The article makes no mention of when the training manuals were in effect. The comment in question, that the FBI could "bend or suspend the law," came from Robert Mueller, who was appointed by President Bush on September 4, 2001. The most recently-reported race-related scandal at the FBI (prior to this one) also took place during the Bush administration. Both scandals were revealed by Democratic Senator Dick Durbin, who has been investigating misconduct at the FBI for the past few years.

How on Earth did you connect this to Obama?

...is that you do not believe homophobes would undertake a ridiculous, ill-conceived, but technically-sound plan to identify and harass gays. The Emperor does not believe you have interacted with very many homophobes.

No, but they work for organizations with names like "Lutheran World Relief" or "Baptist Global Response," and their logos invariably feature crosses or other religious insignia. And not only that, but they network together, so that all the Lutheran and Methodist and Baptist relief efforts are communicating and working together, but they don't extend nearly the same effort when interacting with secular groups, which leads to a lot of obviously Christian evangelical groups spending most of their time together. They don't make comparable efforts when working with secular groups, and will often work completely autonomously from them, sometimes with disastrous results.

The Emperor knows this firsthand, as an atheist who has helped coordinate fundraising and other efforts for Lutheran World Relief.

Of course, the only atheists you "know" are the vocal ones - that's because you'd never, ever recognize a "stealth" atheist. Get off the Internet, try to meet some real atheists (you will probably fail, due to the nature of atheism), and stop spreading derogatory lies about entire groups of people. The vast majority of atheists and agnostics will not openly bring up their beliefs, perhaps not even if pressed on the subject, because non-believers are the most persecuted and unpopular group in America, largely because of the intentional ignorance spread by people like yourself and your pastor. THIS IS ESPECIALLY TRUE IN HIGHLY RELIGIOUS DEVELOPING COUNTRIES, WHERE ATHEISM IS EVEN LESS TOLERATED THAN IT IS HERE. Openly identifying as an atheist is not only extremely improbable behavior for an atheist in any situation, but in a country that does not have a strong tradition of liberalism, it is actually dangerous.

(We have not decided to correct you because you have offended our fellow atheists; The Emperor defends the truth and integrity of all cultural groups, including religious groups whose faith we do not share. But we will not abide libels.)

That is slimly possible, but "idiot" was the polite term for someone who spreads ignorance and libel about an entire group of people. "Bigot," "monster," and "evil" may have been more appropriate, although just "ignorant" probably suffices.

You'll find plenty of atheists, agnostics, and secular humanists doing aid work in Doctors Without Borders, the Peace Corps, Amnesty International and the like. Your preacher got confused because secular charity organizations don't operate in the "name of atheism," and also apparently because he is an idiot.

Not, "How can I write flawless code?," but, "What should I be reading?" The submitter showed no prior knowledge of exploits, so it seemed reasonable to provide him with a simple introduction to the kinds of exploits he may encounter and how they can be prevented.

Interestingly, the 2010 "OWASP top 10 vulnerabilities" have all existed for a decades - a competent developer flash-frozen in 1998 and thawed out today would be able to guard against all of those flaws. That's not good evidence for your position that the question "continually needs to be asked."

Major Perl vulnerabilities still crop up on a regular basis - on average, one or two a year. When was the last time you heard of a major vulnerability in the C programming language? And what "experienced developer" can't be bothered to guard against buffer overflow exploits?

The simpler the runtime environment, the more easily it can be controlled and problems can be avoided. Simple C has one of the simplest runtime environments of any programming language, making it perfect for use in high-reliability situations.

http://www.w3.org/Security/faq/wwwsf4.html

Once you understand the things they recommend and WHY they recommend them, you won't need to ask this question anymore.

The reference occurs on a different page.

However, the Google cache of that page has been cleared within the last few hours, although most other pages on "CrossMediaGlobal.com" have snapshots from 11 days ago. As of first posting, the Emperor believes that there was no reference to the original drupal sources. Furthermore, a single linkback is insufficient to fully comply with the GPL.

This is a Google webcache link that, as of this writing, contains no link back to the original drupal module.

This is a screencapture of the cache.

This might indicate that the redistributor is making good faith efforts to comply with the GPL, now that they are aware of the violation.

Your insight and knowledge is appreciated.

17 USC 506 (d)

If your software were a compiled language (eg c/c++/java etc.) then if they didn't provide the original source OR didn't provide it on request by you AS A CUSTOMER (the license is granting rights to the people they distribute to - ie customer), then they violate. If they have put the php through some code obfuscator and don't provide the original source before obfuscation, then this would come under the "compiled" category i'd say. What they are doing is perfectly legal under the GPL.

The code was stripped of its existing GPL and redistributed under a new license. Even though the source code is available (because PHP is distributed in source form), it's no longer clear that the code is still covered by the GPL - someone purchasing this package wouldn't know that they were entitled to redistribute or modify the code. That's the crux of the violation:

I'm no lawyer, but my perspective is this violates both the spirit and law of GPLv2, most specifically clause 2-b: 'You must cause any work that you distribute or publish, that in whole or in part contains or is derived from the Program or any part thereof, to be licensed as a whole at no charge to all third parties under the terms of this License.'

Even though copyright law is one of the most widely-discussed topics on Slashdot, almost no one here can bother getting their facts correct in even the broadest details. To wit: several posters have already claimed that, "unless copyright notices were attached to the headers of each and every source file," the source code may have been "public domain." In fact, the Berne Convention states that copyright protection is granted automatically to all eligible works at the time of their creation, and the United States is a signatory of the Berne Convention. Our Imperial Subject "cultiv8" claims that his source code was copied without following the terms of any license he offered; the GPL describes what happens in this situation explicitly:

Only by following the terms of a valid license does one gain the legal right to redistribute copyrighted code. In this case, the only valid license available was the GPLv2. The license has not been followed, therefore the redistribution is copyright infringement. This interpretation was confirmed in Jacobsen v. Katzer, a case of such critical importance that every educated Subject of the Emperor who professes an interest in copyright law is obligated to become familiar with it.

Unfortunately, the infringing party described in the summary claims to be located in Pakistan. If this is true, Our Subject "cultiv8" will not be able to pursue a legal claim against the offender; copyright enforcement in Pakistan is notoriously lax, with many vendors openly selling "bootleg" videos, music and software. The ordinary remedies that would be applicable in US copyright infringement cases (DMCA takedown notices, Cease-and-Desist letter, or copyright infringement claims filed in a US court) are unlikely to succeed.

Our Subject may consider speaking with a free legal advocacy group (such as the Electronic Frontier Foundation, or the Software Freedom Law Center), or consulting a "law clinic" (freely available at many US courthouses on a regular schedule); however they will be unlikely to provide any effective recourse through legal channels. NEVERTHELESS, a solution is available that is so simple and so elegant that only a genius or a master of the obvious would suggest it:

"CrossMediaGlobal" uses PayPal as their payment processor. So contact PayPal's abuse department. Then wait while they (probably) do nothing.

As Emperor, We are glad to serve Our Subjects.