Oh, a Martian? You're obviously not familiar with some of our customs. You see, when we earthlings say you're entitled to free speech, what we actually mean is: as long as your speech doesn't offend our bigoted ears. If you feel that this law-enforced discrimination is no better than racism, sexism, or homophobia - keep that feeling to yourself, because asserting that *laws may actually be discriminating* will get you jailed in no time! That's because we earthlings honestly believe that to really understand the "freedom" of speech you should contemplate it from behind bars.

Remember to take your cash too. Next, they'll start charging non-residents for drinking water from public fountains. Or, for sitting on park benches.

A modest proposal: they should just further ramp up their EU prices (say, to 1.000.000 EUR per copy of Win7) and lower their US prices (say, to 1 $). They should do likewise for *all* US products. This approach would (1) fairly reflect the true value of US products and (2) be as effective as boycotting them, *without being rude*.

Yeah, it's incomplete. It should say: Apparently, the instrument has never been allowed to play music, as it was not RIAA-approved. The maker's skeleton found nearby without pelvis: obviously had his ass sued off.

Cars should be designed so as to run right smack in the middle of the road by default, unless the user changes the default -- to accomplish which, a reasonably complex procedure should be put in place, in order to avoid accidental/unwanted changes to the sane defaults.

Alternatively, cars could be produced to run on the right side of the road, whereas trucks could be produced to run on the left side by default.

That would avoid the localization problems mentioned in the above post. Similar solutions could be provided for other localization problems (for example: by default, in place of light switches, there should be two live wires protruding from the wall, leaving it to the user to change that default configuration). And so on.

This race-to-the-first-post is getting tiresome. The Admins should modify their software: by default, every first post should be deleted, so that the 2nd post becomes 1st. Then, the 1st post should be deleted, so that the 2nd post becomes 1st. Then, the 1st post should be deleted, so that the 2nd post becomes 1st. Then...

That would simplify SlashDot and make it more user-friendly, making AJAX and other complex technologies virtually obsolete.

That's *exactly* why the telco has taken this to the supreme court. They were concerned about the taxpayers' money!

$423,500? They must be joking. They'll never get any firm results unless they come up with some hard, pulsating cash.

Geez, I should stop whistling popular tunes to myself while in public areas. Bad, bad habit! Some RIAA or ASCAP jerk may overhear me and sell me into slavery to the Third World. On the other hand, there I'll be allowed to whistle at least!

You must PAY to use a patented format, such as jpeg or mp3 or mpeg-4. In practice, the maker of your DVD player or your video camera, or the company making the software or ripping CDs, or your content provider, will have paid that "tax" in advance -- from your pocket, of course. That way, everything gets a bit more expensive than it should be. Players, cameras, computers, software, everything is encumbered with this "tax".

It also means that, if the patent holder decides to prosecute us users tomorrow (just as RIAA is doing today) and they find a jpg, or mp3, or mpeg-4 file on your computer that was obtained without paying for the royalties, using patent-circumventing means -- which roughly comprises ALL free software and many OSS phones/players/PDAs -- they may sue your ass off. That's why license matters.

If I were to choose between a proprietary, obfuscated, possibly patent-encumbered format and an open, free, community-geared format, I'd always choose the latter, without all that nitpicking about performance and technicalities. In the end, it all boils down to whose interests you want to support -- those of a patent holder who's gonna charge you every single time you watch a video, or your own.

On the other hand, consumers are strange and bewilderingly uninformed creatures. They rarely choose what's in their best interest (as shown by the mp3/ogg controversy, by the wide acceptance of DRM-ed content, and so on).

Well, I, for one, migrated from KDE to Gnome precisely because of this "innovate at any cost" philosophy in KDE. KDE4 was introduced far too soon in the major distros and even promoted to the "default" Desktop Environment in some of them, while still being horribly buggy and crashing all the time. The haste to make the GNU/Linux desktop look cool just made it look bad.

If I could sort of understand this innovation hype while I was a Windows user (novelty sells), I really wish GNU/Linux developers would slow down "innovation for innovation's sake", and invest their energies in making things work smoothly first. Personally, I'd be more than happy with a Desktop Environment that was, say, 5 years old, without bells, whistles, or Compiz, but was *maintained* well -- nay, maintained *aggressively* -- in order to have almost every bug squashed. The only time I'm glad to see innovation is when it's related to new devices/hardware support.

That's just my opinion, of course.

Good point! You're purchasing nothing more than a "permit to listen". I wouldn't even go as far as suggesting to buy it once: better wait until they come up with a "product" -- "permits" are usually not worth the paper they're written on... But, hey, these are paperless, so let me guess how much must THEY be worth?

Decades ago I had close to 3,000 LP's. To preserve them from wear, I copied many of them to blank cassette tapes (which, IIRC, included a special overprice to cover "copyright damages" incurred by taping music). Then the CD arrived, with allegedly better sound, so I re-purchased many of the albums in CD format. After that, downloadable DRM-ed music came out. Hmm, that would be like re-purchasing the same music for the (counting the "copyright tax" on cassette tapes) FOURTH TIME OVER??? I said no, thanks. I prefer to buy CD's and convert them to ogg/mp3 myself. I'll never buy a DRM-ed piece NO MATTER how perfectly DRM is implemented. Does this make me a consumer that has learned or...?