Shh.. don't give them ideas!

Newsflash, some people don't have an interest in the technical aspects of computers! They want the machine to work and do basic tasks. Save your marriage while you still can, and buy a new PC, or upgrade your existing one.

I rather want a laptop with touch-screen than support stereoscopic imaging. The former is convenient, the latter is a gimmick.

Java, or link to the Cygwin library. The latter gives you a kind of POSIX API wrapper for your windows applications. So you can use POSIX threads and IPC stuff if you want. I'm not sure how efficient that is though, or how stable the general Cygwin API is.

Yes, and more safe (less certain) for those who can't do simple arithmetic ;-)

So this legal issue works just like with emulator BIOS files. In order for some emulators to work, you need the system's firmware (Playstation, Amiga, Gameboy Advance), which is copyrighted and isn't bundled. If you acquire it from your device yourself, you're in the green however.
So.. nothing new here.

No, there is no difference. And no it isn't stealing; it is copyright infringement and you know that, so why use that stupid analogy?
Still I think OSS software abuse is slightly more serious than private filesharing, notably because OSS software makers rarely make any money from their work. Licensees honouring the license is their "pay for the effort" sort to speak.
Abiding by an OSS license doesn't cost you a dime. Only a bit of extra effort and the occasional e-mail/snailmail received or webserver bandwidth in the case of GPL, or simply making sure that header files are intact for MIT/BSD variants.
That's why I put OSS 'freeloaders' even lower than people who infringe copyright by downloading songs/movies/games. In my opinion stealing someones acknowledgement/due credit is way more insulting than causing a potential lost sale.

<President Merkin Muffley: > But this is absolute madness, Ambassador! Why should you build such a thing?
<Ambassador de Sadesky: > There were those of us who fought against it, but in the end we could not keep up with the expense involved in the arms race, the space race, and the peace race. At the same time our people grumbled for more nylons and washing machines. Our doomsday scheme cost us just a small fraction of what we had been spending on defense in a single year. The deciding factor was when we learned that your country was working along similar lines, and we were afraid of a doomsday gap.
<President Merkin Muffley: > This is preposterous. I've never approved of anything like that.
<Ambassador de Sadesky: > Our source was the New York Times.
<Dr. Strangelove: > Based on the findings of the report, my conclusion was that this idea was not a practical deterrent for reasons which at this moment must be all too obvious.

[citation needed]

I second this. Not to mention that the Creators Club subscription costs money, and is needed in order to debug and upload applications to the XBox360. While installing Linux on the PS3 is completely free with no strings attached.

The idea of being able to patent algorithms or mathematical equations is preposterous, no matter how obvious the algorithm is or not. Code belongs under copyright, not patents. I like to play around with code and math *without* worrying about infringing patents.
Protect the implementation, fine. But leave the concept free for everyone.

IIRC, Bush happened to spend money on two needless wars, unless you think revenge was a fair motive. Obama on the other hand got a recession to take care of just when he entered office. You think those two events can be compared directly and fairly when it comes to government spending?

That's true, and is due to the Halting problem: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halting_problem

I hope what you just wrote was a joke. In that case, disregard this post.

I doubt you understand the consequences of your preposition. The C++ standard library is based on templates, so you can't link dynamically to it. Translation units need the whole template definition and declaration in order to successfully instantiate an object or function based on a templated type. If this was the case, all code which used your C++ standard library implementation would have to be released under GPL. Not even LGPL would work here. This is why even GNU does an exception for their implementations of libc and C++ libraries.

You don't have an inherent right to use GPL code without abiding to the license conditions any more than you have the right to breach copyright on other works. No one forces GPL down your throat. You can choose not to use it. If you feel so altruistic, code your own implementation of whatever library you find licensed under GPL and release your code under MIT or BSD.