You may be right, though it still leaves us with the inescapable conclusion that the person typing it and those defending them have had no math education beyond what I received when I was about 9, or they would have immediately recognized the problem the rest of us were alluding to.

No, I'm treating the whole thing as not making sense within the context of the math education that is likely to be received by an American child. It may well be that neither of my reactions upon seeing it were *correct*, but either way I did the equivalent of throw a DoesNotMakeSense exception rather than somehow magically decide that the left side of the equation should end up in the parentheses.

I'm not saying there's not a problem here, just that anyone expecting a typical US schoolchild to do the _right_ thing with that equation is off their rocker.

Well, it's sort of that confusing.

For the most part, my math skills are about that of a competent sophomore or maybe junior in high school, which isn't so bad for an adult American these days. I have never seen anyone present an equation like "4 + 3 + 2 = () + 2". To me, that's either a syntax error, or somebody saying "9 = 2", which is just wrong. I've never seen empty parentheses treated as a variable, and I'd be shocked if it's commonly-taught in American schools.

That said, I would never come up with putting 4+3+2 in the parentheses. That's just a WTF.

The US _is_ a third-world country. Like all our other public infrastructure, our public schools are complete shit, and our private schools are ridiculously expensive for anyone not firmly in the middle class or above.

The idea of mandatory voting is anathema to freedom, a fact obvious even to the most backwards, shit-for-brains redneck. Those few countries that practice it are either totalitarian dictatorships, third-world "democracies" still trying to find their legs, or pseudo-democracies who A) don't really enforce it, and B) have other policies that are also worse than any shit-for-brains redneck would come up with.

So, 100% estate tax for everyone of all income brackets then? And no gifts?

By the way, in case you hadn't noticed, we don't _have_ a good society in the United States (which is the country at issue here). The social safety nets are an absolute joke. I don't know what you think the US is, but it doesn't seem to be reality. We're a third-world country with a lot of bullets. That's all.

What the fuck does massive environmental catastrophe brought on by negligence of a multinational corporation have to do with the ability of an artist to support his family after death?

You're attacking a strawman.

So instead of letting the author's work earn a little money for his or her family, society gets to pay for the care of the author's disabled kid, elderly parents, cancer-stricken spouse, or whatever?

Copyright should last a fixed, limited period not exceeding 50 years. Period.

What the hell does copyright have to do with it? Patents and copyrights are very, VERY different things.

So long as exclusive rights to land and spectrum continue to be auctioned off by governments to the highest bidder, said highest bidder is effectively a government actor and should be subject to all constitutional restrictions placed on the government.

It wouldn't help.

Yes, the GPL *could* say explicitly that dynamic linking does not constitute derivation, but why would they want to? The FSF *wants* dynamic linking to be derivation (in most cases, anyway). If the courts decide any particular case doesn't constitute a derived work (as they probably would for, say, a GPL'd library that strictly implements the standard C library), so be it, but the FSF wants as much code as possible to come under the requirements of the GPL.

A number of your questions would be answered, or at least be more intelligent, if you'd actually read the GPL thoroughly.

The GPL *can't* offer a definition of derived work, because the definition of "derived work" is wholly a question of copyright law.

The wording of the GPL is based on copyright law, because there's no other way to word it. If the work is a derivative of a GPL'd work, it must be under the GPL. What constitutes a derived work is a question of copyright law, not the GPL.