But we're supposed to be a civilized society that don't send people to prison for "punishment", but instead to avoid further harm to others.

Oh shit!, sorry, wrong planet!

Doesn't the fact that the theft occurred outside of US territory. I'm sorry, I'll correct: Doesn't the fact that the theft occurred outside the planet messes up all the jurisdiction thing?

Are they going to be able to shapeshift into cars, trucks, and cool jets?

Screw folding@home, give me that cluster so I can make some Bitcoin!

Hopefully they will eventually do the same with all research that's financed with taxes.

But a worker that accepts one of these positions probably has nothing better, as as the saying goes: better crowdsourcing than no-sourcing.

...the stupidest idea ever published on Slashdot.

Bicoin transactions can't be reversed, on the other hand, transactions that were performed inside an exchange never left the exchange, so they can be reversed.

Someone is WRONG on the Internet.

You don't get it. Bitcoin will not encourage credit, it will encourage saving on the other hand. It's like some people only see one side of the coin, pun intended.

Look at this, this might shatter once and for all your idea that inflation is good:
http://mises.org/daily/4623

Hope this time they fix that bug in the computer that helped the clones escape.

Piracy stems from us not buying the whole "I own this piece of information", or "I own this idea" thing. It's something that we reject deeply, perhaps even unconsciously.

If piracy and idea "theft" was punishable by death then our species would become extinct. Everybody's crime is nobody's crime.

IP is hampering innovation by promoting laziness among IP owners. It creates a government-enforced monopoly on certain ideas, so companies do some R&D, find one idea, and stop doing R&D to profit from the only single idea that they came up with.

Maximization of profit stem from innovation rate, not government enforcement of ideas and information scarcity. It's the fucking dark ages elitism. Old stuff is new again.

...let the fucking market deal with this?

I used to believe that Richard Stallman had the key to the salvation of our industry, but nowadays the guy seems to have pretty much lost it.

Free and Open Source Software would probably do much better without that dump of fanaticism.

I'm all for free and open source software, and I don't support intellectual property in the form of patents and copyrights. I recognize that the FSF has brought us the GPL and a coherent set of free software tools. But it's the FSF itself and Stallman's intransigence who has also debilitated us into stupid internal fights over Free Software vs Open Source. It's very good that the people actually writing the software don't care much and just keep doing their wonderful contributions.

Don't listen much to RMS these days, but focus on reducing patent and copyright reaches.

Mobile phones are mostly harmless, and if it's not you can just root it and flash it. There are fully open-source software distributions that you can put into your phone and will not contain impossible-to-audit software. You can even audit what closed source programs are transmitting over the Internet and to whom. It's reasonable to trust certain companies with information about your location in exchange for a service. I like to use Latitude for example. I believe the privacy contract that I accepted with Google is enforceable, and that my data is generally safe for them. It just takes disabling it for it not to transmit my location anymore. I have open source software in my phone that I can audit and check. I can disable my data connection. I have no reason to believe that Google will use my location information for nefarious purposes, and I could chose not to share it otherwise.

Keep it real people. Paranoia is never good. Control over your phone is good, intellectual property is bad. But the beyond-1984-esque paranoia is no subject matter for a civilized conversation. It's just a touch of senility and some Luddite behavior of RMS. I believe he's desperately looking for attention since most of the things he has done are not very visible outside nerdland. He's probably a bit angry at the fact that Free Software (as he calls it) is thriving as Open Source, and GNU is thriving as Linux, and Ubuntu, and Android, and that no one knows who's the FSF outside our industry. Jealousy and the need for an ego stroke seems to be behind all his recent ranting.

I'd tell RMS to keep doing software, keep preaching on the moral good of free vs proprietary, but cut on the paranoia speeches, and the extreme fundamentalism. It's not good for the image of our community. We've been trying hard to go mainstream for many years. It's better to have more freedom than non, and in that same line then mainstream is actually a good thing that RMS seems to be trying to undermine.

What's the problem of having a few proprietary packages in a mostly open stack?, not using mobiles?, not using computers?. Come on, even RMS had to use proprietary Unix once to develop GNU. Before it used to be all proprietary. Now that's the other way around in many industries, including mobile, servers, embedded, I mean, all computing but PCs is quite open. If else we should be celebrating the widespread use of free software on mobiles instead of going into a tantrum.

I for one congratulate Google for Android, Canonical and Shuttleworth for Ubuntu, heck, I even congratulate Apple for WebKit, and Oracle for Btrfs. Heck, even the big proprietary software vendors are all contributing their wares under FSF approved licenses, just as RMS prescribed.

Quit ranting and celebrate old man, your contribution is all over the place. The philosophical side of it is well understood by a large group within the industry. You've won for all what's worth. Change that face. It seems you're hardwired for negative thinking.

So Ubuntu is evil because it's pushing innovation?

Canonical is evil because it wishes to make a profit?

To hold up to an ideal being poor is a pre-requirement?

All this from an article heavily loaded with publicity?

I'm sorry, but it's the lamest article I've read in months.