Actually, you're the one who should be going if you don't understand the basic concept that the Supreme Court's job is to interpret how the laws are applied and what they mean, not just in the historical context in which they're written, but in the context of our ever-changing modern society; that laws are meaningless on paper, that only how they're enforced and upheld lends them any power. It's people like you who don't understand that simple concept--in spite of the founding fathers making it explicitly clear that they understood the need for what they were doing to continually be expanded upon and interpreted as times change--that are responsible for a large number of the problems in this country today.

You're the modern-day equivalent of a flat-earther. So yeah, good riddance to you. Or else good luck when you get arrested and try the "my rights are only subject to MY interpretation and I don't recognize this court's authority!" defense.

My gut instinct says that very rarely do people in the public eye follow totally altruistic agendas, particularly when it comes to issues like this that have little to do with the common good. If you dig deep enough you can find special interest trails that more often than not uncover these people's true motivators. Just follow the money.

You do know that the British courts have already decided to extradite him to Sweden, don't you? He didn't run off to the embassy until his appeal of the extradition failed.

... said the anonymous coward.

So why would they receive insurance settlements?

Doesn't that support my claim? That is, GameSpot did adjust its editorial policy just to make one advertiser happy, and it imploded. Hence no *rational* company would do that.

If the newspaper has more than one subscriber, it has a conflict of interest. Your interests won't match the other subscriber's.

They aren't going to publish things just to make you happy; they aren't going to publish things just to make one advertiser happy. We're talking about the NYT, not some trade magazine that depends for all its revenue on one sponsor.

Advertisers?

You said you pay for the NYT. Do they let you determine what articles to include? Only to the extent that if they do a bad job, you won't renew your subscription. If advertisers were paying, the same would be true: they won't get eyeballs if they don't have content that attracts them.

I'm sorry, I didn't realize that folks weren't more familiar with Jeopardy!.

Normally if a player is in the lead by more than twice as much as the next closest person (that is, a guaranteed win), he will bet an amount that, if he misses the question and the second-place person answers it correctly, will leave him or her in the lead by a dollar. For example, if Alice has $15,000, Bob has $7,000, and Carol as $4,000, Alice will bet $999. If Alice misses the question and Bob gets it correct, Alice will end up with $14,001 and Bob will end up with $14,000, thus securing Alice the win.

To play for the tie instead, Alice would bet $1,000. Thus if she answers incorrectly and Bob answers correctly, they will both have $14,000. Both win the cash prize instead of the consolation prize(s), and both come back on tomorrow's show. If Alice is hardcore nice, she might even miss the question deliberately (yes, that means she'll be foregoing $2,000 extra in prize money) since that will net Bob $14,000 and she'll be bringing someone into the game tomorrow that she's relatively confident she can beat.

If Alice does not have the game locked up, then normally she would bet just enough so that, if she and Bob both answer correctly, she would end up one dollar ahead. For example, if Alice has $15,000, Bob has $10,000, and Carol has $3,000, Alice would bet $5,001, assuming that Bob will bet the entire amount. If both answer the question correctly, then Alice will end up with $20,001 and Bob with $20,000. If both answer incorrectly, Bob will likely end up with something close to $0, and Alice will end up with $9,999. If Alice answers incorrectly and Bob answers correctly, then unless Bob really screwed the pooch on his betting strategy, he will win and there's nothing Alice can do about it. (Which, incidentally, I have seen before.)

However, if Alice is playing for the tie, she will bet $5,000. That way, if she and Bob both answer correctly, they will both win $20,000, and again, she will carry a player she's likely to beat into the next game.

Obviously, that's not the whole story, because you might adjust your betting strategy based on where the third place person is to ensure that you capture at least second place, and sometimes you tweak the amount so that if everyone blows it, you come out ahead. Or sometimes you might do something irrational if you have some ulterior reason for it; for example, Alice might bet more on the question if it is about 18th Century Authors and she happens to be a literature professor with extensive knowledge in that field. But still, hopefully that paints a good enough picture to understand what "betting for the tie" means, versus trying to win outright.

I've wondered for years why more players don't play for the tie instead of the win. For one thing, doesn't that mean that the person who would have been in second place but who tied instead also gets to keep their money? Seems to me like it's kind of a dick move to not play for the tie, unless you just don't like the person for some reason. For another, wouldn't it be to your advantage to take someone with you into the next game that you already know you can beat? I mean, I'd feel safer going up against Steve from Montana who I was a few thousand ahead of going into Final Jeopardy than risk facing Watson and Ken Jennings on tomorrow's show.

WTBS went national on December 17, 1976. Nickelodeon dates back to December 1, 1977. ESPN started broadcasting September 7, 1979. USA Network was broadcasting nationally via satellite by the late 70s. CNN brought us the 24-hours news cycle on June 1, 1980. MTV told us that Video Killed the Radio Star on August 1, 1981. 1982 brought us CNN2 (later Headline News, on January 1), The Weather Channel (May 2), and a slew of other ad-supported channels.

While HBO was started in 1972, and Showtime in 1976, Cinemax started in 1980. The Disney Channel, originally a premium add-on channel, launched in 1983. Those were the only ad-free premium channels in the early 80s, as Starz didn't launch until 1994.

So I don't know what all of these "movie channels of some sort" you remember in the early 1980s, but there were only three mainstream ones out there, four if you count Disney's launch in '83. Meanwhile most other popular cable channels such as ESPN, CNN, MTV, and various "superstations" with advertising were staples of cable television line-ups by then, as well as the national broadcast networks, plus some local access channels that, as I said, broadcast almost nothing but commercials..

Now, I suppose you could argue that C-SPAN and maybe some local religious stations (many of which also ran ads) that no one watched were really what made the "good ol' days" of cable television the good ol' days, but even accounting for those, I still stand by my assertion that, with very few exceptions of possibly some small cable providers that didn't provide many national cable networks at any given time, cable television has always been predominantly ad-supported. Again, you are mixing "most ad-free channels were on cable" with "most channels on cable were ad-free." The former is true, but the latter, although a common misconception, is far from it--a fact that is easily verified by looking at any cable channel line-up from the 1970s or 1980s (or if you can find material back that far, even the 1960s). Insisting that it is only shows a very selective and inaccurate memory.

Then you're misremembering. There's a huge difference between ad-free networks being mostly on cable (the actual historical situation) and cable being mostly ad-free networks (how many people incorrectly remember the "good ol' days" of cable). Cable television has always had advertisements, barring a few notable premium channels such as HBO and, of course, public television stations. Many channels were nothing but ads, such as home shopping channels and local access stations that ran infomercials for something like 20 out of 24 hours a day.

Originally, cable television was merely a way to get television into areas that were unable to receive broadcast signals, thanks to geography or other factors, and carried only the networks, which had ads. Eventually some "superstations" rose up that were only available via cable out-of-market, the first of which was Ted Turner's WTCG (later WTBS) and eventually stations like WGN and WOR, and all of those had ads. Later, almost all cable-only channels such as ESPN, MTV, and CNN have run ads since their inception.

What you're mostly likely remembering is the commercials for specific premium channels like HBO, Cinemax, Showtime, Starz, and Disney (prior to 1997) that advertised that their channels were ad-free, but these were the exception and commanded extra fees in addition to your normal cable bill, not true of cable television in general.

THANK YOU!!!

You have no idea how frustrating it is as a Southerner to be constantly condescended upon because of our supposedly lousy driving skills. I don't care HOW skilled you are at driving on snow or ice, when you crest an ice-covered hill with a curve at the bottom, even if you're driving 1 MPH, you're going to go off the road or crash into the curb (or the car) at the bottom.

Every time I see one of these "lrn2drv" smug posts, I want to invite that person to come on down and drive on a road that is completely untreated in a car that is completely unequipped for snow/ice driving. In this case, I'd love to get them to try it in the middle of an Atlanta rush hour that was as popped out on steroids as it has ever been in the history of the city. Yes, we're not used to driving on ice. Yes, there are some fools who do it wrong. But I've seen people who are the most careful of drivers creeping along at a snail's pace still have wrecks because, believe it or not, when your roads have no snow or ice for 999 out of 1000 days in a row and no one has prepared for the eventuality that they might, and your government is run by "don't spend money for any reason"/"let's err against the side of safety" idiots, shit happens.

But coming back to the beginning of the thread: Even though the GPL2 is perfectly valid, the FSF has declared in GPL3 that it is not a compatible license. Through their required copyright transfer, they are able to change the license on their projects from GPL2 to GPL3, thereby putting pressure on other GPL2 projects to relicense as well. That's not promoting freedom, that's promoting control.

There is no "or later version" clause, nor does there need to be. The GPL2 license was perfectly valid at the time.