They never are. It is the clueless users, of which there are plenty. As Linux gets more popular, it gets more of them. We have a lot where I work at a university. Grad students will decide they want to have a Linux system for something they are researching. They won't consult IT, they just go grab whatever distro they've heard of and install it. Then they start turning on every feature they can, SSH, web, etc, anything any of their software asks for or anything they think might be neat. They leave it on all the time and don't mind after it. Then it gets owned, and they are surprised.

I care about malware notices not for my own system, I've never had any case of any kind of malware since I'm vigilant in my security. I care because I work in IT and have to deal with people who are not careful. Also because the more of these infected systems there are, the shittier a place the Internet is in general.

There is no loss. You confuse loss with gaining a contractual obligation. An absence of gain is not a loss.

No, because there never was anything you inherently could have, i.e. someone else's property. There is no lost opportunity because there never was a right to such an opportunity. Coveting someone else's property and not getting access to that property is not a lost opportunity.

A "fork" can be internal, private. The GPL allows such an internal effort to apply any subsequent changes or additions you make, to track your main "branch", and to use such code internally to make money and not reimburse you.

No. Both GPL and BSD users only have what the community happens to offer them. There is nothing to "like" beyond the community's offering. Plus there is your confusion of "loss" with failing to get something you never had but merely covet.

Again, coveting something you never had, not a loss. If you buy a Windows box and it doesn't run BSD you did not lose anything. You did not buy a BSD box. If you bought a BSD box in the first place you would lose nothing.

The fact remains that a user who wants to continue using their original vendor supplied software is forced to go without a patch despite the GPL.

I'm not saying v3 is better or worse, its just different, more restrictive. And that it does not apply to anything Linux based which in reality is what one will typically find. And as such if the hardware requires factory signed code then the user has no option to apply a patch as originally suggested.

False analogy. Nothing is taken, merely the forced benevolence is an act of giving.

Which is pretty much the same situation as Linux based device that have signed binaries. The GPL doesn't really help such users.

Some users. Few go that route, most go without critical patches. The GPL is not benefitting these users, the vast majority are still at the mercy of their hardware vendors.

The end user is not forced to use a commercial fork, they may continue to use the community BSD code. For example FreeBSD users are not impacted at all by anything the Mac OS X adds or changes and does not contribute back. They have lost nothing.

You confuse loss with coveting. A FreeBSD user may simply covet something added to Mac OS X.

Who said anything about not liking the GPL. The only thing going on here is debunking the myth of GPL being free. As I said before forced benevolence may or may not be good but it is not freedom.

One does not have an inherent right to the work of someone else. Such a right only exists when it is contractually forced by an agreement such as the GPL.

No, it is not a loss. It is simply coveting something one does not have. If you want to say it it unfair, sure, but a loss, no, not all.

They absolutely can use GPL code commercially. Commercial use does nor require distribution to external users. Commercial use simply means they make money off your work, and this is perfectly allowable under the GPL.

You forget the pesky little detail that I mentioned that users are under no obligation to use a proprietary BSD fork rather than the community version. They can stick with the community and have no such fear, use FreeBSD rather than Mac OS X for example.

Its also a humorous example given the fact that Android phones with their GPL based Linux host are not getting critical patches. Yes you mentioned GPLv3 but that was a crude attempt to manufacture a hypothetical, the reality is that Linux is what most devices will be based upon and Linux is inherently GPLv2 and will not be changing.

A straw man. No where was your property, the community BSD code, at risk of loss. Only the commercial fork's code, and that code is not yours, it is someone else's property.

You are under no obligation to use commercial forks. Again, you may stay with FreeBSD and not run Mac OS X. Nothing Mac OS X does or adds takes away from anyone who wishes to use FreeBSD.

The source lost no freedom at all. Not one line of community source code was lost. Not one user is forced to use the commercial fork.

That is a strange straw man. The GPL only forces you to act benevolently if you use GPL'd code.

No one is saying otherwise. Just debunking the myth that the GPL is about freedom, its is not. It is about forced benevolence.

Only in high school introductory physics with its grossly simplified mathematical models that ignore many relevant variables where they are trying to get you to understand concepts, not solve real world problems. In the world the naval rail guns will have to operate having a target masked by terrain is a significant problem.

Wrong. Direct fire is when you can see the target, indirect fire is when you can not see the target. And one of the major reasons one can not see the target, being masked by terrain.

When people are killed it is generally because the gun was fired at a lower elevation and the projectile still had a lot of forward momentum when it hit. With very high elevations approaching the vertical, "firing up", that forward momentum gets lost and the bullet has a near vertical descent at its terminal velocity. The notion that a bullet returns at its muzzle velocity is a long debunked myth. At least until they start firing bullets on a planetary body without an atmosphere.

When masked by terrain, when in the terrain's "shadow", there are no lower angle solutions as one would have in direct fire. The only available solutions are high angle, and not all high angle solutions are equivalent. The equation for a parabola is woefully inadequate once one gets past the intro to physics thought experiment. Perhaps an illustration will help: http://askthephysicist.com/ima.... If you doubt this graphic I can give you the page number of an Army field manual pdf that has similar illustrations. The shortest of the high angle shots is more desirable because it is more accurate. Shorter exposure to the myriad of unknowns that destroy accuracy.

A rail gun with its extremely high velocities is even more susceptible to the unknowns of long flight times, higher altitude ballistic paths. If you bother to read about rail guns you will find that one of its advantages is that the launch speed of a projectile is far more variable than with a convention gun and its 1, 2, or 3 powder bags approach. The rail gun provides, for the first time, the opportunity to optimize the trajectory for the shortest path when lobbing a projectile just barely over masking terrain. But again, this will result in low speeds so old fashioned explosives will be necessary. Kinetic weapons can not fill all roles.

And even if the mathematical models were improved to account for the various variables currently contributing to inaccuracy, the simple effect of air resistance and the resulting terminal velocity render kinetic weapons unusable for high elevation shots. At least ground/sea based kinetic weapons. Space based would be a different story.

Really? How did they degrade your performance? You have access to and may enhance and contribute to the exact same source code they did. You lost *nothing*, not one line of code, not one opportunity to add a new line of code.

And if your code was GPL based a corporation may do the exact same thing. They may fork and enhance a GPL based tool for internal use only and not share. They can continue to benefit and merge all your work and the rest of the communities work as well.

What rights do BSD contributors lose? All the community code exists, the community can continue without the commercial changes, the community is not required to use some commercial fork. They lose nothing if some contributor chooses not to give back. Furthermore, users of GPL'd code decide not to give back at times too. They can use some a commercial fork internally and benefit from community work and not give back. Also, various commercial users of BSD code have a pretty good track record of contributing back.

What rights do BSD users lose? **IF** they care about "free software" or access to the source code they can just avoid commercial/closed forks and stick to the community based code.

The GPL does *not* offer greater freedom, it creates restrictions to force behaviors it believes benevolent. Forced benevolence may or may not be a good thing but it is not freedom.

Define "better". So very few devices work well for things in the $35 category. You typically have to spend double that for similar gear- and IT isn't any better- they're all bare boards and each have gotchas gallore for their use.

Most people aren't going to shell out $500 or more for the board that accounts for all the possible concerns- which is what you get to pay for someone to have done most of the gotcha removals on the design. Well, unless they're building a system to commercially control an industrial CNC machine or the like...

And who disputed that? What was being disputed was your erroneous statement that things "fall back to earth with roughly the same speed". Go re-read your junior high physics text and pay attention to necessary conditions like "in a vacuum".

No, they don't. Their velocity is limited by air resistance when they "fall back" (gravitation acceleration), they fall at their terminal velocity. You fire a .30 cal rifle straight up, the velocity of the bullet leaving the barrel is roughly 2,500 to 3,000 feet per second. The bullet does not return at that speed, it returns at its terminal velocity of around 300 feet per second, about 1/8th to 1/10th of its muzzle velocity.

Check the mirror dude. The physics of a rail gun projectile is the same physics as a howitzer projectile. And howitzers have to reduce launch speed (smaller powder charge) and use extremely high barrel elevations ( up to 70 degrees) to hit targets that are masked by terrain. It is no different for rail guns. And to hit targets that are near to the terrain that is masking them nearly all the forward momentum of the projectile has to be bled off and the path to the target approaches the vertical. This will be too slow for kinetic weapons, explosive warheads will be needed.

If the Navy were to employ rail guns as you describe there would be enormously long "shadows" behind masking terrain that they could not hit.

No, you are thinking of indirect fire as an over-the-horizon direct shot. Something very different from what I am referring to. What I am referring to as indirect fire is a target masked by terrain, in the "shadow" of that terrain. For such fire launch speeds are low and the gun elevation extremely high because most forward momentum must be bled off and the projectiles descent to target approaches the vertical. Read up on modern howitzers. They reduce the powder charge and elevate to 70 degrees for this this type of mission. Rail guns will need to do similarly, however the speeds involved are insufficient for kinetic weapons so the rail guns will need to launch old fashioned explosive warheads.

The Army and Navy also vary the powder charges to adjust the ballistic curve. For example in WW2 battleship they would load one to three bags of powder behind a projectile. The rail gun has the advantage in that it can more easily be adjusted for launch speed. Adjusting launch speed is absolutely essential to hit a variety of targets via indirect fire. Rail guns do not change this fact.

Indirect fire usually refers a target being hidden by, of being in the in the "shadow" of, terrain. For such targets a very high ballistic trajectory is needed. For a long range over-the-horizon shot that you are describing the trajectory is relatively low compared to the former. Its not unlike a soldier taking a shot at a target 1,000 yards out with a .30 cal rifle, the barrel gets a lot of elevation.

The type of shot you are describing still hits hard because the forward momentum has been preserved. But in many indirect fire missions the point of the high parabola is to bleed off most of that forward momentum and have a very sharp descent. Such a trajectory is needed when the target is relatively close to the terrain it is in the "shadow" of. Note that Army howitzers elevate to 70 degrees for such shots. These shots have lost most of the forward momentum and are descending at their terminal velocity due to air resistance. Such shots will not have the momentum necessary for a kinetic weapon, old fashioned high explosive projectiles will be necessary.

Utterly wrong. Firing only a high speed kinetic projectile effectively creates extremely long "shadows" behind terrain that would be untouchable. The only way to hit targets masked by terrain, such as those on a reverse slope, is through low launch speed and high barrel elevation. Just like howitzers do by reducing the powder charge and cranking elevation up to 70 degrees. Rail guns will need to act similarly, slow the launch, have a very high elevation, and fire explosive projectile for this type of flight profile.

Gibson Guitars. Gibson imported wood guitar components that we legally harvested and legally exported. Eventually the US gov't admitted Gibson did nothing wrong. However to investigate Gibon's possible improper importation of wood a heavily armed SWAT raid was conducted to seize their paperwork and the wood in question.
http://www.nationalreview.com/...

Cheaper than TT, very easy to use, and it works well. Ya I could do it myself but in addition to being a fair bit of paperwork and math (I think about 15-20 pages between federal and state in my case) I don't want to have to look up any rule changes or breaks that might apply to me and the tax software has all that programmed in. I'm way too lazy to do them by hand, and they aren't complex enough to be worth paying an accountant to do for me.

Only downside is they want more money to e-file a state return. No problem, I just print it and mail it. E-file is convenient but no big deal.