Then don't have kids. It's still an elective choice.

That's a sad excuse for "choice," especially when a solution is readily available.

By its very definition of how it's done is unnatural

So is clothing.

and the long term consequences to the gene pool unknown.

The gene pool would be unchanged because what's happening is a mechanical repackaging of the genetic material with non-defective mitochondria.

the GPL restricts you from making use of, say, a library in your software.

Technically, you restrict yourself.

If you link against the libreadline headers, then your software must be GPL.

No, your software remains whatever license you prefer it be under. It must be GPL if you redistribute it. From the libreadline site:

Readline is free software, distributed under the terms of the GNU General Public License, version 3. This means that if you want to use Readline in a program that you release or distribute to anyone, the program must be free software and have a GPL-compatible license.

So even if you wrote a bsd header, you'd still be linking to a GPL readline and thus subject. But that, again, only matters if you release your software to other people and don't swap the GPL libreadline out.

Why do all the people incapable of anything other than off-topic, ad-hominem arguments come crawling out of the wood work whenever RMS comes up?

I think the new versions of the GPL are becoming exactly what the GPL was originally used to protect agains, another intrusive EULA, restricting usage because someone doesn't like that usage.

The GPL does not restrict usage, not even GPLv3. It continues to apply only in the case of redistribution.

My reading of the GPL3 is such that it is placing restrictions on use

Redistribution goes beyond use, and is specifically the scenario the GPL was designed to have an impact in. You can continue to use software however you see fit, even in ways that would violate the GPL if redistributed.

Yup because IT'S A CONSPIRACY!

Right? That's what Exxon Mobil and Fox News tell me...

those states that are fighting to remove evolution from biology classes.

They aren't doing that. What they're doing is more insidious.

Most of these states are trying to give cover to teachers so they can go off-topic on religious matters and preach creationism, or allow students to opt-out of science lessons involving evolution. All of them are attempting to "teach the controversy" and mandate that unscientific quackery like "intelligent design" get equal time with evolution, to put it on equal footing it does not deserve.

Nothing you said is an argument against including finance as school-grade subject matter.

OOXML is transparent like mud. You know, cause mud has water in it. Therefore it's transparent.

When the "standard" obliquely references a tag as indicating to do something in a way that only Microsoft could possibly know or implement, then it's not a very open standard. Not that Microsoft even follows it in their own products.

It's already running on phones sold in India and Russia

No, they will begin selling into those regions. They're already shipping to much of Europe.

You know, regions that don't have problems with patent trolls tearing at companies with worthless software patents.

priests of scientism

Non-existent priests of something that doesn't exist.

once they feel confident in a conclusion it becomes like a religious dogma. Once they have a council and get all the archbishops to agree on this conclusion it is in their eyes forever true and beyond question.

Care to highlight some examples of this behavior?

Science is a method for ascertaining reality. One that presumes and requires the very skepticism that the priests fight as a mortal enemy.

I see you're tilting at windmills here, never mind.

And here we have an example of a "self-fulfilling prophesy."

And by "vapid idiots" you mean "people who don't think like me."

the big problem is that all this desktop crap doesn't matter.

Not for you, perhaps.

X-over-ssh is non-negotiable.

And any applications you have that use X11 will continue to work. It's hideously inefficient for anything using a recent toolkit, but it'll work.

it would be great if the X-now-wayland wankers did their wanking on some more-async, lower-bandwidth interface that didn't throw the baby out with the bathwater.

Well considering that they can capture the per-app buffers, compress them, and stream them over the network only on update (without polling), I'm sure that a wayland-derived remote system will easily be more efficient than X11 and VNC. Tunneled over SSH, of course.

Net Neutrality is not designed to stop actions like this.

If it's directed towards Netflix, yes it was.

The government does not care about this. They will not act against this.

Only because the FCC is hindered by Congress and can't put ISPs in the common carrier category they belong in. So Verizon looks at traffic and says "oh, sorry about Netflix being slow, have you seen our TV deals?!"

But please, be more enraged on behalf of abusive corporations. I'm sure they appreciate it.

TrollstonButterbeans

Nice, but in case some fool takes you seriously...

Linux can't have a viral open source lock-down like GPL 3.0

Irrational statements like this show you argue from emotion rather than logic.

So things like Android and Steam OS aren't going to bring Linux style "freedom".

SteamOS being based on Debian means it could very well do so, as Debian readily uses GPLv3 packages and nothing Valve is doing would be impacted by the GPLv3.

You can still do TIVOization

Yet nothing indicates Valve will do so. If anything, their own behavior suggests the direct opposite.

There are and WILL be strings, unlike the operating system itself. Correct me if I am wrong, but I'm pretty sure I am correct --- and please only people that know what they are talking about (so thank you in advance!).

What strings? Can you name them? You can't be contradicted if you won't lay out your claims.

Competition is good, but in markets like the US where the mobile space is functionally broken due to the business models of the carriers, you can't enjoy innovation.

How many players are actually in the market?

Shockingly few, mostly those willing to crank out new handsets every 6 months (Samsung, HTC, et. al.) to comply with carrier demands or the single US example of Apple, who can build a single hardware platform and deliver one new handset to carriers per year.

Where are the small, innovative underdogs?

There are some minor players trying to do new things, but none of them sell into the US. The carriers and gorillas like Apple and Microsoft make it too dangerous.

Which is just how they want it. A stagnant market that is safe from competition.

No one justified anything. Stop trying to change the subject.

I'm not changing the subject, I'm directly questioning your assertion. There's no evidence that the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq did a single, goddamn thing to prevent terrorism in the US. None.

Making it OK for the President to use the IRS to to harass and attack his political opponents?

It still hasn't been shown that the President was involved, I'm sure that his enemies would be all over the news if they had any actual evidence for it. But, again, we'll ignore the fact that "occupy" groups were overly scrutinized as well. You still didn't respond to my question regarding the EPA and ATF being used against political opponents.

"Suddenly" the President is using the IRS to harass and attack his political opponents.

Let's ignore the fact that the prior president started two wars and helped needlessly expand the power of the executive, increasing the threat to the public. Face it, you're a partisan hack and ignored the wrong-doing until "not your guy" ended up in office.