entirely on whether the plaintiff (a)notices you, and (b)considers you worth the effort.

I assume the sued-people are hushed, but don't they leak out the lawsuit details somewhere so we can all learn?

You don't know how the legal system works, do you? Specifics of a settlement are commonly sealed, but the rest of the proceeding -- including the details of the complaints -- is public record. It's possible to seal them, but very unusual (pretty much, the complaints themselves must, by necessity, contain information that would be harmful if released [e.g. in trade-secret litigation] -- this has never, to my knowledge, happened in a copyright-infringement suit).

Go to the library and ask your reference librarian about how you'd find relevant cases. Remember that they're not allowed to give legal advice, but they can help you find what you're looking for.

I hate large majorities in Congress, because if you don't need moderates in both parties, the wing nuts are in charge

+1, Insightful. I wish more people realized that this is how things work.

The "Piracy" argument is misdirection. Thet's not what they're really worried about.

Partly, but it's way more complex than that.

There are three basic things that the media industries, as represented by MPAA and RIAA, care about when it comes to copyright infringement:

1. lost sales. Whether or not it's true doesn't really enter into it. Leadership of these organizations and their largest members truly believe that if all infringement could be stopped, people would have to buy their music. They don't understand downloading as a discovery process, they only understand it as an ownership process.
2. legal perception. There are people, mostly abroad, who massively copy media for the purpose of sale. This represents a real business risk. If the industry chooses to accept the infringement of their copyrights in enough "harmless" cases, they fear that they will lose their standing to ask for help with the stuff that really is hurting them. Their fear is not entirely unjustified.
3. control. This is related to what you were talking about. Copyright is about control; the executives fear losing control over the marketing and management of their talent and their talent's products. They don't want to invest millions in marketing a band only to have their sales fall flat because we already heard their album, and there's only the one good song.

As with most things in Corporate America, the decisions are being made by people who are by nature disconnected with what's really going on. If most people knew how many major business decisions are made by looking at data, then ignoring that data and going with a gut feeling, they'd blanch in seconds.

So I can run a website saying I am making heroin, illegal firearms and small children available for purchase, and that's fine right up until the money changes hands?

I'm not an attorney, but I do have some legal experience. Let me show you the imperfections in your analogy. (Note, none of this is legal advice; if you need that, hire a real lawyer).

Announcing on a website that "hey, I'm making heroin, I'll be selling it later" is not, of itself illegal. It's quite possibly probable cause for investigation, perhaps even a search warrant. If you actually were making heroin, you'll be charged with a crime. If you actually were planning to sell heroin, you'll be charged with a crime. If you did neither of those things, you'll end up with some hassle, but you've done nothing wrong.

Pay special attention to the "crime" portion of that explanation -- under most circumstances, copyright infringement is not a crime (see this article for an explanation) -- it's a civil matter.

My saying "hey, I have a Beatles CD that you could make a copy of" is legal. Making the copy is almost always legal. Actually giving the copy to someone is probably illegal, but not a crime -- if I'm Apple Records, I can file suit to get you to stop, and maybe I can even collect some damages.

Now, if you start selling the copy, now you might be in crime territory. If you sell enough copies, it could even be a felony. But simply announcing that you have them for sale isn't illegal, it's actually selling or attempting to sell (making a general offer like "I have some copied music I might be willing to sell" usually isn't enough, but making a specific offer like "give me $0.99 for this song copy" is probably enough to qualify as "selling").

US law is a murky, murky world; this is why lawyers are rich -- more money is made from advising people on how to interpret all the twisty little packages than is made on filing and defending lawsuits.

Anyone who paid attention and had even a hobbyist's legal training could see that the goal of the RIAA lawsuit in question was primarily intimidation.

Transmitting copyright material without authorization (or without a solid fair use claim) is illegal, and I don't begrudge copyright-holders their ability to do so. But simply advertising that you might have some information someone might want? This gets far into the realm of Orwellian and rightly doesn't have any legal teeth.

My bet is that the RIAA is quietly formulating ideas about how to push for legislation that will allow them to draw and quarter... *ahem* litigate against individuals who imply that they might have some copyright content available. Hopefully those of us who get the silliness can educate Congress and keep that from happening.

The system does, kinda-sorta, work. ;-)

Reading a modern hard disk that's been written over with zeroes is not that simple, and would likely require very specialized, very precise hardware.

The historical problem with writing over with zeroes was that the amount of magnetic surface between tracks on the platter was fairly large. This space between tracks would keep a "ghost" of previous data should there be only zeroes written to the nearby tracks. Guttman's research and the DoD wiping method were designed to overwrite the track data and make sure that that "ghost data" would be wiped as well.

Modern disks have such narrow gaps between tracks that overwriting with zeroes is sufficient to stump any commercial data-recovery attempts. (See, e.g. The Great Zero Challenge).

The military takes more extreme measures with highly-classified data because there are ridiculously expensive and time-consuming methods that one could use to recover data that's been "merely" wiped. There are governments and organizations that have those resources that might be willing to expend them to get their hands on such data.

There are not criminal organizations that have or will expend the insane effort to recover the information that might be on an individual's drive. The cost-benefit just isn't there. An individual who boots something like DBAN and does a one-pass wipe of all zeroes across the entire disk is entirely safe from anyone who has less resources than a major government intelligence agency.

Reading a modern hard disk that's been written over with zeroes is not that simple, and would likely require very specialized, very precise hardware.

The historical problem with writing over with zeroes was that the amount of magnetic surface between tracks on the platter was fairly large. This space between tracks would keep a "ghost" of previous data should there be only zeroes written to the nearby tracks. Guttman's research and the DoD wiping method were designed to overwrite the track data and make sure that that "ghost data" would be wiped as well.

Modern disks have such narrow gaps between tracks that overwriting with zeroes is sufficient to stump any commercial data-recovery attempts. (See, e.g. The Great Zero Challenge).

The military takes more extreme measures with highly-classified data because there are ridiculously expensive and time-consuming methods that one could use to recover data that's been "merely" wiped. There are governments and organizations that have those resources that might be willing to expend them to get their hands on such data.

There are not criminal organizations that have or will expend the insane effort to recover the information that might be on an individual's drive. The cost-benefit just isn't there. An individual who boots something like DBAN and does a one-pass wipe of all zeroes across the entire disk is entirely safe from anyone who has less resources than a major government intelligence agency.

I am guessing that the update is DRM updates... something like the ability for the player to identify copied disks, or maybe blacklisted keys or something.

Or, you know, bugfixes. And, contrary to popular belief, many vendors do in fact release updates to add additional features. Yes, it's for selfish reasons -- making your customers happy means they're likely to recommend you and buy your products again in the future.

People who don't realize that companies often do customer service to make their customers happy often seem to assume, as you appear to have done, that corporations' inherent selfishness automatically means they'll never do anything good.

A business never ever does anything unless it thinks it will be benefitting from the action.

This is true, but also exactly how it should work. Businesses do a lot of very good things because the management believes that it's the best way to keep their company in business and profitable. Taking good care of the customer -- even at fairly high cost -- is a good long-term strategy for growth.