This is NOT TRUE. Why do people have such trouble understanding this?

Without a license, you have absolutely zero legal right to COPY anyone else's copyrighted works. Why do you think they call it "copyright"? It's the right to make copies, make modified copies, and distribute copies. It is NOT the right to use. Copyright does not prevent you from reading a book that you already own a copy of (which would be using the book).

Not true. You may use a copy of copyrighted material that you've been given. But you may not copy it, distribute copies of it, or create a modified copy of it. Just like you may read (use) a book that someone gives you a copy of -- copyright does not prevent that.

So the next question is whether the author is giving you a copy by publishing it on the Internet. I can't think of any other reason that anyone would publish something publicly on the Internet than to give you a copy to read (i.e. use), I think you'd have a hard time making an argument in court that that was not the intention.

Of course, since you're not allowed to make additional copies or modifications under copyright law, you would not be able to use the code in any other projects. So a library would not be very useful.

Yes, but international doctrines don't usually apply to one nation and not another, especially if those 2 nations are equal in power.

Which is why the Bush Doctrine really scares me. By that doctrine, if China feels threatened by the USA, and if the USA has weapons of mass destruction (which we do), then China has the right to invade the USA. It's sad when you set a precedent that could lead to your own demise.

It wasn't meant to compare 2 equal situations. It was meant to imply that Americans think this is an encroachment on our "rights", but it's not nearly as bad as what we're doing regarding Taiwan, when viewed from the perspective of a disinterested party.

The USA is here to help!

We will gladly start a war with any 3rd World country to help reduce the population. We really can't afford it, but we'll do it if we have to.

You're welcome!

Holy racism, Batman!

I find it highly unlikely that the mostly white power structure in this country is bound and determined to exterminate white people. That's just not how powerful people behave. Powerful people behave in a way that preserves and increases their power (and the power of those like them), not destroys it. The whole point of the US Constitution is that this is natural human behavior, so we need to make sure to limit such power.

Look at your own interests in your post, Eravnrekaree. You're interested in ensuring people like yourself continue to prosper. Why would more powerful people have strongly different interests? Can you find any historical evidence of other situations where a group of people were intent on eliminating people like themselves? History is replete with the opposite case, but I can't think of anything like what you think is happening.

Wait, what? You consider a loss of $1 a disaster?

Most employees have a bias for good bosses, and against bad bosses.

Who said anything about mid-level? Same shit works all the way up to the CEO level, for the most part.

I had to look up "philologist" in a dictionary. (Which is a bit ironic, now that I know what it means.)

So the USA can meddle in Taiwan, but China cannot meddle in Central America? Seems fair...

The JonBenét Ramsey case is one you should think about. The police accused the parents, and the parents got lawyers and refused to cooperate with the police. To everyone, it looked like the parents were guilty, or trying to cover something up. But the reason they stopped talking is that the police were making accusations against them, and turning the circumstantial evidence against them.

It took almost 10 years, but eventually the family was proven NOT to have been involved.

Many people in this country don't understand why we (still) have the 2nd Amendment. But we do. And while it's still our law, we need to enforce it. It's there to protect us, like the other rights. I think you could make a better argument against the 2nd Amendment than the 5th -- the 2nd was meant for the people to be able to rise up against their government to overthrow it, which is not practically possible today with guns -- so what's the point?

There are quiet a few things in the Constitution that might not make sense to you. But they are our rights and our laws, and we are a nation of laws. So we enforce those rights, even if you don't understand them or think we should have them.

Besides, as many others have pointed out, the 5th Amendment does serve a useful and necessary purpose.

Um, exactly how would you propose that a broadcast TV signal adapt to the time zone of the TV receiving it? They display the time of the broadcast location, since there's no other possibility.

Um, WTF? Did you even read what you wrote?

It turns out it is actually difficult to get time zones right, especially when you need to coordinate between web clients and servers. I know -- I've done it. The amount of time we spent debugging it (after we thought several times that we had everything figured out) was ridiculous.