The way I see it, the problem with encryption is that it's generally computationally expensive and there are bandwidth overheads in performing strong worthwhile encryption. BUT, with the DMCA and other localised laws forbidding cracking of encryption, is strong encryption needed? Is it worth just encrypting things using a trivial dictionary or some such computationally trivial and zero bandwidth overhead system? That way if someone wants to look at the data, they'll need a warrant or else they'd be breaking the law. Is my thinking here valid?

As long as the program never runs with privileges different than the user installing it then it's not really a concern. In fact, it's not really any different to the user running whatever software they want in their home directory. However, as pointed out by many before, if the program runs with elevated privileges or under a different username or even worse, as root, than it becomes far too dangerous to allow. Hopefully a sane compromise can be achieved like only requiring root privileges to install programs that run elevated.

You make the fatal mistake that unless your Australian, you probably didn't fund the initial research. So to put your question back on you, if your tax dollars weren't spent developing it, what right do you have to use the technology for free?

Wouldn't you BLOCK a person on facebook before getting a restraining order out on them? However, I don't disagree with this decision at all, and strongly agree with the previous comment:

Don't they know that if you surround your enemy with mobile phones and get the phones to ring at the same time they pop like popcorn?

So why bother investing in expensive and high risk research when you can just steal the proven results of everyone else?

Anyone that joins a group called "windows haters" is a fanboy of some other operating system in my book. Windows frustrates me, but I don't choose to go join "windows haters" groups.

Is this post modded "Interesting" because of it's unique interpretation of English grammar?

Maybe the current version could be used to simulate how this happened? :P I used to play with that thing in the high school library far too much during library classes (hey, this was before schools had the internet). It was always fun making the moon crash into earth.

OK so you've provided an edge case where a complex system would exhibit undocumented behaviour that the software engineers weren't aware of. What part of what I said is therefore Wrong? Just because things happen that aren't documented/expected, doesn't make them non-deterministic. If you want me to clarify what I said to the point of nitpicking fine. Digital hardware designers don't generally concern themselves with the analog behaviour of the underlying technology. Why? Because their lives are hard enough as it is dealing with digital stuff which they presume to be deterministic. Digital guys try and make the algorithm or code as simple as is practicable to minimise space whilst maximising space. Hardware just wouldn't be made if digital guys had to worry about non-deterministic effects of every latch and logic element in a design containing millions of such elements. Hell, digital hardware guys these days don't generally concern themselves with RTL, that's why we have languages like VHDL and Verilog.

Leakage currents, neighbouring circuit interference and temperature are all able to be modelled (again, this is why Cadence et. al. are so expensive), plus hardware engineers worth their salt put in sensible tolerances for all these values. My point was, hardware design is comparably deterministic as software engineering. Sure, if you break the silicon or run it out of spec it stops doing what you designed it to do, but so does software.

No, the first library does not link against the second. The second links against the first. Essentially the second library is an extension or plug-in. The first library works in it's entirety without the second.

Dear USA, Please don't nationalise your healthcare or we won't have anyone to point to and say "See, it could be worse". Regards, The rest of the world's governments.

I've written a library which can be used fine without any GPL libraries but I wanted to add an extension that was essentially provided by an existing GPL library. So all I did is write a secondary library which links with my my original (non GPL) library and also the GPL library. I'm fairly confident all I have to do is license the second library under the GPL. It's clear my original library isn't a derived work of the GPL library (it doesn't even link with my secondary library nor the GPL library). Whilst the term "derived work" is a fairly legal term it isn't necessarily ambiguous or confusing to apply in the real world. I would think that the test "can my work operate in any form without the GPL work" is a fairly easy test to apply with regards to libraries and linking.