Explicit language might modify what would otherwise be there only by an implicit doctrine.

In general, a licensor can modify their own terms. So, if you are using the GPL on software to which you hold the copyright, and you add some sort of exception, it applies. You can't do it to other people's software.

Japan announced it was cancelling Christmas today. I was so happy until I remembered what the date is. Damn you, April Fools, for getting my hopes up.

It's not so much sequels, it's a desire to see the story played out to conclusion and then ended without pointless cash-ins. Trek was cancelled too early, many of the sequel/remake movies are pointless.

The guy who plays Kirk in Continues is a better Shatner than Shatner is. He has all the mannerisms and speech patterns down perfectly. I could believe it was the same character, the same person. Only, he's actually slightly better, slightly less camp and with a more expressive face.

A good actor can bring something special to a film, but for something like Star Wars they don't need that. In fact if you look objectively at the original films the acting was pretty terrible, but that didn't really matter. A lot of movies are like that these days.

It's the same with music. A lot of modern stuff has very "powerful" vocals with lots of acrobatics, but it's all just AutoTune and half a dozen takes stitched together. Around 1990 there was a switch from writing music for the vocals to writing vocals for the music, and at that point vocal talent started to matter much less. Like movies, for some bands it was never very important anyway.

Depends which movie star you mean. Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson? Vin Diesel? Wouldn't be hard to find better actors than those guys.

The Rock is famous because he was a wrestler. Some actresses are famous for being naked and having fake boobs. I think Megan Fox is only famous because her arse looks nice on a bike or something... Acting ability is not important for many roles. Schwarzenegger can't act but was perfect in the role of an emotionless machine that can't act.

All the FIVE EYES countries get other countries to spy on their own citizens when they can't, so even if what you say is true it just means that the NSA does likewise and asks GCHQ for intel on US citizens that it isn't allowed to gather. It ignores security laws to allow GCHQ to do that on its behalf.

The NSA also helps GCHQ and other national crime^H^H^H^H^Hspy agencies subvert and pervert the laws of their own countries through its foreign spying programmes.

It's a clever plan to drum up business for VPN providers. Between website blockades and spying they are really helping push up subscriber numbers.

I am still having a little trouble with "we don't need our spies to spy". Maybe we do.

I am also having trouble believing that the kind of encryption we use on the Internet actually stops the U.S. Government from finding out whatever it wishes although IETF and sysadmins might be kidding themselves that it can. Government can get to the end systems. They can subborn your staff. Etc.

MS language is potentially worse than the default. And there is room for litigation to surprise us.

Well, I use Python on a regular basis, I'm well-known in my circles as the guy who exploited vulnerabilities in the radio software and bootloaders of 4 Android phones, and broke the RSA protection on the RAZR V3. I also worked on the early iPhones and developed a way to dump and decrypt bootloader blocks by manipulating the kernel page tables once we had temporary root.
https://web.nvd.nist.gov/view/... references my code and an exploit I discovered and was also widely used.
I've been mentioned in a book, invited to security conferences, and written piles of kernel-level and below code. I wouldn't call myself a dumbass, and I don't know many who would. Python's indentation still sucks my ass. Maybe my brain is just programmed to want structure in a way that's more flexible, I don't know. But I fucking hate it. I stumble across it frequently and get highly annoyed with its constraints. I think those are definitely valid complaints, even if they may only apply to me. Flexibility wins.
You're also a closed-minded dick.

YMMV, of course, but a while back I had to compile some software written in the 90s in c++ for whatever the STL target for linux was back then, on a modern linux machine.
The corrections needed to compile with today's STL were far from minor.

Yes. The last stuff I wrote that I couldn't compile today was in "Promal" or "Paradox". My C and C++ code from 1980 still builds and runs.

All of my web development is on Ruby on Rails. That environment has had a lot of development and I've had to port to new versions. So old code for RoR would not quite run out of the box, but it's close.

I don't think you understand what "equality of opportunity" means. For example, it means that all children would have the opportunity to get a high quality education. Obviously some children are less bright than others, but the high quality education is offered to everyone. More over, children shouldn't be disadvantaged because of their parents failings, because that isn't fair to them. That's one of the reasons why children must attend school by law in most countries - even if the parents would prefer them to stay at home or work they must be given the opportunity to learn.

As for jobs, equality of opportunity means that everyone can apply for a particular job, i.e. the employer can't arbitrarily discriminate against say Latino people. It also means that we should try to make high quality jobs available everywhere, or ensure that people can relocate if necessary without artificial barriers. Imagine there was some bright kid just out of college who couldn't afford to move to where high end jobs in his field were. Someone might decide to help give him the opportunity to apply for and get those jobs by offering assistance to move.

Popular computing languages do not in general have only one Open Source implementation, and do not get abandoned.