The proposed "Media Code" is a shakedown. The pollies are doing the bidding of only the big the media and will get good press for their troubles. It's corruption 101. The new code does not apply to small mom and pop news and explicitly allows the big media companies to take their share of the deal. The ACCC has been issuing press releases that mis characterise their own draft legislation. It's an absolute sham. And, the pollies will just ram it through and we'll all be stuck with an even crappier coverage of the pollies so they can push even more crap through parliment with even less oversight.

Your subject line indicates your lack so appreciation on open source. There are open source Java APIs and GNU is only one of hundreds of open source licenses. Up until this lawsuit, APIs were considered not protectable from copyright. The SCOTUS decision on the IBM BIOS case was considered the rule. The reasoning was that like you can't copyright a dictionary, so you can't copyright the verbs of an API. This means you as an app developer don't have to be locked into one supplier of an API. How would you like it if I held the copyright to all English words and you had to use my paper, air, equipment to utter any of those words? It would go against the whole idea of why we as a community allowed copyright laws in the first place. Hence we will be all very sad when and if APIs become copyright encumbered. OK, there are enough APIs that are open source today that will become the only go to for future projects. In fact, anything not open source will be a non starter. So Oracle, go ahead, make my day.

Larry has benefitted from the very rule he is trying to deprive all of us. In this fight against API freedom, he has destroyed all trust in Java as an open platform. It would be silly for anyone to trust Oracle ever again.

My opinion is public and this article is the first I posted on in a long while i think I care that MS makes a mockery of Justice system. Just to point out I care, being public and all.

Sure, he pleaded guilty to that. That's not the point. The point was that the severity of the sentence was because of Microsoft testimony saying these disks were worth $28 each. That's ehat gave the prosecutor leverage when in fact they are free.

I have a similar make based build system called MakeXS. It's used in the Austria C++ project. It has similar features but my plan was to migrate away from make. Now that Google has released bazel I'm thinking of migrating to it instead.

"Deeper"? There are multiple definitions of balanced. The usual meaning of balanced is if the difference in the number of nodes is no more than 1. Depth difference is usually AVL balanced (named after G.M. Adelson-Velsky and E.M. Landis). So, there are an arbitrary set of "balancing" rules. He could have, in theory just returned true. Or false....

No, that's pretty conventional nowadays.

Being a big company, Apple has many to be careful not to use its size to kill companies. Simply put, if Apple wants A123's tech and it can simply provide key A123 employees an offer they can't refuse, it gives them an unfair advantage and they can do this to any company. A company the size of Apple is able to do this many times over and it simply becomes an unstoppable monopoly which goes against the the whole spirit of capitalism when one company can control everything.

... that I can write bad code in any language?

It's only illegal if you get caught.

I got my first mobile phone in 1999. It was because the job required it. The very first day I had the phone, my car broke down and I the phone was a rather very convenient device.

I was a phone luddite. I didn't want to be strung to the rest of the world by the hip. Dude, you can turn the phone off any time. I don't have to use it.

Now, 11 years on. I have a Galaxy Nexus, I run My Tracks almost every day, I browse web sites, take photos and videos, do navigation and occasionally make a phone call.

I get to do what I want to do better. Sweet!

You can "fix" this. You can type +x +y +z and it will only give results that contain all of x, y and z. There are a few other "operators" you can use.

My son has Asperger's too. I think you need to read up alot more on the kinds of issues that surround persons with AS. There are a huge number of journal articles you should get familiar with to make sure you keep your son out of trouble. Asperger’s Syndrome in Forensic Settings Is just one of many. A recent one by Ian Freckelton and David List, Asperger’s Disorder, Criminal Responsibility and Criminal Culpability gives a very good summary on the issues an AS sufferer has with the Criminal Justice System.

If you truly care about your son, you will take the time to get informed as the CJS can screw with an AS sufferer in ways that will make you sick.

I'm not exactly sure what you think you maybe learned but both shuttle disasters were caused by management overriding engineers and making engineering decisions.

It's not uncommon that managers in stressful situations somehow loose faith in engineers and make their own engineering decisions. All too often this happens, perhaps the consequences are often not dire but it regularly causes major issues. There is an endless list of them. Google for "challenger bhopal engineering management" and you will find endless discussions on them. Needless to say the report on the Challenger disaster points its finger directly at the management - alas it did little to remedy the situation having another shuttle disaster happen only a few years later again with management not listening to engineers and overriding their recommendations.