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.

But most of that is on the cloud anyway.

And how, exactly, do you think that data in the cloud is stored?

Not really a good comparison; the polar bear is already a killing machine, and putting a radio collar on it "could" make it a cyborg. It's either a cyborg killing machine, or a radio tracked killing machine.

The bacteria are in essence, armored AND tracked, which makes them pretty a more like Emo kids with smart phones who tweet their every action. Sounds counter productive; "LOL, just arrived at the Colon and man, this dude is whack!" Sorry, my slang is 10 years un-hip.

That was an awesome and insightful response.

So while Nuclear is getting better technology -- it's providers are only in the game if the Government can flip the bill.

Has any business in the past two decades actually financed and built a nuclear power plant? If not, then that would challenge the concept that they are economical.

"The government views this as a revenue enhancing measure because it wants to channel gamblers to its own Espacejeux, the government's own online gaming site."

Usually the blocking of sites is for morality issues, but Quebec is seeing this as a revenue measure. Much like the provisions against bringing in your own water bottle to a concert, so you can buy their more expensive one.

Communism is redistribution of wealth, or at least apportionment of resources (can be like old USSR, or like Star Trek if you've got machines to materialize anything you can want -- resources are no longer limited).

Fascism is a government that runs for the purpose of businesses and eventually, picks a winner (like 1940's Italy and Germany, and arguably Japan today, and America is getting close).

But what is it when the government BECOMES the company? Don't government's know they can just PRINT MONEY? SEE; Real World economics explained below.

Instead of a lottery/gambling;
Form your own bank, create bonds for local infrastructure, and pay 10% per diem with tax breaks to investors and meanwhile you can put people to work creating things that will enhance business and the community. You get more money back from the wages.

Gambling is a pernicious social problem, and these scratch-card financed governments can only capture revenue from other locations and their own citizens, who will be less productive and lose a work ethic for their "get rich quick" gambling ethic. It's a way to raise taxes on the people who usually have the least education, judgement and income. In short; it's robbing Peter to pay Paul, but doing it with Pay-Day loans and Paul is going to be a useless wife-beater wearing fool who insists everyone around him write their Le Menu in French.

*In the USA we have a fractional reserve banking system. Bonds are created to be offset by dollars created and the bonds are investments the government can sell. So money is created by debt. The Money just gets shipped to banks. Why doesn't the government be the bank, you may ask, since it's both the real lender and the one taking the risk (holding and paying off the bond) - and wow, Iceland just did it and it seems to have worked fine in the past in the USA. Great question, which will get you kicked out of economics class if you ask it again. but that's because it was necessary to pay off the rich people in charge at the time during the Civil War -- I'm sure people have learned interesting and convoluted economical explanations for why our Federal Reserve banking system is yadda yadda, but they can't explain how the system doesn't collapse if you pay off all the debts that created money in the first place (because of factoring, banks can loan $10 or more dollars for each on deposit - but leverage works both ways see; Nov. 2008) -- oh, and let's not notice that the #1 Investor is offshore banks. Anyone know if we don't just manufacture money to buy our own money? But I digress, all is well and go back to whatever and just know; governments don't need to tax -- EXCEPT to engage the citizens, and to redistribute wealth (some other fools think it's because they can't pay for things otherwise and stuff about who DESERVES what they earned -- as if most wages weren't decisions made by those who valued themselves higher), and it's a way to value their currency -- you have to back a currency with the ability to pay it back if you don't have nuclear weapons (OK, someone really needs to explain to the average person how currencies are valued; military power, and/or arbitrary decision of World Banker and his last bootie call -- you are welcome).

Russia -> Alaska is two 30 mile bridges through Diomede Island. That's like crossing the English channel, which has been done.

The Atlantic is harder. You'd want to go north of Baffin Bay to get to Greenland, and then you'd be stuck with a ~300 mile jump to Iceland, another 300 mile jump to the Faroe Islands, and a third 300 mile jump to get down to Scottland. Building a 300 mile bridge is probably possible, but...

Can anyone speak to the costs that are often left out of pro nuclear equations;

Half of all nuclear power plants don't seem to get completed -- is that fair?

Cost over-runs are rampant, they never cost what is projected, often this is 2 to 10 times projected, but maybe that's just in the USA where the winning lowest bid forces unrealistic expectations.

After the plant is out of service, they have to maintain it for 2000 years -- or that's what I'd heard. Good luck getting humanity to keep going on a project that has no benefits for longer than the aquifers of Rome were built. Companies finagle themselves out of pension obligations these days, and dump toxins whenever someone isn't looking (google any records of dumping of the coast of New Jersey for instance -- metric tons of if). So the "we'll collect money to take care of decommissioning" is only as good as the government. With Citizen's United, it's cheaper to buy a politician than store a control rod. We all need government, but then some people who are pro corporate, have a lot of wishful thinking when it comes to corporate responsibility. Nuclear power has bigger responsibilities, are we heading towards our own Fukishima one day?

It is reliable and good to have in combination with other energy sources, but mere "cost per KWH" is not the only factor. We should also be looking at the water usage of energy and how it effects standard of living (you know; creating jobs for a lot of people as the cost of Green energy, rather than mostly capital expenditures as we get with Nuclear Plants)

I've got a therapist who is helping my kids, and I'm having a hard time justifying all the practices she is promoting. But since we are getting the input -- I've got to at least try what she recommends.

But the "put all the violent video games away -- it will hurt their minds" really irks me. I know too many violent brats who aren't allowed to even play with toy guns, much less violent games. There's no damn serious studies that link the two; as if violence arose with a First Person Shooter.

The main downside I do see to games and the smart phones is over stimulation. It's kind of like how some stimulant drugs work, and the user is no longer satisfied by real-world pleasures. There is value to "being bored." Figuring out how to entertain yourself or being lost in thought -- writing down a dream you had -- that's profile of future inventors.

It isn't cartoons or games in themselves that rot the mind. In fact, I'm fairly sure anything that forces you to react quickly improves the mind -- it's that doing it TOO MUCH instead of sports, and other more cerebral endeavors where you create the content needs to be part of someone's day.

I grew up with parents who didn't think you had to do much with the kids except feed them - and I'm raising my kids as if they were orchids. There needs to be a balance between these two extremes.