If the API header files are protected by copyright, then Linux infringes on Novel's Unix copyrights. The SCO IBM litigation teaches us that this is not so.

Subtlety while helpful is frequently over rated.

A vivid imagination and a sense of humour, particularly as regard to irony helps too.

Some of it will do useful work on the way but ultimately all of it will decay to heat. Sad but true http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cb2kBFqrZx8&feature=related

No, but blowing things up is inherently violent.

No, accounts payable don't care that the goods have been delivered even if the supplier can show a valid PO. All they want to know is who authorised the PO so that someone with sufficient authority in that department can authorise the invoice for payment.

Yes, but with adverts as you complained above, if you were in the UK there would be no adverts.

Last I checked Wyoming was in America and outside of the BBC's public service remit.

There are two fallacies here, one is the public funding leads to government control and the other is the public and private funding can not coexist. The UK experience plainly shows the contrary.

Both the BBC and the NHS are publicly funded but they both have their own constitutions, charters and governing bodies which control them independently of the government of the day. The British might chose to elect a government that decides to override these protections. Similarly the US might chose to elect a government that on the one hand overrides the constitutional protections of the press, or on the other hand one that decides to create some form of public health care.

The idea that the NHS would drive out private practice in health care was the fear of many doctors when the service was set up, but over the sixty years of its existence this simply has not happened. Health care in the UK remains a mixture of private and public provision. There is co-operation between the two sectors.

The position in broadcasting is even stronger. While the BBC started as a state monopoly broadcaster this is no longer the case. Independent commercial radio and television stations have had a long existence in the terrestrial broadcasting and have expanded further with the onset of digital. Ironically Sky a Murdoch company was until the recent onset of Freesat the sole supplier of digital satellite broadcaster for the UK. Companies have set up profitable healthy businesses in this space despite the presence of the BBC.

We are privileged in the UK to be able to receive Fox News. I guess that is the price we pay for giving BSkyB control of the UK TV satellites. Perhaps if more people watched it support for the BBC would go up.

Yes you can un-subscribe, you just stop paying the license fee and if they ask why tell them you no longer have any equipment capable of receiving broadcast television. Easier to claim this if you remove any satellite or terrestrial antennae. You can event continue to use iPlayer with non-l;ive content. What you can not do is opt to pay only BSkyBs fee.

They are honest about it, you just forgot that you were not in the UK

You can at the moment but Murdoch senior has announced that he intends to charge for all his online news sites. Murdoch junior realises that this strategy will only be successful if other news sources follow along. This plainly won't happen with the BBC so their unwelcome completion needs to be eliminated by political means.

It's not a privacy surcharge. It's perfectly possible to pay for an oyster card in cash, not register it. They can still track where you card has been, but depending on your level of paranoia you can get the deposit refunded regularly and get another.

You are right to the extent that you say you are not a lawyer, beyond that no.