The parent was modded funny but in fact he is quite correct. Governments DO compete for taxpayers and the next administration here in the United States, whomever that may be, would be wise to consider that before they effectively raise taxes. Now you can argue all you want about "closing loopholes" and such, but ask yourself this, what does the taxpayer care about? If the tax rate is 35% but loopholes allow you to effectively pay 8% then the effective tax rate is really 8% because that is what you pay. It does not matter if taxes increase because of closed loopholes or new taxes, an increase is an increase (the mechanism is irrelevant to the taxpayer) and attempting to distinguish between "closing loopholes" and raising taxes is disingenuous and insults the intelligence of the taxpayers. Very few politicians anymore (even Mr. straight-talk McCain) actually tell the blunt truth (Ron Paul is one of the few current politicians that I can think of who doesn't mince words) when sophistry, half-truths, and lies of omission will do. The presidential debates, for example, are really not advancing the discussion at all since both sides are variously engaged in setting up the straw man, argumentum ad nauseum, and the ever popular loaded question instead of actually finding the root of actually making progress on accurately framing and solving the real problems that we are facing in the economy, with health care, and foreign policy (among other things).
copyright and patents are limited exclusive rights granted by the government, but they are NOT the same thing as property in sense of real or physical property and thus cannot be "stolen" in the same sense that an owner can be deprived of physical property. The laws concerning property and those concerning copyrights, patents, and other grants of exclusive rights are entirely separate branches of our laws and are not covered under the criminal codes (although some copyright infringement is criminalized in some circumstances by different laws) which cover theft of property. If we want to advance the debate on copyrights and patents then we need to stop confusing the issues by adopting the terminology of the patent attorneys and the copyright cartels who always push the patents and copyrights == property concept (without basis) by using the term "intellectual property" wherever and whenever they can as part of a conscious strategy to eventually have their definition accepted by the courts (i.e. keep pushing the lie until everyone believes that it is true and has always been that way).
Actually aging a bottle of whiskey tends to make it worse, especially if the battle is less than half full, because the volatiles and aromatic components of the whiskey tend to evaporate and oxidize. It is always better, taste wise, to drink the entire bottle as soon as it is opened for the first time unless you have some sort of resealing equipment that can back fill the air gap in the bottle with nitrogen or something.
I thought that the law (in the United States) says that all royalties must be paid to SoundExchange corporation which then distributes them to the copyright owners (your band in your case) although I have also heard that they are notorious for not lifting a finger to find out where to send the royalties in the case where the copyright owner (who may not even know that they inherited the right to receive royalties) does not show up and ask for them and even then they tend to give individuals and small independents the run around (making you prove who you are, etc). It is like filing a claim on your insurance, the insurance company does everything it can legally to deny the claim or delay payment as long as possible or both. The royalty system in the music business has a reputation for these sorts of practices and they are hated like insurance companies are for engaging in many of the same types of shenanigans.
The idea here is to juice up the batteries at home and use them for the first x number of miles (hopefully enough to handle your commute). After that, when the batteries are low, a small diesel (or gas) engine will start up and begin charging the batteries providing you with more range
It would be nice to have some sort of manual override so that you can manually select from among the different available modes which one to use (electric only, gas + electric (with type selected for either efficiency or power, user's choice), gas only, etc...) and possibly even to have custom presets and programmable modes depending upon variable inputs from the vehicle sensors. Perhaps not all enabled by default, but there for those users who want to delve into the operations manual and customize their hybrid to better match their individual driving habits. The vehicles that we drive today mostly do not offer those types of customizations and since the driver knows what type(s) of car trips they usually take it would be interesting to allow more customization and modes in vehicles for those who wanted to experiment.
That is an interesting point and while there is apparently a shortage of law geeks here on Slashdot (I do happen to know someone with both a law degree and a PhD of CS, but that is probably fairly rare) we IT and developer geeks do provide, collectively via the comment and moderation system here on Slashdot, good technical commentary and fact checking which might be useful to your justices as part of an amici curiae brief in order to more fully inform them of the technical background and basis for arguments presented by the attorneys.
FYI there are efficient approximate solutions to the TSP that are guaranteed to come within a few percent of the true optimum.
I am aware of them yes, but it was my understanding that they do not guarantee the margin of error between the "good" approximate solution and the globally optimal solution (i.e. you never know for certain how "good" the approximate solution is compared to the "best" solution unless you compute them both and compare them which is impractical for most reasonably large problems). Has the upper bound on error term been proven for any problem size? It was my understanding that as the size of the problem increases (more nodes, more routes, more terms, etc) the "good" approximate solution diverges ever farther away from the globally optimal solution (i.e. becomes less and less "good" as problem size increases).
You could still potentially be hit with the inconvenience of being forced to switch back to locally run services (and getting your data back out of the cloud and onto your machine) at an inopportune moment like around a big project deadline or the week before exams at school (either that or be forced to pay for a few periods, until a more convenient time to move yourself off comes around). Then of course there is the privacy issue (although it could be argued that email is already not very private without additional third party plugins like Pretty Good Privacy or GNU Privacy Guard).
How's that exactly? As you said, "everyone knows or at least strongly suspects" the answer.
If P is not equal to NP, as most computer scientists expect, then the present situation, where problems known to be NP-Complete are very computationally costly to solve for the optimal solution, will persist into the indefinite future and possibly forever if someone manages to finally prove that P not equal NP. The fact that nobody has been able to produce either a proof OR an algorithm which solves an NP-Complete problem in P time (despite decades of dedicated programming efforts) strongly suggests, based upon exhaustive experimental evidence AND the failure to produce an affirmative proof, that P is not equal to NP.
However, suppose for the sake of argument that some manages somehow to prove that P is equal to NP and develops an algorithm to solve a known NP-Complete problem in P time as experimental proof (the demonstration). It has already been proven that any problem in NP-Complete can be converted to any other NP-Complete problem. For example, the Traveling Salesman Problem, the Multiprocessor Scheduling Problem, and the Boolean Satisfiability Problem, etc...would all be interchangeable (i.e. if you can solve ONE in P then you can solve them ALL in P).
Now, how much do you suppose that it would be worth to FedEx, UPS, and the postal services of the world if they could quickly calculate the optimal routes for all of their delivery schedules (the Traveling Salesman Problem)? Imagine how many gallons of fuel that would save per year and how much that would be worth. The Boolean Satisfiability Problem has huge cost savings and efficiency potential in the electronics industry. An optimal solution to the Multiprocessor Scheduling problem could dramatically improve the parallelization of concurrent but interdependent stepwise processes in grid computing and it would also apply to real world scheduling problems like making sure that students, classes, and exams are optimally scheduled to allow the most number of possible combinations in the least amount of time. Many modern cryptographic algorithms are based upon problems which are known to be NP-Complete so imagine how much various interested parties would pay to be able to quickly break the encryption schemes of their adversaries. There are so many potential cost savings opportunities with a P equals NP proof that they would all add up to billions or even trillions of total dollars saved.
Everyone knows or at least strongly suspects that P not equal NP, it's just that nobody has been able to prove that yet. It is exceedingly unlikely that DoD or even NSA (which would certainly be interested in a proof and practical demonstration of P = NP) has proven the conjecture and even less likely that they have proven it in the affirmative ( P = NP). Decades of research by some of the best minds in theoretical computer science have barely scratched the surface of this problem (mostly closing off leads that were once thought to be promising and further reinforcing the reputation of the difficulty of the proof). The solution to this problem and a practical demonstration would be worth billions, possibly even trillions, of dollars and name placement among the great mathematicians of history. If someone had a proof it would be very unlikely that they could keep it secret for very long with those sorts of incentives for being the first to announce the discovery.
As a corollary, what other parts of the bill of rights should be applied differently in different parts of the Country? Does free speech work in Cheyenne but not in Chicago or Washington DC? The Supreme Court said that the right to bear arms is a fundamental individual right and being that the handgun is among the most practical of personal defense weapons available today why should ownership of handguns be needlessly encumbered in Chicago or Washington DC? Are Chicago and DC any less dangerous than Cheyenne? Hasn't there already been enough damage done to the Constitution and individual rights in this Country (free speech cages, handgun bans, panopticon surveillance, etc...) by a take what we like and leave what we don't approach to our founding documents?
As has been discussed by other posters the domains in question were recorded with registrars incorporated inside the United States and apparently the State of Kentucky was able to pressure them into handing them over (ICANN was probably not directly involved). The solution, as other posters have mentioned, is to register your gambling domain with an offshore registrar located in a country that is likely to tell the State of Kentucky to piss off. They could try to threaten ICANN into cutting off redirects to foreign registrars or country level DNS servers (don't know the exact terms, but others have posted in detail) but that is sort of like the nuclear option (which ICANN probably doesn't want to do) and would accelerate the breakup of the world-wide Internet into country controlled networks (already happening to some extent). Actually, it is something of a minor miracle that ICANN has been able to hold the whole thing together this and prevent a proliferation of country-controlled Internets from cropping up in direct competition to ICANN controlled DNS registrations (countries like China, Saudi Arabia, and others would probably prefer something like this in the long run anyway).
Probably too cool to keep working too if Apple's response(s) to the iPod jailbreaks are any indication. They will probably release a mandatory 'update' to OS X that conveniently bricks your dongle PC\Mac clone.
True, but the RIAA were themselves both the originators and promoters of that theory during the trial. They did nothing to prevent the judge from making this mistake (by offering honest and good faith legal opinions and failing to bring other relevant and extant documentation and decisions from similar cases to the attention of the judge). As for legal fees, that is an interesting question. If the defendant eventually prevails in subsequent but related litigation can the RIAA argue and convince a judge that legal fees from the previous mistrial are not warranted (they would probably almost certainly try if the defendant won legal fees after a successful defense)?
He can say whatever he likes as a private citizen and people are free to ignore, support, or oppose him as they please, but his career as a litigant against the video game industry is likely to be limited in any case by the vexatious litigant laws and politically video games are a minor issue at best (i.e. they come up from time to time in the context of highly visible crimes, especially shooting spree crimes, but otherwise most people couldn't give two shits because they are too busy trying to save their mortgage and keep their jobs). We may not have heard the last of him on the Internet, but I suspect that his career as a semi-serious public figure is probably over and I say good riddance.
Right, still it seems "unsporting", as the British might say, about trying her again. I hope that the RIAA doesn't, but that is probably to much to expect from such an ethically bankrupt organization.
One good thing that may come of all of this is more and better research into data compression and network quality vs bandwidth optimization algorithms. Who can say for certain whether or not anything will come of it, but it might at least spur some more people to think about those things and that is also a good thing.
It is DRM because it restricts me from running the application until I either re-install it or activate it
Are you restricted in the number of copies that you can make by repeatedly re-installing the games? I have re-installed the games multiple times on multiple computers, played on multiple computers simultaneously, and downloaded the updates and the games have never complained. I think that the activation is mainly just to keep track of how many times a key has been used on Stardock's servers, but that prohibitions against subsequent installs are not technically enforced (or at least not for any reasonable number of installs) and they have said publicly that there is no copy protection. You could probably set a firewall rule so that the activation program always fails to connect and still play the game indefinitely (I haven't tried that personally, but I suspect that it probably would work). Are you sure that you cannot play the games if you don't activate? At worst, Stardock's DRM is no worse than Steam, which although it is DRM is widely regarded as "fair" (in fact, Stardock is probably even more fair because it allows multiple simultaneous sessions with the same keys).
Activation, in this case, is not the same as DRM (although I suppose, strictly speaking, that that depends upon how far you want to extend the definition and scope of DRM). If you have a copy of the game then you can install and play it without activation (although you may not be able to download updates without activing). Also, you can activate on as many computers as you want as many times as you want. I have a Stardock.net account for object desktop and the galactic civ games and I can and have installed them on three (3) computers that I own. From all that I have heard the games, when installed with key from the jewel case or manual (which is typical for most purchased games), will function even if you have not paid for your copy (although I would encourage you to purchase your Stardock games if you want to play them since buying from Stardock supports the "good guys" whereas buying from EA supports the "bad guys"). If you object to DRM because it limits your freedom to use the product as you wish and not simply because you would rather not pay, then it behooves you to support the "good guys" with your dollars in the DRM fight while simultaneously not giving the "bad guys" (EA et al) any ammunition to say, "See, Stardock used no DRM and everyone pirated their games." (even though DRM does not prevent most non-casual copying and even less with PC games since most PC gamers are more savvy than the average computer user).
The entire notion of "managing the rights of another", with the exception of minors being rightfully managed by their parents until they reach the age of majority, is simply a euphemism for tyranny. DRM manages rights in the same way that prison manages freedom and all civilized societies consider imprisonment prior to conviction of wrongdoing, which DRM does by assuming by default that all customers are criminals, as morally repugnant and wrong.
The lesson to be learned here is that the talk of a salesman is cheap. Get the promise in writing and signed by a corporate officer of the vendor (someone with authority to enter into such a contract) with penalties if they fail to deliver on the promise (preferably cash payments for every day of non-compliance OR full immediate refund of purchase price to you the customer from the vendor and NOT extended support or other non-money payments).
Yes, but part of the reason for that was the large amount of liquid assets (marketable securities in the amount of $40+ billion) which meant that for any amount that they were likely to borrow the chances of them being unable or unwilling to repay their notes was practically non-existent. If they use most of the cash hoard to buy back equity shares then the future credit rating will more accurately reflect the likely future sales and licensing revenues of their flagship products (Windows and Office) which have hit a few bumps in the road over the past several years (the Vista debacle for instance) minus any liabilities (ongoing legal costs for example). This is almost certain to reduce their credit rating, perhaps to AA from AAA although nobody can say for certain (even the professional analysts) until Microsoft tries to float bonds or commercial paper in the open market subsequent to their using up the cash hoard.
Slashdot Mirror
The parent was modded funny but in fact he is quite correct. Governments DO compete for taxpayers and the next administration here in the United States, whomever that may be, would be wise to consider that before they effectively raise taxes. Now you can argue all you want about "closing loopholes" and such, but ask yourself this, what does the taxpayer care about? If the tax rate is 35% but loopholes allow you to effectively pay 8% then the effective tax rate is really 8% because that is what you pay. It does not matter if taxes increase because of closed loopholes or new taxes, an increase is an increase (the mechanism is irrelevant to the taxpayer) and attempting to distinguish between "closing loopholes" and raising taxes is disingenuous and insults the intelligence of the taxpayers. Very few politicians anymore (even Mr. straight-talk McCain) actually tell the blunt truth (Ron Paul is one of the few current politicians that I can think of who doesn't mince words) when sophistry, half-truths, and lies of omission will do. The presidential debates, for example, are really not advancing the discussion at all since both sides are variously engaged in setting up the straw man, argumentum ad nauseum, and the ever popular loaded question instead of actually finding the root of actually making progress on accurately framing and solving the real problems that we are facing in the economy, with health care, and foreign policy (among other things).
copyright and patents are limited exclusive rights granted by the government, but they are NOT the same thing as property in sense of real or physical property and thus cannot be "stolen" in the same sense that an owner can be deprived of physical property. The laws concerning property and those concerning copyrights, patents, and other grants of exclusive rights are entirely separate branches of our laws and are not covered under the criminal codes (although some copyright infringement is criminalized in some circumstances by different laws) which cover theft of property. If we want to advance the debate on copyrights and patents then we need to stop confusing the issues by adopting the terminology of the patent attorneys and the copyright cartels who always push the patents and copyrights == property concept (without basis) by using the term "intellectual property" wherever and whenever they can as part of a conscious strategy to eventually have their definition accepted by the courts (i.e. keep pushing the lie until everyone believes that it is true and has always been that way).
Actually aging a bottle of whiskey tends to make it worse, especially if the battle is less than half full, because the volatiles and aromatic components of the whiskey tend to evaporate and oxidize. It is always better, taste wise, to drink the entire bottle as soon as it is opened for the first time unless you have some sort of resealing equipment that can back fill the air gap in the bottle with nitrogen or something.
I also wonder where the royalties are really going and what the pie slices look like
Probably nobody knows exactly where everything goes down to the penny, that tends to happen with corrupt businesses like record labels.
I thought that the law (in the United States) says that all royalties must be paid to SoundExchange corporation which then distributes them to the copyright owners (your band in your case) although I have also heard that they are notorious for not lifting a finger to find out where to send the royalties in the case where the copyright owner (who may not even know that they inherited the right to receive royalties) does not show up and ask for them and even then they tend to give individuals and small independents the run around (making you prove who you are, etc). It is like filing a claim on your insurance, the insurance company does everything it can legally to deny the claim or delay payment as long as possible or both. The royalty system in the music business has a reputation for these sorts of practices and they are hated like insurance companies are for engaging in many of the same types of shenanigans.
The idea here is to juice up the batteries at home and use them for the first x number of miles (hopefully enough to handle your commute). After that, when the batteries are low, a small diesel (or gas) engine will start up and begin charging the batteries providing you with more range
It would be nice to have some sort of manual override so that you can manually select from among the different available modes which one to use (electric only, gas + electric (with type selected for either efficiency or power, user's choice), gas only, etc...) and possibly even to have custom presets and programmable modes depending upon variable inputs from the vehicle sensors. Perhaps not all enabled by default, but there for those users who want to delve into the operations manual and customize their hybrid to better match their individual driving habits. The vehicles that we drive today mostly do not offer those types of customizations and since the driver knows what type(s) of car trips they usually take it would be interesting to allow more customization and modes in vehicles for those who wanted to experiment.
That is an interesting point and while there is apparently a shortage of law geeks here on Slashdot (I do happen to know someone with both a law degree and a PhD of CS, but that is probably fairly rare) we IT and developer geeks do provide, collectively via the comment and moderation system here on Slashdot, good technical commentary and fact checking which might be useful to your justices as part of an amici curiae brief in order to more fully inform them of the technical background and basis for arguments presented by the attorneys.
FYI there are efficient approximate solutions to the TSP that are guaranteed to come within a few percent of the true optimum.
I am aware of them yes, but it was my understanding that they do not guarantee the margin of error between the "good" approximate solution and the globally optimal solution (i.e. you never know for certain how "good" the approximate solution is compared to the "best" solution unless you compute them both and compare them which is impractical for most reasonably large problems). Has the upper bound on error term been proven for any problem size? It was my understanding that as the size of the problem increases (more nodes, more routes, more terms, etc) the "good" approximate solution diverges ever farther away from the globally optimal solution (i.e. becomes less and less "good" as problem size increases).
You could still potentially be hit with the inconvenience of being forced to switch back to locally run services (and getting your data back out of the cloud and onto your machine) at an inopportune moment like around a big project deadline or the week before exams at school (either that or be forced to pay for a few periods, until a more convenient time to move yourself off comes around). Then of course there is the privacy issue (although it could be argued that email is already not very private without additional third party plugins like Pretty Good Privacy or GNU Privacy Guard).
How's that exactly? As you said, "everyone knows or at least strongly suspects" the answer.
If P is not equal to NP, as most computer scientists expect, then the present situation, where problems known to be NP-Complete are very computationally costly to solve for the optimal solution, will persist into the indefinite future and possibly forever if someone manages to finally prove that P not equal NP. The fact that nobody has been able to produce either a proof OR an algorithm which solves an NP-Complete problem in P time (despite decades of dedicated programming efforts) strongly suggests, based upon exhaustive experimental evidence AND the failure to produce an affirmative proof, that P is not equal to NP.
However, suppose for the sake of argument that some manages somehow to prove that P is equal to NP and develops an algorithm to solve a known NP-Complete problem in P time as experimental proof (the demonstration). It has already been proven that any problem in NP-Complete can be converted to any other NP-Complete problem. For example, the Traveling Salesman Problem, the Multiprocessor Scheduling Problem, and the Boolean Satisfiability Problem, etc...would all be interchangeable (i.e. if you can solve ONE in P then you can solve them ALL in P).
Now, how much do you suppose that it would be worth to FedEx, UPS, and the postal services of the world if they could quickly calculate the optimal routes for all of their delivery schedules (the Traveling Salesman Problem)? Imagine how many gallons of fuel that would save per year and how much that would be worth. The Boolean Satisfiability Problem has huge cost savings and efficiency potential in the electronics industry. An optimal solution to the Multiprocessor Scheduling problem could dramatically improve the parallelization of concurrent but interdependent stepwise processes in grid computing and it would also apply to real world scheduling problems like making sure that students, classes, and exams are optimally scheduled to allow the most number of possible combinations in the least amount of time. Many modern cryptographic algorithms are based upon problems which are known to be NP-Complete so imagine how much various interested parties would pay to be able to quickly break the encryption schemes of their adversaries. There are so many potential cost savings opportunities with a P equals NP proof that they would all add up to billions or even trillions of total dollars saved.
Everyone knows or at least strongly suspects that P not equal NP, it's just that nobody has been able to prove that yet. It is exceedingly unlikely that DoD or even NSA (which would certainly be interested in a proof and practical demonstration of P = NP) has proven the conjecture and even less likely that they have proven it in the affirmative ( P = NP). Decades of research by some of the best minds in theoretical computer science have barely scratched the surface of this problem (mostly closing off leads that were once thought to be promising and further reinforcing the reputation of the difficulty of the proof). The solution to this problem and a practical demonstration would be worth billions, possibly even trillions, of dollars and name placement among the great mathematicians of history. If someone had a proof it would be very unlikely that they could keep it secret for very long with those sorts of incentives for being the first to announce the discovery.
As a corollary, what other parts of the bill of rights should be applied differently in different parts of the Country? Does free speech work in Cheyenne but not in Chicago or Washington DC? The Supreme Court said that the right to bear arms is a fundamental individual right and being that the handgun is among the most practical of personal defense weapons available today why should ownership of handguns be needlessly encumbered in Chicago or Washington DC? Are Chicago and DC any less dangerous than Cheyenne? Hasn't there already been enough damage done to the Constitution and individual rights in this Country (free speech cages, handgun bans, panopticon surveillance, etc...) by a take what we like and leave what we don't approach to our founding documents?
As has been discussed by other posters the domains in question were recorded with registrars incorporated inside the United States and apparently the State of Kentucky was able to pressure them into handing them over (ICANN was probably not directly involved). The solution, as other posters have mentioned, is to register your gambling domain with an offshore registrar located in a country that is likely to tell the State of Kentucky to piss off. They could try to threaten ICANN into cutting off redirects to foreign registrars or country level DNS servers (don't know the exact terms, but others have posted in detail) but that is sort of like the nuclear option (which ICANN probably doesn't want to do) and would accelerate the breakup of the world-wide Internet into country controlled networks (already happening to some extent). Actually, it is something of a minor miracle that ICANN has been able to hold the whole thing together this and prevent a proliferation of country-controlled Internets from cropping up in direct competition to ICANN controlled DNS registrations (countries like China, Saudi Arabia, and others would probably prefer something like this in the long run anyway).
These things are probably too cool to stay legal
Probably too cool to keep working too if Apple's response(s) to the iPod jailbreaks are any indication. They will probably release a mandatory 'update' to OS X that conveniently bricks your dongle PC\Mac clone.
True, but the RIAA were themselves both the originators and promoters of that theory during the trial. They did nothing to prevent the judge from making this mistake (by offering honest and good faith legal opinions and failing to bring other relevant and extant documentation and decisions from similar cases to the attention of the judge). As for legal fees, that is an interesting question. If the defendant eventually prevails in subsequent but related litigation can the RIAA argue and convince a judge that legal fees from the previous mistrial are not warranted (they would probably almost certainly try if the defendant won legal fees after a successful defense)?
He can say whatever he likes as a private citizen and people are free to ignore, support, or oppose him as they please, but his career as a litigant against the video game industry is likely to be limited in any case by the vexatious litigant laws and politically video games are a minor issue at best (i.e. they come up from time to time in the context of highly visible crimes, especially shooting spree crimes, but otherwise most people couldn't give two shits because they are too busy trying to save their mortgage and keep their jobs). We may not have heard the last of him on the Internet, but I suspect that his career as a semi-serious public figure is probably over and I say good riddance.
Right, still it seems "unsporting", as the British might say, about trying her again. I hope that the RIAA doesn't, but that is probably to much to expect from such an ethically bankrupt organization.
Can they try her again? Do they have to use the same evidence only or is it a completely new trial?
One good thing that may come of all of this is more and better research into data compression and network quality vs bandwidth optimization algorithms. Who can say for certain whether or not anything will come of it, but it might at least spur some more people to think about those things and that is also a good thing.
It is DRM because it restricts me from running the application until I either re-install it or activate it
Are you restricted in the number of copies that you can make by repeatedly re-installing the games? I have re-installed the games multiple times on multiple computers, played on multiple computers simultaneously, and downloaded the updates and the games have never complained. I think that the activation is mainly just to keep track of how many times a key has been used on Stardock's servers, but that prohibitions against subsequent installs are not technically enforced (or at least not for any reasonable number of installs) and they have said publicly that there is no copy protection. You could probably set a firewall rule so that the activation program always fails to connect and still play the game indefinitely (I haven't tried that personally, but I suspect that it probably would work). Are you sure that you cannot play the games if you don't activate? At worst, Stardock's DRM is no worse than Steam, which although it is DRM is widely regarded as "fair" (in fact, Stardock is probably even more fair because it allows multiple simultaneous sessions with the same keys).
Activation, in this case, is not the same as DRM (although I suppose, strictly speaking, that that depends upon how far you want to extend the definition and scope of DRM). If you have a copy of the game then you can install and play it without activation (although you may not be able to download updates without activing). Also, you can activate on as many computers as you want as many times as you want. I have a Stardock.net account for object desktop and the galactic civ games and I can and have installed them on three (3) computers that I own. From all that I have heard the games, when installed with key from the jewel case or manual (which is typical for most purchased games), will function even if you have not paid for your copy (although I would encourage you to purchase your Stardock games if you want to play them since buying from Stardock supports the "good guys" whereas buying from EA supports the "bad guys"). If you object to DRM because it limits your freedom to use the product as you wish and not simply because you would rather not pay, then it behooves you to support the "good guys" with your dollars in the DRM fight while simultaneously not giving the "bad guys" (EA et al) any ammunition to say, "See, Stardock used no DRM and everyone pirated their games." (even though DRM does not prevent most non-casual copying and even less with PC games since most PC gamers are more savvy than the average computer user).
The entire notion of "managing the rights of another", with the exception of minors being rightfully managed by their parents until they reach the age of majority, is simply a euphemism for tyranny. DRM manages rights in the same way that prison manages freedom and all civilized societies consider imprisonment prior to conviction of wrongdoing, which DRM does by assuming by default that all customers are criminals, as morally repugnant and wrong.
Maybe it's not his bag.
The lesson to be learned here is that the talk of a salesman is cheap. Get the promise in writing and signed by a corporate officer of the vendor (someone with authority to enter into such a contract) with penalties if they fail to deliver on the promise (preferably cash payments for every day of non-compliance OR full immediate refund of purchase price to you the customer from the vendor and NOT extended support or other non-money payments).
They're bond rating is "AAA"
Yes, but part of the reason for that was the large amount of liquid assets (marketable securities in the amount of $40+ billion) which meant that for any amount that they were likely to borrow the chances of them being unable or unwilling to repay their notes was practically non-existent. If they use most of the cash hoard to buy back equity shares then the future credit rating will more accurately reflect the likely future sales and licensing revenues of their flagship products (Windows and Office) which have hit a few bumps in the road over the past several years (the Vista debacle for instance) minus any liabilities (ongoing legal costs for example). This is almost certain to reduce their credit rating, perhaps to AA from AAA although nobody can say for certain (even the professional analysts) until Microsoft tries to float bonds or commercial paper in the open market subsequent to their using up the cash hoard.