Some time ago I saw some documentary whose message has been essentially like "There are few hundred thousands of Muslims in Europe already. With average birth rate in EU being something like 1.6 but in those Muslim families 6-8 the future is most of the Europe countries becoming a muslim states in something like 30-40 years.".

So, seeing also your post I see this:

1. Europe will be conquered by Muslims by out-birthing Europeans.
2. USA will be conquered by Chinese thanks to Americans giving Chinese american know-how, money and land in exchange for few truckloads of cheap consumer goods.

Well, future seemed quite a lot different when I was a child: all that talk about leaps in science and technology, conquest of the universe, etc. presumably mainly by "white guys" from Europe and USA.

Who would have thought?

Well, problems with contracts, laws, etc. is that they are created (we enter into them, ...) because we want something. But while doing so, some written document is produced and from that point, one big problem starts: we try to adhere to the agreement, law, whatever but some stuff can be evaluated in two different ways with two opposing results depending on whether you are interpreting "the spirit" of the contract, law, ... or "the letter".

I guess, dynamically linked kernel extensions ... are against "the spirit" of GPL (any GPL, not just v3). But such judgement will have to be individually handed out (at least by me, if i'm asked to :) depending also on what the module does, how it does that, who produced it, what is the intention of the producer, ...

All that is complex. So, "in a spirit" of what I wrote earlier, I try to avoid such "complicated matters".

Thus, I did not follow closely the debate you are referring to. I just noted "yup, there are issues, mainly if you try to make a profit off of GPL licensed code". So my commercial work .. I simply avoid GPLv3 code - good for the company, good for the authors of the GPLv3 licensed code in question too.

My opinion (also as a developer of commercial software) is, that GPLv3 is mostly "controversial", "bad", ... for those who for some reason try not to follow "the spirit", but "the letter" of that license. Maybe because they do not understand the free/open source movement. Or because they are trying to profit from the GPLv3 licensed works of others without without giving equally back.

But again, in some individual cases, such "harsh" opinion might be deadly wrong.

Reality will kick in sooner or later. If later, it usually takes form of a "global depression", "global warming" or something similar.

So I guess, the sooner it kicks in, the better. :)

I'm not a lawyer but maybe precisely because of that it seems more dangerous to me to work with something directly covered by Microsoft patents and specs - like Mono - than with the rest of the examples you gave, or those I know something about (Python and C).

We're "techies" here on /. . So it's hard to make arguments for something whose main "problem" is related to laws, contracts, copyrights, patents, etc.

On the other hand, why should "techies" even worry to much about non technical stuff? We want to do stuff, develop, deploy, install, maintain. Not to practise law. Period.

So instead of spending money on lawyers we either use tools with simple enough licence terms so that we can at least think we can understand them or we avoid the tools with licence terms we do not understand (and thus rightfully fear).

In your other post you wrote "... his [Stallman's] objections are based on fear and innuendo, not on principles or reason.". Yup, he might be "fearmongering", but IMO based on principle: "The tools comes with difficult licence terms. And company with history of ... well, questionable tactics is involved in those terms. So I better not use that tools. And warn others.". I see no problem there.

So, what I would like to see instead of debates like this would be a debate, where reasons (technical reasons) for using Mono would be given and discussed. This debate about legal issues is informative (to give warning) but in its details is mainly waste of time for me.

... or Slovak Telecom: IIRC all backbone routers with same password. (page 10 of the linked PDF)

Or National Security Agency (Narodny Bezpecnostny Urad Slovenskej Republiky) - something like NSA?: root password nbusr123 IIRC on public server facing Internet, some further authorization credentials stored on that system and used by attackers to get further inside. (page 11-13 of the linked PDF)

More info: .sk scene: from past to present.

If the Feds paid nearly 10 million bucks for that I am obviously in the wrong line of work. It looks like something I could knock off in a few weeks with Django and MySQL.

Here you're wrong also. If you used those you would produce something better than current APSX+Flash+whatever. I guess. :)

Finally.

Good idea. Hopefully implementation will be also very good and suitable also for times when there is no disaster. :)

Or alternatively we buy our hard drives from Chinese manufacturers, which I think is what they want to happen..

... and "mine" those Chinese hard-drives for this rare materials to manufacture our own hard drives. :)

And it's not just alcohol.

Little example: You are walking the street. The street is nicely covered with cameras, everything is recorded by the police. Some guy comes to you and robs you of your wallet and phone. As expected, this crime is properly recorded.

So, you go to police to file "what ever it is called" and expect police to find the perpetrator and give you back your wallet and phone. Should be easy, right?

Well, in reality they will simply try to convince you they can't do anything about it because "there are lots of such small incidents and even IF they do look at the tapes, and even IF they do successfully identify the guy, and even IF they do find him quite quickly, you wont get your wallet and phone back - wallet would be long since empty and discarded somewhere and phone sold". And even getting the man to court would be quite ... expansive and the resulting conviction ... unsatisfactory.

In IT terms, cameras do not scale properly and small criminals are flooding them so much that they are not effective.

So yes, sometimes cameras can help with something big. But otherwise they are not helping and can be hugely abused (if not already).

IMHO.

So, the big multinational company tries to leave your region and wont hire you unless you are willing to leave to say India too.

So, you stay in U.S., for now unemployed.

You would be thinking "What should I do now?" You should remember, how the U.S. started - colony, 3rd world country, pioneering, hard work, ...

So you should simply begin to care for yourself: start your own small company, be self employed, ...

While doing so, you would realize how much you're paying to the state and what you get from state in return. So you will push the state to drop the "services" which do not have good price/benefit ratio. Like all the stuff which some big copanies lobbied for themselves at the expanse of small people.

And you either succeed or die.

I guess you would succeed, but of course only because you are skilled and work hard.

And IBM? They can lobby also say in India. They might even make same stuff happen to India as previously U.S. and India will become the world power. But if the ways of IBM do not change, India will too grow "over regulated" and thus "too expansive" and they will move on.

Good things:

• Those who are skilled and hard working will survive. (applies to people both in U.S . and elsewhere)
• It will push states to optimize - dropping unnecessary bureaucracy, pointless "political quest", unwanted military campaigns, ...
• Companies have to adapt also to a long term survival - if they succeed only if they abuse the country they are based in, soon they will run out of countries they can relocate to.

Bad things:

• This "self regulation" takes a looong time. Balancing of the U.S. and the rest of the world, the people in U.S., the people elsewhere, ... wont happen throughout the night.

There's "easy" solution: You are a telco with declining number of subscribers on landlines. So, just take those billions of dollars you got few years back to upgrade your network to deliver next generation broadband speeds. Use them to upgrade old telephone lines into new "packet tubes" and migrate your old telephony system onto those new "tubes". And here you go: one infrastructure which is going to make you money as ISP *and* which will allow you to operate the "old telephony network" almost for free.

Something similar to what has been used for allowing analog TVs to receive digital TV can be used to connect old analog phones into new digital network.

Unless I'm mistaken and/or too optimistic. :)

Well, example from Slovakia (part of EU): When (not if, when) the minister causes too much trouble (like say stealing so much that it is impossible to cover it up) he gets kicked out. But hey, his comrades wont let him fall on the street. He gets a new job as a member of parliament - usually position with much less work but better pay.

Now, I just wonder where is the motivation for a minister to do a good work (for the citizens).

Aren't they already?

Because, there was a story, that if you look (hard enough) into say Pi, you find your latest favourite Hollywood flick in there somewhere. So DMCA or something similar might be used to forbid you from even possessing a Pi number computed to a big fraction.

I guess (I have to, I do not have mathematical proof) that similar argument can be made also for any big enough random number.

So, RNG generator are not only "munitions" but also a "devices for creating copies of copyrighted works".

note: Yes, I'm joking here. But in some court rooms it might not be taken as a joke. I guess.