Did you know it's technically legal to throatstab anyone who says things like "kibibyte", "mebibyte", or other Mushmouth-invented fictional units?

In no unit of measurement is 64K(anything) = 65 6 35 = (64K+99).

Sure, but under what justification? If you download an adware app, you're not out anything. You can delete it. You can duct tape over the add portion of your screen. Unless it's "adware with IAP", which would place it in the non-free category, it's factually free in every practical sense.

I find adware annoying and I steer clear of it, but I can't imagine a reason to label it as non-free when it costs me no money to download or use it.

Apple is a public corporation, but they seem to be eking out a living from making stuff that people voluntarily want to buy.

As it turns out, a greedy algorithm is a poor choice for those actually wanting to be greedy.

I understand the concept. By getting other people excited about your favorite OS / band / TV show / game, you increase the likelihood that people will want to bother with continuing to make it.

There are plenty of projects that exist because they scratch the author's itch, and will continue to be maintained even if their authors were the only person in the world using them. Something as big as a Linux distro, or enormous as an entire OS like one of the BSDs, likely needs a certain user base to make it worthwhile. As such, I don't care if everyone in the world uses FreeBSD. I just want it to be popular and widespread enough that no one starts asking themselves if it's time to pack it up and go home.

If I'm Activision, I'm claiming that this is Constitutionally protected political speech. If you're the public figure in charge of a country, I feel you lose the right to control how you're depicted in media.

I'd almost buy that, except people generally seem to like the Mac OS interface which hasn't had a meaningful Start button in the Windows sense, since OS 9 or so. You don't have to make an exact clone of XP for people to enjoy it.

If you believe Apple, that's how their iCloud Keychain works. They say they can't decrypt your keychain, because the keys are embedded in your phone and never transmitted.

You know, I think Apple, Google, and a few other companies could get away with calling their bluff. If Tim Cook or Larry Page had a press conference to announce that they'd received a hush order from the NSA, that they refused to honor it, and that it was against their company policy to spy on Americans (all while waving a flag and talking about apple-pie-eating eagles), I don't think much could be done about it. Can you imagine the firestorm if someone tried to have those guys arrested for "protecting average Americans like you and me against government oppression", which is what the front page of Google News would say for the next month?

I'm certain the OpenBSD guys have literally never cared a single bit. Their goal is to make a secure, clean, and open codebase that people can use and build upon. Anything beyond it simply existence is a bonus.

Yeah, no. You can't enumerate every permutation of every weapon imaginable. At some point, you have to expect an adult to assess a new situation using generally acceptable principals to reach a reasonable conclusion.

Ask a random guy on the street whether Scala is a declarative language and you should expect a random distribution. Ask him whether a disassembled rifle is a weapon and you should expect a solid "yes". You shouldn't need to train on that.

Also, this guy was a dumbass.

A little harsh but dead accurate. They're not legally obligated to sue the grieving parents. They could even draw up a contract and sell them limited rights to have this one statue in perpetuity for a dollar, or some such. For PR reasons, the DC rep could even donate the dollar to the rights purchaser.

There are many ways DC could do this, legally and protected, without being asswipes. They chose "fuck 'em; none of the above".

That, or they could be normal decent non-fuckhead humans and let a little boy have a grave that looks like the hero he wanted to be. I prefer that option.

A family acquaintance - let's call him "Joe" - worked as an airport screener. This is a true story: I was personally in the room when Joe was complaining to my dad that he'd been fired.

They run periodic checks where an undercover agent tries to smuggle contraband onto a plane. When questioned after the fact, Joe didn't understand why everyone was upset that he'd allowed a disassembled rifle through screening: "but it was in pieces! He couldn't have done anything with it!". "But Joe, he could've taken it into a bathroom and put it together, couldn't he?", followed by an expression of horror creeping across his face as the realization sank in.