Different states' laws vary, but the exclusionary period on suicide for most life insurance policies is two years. You can buy a life insurance policy, wait two years, off yourself, and they still pay out.

Speak for yourself. I plan on living forever. Been going just fine so far.

Poettering is a paid employee of the Red Hat corporation.

Incidentally, 50% of Red Hat's revenue comes from the US Army.

So, transitive property of funding...

That's the only thing I can think of, too.

Linux won, and 80% of everything runs Linux. 80% of internet servers. 85% of smartphones. My consumer router, NAS, and freaking surround receiver came with copies of the GPL because they run Linux kernels.

The spooks already have back doors into windows and os x, no doubt. But you think they're just going to sit around and saw "awww shucks, guess we can't get into 80% of stuff..." Fuck no. If you can ask, ask. If you can buy, buy. If you can force, force. If you can't force...infiltrate and subvert, and that's what they're doing.

Systemd is a plot to infiltrate and subvert the GNU/Linux ecosystem by the US government via the Red Hat corporation.

No, this is a political problem and needs a political solution. You will never solve it with technology because Big Brother has more technology, near-limitless cash, and very smart people working 24/7 to spy on whatever you do, using any and all means, legal or not. If they can buy your information from private companies that collect data on people, they will. If they can ask for it and have it handed to them, they will. If they can threaten a company with an NSL or secret warrant, they will. If they can't do that, they'll infiltrate the companies that make your stuff and backdoor. They've intentionally weakened encryption algorithms by passing off bad math. Open source sure isn't safe. See the Underhanded C Contest. And tons of contributions come from and projects are directed by Red Hat, whose #1 customer and revenue source is the US Army. Who's auditing all that code? (btw, *adjusts tinfoil hat* systemd is a plot to infiltrate and subvert the Linux ecosystem on behalf of the US Government via the Red Hat corporation)

You need a political solution that forbids the collection of this data, with monitoring and oversight, and jail time for people who break the rules. It's the same thing with any other restriction on government power. I can't build a door the government can't bust down. Doors have been kickdownable since the invention of doors and kicking. But I'm reasonably sure government agents are not going to come kicking in my door without a warrant issued by a judge based on sworn testimony that there exists probable cause that I have violated a law written by a legislature elected by me and my neighbors. Is the system perfect? No, but nobody's been kicking down my door. And they're not stopped by my super-strong door. They're stopped by the pieces of paper that say they can't do it.

Technology will not stop the spying. Slow it down a little, maybe. But we need more pieces of paper that say they can't spy on you, and penalties for doing things other than what's on those pieces of paper.

The problem is our consciousness and language are so dependent on the concept of time that we lack the language, and therefore ability to conceive of a state of being without time.

You said "could have been." The GP said "what came before it." "Been" and "before" imply a time-ordered sequence of events, but these are only possible from time t=0 on. There is no time t=-1, "before" the Big Bang, because that necessarily means a clock was ticking down to (or up to) the big kaboom. But clocks only tick from t=0 on.

So "before the big bang" is a meaningless question. Our brains and language lack the ability to describe a state of being without time. Perhaps it makes sense to the 12th dimensional hyperbeing who coded the kiddie's game that is our universe, and we'll keep plugging away at the questions of existence, but for now...the questions that you're asking aren't meaningful questions. It's like asking what the color blue smells like.

No, definitely meaningless. Time itself began with the Big Bang. The instant of the Big Bang is t=0. There is no t = -1. If there could be, then there would be time, which would pass from that point leading up to the moment of the Big Bang. But time began with the Big Bang.

But, our language and consciousness are so dependent on the concept of time that we lack the language to describe a state of being without it. Which is why we erroneously say things like "before the Big Bang," but it's a meaningless statement, because "before" implies an ordering of time, and time only began with the Big Bang. I had to be careful there to not say "there was no time before the Big Bang," because "was" also implies time. That time ticked along counting down (or up) to the Big Bang, then everything blew up. See there? I just gave a time-ordered sequence of events. But time-ordered sequences of events are only possible after t=0.

Better than "bitches" I guess. Unless you're a pimp.

"Our bitches here at Ford Motor Company build some nice motherfuckin' cars."

"Come to T.G.I Friday's and let our bitches serve you food."

"Sick? The bitches at Mercy General will heal you up good."

"Like a good neighbor, State Farm's bitches are there."

Of course. But it's usually not so plainly stated. The boss doesn't usually come by my desk with the other managers and say "meta-monkey here costs us a lot of money. Find a way to get rid of him. Oh, but in the meantime, meta-monkey, keep that cash coming in so Johnson here can find a way to get rid of you."

Be an Uber driver! Great way to make some extra cash! Gosh we love our Uber driving partners!

But they're sucking up all that sweet sweet moolah that could go into our coffers instead, so let's work to get rid of them. But in the meantime, keep driving for us so we can keep the money coming in for R&D to get rid of you!

There's a big difference between "using discretion" and "refusing to enforce laws they thought were unjust."

Also, to be honest, if every single law were enforced on everyone, all the time, it might wake people up that "hey, maybe there are too many laws..."

I wish I could think of the right terms to google for the stories I've read about the situation. Hard to find in the piles of results that are just about debugging GCC.

But yes, they intentionally obfuscated the debugging code from GCC to make it hard to understand without GDB. It was a poor choice, and drove development to other systems which play nice with non-GPLed environments. RMS's comments here are in the same spirit. "We could easily add this feature, but since it might help something that isn't GPLed, we will intentionally leave it out."

I don't expect you to take the word of some guy on slashdot, but I guess just keep it in the back of your mind and if you ever come across an article about the history of GCC debugging development, scan it for this information.

I agree with you. They use the rhetoric of "tolerance" and "equality," but they actual want dominance. But "social justice" sounds like a good thing, so calling them "social justice warriors" makes them sound good to the uninformed. But everybody knows supremacists are bad. So let's just call them what they are.

Doesn't really matter. It's okay for police to break the law when enforcing the law. Generally these actions are authorized by the supervising attorney and reviewed. It must not be dangerous, there must be a good reason, and it must be relevant to the investigation underway.

There's nothing illegal or unethical about the actions of the police in this case. If you don't like the crimes the police were investigating, well, change the laws. But the police procedure was routine and appropriate.

If somebody had died, I agree, murder 1. From Wikipedia:

"At base, murder consists of an intentional unlawful act with a design to kill and fatal consequences. Generally, an intention to cause great bodily harm is considered indistinguishable from an intention to kill, as is an act so inherently dangerous that any reasonable person would realize the likelihood of fatality. Thus, if the defendant hurled the victim from a bridge, it is no defense to argue that harm was not contemplated, or that the defendant hoped only to break bones."

Sending armed men to bust in your house and point guns at you is an act so inherently dangerous that any reasonable person would realize the likelihood of fatality. And it's clearly planned and premeditated.

Since nobody died, though, I'd say reckless endangerment. Attempted murder does require intent to kill, and I don't think Wilson intended for anyone to die.