> I've occasionally heard people say that if there was no copyright, there'd be no need for the GPL, but I don't buy that -- if you really believe that, why not use BSD or MIT? erm... because I believe that copyright exists? '~C -> ~G' does not imply '~G'.

Healthy old folks may be useful for humans. That would be a great explanation - if humans were the only things to sleep. Why do all sorts of animals which don't even have social groups, much less the ability to learn from each other (or anything to learn), sleep? Further, what sort of incredibly massive advantage are 'we' deriving from old people that in exchange we are willing to piss away at least a third of our life and render ourselves incredibly vulnerable?

The author of the OP article, bos, most certainly does understand the Darcs model, having used it often as he has long been part of the Haskell community (as his bio reveals); his point is that other people may not. (Personally, I think in comparison to Git's model, Darcs is a miracle of clarity. But reasonable hackers may differ.)

The German wikipedia is also small, banned fair-use images, has essentially no pop culture coverage, and is hostile to newbies.

Let's leave aside our reflexive hostility to pop culture and consider; is it *really* a good encyclopedia which, given unlimited space, will only have *5* paragraphs on Darth Vader - and Anakin Skywalker combined? (See http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darth_Vader#Anakin_Skywalker.2FDarth_Vader )

If you don't like this example, we can go through the list of English FAs or even GAs and compare them with their German counterparts. The comparison, I assure you, will not favor de. Why? Because de is a terrible Wikipedia, a shining example of deletionism and exclusivism run amok.

> A successful person currently between jobs (thus no insurance) getting hit by a car driven by a stupid person and being unable to pay the bill to save his life is NOT NATURAL SELECTION. Sure it is. Natural selection depends on a *differential* rate of reproduction between possessors of allele-variants. If successful persons die less/reproduce more even at the tiny rate of 1%, so small that pointless anecdotes and examples like yours are irrelevant, the associated allele variants will still win out in the long run! Evolution simply could not work if an allele had to be 100% perfect at preventing death, in your absurd binary example. (There are even full probabilistic models of how long a run it will take for a 1% or n% variation to reach fixation; but those equations are no doubt too complex for someone who has obviously only a pop science understanding of evolutionary theory.)

The Death Star was the embodiment of Tarkin's Tarkin Doctrine; of course Vader would let Tarkin use it as he saw fit. But nevertheless, the buck stopped at Vader's door. The 'supreme' adjective in his title ain't there for pretty; nor was he Palpatine's right-hand man for nothing. As for the choking thing, that might just be Vader realizing he was acting childishly.

Now, as for construction crew; while you may be channeling _Clerks_ there, we don't see any non-military personnel on the Death Star I, nor is it ever described or appear uncompleted. Whatever was left to do was no doubt being taken care of by the select picked crew of the Death Star I. The original construction was done by Wookiee slaves and Desapyre prisoners - all dead or gone by Yavin.

Finally: since when do rebellions need to declare war? But if you really insist: http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Corellian_Treaty

> Plus, how do you get around the fact that Luke killed way more people by destroying the Death Star I than Vader ever did?

Let's keep in mind that we see very little of Darth Vader; we don't hear about his genocide of the Falleen, for example (I'll assume that you will refuse to accept that Darth Vader is responsible for blowing up Alderaan, even though he was Supreme Military Executor, in charge of all military operations). The EU covers his exploits in much more detail, and gives him a more appropriate bodycount.

Also, the people on the Death Star were military. In war, military personnel are fair game. Luke didn't go after civilians; Darth Vader and the Empire did.

> What would we do without the wiki

Thanks; I always enjoy seeing people find my articles useful!
/article editor

> nondeterminism != free will.

Yes, that's option 3, as I said. And that may be your view, but I'm sure you don't presume to speak for everyone who claims to believe in free will.

> Maybe your entire philosophical platform, I've never seen a need for free will. The whole idea is pure anthropocentric hubris.

That's good for you; then these results are a non-issue for you. (Funnily enough, I hew to compatibilist views along the lines of Dennett, so it's not a issue for me either; but it's still interesting to discuss - it's not at all obvious that quantum mechanics would have anything to say about consciousness or free will.)

> Considering that quotes are often used to denote words that are being used to mean something different than what is being said (verbal irony?), it follows that a likely conclusion is "people have "free will the same way a rock does." Which is to say we don't have it as we understand it. Yes, you can definitely understand this as a 'reductio ad absurdum', but it's more of a trilemma: "Here's what quantum mechanics says: your nondeterminism implies particle nondeterminism. Now, you can either reject free will (and accept determinism), or reject quantum mechanics, or you can dodge the bullet by revising your concept of 'free will' to some other property than predictability you have but a particle doesn't. Which will it be?" Obviously we don't want to take any alternative. If we reject quantum mechanics, we've declared war on a century of successes and the entire physics community; if we reject free will period, then we've rejected our entire philosophical platform; and if we modify free will to cut out particles and bacteria, then it's even more unclear what exactly we mean by 'free will'. But if you accept these theorems, you have to pick one of these three.

In my experience doing both, Tor can eat up as much as you give it - which since the default limit is something like 100 kb/s with bursts up to 1000 means you'll be donating ~200 kb/s in my experience. Freenet on the other hand has a more generous cap, but I don't think I've ever seen it upload more than 30 or 40 kb/s, even with a few gigs in my store.