The USG has many secrets. No laws are among them. The occasional secret executive orders tend to run intro trouble when they run afoul of the commercial sector. Presidents get spanked.

Then you hire a lawyer because no court in the U.S. has the authority to order a specific change to a product. The most they can do is declare a product to be unlawful as shipped, and that is done very publicly.

Key escrow laws have been attempted before. And failed.

Of course that's not expected of you. But you know, TV notwithstanding it's actually kind of hard to come on U.S. soil and take hostages. So it's only a problem if something makes you unusually susceptible to blackmail.

Perhaps more importantly, Uncle Sam has to be able to trust that as soon as you're out of the way of imminent harm, your next call will be to him ready to assist in catching the bad guys. No matter what you did in the moment.

If your behavior suggests you'll keep quiet, keep your head down and hope nobody discovers you were blackmailed then you're most emphatically unclearable. Know what's worse than a lost secret? A secret you mistakenly think is still secret.

Policians aren't employed, they're elected. A surprising (or maybe not so surprising) number of them can't get security clearances and, as a result, don't have access to U.S. secrets.

Just so.

Look, basically three things get you into trouble during a government background check:

1. You *currently* participate in an organization trying to harm the United States Government.

2. Anything about yourself or your family life leaves you vulnerable to blackmail.

3. You conceal relevant truth, lie, or exhibit a pattern of deceit and/or theft.

Pretty much nothing else disqualifies you for work for Uncle Sam. You can even get a security clearance.

So, DON'T LIE. Err on the side of telling the interviewer more than he asked. Especially if it's embarrassing. An open book is easy to read and it's incredibly hard to blackmail someone who is never too embarrassed to seek the local security officers' help.

In related news, idiot web users actually have Flash installed in their primary web browser that they use for general purpose tasks like reading slashdot. Seriously dude, get rid of it. Keep a secondary browser around for the very few sites where you actually *want* to see Flash.

Wolfe makes a claim that the decompiled/deobfuscated Minecraft source code is not the code's "most preferred form" and thus does not count as source code under the GPL. But that claim doesn't hold water. Licensing that particular source code under the GPL is authorized by the software's owner, and no more preferred form of the source code is ever used with Bukkit. As importantly, Wolfe did not find that version of the source code objectionable at the time he offered his code for inclusion in Bukkit.

The GPL does not entitle you to all of my source code... just the source the code I choose to include in the version of the product that's under the GPL. Which has been provided.

Short version: Some dude made a false DMCA claim. Threw in "GPL" to try for sympathy. Some other dudes are scared about it instead of simply telling him to take a long walk off a short pier.

Beware that freezing or seizing assets as a result of a small claims judgement is unlikely to work out for you. I worked for a company in which the gruddy lunchroom microwave was "frozen" for 6 months as collatoral for a $150 judgement we were fighting. Basically the police show up, advise that they're required to freeze assets worth $X and then ask your help to determine which assets add up. They slap on an orange sticket and then go away.

Yes, exactly. The next court up is still a court in your state and they have to actually have grounds for an appeal (an error of law by the judge, not an error of fact. They gave up challenging any error of fact by failing to show up.) They can't even argue venue -- removing it to federal court requires a case whose damages are generally in excess of what the small claims court awards.

Washington Gas is neither a tiny company nor in the boonies. And AT&T often doesn't have a local lawyer with offices across the street from your county's small claims court.

They also (and this is important) have to show up in court to defend themselves.

I had billing trouble with the local natural gas company. The billing department took a similarly hard-line stance about my complaint. A year and a half later as I refused to pay, they escalated the matter to a lawyer.

It took one 5-minute conversation with their lawyer and the matter was resolved. Because I was right? No. Because it was cheaper to let me have my way than go to court, win or lose.

I'm not a fan of rules, of someone telling me how to do my job. Not a fan when the boss tries to do it. Even less a fan when the local 409 tries.to do it.

Programming is a creative endeavor. If I'm not free to create then its just another suck job. And life's to short to spend it working a suck job.

So the deathmarch would be acceptable if the boss further cut the quality control work in order to deliver on time? Really? 'Cause unions don't demand schedule changes, they only demand that workers get paid. And the kind of boss that requires a deathmarch places a priority on his uneducated concept of "good enough."

Seriously, if that's acceptable to you I don't want you on my team or anywhere near my code. At any salary.

Manning is a vile, conscienceless poor excuse for a human being who thinks the world owes him something. The patriotism in Snowden's behavior is at least debatable but Manning? The guy/gal whose response to a bad month was to indescriminately dump every secret he could get his hands on? What's wrong with you?