Don't blame CGI for bash idiotically accepting external code from environment variables.

I wonder less whether religions are ready for ET and more whether science is ready for the discovery of inorganic life. Nearly everything I read on the subject carries a stated or more often unstated assumption that evolved alien life will have the same carbon-and-water basis that we do.

Actually, I miswrote it. I meant "kill -HUP 1", i.e. sent the HUP signal to process id #1.

Yes, it was trivial to achieve. With sysvinit. Lots of stuff is trivial with sysvinit and overly complicated with systemd.

If it still doesn't adequately support the "kill -1" functionality of initd (which kills and resets all processes init manages, especially the getty processes on the terminals), I still don't want it.

The USG has many secrets. No laws are among them. The occasional secret executive orders tend to run intro trouble when they run afoul of the commercial sector. Presidents get spanked.

Then you hire a lawyer because no court in the U.S. has the authority to order a specific change to a product. The most they can do is declare a product to be unlawful as shipped, and that is done very publicly.

Key escrow laws have been attempted before. And failed.

Of course that's not expected of you. But you know, TV notwithstanding it's actually kind of hard to come on U.S. soil and take hostages. So it's only a problem if something makes you unusually susceptible to blackmail.

Perhaps more importantly, Uncle Sam has to be able to trust that as soon as you're out of the way of imminent harm, your next call will be to him ready to assist in catching the bad guys. No matter what you did in the moment.

If your behavior suggests you'll keep quiet, keep your head down and hope nobody discovers you were blackmailed then you're most emphatically unclearable. Know what's worse than a lost secret? A secret you mistakenly think is still secret.

Policians aren't employed, they're elected. A surprising (or maybe not so surprising) number of them can't get security clearances and, as a result, don't have access to U.S. secrets.

Just so.

Look, basically three things get you into trouble during a government background check:

1. You *currently* participate in an organization trying to harm the United States Government.

2. Anything about yourself or your family life leaves you vulnerable to blackmail.

3. You conceal relevant truth, lie, or exhibit a pattern of deceit and/or theft.

Pretty much nothing else disqualifies you for work for Uncle Sam. You can even get a security clearance.

So, DON'T LIE. Err on the side of telling the interviewer more than he asked. Especially if it's embarrassing. An open book is easy to read and it's incredibly hard to blackmail someone who is never too embarrassed to seek the local security officers' help.

In related news, idiot web users actually have Flash installed in their primary web browser that they use for general purpose tasks like reading slashdot. Seriously dude, get rid of it. Keep a secondary browser around for the very few sites where you actually *want* to see Flash.

Wolfe makes a claim that the decompiled/deobfuscated Minecraft source code is not the code's "most preferred form" and thus does not count as source code under the GPL. But that claim doesn't hold water. Licensing that particular source code under the GPL is authorized by the software's owner, and no more preferred form of the source code is ever used with Bukkit. As importantly, Wolfe did not find that version of the source code objectionable at the time he offered his code for inclusion in Bukkit.

The GPL does not entitle you to all of my source code... just the source the code I choose to include in the version of the product that's under the GPL. Which has been provided.

Short version: Some dude made a false DMCA claim. Threw in "GPL" to try for sympathy. Some other dudes are scared about it instead of simply telling him to take a long walk off a short pier.

Beware that freezing or seizing assets as a result of a small claims judgement is unlikely to work out for you. I worked for a company in which the gruddy lunchroom microwave was "frozen" for 6 months as collatoral for a $150 judgement we were fighting. Basically the police show up, advise that they're required to freeze assets worth $X and then ask your help to determine which assets add up. They slap on an orange sticket and then go away.