I didn't mean it is literally a contract, I said basically. The point is, multiple parties were involved in it's creation, and when that is the case it is not unusual to consider other sources to resolve ambiguity.

Yes, you can walk away from a license. That is not the point. The license is already drafted. You interpret it and decide it is good. There is no reason to walk away or negotiate. It would be highly unfair for the licensor to come back and say 'the words I said (and you agreed to by using the product) are not actually what I meant'.

It will run the same every time, right up until the point where a new unexpected input is introduced. What then?

The Constitution is basically a contract between the States. It is not unusual in contract law to look outside the contract to resolve ambiguities. They are looking for the so-called 'meeting of the minds' between the parties to determine the real meaning.

A license is not a contract. It is completely one-sided. and the licensee has no input and there is no meeting of the minds. Therefore, the licensor has all the responsibility for making the license clear. He does not get to go back later and say 'that is not what I meant'.

This is an idea that is often posted on here, and it never makes sense to me. What makes you think a programming language would do any better with these kinds of questions? There are basically an infinite number of variables - how do you write a program that handles all those variables, especially when some variables or values were not even known to exist (or were otherwise not considered) when the program (law) was written? The best you could do is throw an exception when the set of variables and values does not already match an existing definition.

Which is basically what the law does. If a case is largely the same as a prior case the principles of law are pretty well understood, and executing the 'program' just determines which party wins based on the established rules. But when a case is not just like a previous case, then more work is required. When that work has been done it becomes precedent, and future cases do not need to consider how those variables should be interpreted.

But that's exactly his point. All organizations have sensitive data infrastructure these days - most do not have IT staff competent to actually manage it once everyone's connected to the internet. And the staff they have was getting cut to the bone before IT got outsourced to the cloud. So, unless you're as tech savvy as the cloud majors, your data's likely to be less secure in house. Of course, that assumes you're a big enough target for hackers to take an interest in you. If Sony can be cracked, you can bet you can be too. So if you're as conspicuous a target as a Sony, you're probably better off in the cloud than relying on your IT staff to protect you. Odds are they're not as good as Sony's staff...

Or, more likely, the company's merged a few times, so most of the IT folks got fired. And now the 2-3 people remaining are in a different location administering systems they're not familiar with.

When my company switched Manhattan offices last year (after a string of takeovers and mergers), they mandated that all servers be located in a cheaper New Jersey location - including file servers for the local network. Even with a pretty good amount of bandwidth between the two sites, the file servers are now essentially useless. I've resorted to doing all work on local copies on my desktop machine and then copying them to the servers for backup whenever I think I've changed enough stuff for it to be worth waiting 15 minutes for the copy operation. It was either that or wait 10 minutes every time I wanted to recompile a Windows app I work on. I suppose they could've hosted my dev environment on a Citrix box in New Jersey - except that all the Citrix stuff they have is in Kansas City.

These are New York only servers, and the New York office has a mostly-empty equipment room that houses the routers, phone system, etc. The only reason these servers are in New Jersey is that there's nobody left in the New York office to swap backup tapes every morning (and I guess there'd be some cost to arrange for offsite storage of those tapes). But they're probably paying me more to do my own backups than any real solution would cost.

Broadcast radio is 'full of ads'. As in, a LARGE percentage of the time is spent trying to get you to purchase some product or other, often in the most obnoxious way possible.

XM does have some announcments. Nowhere nearly as frequent as 'every other song', usually I'll hear one or two announcements during my 1/2 hour commute, and those announcements generally are less than 5 seconds long. XMs announcements tend to be 'if you want to hear more of that artist, switch to channel x'. I guess if you are desperate to call something an ad that would count.

It seems the main proponents of 3D printing are people that break a lot of stuff. OK, everybody breaks stuff, but most people just tape (or glue) the broken thing back on, which is way cheaper and quicker than printing a new one will ever be.

I am still waiting for the 'killer' 3D printing idea, that would make ordinary people care at all about 3D printing.

Why? Because it couldn't be an application problem, or a hardware problem, or a power problem, or a network problem, or even an admin problem? Must be the OS?

What are you listening to on XM that is 'nothing but ads'? I have been listening to XM for over a decade in both cars and at home (mostly rock/jazz/classical) and I have yet to hear an ad.

The reason that geeks get incensed about both things is because they like being incensed and will find any reason to do so, even if said reason is entirely incorrect. Not exactly 'sensible'.

In the case of patents, 'on the computer/on the internet' DOES in fact make a difference. The irate geeks focus on one of two things: they either claim that patents protect concepts, or they claim it is 'obvious'. Both are wrong. A patent does not protect 'display a moving picture', it protects HOW you do that. A film projector is fundamentally different in almost every way from a computer decoding an MPEG. But the geek will say 'it is the same thing, only on a computer'. No, it is not. Then they trot out the 'obvious' claim, but only after someone has already done it. Everything becomes obvious after it has been done.

In the case of Uber they claim that the 'new' thing is 'it is an app'. But the fundamental thing is it is a car-for-hire service, and car-for-hire services are regulated. It doesn't matter in the slightest HOW the car is hired.

The cost of NYC medallions is not all that high. They are just not available, so people who already have one can sell it for a lot of money if they want.

Now, ask yourself why a city would want to limit the number of cabs, and if you can't come up with any reasons other than 'corruption' and 'bought by the taxi companies' then you can't think very well.

That is you doing the rebooking. This is the flight crew rebooking for you. They are not the same. And having gone through both ways (my rebooking vs airline rebooking) I much prefer to have the airline do it. However, you used to have to wait til you were on the ground for the airline to rebook.

It is 'Watergate does not bother me, does your conscience bother you, tell the truth'.

In some cities no distinction is made between cabs that are 'hailed' and cabs that are phoned for.

In other cities (such as NY) they do make a distinction. 'Yellow cabs' are hailed, and can not be phoned for. 'Black cars' are phoned for, and can not be hailed. Both are regulated.