had shills packed to the rafters demanding that the program stay in place

Not everyone who opposes you is automatically a shill.

Claiming so doesn't show insight, it shows an utter lack of awareness that unbiased observers may weigh things differently than you.

Show us that they've been paid or have some other financial interest in the outcome.

Otherwise recognize that you yourself could be labeled a shill by your own particularized definition.

But not by the city. Learn to read.

By god, you're right! And that makes people who are not licensed by any governmental entity entirely equivalent to those who might be licensed by a county, a state, a Federal administrative agency, or the like!

the citya regulatory body

Crumb. Now you need to address the actual argument instead a pedantive construction of a sentence.

So here's a guy who calls himself a "libertarian", declaring that it's not legal for a private entity to refuse to do business with him based on their political views.

Where does he declare that it's illegal for FedEx to refuse his business?

"Defense Distributed's founder Cody Wilson argues that rather than a legal ambiguity, FedEx is instead facing up to the political gray area of enabling the sale of new, easily accessible tools that can make anything -- including deadly weapons. 'They're acting like this is legal when in fact it's the expression of a political preference,' says Wilson."

He's declared that they've disguised a political decision as 'due caution' concerning a legal issue, not that what FedEx is doing is itself illegal. Because you'd have to own a political decision, but you can blame the government for 'ambiguity' even if the government isn't actually threatening to interpret the law that way.

It's not irony, it's poor reading comprehension... on your part.

It's a common refrain to say that nobody benefits from class action suits except the lawyers. While that may be true for the class litigants themselves it is entirely untrue for the public at large.

It's only true for the class members at large, if at all, because they typically refuse to pay any attention to the class litigation and/or court approval of the settlement. If you think that a settlement is only enriching the class lawyers -- OBJECT TO IT.

It's a common refrain, yet almost nobody attempts to file objections with judges, much less retain legal counsel who might successfully oppose a settlement, because that would mean expending actual effort. If the class target, the class lawyers, and the class representatives are telling the judge that a settlement is fair, and nobody opposes that position, what do you expect to have happen?

Judges are an independent check on class shennanigans, but only to the extent that any extremely busy professional receiving information from only one side can be. Just like in every other aspect of life, you must offer decisionmakers -- whether employers, politicians, or judges -- sound reasons for supporting and advancing your interests above other, competing interests.

If you do not, you can hardly be surprised at what you get.

You're asking for a kind of button that will make it possible to rely upon a 2-year-old child as a caretaker.

That's funny. I thought he was asking for a kind of button that would make it possible for his child to communicate with him as a backup measure, given the video surveillance and all.

Of course you're free to argue that epileptics cannot be left unsupervised. Good luck with that.

You're also free to argue that epileptic parents should not be allowed to be alone with their children since their children might be required to be "caretakers," whether via a button, a telephone capable of 911, or merely living within distance to run to a neighbor. Because we'd all support that.

After all, this isn't an attempt to marginally improve a circumstance. This is an attempt to shift all responsibility for the parent's care onto the child. Not.

Nonsense.

Freedom of Speech for own own citizens is one thing. Freedom of Speech for people who are unquestionably trying to wipe out our citizens is another matter. One of the very first thing you do during a war is take out the enemy's communication capabilities. This is no different.

Double nonsense.

The people you were replying to were not advocating for free speech for ISIS. They were advocating for free speech for those discussing and analyzing what ISIS had done.

What is gained by enabling them to spread their propaganda? Why fight a battle with our hands tied behind our backs?

Who are you to demand justification showing the video? What is your threshold for justification? Criticism? Counter propaganda? Simple reporting of news that people should be aware of?

You're welcome to ask what is gained, but that is not what you're doing. You're arguing for suppressing the speech of your own citizens if it includes the speech of 'the enemy' -- at least so long as you don't personally approve of the motivation.

What is gained is allowing others to have their own discussions on their own terms. There done. Issue solved. Again.

Add that to the refusal of a person who is very reputable in the banking and security fields and advises governments to testify on his behalf on how stuff works, which he does to laypeople as his job very effectively (many times as an expert witness like he would have here) it seems massively shady that such a person would be denied as a witness to state facts that would have possibly been beneficial to the defense.

The Perry Mason "surprise witness" trope does not work in real life. In real life trials, you disclose your proposed witness list to the other side well before you reach the courtroom. In real life trials, you have the opportunity to research your opponent's witnesses and qualifications. In civil trials you can even *gasp* question your opponent's witnesses in depositions taken under oath so that you know the substance of what they will say well before they reach the witness stand, and impeach their testimony if it changes from the tesimony given in the deposition.

Excluding "expert witnesses" first disclosed in the middle of the actual trial is not massively shady, it's the expected outcome barring some completely exceptional testimony being introduced that one should have the opportunity to counter in rebuttal. The judge's ruling makes clear that in addition to disclising the experts late, the defense refused to even disclose what specific topics they would testify about. You cannot do that in a trial.

The defense's strategy was massively shady.... not the exclusion of these witnesses.

Planetary detectives trace the culprit to dark residues left behind as heated ice moves to a new neighbourhood on the cooler side of the moon. More dark areas means more solar heating, and more ice migrating away in a self-perpetuating cycle. Mystery solved! Good job, planetary scientists!

Interplanetary redlining and white flight! Bad job, scientists!

[Steam] as a proprietary application expects in this case to invoke the GPL mantra of usability without warranty.

I could have sworn that that mantra appeared in BSD licenses well before the GPL was a twinkle in RMS' eye. Yep.

If I cared to research it, I'm certain I would find similar language in proprietary licenses which predate even that.

Your distinction between "on" and "for" is equally myopic and artificial. Binaries "for" an operating system is used so commonly it is only questioned by ideological zealots, which most of us are not.

If you don't get the bylaws before you buy, and sign them before you buy, then you aren't bound by them. Lots of the HOAs are "illegal" in that sense, and would lose nearly every suit brought against them.

Woefully wrong interpretation of the law in the jursidictions that I'm familiar with.

The whole reason that rather tony old neighborhoods do not have HOAs while rather tony new neighborhoos tend to have HOAs is that HOAs are created through a deed restriction. When you create the subdivision you create the HOA. Where the subdivision already exists, there's no single body that owns the properties and can tie their deeds together.

You're on constructive notice concerning deed restrictions. If you fail to research the bylaws and regulations springing out those restrictions, it's on you -- the HOA will likely win the suit that they bring against you.

A m00se once bit my sister... No realli!

A m00se? Or some other J0ng-un-gulate?

The reasoning is that natural gas releases less carbon than coal, so if we switch from coal to natural gas, then we'll reduce climate change.

Yes, I'm perfectly aware of that, and unlike you I know the science behind it. The problem is the next sentence of my post that you conveniently left out of your quote -- which is, if we don't actually reduce energy demand, we'll eventually run out of natural gas and have to burn the coal/oil anyway. So we just end up in the same place, just a few decades later.

Unlike you, GP is viewing the entire situation. You simply refuse to work your assumptions into both scenarios.

Also note my primary objection is to the beginning of TFS which implies we could STOP climate change by this substitution, which is in fact idiocy if anyone thought it true.

Let's imagine two scenarios:

1. Burn coal until coal becomes impractical, then switch to natural gas.

2. Burn natural gas (with declining use of coal due to current policy and economic factors) until that becomes impractical, then increase or switch back to coal.

If we don't actually "reduce energy demand," as you put it, we burn the same amount of carbon under either scenario. Yet the second scenario reduces carbon introduced into the system in the earlier years. If we do reduce "energy demand," by whatever means and at whatever time, there is a net carbon reduction.

Only your strawman is claiming that substition = solution. The rest of us are claiming that substition = mitigation. In any of the two scenarios where we dont burn until we "run out" of both resources, there is less carbon emitted by switching to natural gas. In the scenario where we do burn until we "run out" of both resources, there is a nominally greater amount of time for society and nature to adapt by using natural gas first. In the meantime we continue to develop and drive down the cost of other sources, to deploy those technologies, and to develop storage technologies to support personal and bulk transportation.

You claim that switching to natural gas is idiocy yet using natural gas is somewhere between neutral-to-improvement, is currently somewhat cheaper, and under a carbon tax would inherently be cheaper due to factors that you claim to be perfectly aware of. Yet science and economics be damned; you just want the biggest stick possible to force us to do it your way -- right now, all the way, regardless of cost, and "what storage problems?".

The idiocy is not only seeking to internalize the costs of fossil fuels, but seeking to reject any improvement in their use that is not a complete solution. The idiocy is thinking that people won't recognize that fact and call you on it. The idiocy is thinking that once the sciene is proven (which it is), everyone must automatically adopt your particular priorities and timetable because there are no value judgments involved (or only yours).

People rately cooperate with those who call them idiots. Until you have a comfortable majority -- which you do not -- you cannot afford to alienate those who are supporting relative improvements. So become perfectly aware of the sitatuion and stop engaging in equal idiocy yourself.

Good, we need more hate because we certainly need less life on this planet. Let's start with politicians and lawyers, first.

As long as you people insist upon trying to control what your neighbors do, weaseling out of paying your debts, cheating the people you do business with, and making up your own rules that totally suprisingly favor whatever side you're supporting at the moment, there will be politicians and lawyers.

The politicians are just doing what you tell them to do -- or more specifically, what the people who actually care are telling them to do. Those who sit on their ass writing meaningless missives of how it's all rigged against them without actually organizing their neighbors get what they deserve.

The lawyers are usually trying to prevent you from being screwed by the other guys. And before you retort that lawyers are encouraging the screwing, remember that our technological surveillance state is being created by the engineers and computer scientists -- not politicians using off-the-shelf parts. You're no better. Behave yourselves and lawyers won't have clients. Then there'll be less of them.

Courts should punish intentional facilitation.
If you can't be bothered to sell a $1 security dongle with the software as other software companies do, then you must be intentionally facilitating piracy.
The courts are not there to be abused in the face of intentional facilitation, especially as best practice is already known.

Or you could use software activation, as other software companies do? As Microsoft does? Because Windows 7 and Office 2010 activation were certainly put there to intentionally facilitate copying.

As for your comment that hardware dongles are a "best practice," pull the other one, mate. Nevermind that the $1 dongles don't work.

It would seem from http://www.cbc.ca/thecurrent/e... last week's coverage that Newlink had already violated the terms of their license.

How would it seem so, since the very article that you link says "BioProtection Systems Corporation (BPS), now a wholly owned subsidiary of NewLink Genetics Inc., has performed at or above expectations thus far." Outside critics don't get to retroactively cancel a contract signed five years ago because progress under the contract doesn't meet their post-hoc expectations.

Seems like they sat on it as long as possible, then sublicensed to Merck.

Funny, the very article that you linked to says that "[l]ast week, we announced the beginning of clinical trials of the vaccine in Canada." Do you have any direct knowledge of the typical work and time involved in setting up clinical safety trials? I doubt it. Note the following:

Preclinical Testing: A pharmaceutical company conducts certain studies before the future drug is ever given to a human being. Laboratory and animal studies must be done to demonstrate the biological activity of the drug against the targeted disease. The drug must also be evaluated for safety. These tests take on the average 3 1/2 years.

At this point though, who cares about the lousy $50M,

TFA.

[T]hey should just get on with producing the fricking stuff while testing in parallel.

Because mass producing an experimental drug that has not been shown to be safe, much less effective, in vivo goes against more than a half century's worth of applied medical knowledge and ethics, notwithstanding the losses you would suffer if you stockpiled a drug that failed clinical trials? But hey, you can assume safety since nobody has been hurt yet, right?