Try one of these keyboard condoms on your next keyboard!  They’re pretty nifty.

Uhm, I’m pretty sceptical of those. Don’t they totally change the way typing feels?

Anyway, do you guys really lose that many keyboards this way? I am still using the same one for 4 years now, and though I sometimes have to open it up to clean lint and stuff, its fine.

As for getting back on-topic: I read an interesting article about why all those anti-filesharing suits, attacks and so on will not work: Lan parties.

Or, less succinct - because portable storage devices (USB drives) and LAN connections are big and respectively fast enough these days to simply swap huge collections back and forth when you meet up with your friends.

So even if filesharing on the net was not possible, it would continue. A bit more like the old model of swapping disks on the schoolyard, but nonetheless. It seems that at some point the companies WILL have to come round and give people a legal way of sharing and find themselves a better revenue model. Even if we have to wait until the mp3 generation reaches the boardrooms.

Uhm, I’m pretty sceptical of those. Don’t they totally change the way typing feels?

Sure they do, a little bit, but the physical sensation of the actual point of contact between fingers and keyboard is only one small part of the total logged-in experience. 

Don’t they totally change the way typing feels?

Not really, at least the Safeskins that I use don’t.  They’re vacummed formed to the model of your keyboard - what you buy in the store is just the ordering form to mail in.  You get used to it quick.  It’s really for guarding against spills.  If you have a keyboard you REALLY like, like the older ones with a lot of steel in them, then it’s a good idea.  If you don’t mind the $5 keyboards, then the $15 for a KB condom is costly.

There’s also my freaky example for using them:  I had a roach run onto my keyboard late one night, and before I could flick it off, it darted under the keys.  So the condoms protect against both spills and bugs.

If you have a keyboard you REALLY like, like the older ones with a lot of steel in them, then it’s a good idea.  If you don’t mind the $5 keyboards, then the $15 for a KB condom is costly.

I got myself an aluminium keyboard these days to replace the old one (yes, I AM shamelessly bragging now, but its oh so pretty and has such a light touch, like a fine watch). To cover that one with a sleeve would be like… I don’t know - eating a five-course meal with a plastic spork?

There are many comparisons that I have used over the years to explain why suing gun manufactureres for crime is illogical. Like if a wife kills her cheating husband by running over him with her car, is the auto manufacturer guilty? Or if a kid kills another with a baseball bat, should the bat manufacturer pay? When a kid drops a watermelon off a bridge and kills a motorist, should the farmer be put out of business? If you buy a gun, and it blows up in your face, the manufacturer is liable, if you use it to murder someone, you am liable.

There are many comparisons that I have used over the years to explain why suing gun manufactureres for crime is illogical. Like if a wife kills her cheating husband by running over him with her car, is the auto manufacturer guilty? Or if a kid kills another with a baseball bat, should the bat manufacturer pay? When a kid drops a watermelon off a bridge and kills a motorist, should the farmer be put out of business? If you buy a gun, and it blows up in your face, the manufacturer is liable, if you use it to murder someone, you am liable.

All eminently reasonable points. Unless the society itself reaches a consensus (legal and emotional) that guns THEMSELVES should be considered restricted and ‘evil’ (obviously not gonna happen in the US anywhere in the near future), then no gun manufacturer should be sued.

That said, the very SAME argument can be made for filesharing programs. To apply other standards there, where any ‘fault’ is unlikely to ever hurt anyone physically (quite unlike with guns) is simply hypocrital. THAT was at least 50% of the point Kos was making, as I see it.

As a question to those her who have some idea about US law:

Could this decision (that gun manufacturers can not be sued forthwith) be used to LEGALLY protect file sharing programs? ‘Legally’ meaning that a defendant could point to it in court, as opposed to simply pointing at the MORAL hypocrisy, as we do here?

Sure they do, a little bit, but the physical sensation of the actual point of contact between fingers and keyboard is only one small part of the total logged-in experience.

You could be a spokesman for KC DoF; not because your logic is compelling, but because you just made me spit coffee all over my keyboard, thus demonstrating the utility of said product in the most immediate and intimate of fashions.

Kudos!  You’re a marketing genius! (bastard.  Now I have to go find a rag).

thus demonstrating the utility of said product

Besides, just imagine how you can relax and enjoy when you don’t have to worry about fluids…

Unless the society itself reaches a consensus (legal and emotional) that guns THEMSELVES should be considered restricted and ‘evil’...

Well to be fair to “the other side,“ cars, baseball bats, and watermelons can only be misused as weapons.  Guns are properly and primarily weapons.  That might weaken or complicate the analogy somewhat.

Well to be fair to “the other side,â€? cars, baseball bats, and watermelons can only be misused as weapons.  Guns are properly and primarily weapons.  That might weaken or complicate the analogy somewhat.

Complicate? Yes. Weaken? Only if you are of the opinion that guns have no valid purpose in our society. They have at least two - to give law enforcement the power to uphold said laws (I guess no one but some backwoods anarchists/right-wingers would debate that this is a valid purpose) and second, as means of self-defense for citizens. The second part is VERY much in debate, with the US leaving heavily pro, and Europe leaning heavily against. Personally, I’m fine with the latter view.

Speaking of cars versus guns, I was just looking up the CDC data the other day while I considered writing Greg Palast about an article on making guns illegal.  This is the prelimenary 2003 data from the CDC for deaths in the US.  The number of homicides by discharge of firearms was 11,599.  The number of deaths in motor vehicle accidents was 44,059.  The number of deaths in other transport accidents was 47,325 while 16,859 people committed suicide by shooting themselves.