Funny. The Russians seem to have your backs to the wall over the Ukraine...

I remember when Slashdot used to put an effort into coming up with some story that was just plausible enough to have people wondering whether it was an April Fools joke or not. But today, this year? No attempt at plausibility whatsoever. Just lame summaries hashing out old Sci-Fi plot lines.

It's weak, man.

Even from dice-droids I expect better than this.

Explicit language might modify what would otherwise be there only by an implicit doctrine.

In general, a licensor can modify their own terms. So, if you are using the GPL on software to which you hold the copyright, and you add some sort of exception, it applies. You can't do it to other people's software.

I am still having a little trouble with "we don't need our spies to spy". Maybe we do.

I am also having trouble believing that the kind of encryption we use on the Internet actually stops the U.S. Government from finding out whatever it wishes although IETF and sysadmins might be kidding themselves that it can. Government can get to the end systems. They can subborn your staff. Etc.

MS language is potentially worse than the default. And there is room for litigation to surprise us.

Yes. The last stuff I wrote that I couldn't compile today was in "Promal" or "Paradox". My C and C++ code from 1980 still builds and runs.

All of my web development is on Ruby on Rails. That environment has had a lot of development and I've had to port to new versions. So old code for RoR would not quite run out of the box, but it's close.

Popular computing languages do not in general have only one Open Source implementation, and do not get abandoned.

Development with a proprietary language is ultimately harmful to your own interests, whether you make proprietary software for a profit or Free software.

The one thing every business needs is control. When you make it possible for another company to block your business, you lose control. Your options become limited. Solving business problems potentially becomes very costly, involving a complete rewrite.

The one thing that should be abundantly clear to everyone by now is that making your business dependent on Microsoft anything is ultimately a losing proposition. They have a long history of deprecating their own products after customers have built products upon them.

All Open Source licenses come with an implicit patent grant, it's an exhaustion doctrine in equitable law.

The problem is not patent holders who contribute to the code, you're protected from them. It's trolls who make no contribution and then sue.

Of course these same trolls sue regarding proprietary code as well.

They abused the privilege, now they pay the price. I've no sympathy for any of the intel agencies out there who've claimed they're only interested in identifying endpoints and sessions, yet now are crying about the traffic content being encrypted. Encryption simply limits CSEC, GCHQ, NSA, et. al. to the endpoint identification they said they want.

It's too late to change your mind. I use RSA2048 exchange of AES256 keys, hard coded into all my applications. If you don't have the Java export-strength encryption enabled, I don't want to bother supporting your code. You're just begging to be intercepted without export-strength encryption.

I'm tired of being snooped on. I'll take my right to privacy seriously, thanks. I don't even trust pre-generated keys for the RSA2048 server encryption -- I generate them on the fly at server startup so that even the person running the server doesn't know what the keys are.

Not all terrorists are Muslims. Not by a long shot.

The insinuation that he is Muslim is yours, not mine.

As long as the media companies can sell the rights to their product to individual companies in other nations, you will never see an end to geoblocking. It's part of the business model of making profit from as many opportunities as possible.

Why would CTV here in Canada pay for the rights to broadcast "Gotham" if Canadians could just watch the internet streams from the US directly? Why would the BBC pay for the rights to broadcast CTV's "Orphan Black" if British citizens could just watch the CTV streams from Canada for free?

It's all about the money, and the "cost" of piracy is a pittance compared to the profits they earn with the current model.

The fact that no attack occured gives the talking heads leeway to claim there was no "terrorist attack." That does not mean the fellow flying the plane at the time didn't have sympathies for terrorists or had been outright radicalized.

They also hate calling something a "terrorist attack" if there isn't a pre-announced political message for the reasons behind the attack.

Myself, I have a feeling they're going to learn a few things about him during the investigation that they'd rather were not true.

No, they listened to a sales droid who lied about it being available and someone having had it before.

I mean making sure it's currently installed and working on the say-so of the current house owner.

If the NIMBYs have a problem with windmills "destroying the view", imagine how they'd react to this plan if it were enacted here in North America.