On the contrary, that point is exactly *why* we GPL advocates advocate it. We don't want to enable companies which have no intention whatsoever to be part of the community. They're free to do everything themselves, and good luck to them. But giving them a leg up to get off the ground just so they can be selfish assholes with their ideas? Why should we? And yes, sharing your *ideas* and *implementations* is what we mean by being part of the community. If this isn't for you, then don't let the door hit you on the way out, thanks.

Using google glasses... good. It won't provide any more information than the officer already has access to, or that can't be mined off a conventional camera's video. It may just provide the info quicker, when the officer needs it.

The timely arrival of information can interfere with the correct application of decisions. Suppose a cop sees a minor infraction, like crossing the street 50m away from a pedestrian crossing. The choice to go and give that person a ticket or let it go is a function of the traffic conditions, ie how dangerous this behaviour is at the time. It shouldn't be about *who* the person is. Now suppose the glasses come up with a bunch of internet accusations against the jaywalker about beating his wife. So the cop decides to go talk to the guy and give him a ticket anyway.

By giving agents *more* information than necessary, it makes it harder or impossible for them to make correct decisions. It's not unlike hiring decisions, say. If every resume has race, religion, and age right next to the name, that's going to influence decisions for the worse. It's extra information, but it should *not* be available to the decision maker.

The internet consists of hardware and software and things worth stealing. The first has long development cycles, and is more difficult to modify than the second. The second is extremely varied and full of vulnerabilties that are often easy to patch one instance at a time, but hard to patch simultaneously and comprehensively across the network. The third are things that shouldn't be accessible from the Internet in the first place, like our real names just so we can have a Google account, our credit card numbers just so merchants don't have to ask us when they want to charge us, our activity records just so we can be manipulated through ads, etc.

We can't change the first two without destroying the Internet, but there's no reason why computers should contain so much valuable information to steal.

On the other hand, the profits from existing drugs helps pay for research into new drugs to some degree, so could India be similar to a big company that uses Open Source but doesn't release any of their own code?

Research, like many other activities, is influenced by fashions. Arguably, by making a particular drug widely available very cheaply, the resulting enhanced interest will stimulate more funding for similar drugs, by virtue of the increased popularity and availability. This increased funding within the industry could be many times more valuable than the amount a single company can derive from the consequences of patent protection.

No. First, there are benefits unique to audio interaction (immediacy, tonal emphasis, emotion); next up, benefits to physical presence (enhances interaction - e.g. pointing, gestures, a wider visual canvas), and finally you skipped this last bit with the pretty pictures... :) "...code editors open in front of us, trying to demonstrate certain use-cases where visual coding is superior."

This is not very convincing. There are benefits unique to text representation (typefaces, size of text, color of text, capitals/lowercase, even the precise choice of idiom in languages such as perl where there are many ways to do something). These benefits arguably are more varied and precise than those offered by the spoken word. Pointing, gestures and visual canvas interactivity is the job of an editor or ide, as is changing the view of the information presented eg by folding away function bodies etc.

Furthermore, there are benefits that simply exist in text form and can never be duplicated in audio interaction, such as going back and annotating existing text, or skipping comments and going back and reading them later. The linearity of audio interaction makes hierarchical information structures essentially impossible.

We *already* have graphical code. What do you think the alphabet is? It's a modular, graphical coding system for concepts using icons. We use it to build intermediate high level graphical pictures called words, which are then interpreted according to ad hoc graphical rules (such as whether we read left to right, right to left, indent using space or braces etc) into graphical representations of logical processes known as programs.

Perhaps you imagine a more primitive 2D system where the low level structures are not built up from a small number of multi purpose alphabetic icons using elaborate juxtaposition rules, but rather exist individually in a huge library of predefined pictograms. We have that too, it's called Chinese.

Actually I blame the developers. Clearly they are modern "app" developers, as opposed to us old school application developers, from an era when "application" didn't mean a glorified web page drenched in javascript toys.

Any application developer worth anything knows about Model-View-Controller and can separate the underlying data model interaction protocols from the view presented to the user.

There is no excuse whatsoever for the loss of any existing features that are found in classic, nor is there any technical reason whatsoever why there has to be a migration to a single "new" site to keep up with the times. The slashdot website is just a view into the comment and stories database, and there should be many views for everybody to choose their preferred one at any time, including the "beta" one as just one of them. In fact, if slashdot published a reasonable API there would be plenty of low digit users who could whip up a sane interface before breakfast.

Agreed, especially since the Americans weren't critical to the German defeat [only the Japanese defeat in the Pacific].

Quite true. Software should generally be Free. One of the benefits that we all gain from this is that, when software doesn't have to be locked up just to force people to pay for it, it can be distributed in source code form. And that helps prevent issues with embedded malware, and embedded exploitation of the users too.

It wouldn't be nicer. It would be the least they should possibly do.

Publishers like Elsevier are leaches sucking at the teat of scientific institutions, weakening their libraries, which are the cornerstone of humanity's research efforts. The sooner they FOAD the better.

The key is not to confuse fiction with reality which admittedly many do.

And that is precisely the problem TFA highlights. Cameron confuses fiction with reality. To prevent prime ministers from acting on incorrect assumptions and faulty logic, it makes sense to oppose them doing things which lead them into confusing fiction with reality, such as watching cop dramas and discussing them publicly as justifications for draconian spying powers.

In other words, he deserves the crap he gets for allowing TV drama into policy decisions.

The NSA has backdoors into the major encryption systems, for example in RSA products. So recovery is basically trivial, if you rely on any products sold or provided by Microsoft, Apple, Google, etc. Every large US company in fact has too much to lose if they don't cooperate with the NSA, so pick any company where it makes sense for the NSA to put backdoors in. If that company still exists today, then you can conclude that it has a secret deal with the NSA to spy on its customers.

Socialism of all forms is against free markets

That's quite, quite wrong. Socialism has no beef with free markets. You can in fact have free markets under communism quite easily even, but we're not talking about communism here.

All that is required in a free market is the ability to exchange goods and services for payment. What socialism, and its variants, is about is (re)distributing resources (such as money etc) to the market participants, who can then use them to exchange goods and services for payment, in typical free market fashion, sustainably. Whereas the least socialist countries are happy to let money accumulate in hereditary dynasties, while the society at large is progressively starved of funds to participate in the markets, through the natural outcome of unbridled exploitation.

Aside from the above, socialism also takes a more regulatory stance to protect human beings, solely on the grounds that they are human. For example, China today is ultra capitalist, and has very weak laws to regulate economic activities. So you get slavery in factories, and lead poisoning from toys being exported to foreign countries, etc. Whereas European countries are more socialist, and they outlaw slavery in factories, and ban certain toys from being sold due to poisoning issues.

I'm Batman.

(Uhm... that's all I wanted to say)

Well? Has he said anything about them? If not, why not?