"Lots of people have enough authority to bypass or get special permission for security policies but don't have the power to change them for the whole company or fire the IT security manager."

And a lot of times it's simply they *want* the 'statu quo': they want and enforce draconian security for the minions and exceptions for them, both because the draconian security model doesn't work at all, so they really need to bypass it, and because that way it's obvious they are top brass and the other people just minions.

"As part of this though, are they going to be moving to an actual open and inclusion development process for CentOS?"

No. They get supermajority in the governing board. Red Hat controls the show from now on:
* Ralph Angenent - ???
* Tru Hyunh - ???
* Johnny Hughes Jr - redhat
* Jim Perrin - redhat
* Karanbir Singh - redhat
* Fabian Arrotin - redhat
* Carl Trieloff - redhat
* Karsten Wade - redhat
* Mike McLean - redhat

Quite a clever move. With Fedora they got community approval and support for their betatesting process; with this, they will make possible a flourishing enterprisey open source ecosystem that is menacing going Ubuntu (they hope that, say, the next OpenStack will be "natively" developed on Red Hat). And, of course, they gain traction to be translated into lock in against Oracle and Debian derivatives.

"At least Red Hat can then give them the option to easily upgrade to RHEL without forcing them to reinstall their systems."

It's good for Red Hat in that knowledge of CentOS means knowledge or Red Hat and time investment on CentOS means *not* investing time in anything else but... please go read what Red Hat has to say about upgrading major releases: "please, don't do it; you should reinstall".

"Open Source TV set? All well and good, I suppose, until it comes out with a locked bootloader. Is this a TiVo situation all over again?"

More or less yes. And that's why there's a GPLv3 too.

"I suspect that the point of the article was that sea urchins aren't native to the sea immediately surrounding Pompeii"

And they would be wrong. Basically there's no place all along Mediterranean coast where you can't find sea urchins.

"At least these animals were dying for a decent purpose"

Is there any difference?

"someone's meal"

No, not someone's meal. Someone's amusing. Or do you really think giraffe was a significant part of Rome feeding?

"Exotic animals from Africa and Asia were often brought in to the Roman Empire for the simple purpose of being killed in the arena for sport"

Again wrong. There were brought into the arena for people's amusing. See? exactly same purpose.

"the number of people dying from cancer has increased, not decreased over the last 20 years."

What else did you expect? As long as you are doomed to die, if you could die due to A, B and C in the past and you can't die due to A or B anymore, net result is that you are forcibly going to die due to C.

The secondary fact that there has been no single year in the last century (wars taken apart) when life expectancy has decreased implies that things are going better *even* with regards to C.

Cancer is a single disease as much as bacterial infection is a single disease.

"If one guy breaks his leg falling from a ladder, and another breaks his leg in a car accident, does the doctor treat that broken leg differently? Preventative measures for those broken legs may be different, but the result is the same."

On the other hand, if one is coughing because typhus maybe it's not going to be the same as if he's coughing because of tuberculosis.

In cancer, the symptom (uncontrolled replication) can be due to external chemical agents, or virus, or an idiopathic disposition... and both the epidemiologic and individual preventive measures and treatments will be wildly different moreso if you try to eradicate this family of illnesses instead of just trying to control the main symptom (killing the offending cells) and hope for the body to reheal itself.

You can play words all you want but the fact states that trying to control all kinds of cancers and their origins as a single entity will go nowhere.

"What do people that have contributed to the code base get?"

Whatever they negotiated whenever they engaged their contracts.

"So, you'd prefer a Pearl Harbor of your very own?"

Do you think you would have had a Pearl Habor if USA didn't started an oil war on Japan first?

On the other hand, intelligence services be damned, what were your politicians thinking? Didn't they learn anything out of Port Arthur battle?

The one I'm interested in is count... basie

"Anyone who would argue that drugs should be legal must certainly recognize that making them illegal has had little effect on their availability. So why would making guns illegal be any different?"

It's a very sensible question and one that deserves to think of it.

There's an obvious difference, tough: drugs produce ill people that *need* more of it, guns are not the same.

Another one is the very different industries needed to fill the streets with drugs and guns: it's much easier for the former than the later -while this could change if 3d printing stands after its promises.

"If anything, we could expect it to fuel a black market"

Quite true and a difficult issue to deal with in a (modern state) representative democracy with politicians only interested in next campaign.

Difficult, but not impossible: Europe is (comparatively speaking) free of handguns but that was not the case after WWII, which means it is doable.

"I just get sick of this paternalistic notion that government is somehow obliged and/or has the ability to keep us all safe from each other."

You also have a point on this. But your flaw, I'd say is considering government is something different to citezenship. It should be not that government is there to protect each other but that each other empower ourselves through government to have the kind of society we want to live in. And I certainly, while not at any cost, want to live in a society where I don't need to be worried to be killed by a handgun.

"You are just ignoring that drugs are, easy, the biggest motivator for crime"

No he isn't. He is fully aware of what you aren't: *Illegal* drugs are the biggest motivator for crime.

"guns, on the right hands, also saves lives."

Right. Only those whose command is to serve and protect and basically nobody else. Even more, due to the sycopathic status of your country, even police is too many times not the right hands.

"It's strange that every single defender of the firearms ban justs ignores the Swiss status quo."

First get the civility status of Switzerland and ask for your guns then.

"Have we no obligation to take sides?"

A big resounding "YES".

An that's why Voltaire also took his side: "I disagree strongly with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it."