The parent comment is an obvious troll... but the question at the link is a good one. It asks:

I'd like to know if RMS has any further comments on this. I.e., has there been any progress on finding other ways to prevent non-free software from being combined with gcc code, so that offering such dynamic libraries would be possible? If the GPL is not considered sufficient protection, would a stricter license be an option? What avenues are being explored?

The nineties called; they want their argument back (they're probably looking to get this put-down back too).

What we've seen in the last decade and more is that regulation of the digital realm is absolutely possible (think "Great Firewall of China") and can shut down or marginalize targeted activities quite effectively. Not perfectly, mind you, but law enforcement has never been perfect in the analog world either.

Time to update our thinking.

Yes, Linus has played an important role in the ascendency of Linux over FreeBSD, but I think the GPL ought to get even more credit. Stallman is and always has been right about the BSD license. Apple is just one of many companies who have shown how easily a thriving BSD software project can essentially be taken private. Just take your wad of cash and buy out the core developers. Set them to work on your proprietary, extended version with all the security bug fixes, the slick new UI and the closed-source installer. Then get your SEO guys going and soon Google won't even be able to find the so-called "free" version. In three years, anybody who can find the BSD licensed version won't dare to use it anyway because it's so far out of date. RIP "free" version.

Culture, by definition, is not genetically transmitted. Behavior is influenced by both culture and genetics and teasing out which cause has what effect is a very, very tricky business. Merely observing a correlation between race and food stamp use is likely to get you labelled a racist because only a racist (or an ignoramus) would find it at all interesting. Carefully conducted research on the subject has demonstrated much better correlation with family income than with race for a host of societal ills that are typically ascribed to race in the USA.

Pot, meet Kettle.

It doesn't take a genius to foresee the sort of controversy this study might raise in the hands of the media. I'm sure the researchers themselves were very careful and conservative with their conclusions, but using race or genetic data as a proxy for something as easily obtainable as immigration history is just inviting trouble.

Or check it out for free.

Even better, imagine the family's mortification when this happens: http://www.pcworld.com/article/87824/porn_sites_hijack_expired_domain_names.html

New business opportunity: headstone QR code removal service.

Sorry man, my mod points expired this morning, or it bump this. Yeah, carving a link into stone seems like the height of absurdity given the transient nature of the web. "404 not found" is likely to be of less use to genealogists and historians than the summary seems to suggest.

Exactly. What does the summary say? "The users make micropayments, but with attention and data instead of cash." This is no more a micropayment system than advertising is.

Measuring the effectiveness of the screening procedures means measuring how often the items being screened make it through. In this case, that means any containers with > 3 oz of liquid, irrespective of their explosive nature.

The world is full of urban centres that are trying to emulate the success of Silicon Valley. Ever heard of Silicon Valley North? No, I don't mean San Francisco. It's a term my home town, Ottawa, Canada, has adopted for itself. It's also been applied to Toronto, Vancouver, Waterloo, Calgary, and Montreal. But the truth is that none of them have a decent claim on the title -- they can't touch the real Silicon Valley in terms of scale, depth of expertise or level of innovation.

There's a big barrier to anyone trying to be the new Silicon Valley and it has nothing to do with corporate tax rates or research incentives. Those are all easy to measure and copy. It's the network effect -- the same one that makes eBay, the QWERTY keyboard and Microsoft Office so hard to displace. The smart people want to go to Silicon Valley because that's where the smart people are. After all, being with other smart people is not only more interesting, but more likely to lead to your own success. It's easy to see in a place like Ottawa, where the cream of the tech community are frequent targets for Silicon Valley head-hunters. They go, not (just) for the money, but to be part of that scene.

So good luck East London, but maybe you should have a plan B, just in case.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge's_Law_of_Headlines

So, no.

Nobody will learn a new language unless it offers a big advantage over the existing popular languages. In the last 2 decades, that has meant having a particularly useful library or framework (such as CGI for Perl or Rails for Ruby). Why else would anybody invest the time. New languages are a dime a dozen (actually, that's too generous).

Don't count on it. Most people are like me in selecting a course. They want relevant skills. If a course that might otherwise tickle my fancy requires learning B+- or Anchovy_Paste.net I'll keep looking. There's a lot of selection out there now and I have little time for picking up languages on speculation.