any CGI script that at any point invokes a shell or invokes a program that invokes a shell (e.g. using the system call), irrespective of the actual shell command
But it's been well known for more than ten years that you ought not to call system or execute external programs from a CGI program. That's just a bad idea. This exploit is one proof as to why.
As soon as money changes hands it is no longer a "private arrangement".
Congratulations; you've just given the religious right all the authority they need to regulate abortion out of existence.
Notice that the guy who said it is an advertising guy. That's his whole worldview. That's the way he thinks it is and the way he thinks it should be. Meanwhile for the rest of us, we have lots of alternatives. Paid sites, community-supported sites, ad-blocked sites, sites run by people who love what they are running a site about.
Basically this is a little advertiser wanting us to support clubbing a big advertiser, Google. He'd like us to get mad at his competition. What he wouldn't like is for us to start noticing just how much what he is advocating is in his self-interest.
I recommend we all switch to ad-block and screw them all. If some sites die or have to switch funding models, works great for me.
You don't have to be "cynical" to expect the government to act in the government's own best interest. The idea that one piece of government will keep another piece in check rather than colluding together to expand power is an unrealistic pipe dream. Honestly we've had over two hundred years of real world experimental evidence demonstrating that checks and balances DON'T WORK. They never did, and never will. The only realistic check on government power is secession.
They never want me. They find out I won't enforce the law as written if I find it to be immoral, and that's that.
Hopefully eventually they will be unable to find enough jurors who don't feel like me in the jury pool! But I guess I'm feeling over-optimistic today.
Because they were able to successfully extort cable companies for doing the same thing 50 years ago.
Because one of the government's justifications in the past has been that it's not really that much of a hardship
True. And I used to buy that.
judges tend to try to avoid flat out saying "my predecessors and colleagues were idiots and their rulings were bullshit."
Sounds like a job for a jury!
Mod up to 6!
The court concludes international travel is not a mere convenience or luxury in this modern world.
What does that have to do with it? Even if it were a mere convenience or luxury, the point of government is to secure the right to liberty. That includes the liberty to enjoy some things that some people might regard as a luxury (a subjective judgment if I ever heard one), so long as I am not doing so at the expense of somebody else's right to life, liberty, or property.
It's their land, their parking spots
No, it isn't. Everything they have was acquired through theft and coercion.
E = MC ** 2 +- 3db
