while there were various decent, proprietary, dialects that let you actually write code that did stuff, *standard* Pascal was as much use as a chocolate teapot

And that's still a problem today. There's no standard for OO Pascal, and the ANSI Pascal standards have been moribund since 1990.

That's why I abandoned Pascal (and Modula-2): I didn't want to get locked in to a single vendor.

(And for wont of mod points... The group in question just simply isn't contemplating what you talk to, promissory estoppel, and all sorts of other problems opening up that particular can of worms would be for someone stupid enough to TRY it.)

Considering that RMS didn't dream these licenses up, but rather Eben Moglen, you might want to contemplate who knows more about this... The law professor that actually teaches on this subject or someone claiming that there is a right of revocation in there that's effectively free of Promissory Estoppel and the like on the subject. Just because there's a law on one side doesn't mean other laws don't cause OTHER, equally bad problems on the subject and effectively preclude the hypothesized notion out of box.

No, if you're doing your legal documents right, it does place it into the Public Domain as intended. How? Promissory Estoppel prevents such an act from even being ran up the flagpole on an infringement suit. If you actually DID this, just because you can revoke assignments, etc. doesn't give you carte-blanche to actually DO it the way they're describing there.

Without covenants in place as part of the agreement, yeah. There's a problem. With them, this is really nothing more than the nattering of someone trying to make a vastly bigger deal of things than is really there.

Bingo!

You can't make promises or covenants of this nature with the intent of even remotely considering to revoke them. Your successors are also bound to them. Typically someone will bring up Promissory Estoppel and then raise Bad Faith- and then move to dismiss the case you brought against them...and most typically get it.

Fuck that, I've been trying to install FreeBSD on my Commodore 64. Crapping Commodore 1541 disk drive keeps mangling my installation CD.

That's pretty much how I remember it. There would be all those awkward asides referring to events in the films, as if anybody who hadn't seen the movies would actually be reading the book. I found it fairly distracting.

Get back in your box, Richard Stallman!

Another one of my favorite films. David Niven and Peter Falk were also a riot.

So you see nothing wrong with a professor using his status to obtain sexual favors?

I think The Empire Strikes Back still stands up very well. I agree the other two don't have the same magic they once held, but Episode V, which, ironically, had the least involvement from Lucas of the original six films, is extremely well plotted, with better dialog and much more convincing acting. The only thing that comes close to Episode V is the final confrontation between Luke, Vader and the Emperor in RotJ. Unfortunately, that's only a handful of scenes in an otherwise mediocre film.

I read just one of the Dune prequels and refused to touch another. So far as I am concerned, Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson just pissed over the late great Frank Herbert's legacy.

I wish Brian Herbert had done what Christopher Tolkien did, and just simply release the unfinished stories and plotlines, rather than trying to "finish" the series with appalling novels.

Maybe I'll give the Zahn novels another try. I mainly just remember finding the prose pretty stiff.

I have no idea whether Guinness was an asshole or not, but he was a very good actor, certainly the best one on the set of Episode IV. I recently rewatched his brilliant take as George Smiley in Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, and was reminded of just how good he was. That's not even mentioning his extraordinary work with David Lean in Bridge Over The River Kwai, Lawrence of Arabia and Doctor Zhivago. A personal favorite is the original The Ladykillers.

So far as I understand it, while Guinness disliked the dialogue (who can blame him, a lot of it was pretty bad), he was grateful for the money it gave him.

I'm a white Canadian 40-50 who even owned the Princess Leia action figure back in 1978 because you needed a complete set to be cool, and dreamed at night of getting a Millennium Falcon playset. I'll throw down my money, even if I know I'm going to hate the results, because my childhood until about the age of 13 was defined by Star Wars.

And that's the best decision they made. I've read a few of the books, including the often highly praised Timothy Zahn novels, and for the most part the books are so badly written that they actually make Lucas's scripts look good.

And I don't call it a reboot to ignore all the Extended Universe storylines. Unlike new Star Trek and James Bond films, which literally restart the franchises at the very beginning. The new Star Wars films simply start some time after RotJ, so are more akin to Star Trek TNG.