I think you will find there are a number of legal systems that don't require a professional. Tribal and religious courts that are older than most nations have long existed for the same purposes and require only an understanding of the mores, traditions and yes, Laws of a particular group. A person who is more experienced in dealing with these courts may have a better chance of success but I don't think you would be able to call many of them "specialized professionals". It is only when the Law of a group or nation has grown so byzantine that it almost impossible to live a life without violating some aspect of it that you will find the necessity for a professional group to manage the complexity. In many "modern" sovereign states it has become common to pass laws with thousands of pages that have never been reviewed or considered as a whole. New laws often flagrantly and purposely contradict existing laws. Some are passed with the sole intention of having an excuse to stop and detain people when it is convenient, some are passed for political gain, and some are passed for reasons known only to the few people who secreted them away in an omnibus of unrelated legislation.The fact that modern law is so incomprehensible to the laity is a testament to it's dysfunction, not a justification of its existence. Ignorance of the law is no excuse, but when law itself has become so incomprehensible that even attorneys and judges can scarcely decipher its intent with regard to the common, good can any of us claim we are not ignorant?

Anyone looking at my posting history will see I am not a huge MS fan, but in this case I really think the biggest problem is that you can't have a touch based GUI and still be what most people think of as "Windows". A well executed touch based OS takes away almost all of Microsoft's market advantages, i.e. familiarity and application availability. Even if the OS GUI were completely converted to a nice touch interface, almost all existing windows apps would be clumsy to use. This is the closest thing to a level playing field MS has tried to get into in some time. Just look at the phone market, their current premium offering uses the HTC sense GUI bolted on top of WinCE 6.5. It's almost completely unlike "Windows" for the first several steps of any given operation, so why would the average user prefer windows over android/webos?

Just curious, when you say "situations where more restrictive licensing might be desired by their customers", can you tell me why a customer would prefer a MORE restrictive license? I can understand why someone may want to sell under a dual license by why would a customer want more restrictions on what they can do with the code? I just don't hear "Yeah, this is great, could you just put a few more restictions on what I can do with the source code?" a lot.

The judge's observation concerning the potential loss of choice for farmers and consumers is actually the more relevant issue. Even if the modifications are perfectly safe in every case, if the crop stands a strong chance of cross contaminating other farmer's fields Monsanto has proven themselves more than willing and capable of claiming ownership of any hybrids of their patented organisms.

So I have fewer problems with the GENETIC manipulations than I do the LEGAL manipulations.

That kind of demonstrates what the problem is. "Fake" chiropracty is...what? If you manipulate the back in any physical way then some would call that Chiropractic treatment, so even a light massage may count. Everyone says it is bogus because there are no studies, but if you can't do a study how can you say it ISN'T better than drugs or surgery? Back surgery doesn't have any double blind studies to prove it works either, but because they can point to scientific reasons for doing the procedure it is considered legitimate.
I would bet money that a decent massage would give more short term relief from pain than a placebo drug, and there a plenty of subjective follow-up studies that show people with "similar" back problems are "happier"(whatever that means) with the outcomes they get from Chiropractic care than "comparable" recipients of back surgery. Anyone who feels the need to say *citation needed* can just google chiropratic versus back surgery and you will find a bunch of articles... on chiropractic sites. But to be fair a lot of the people who say it is bunk are back surgeons so the bias cuts both ways.

Double blind studies compared to what exactly? It can't be compared to surgery, and drugs are generally not a treatment for a lot of things that involve the spine.

If you are talking about nut jobs that recommend chiropractic treatment of colds, asthma, etc. then I can see your point. But for non-specific lower back pain I'm not sure what you could study it against.

Linux predictions always depend on Microsoft bungling the response to a new threat. If MS had stuck with its plans to mothball XP Linux would be considerably more common on Netbooks and there would be more active interest from manufactures in support a Linux version for their machines the way the currently do for Windows. As it was MS did what they had to do to give customers a familiar Microsoft product to choose over Linux.

People will most often choose familiar products if they can, switching to something that is different but "just as good" ,or even better, isn't worth it to most people unless they are really unhappy with what they have.

The key is that Linux keeps creating more challenges for MS, forcing them to lower prices, increase performance and think of what the customers really want. Without the competitive threats Linux poses, Microsoft would normally charge more for bloated products that are upgraded when Microsoft WANTS you to upgrade. It's not their fault, that is what a complacent monopoly does. They should thank Linux, it has saved them from 2 or 3 really stupid moves.

Have you noticed how Linux is used as a club to bring Microsoft around in so many situations? Governments threaten to switch to Linux/a large discount offer from Microsoft appears. MS tries to kill XP sales, Linux notebooks appear/XP sales are extended and a leaner replacement for Vista gets fast tracked. If ARM finds some manufacturers who are willing to create and sell ARM based devices that are not too expensive and outperform comparable X86/64 devices I think the "no ARM version of Windows" would disappear.

X86 compatibility is holding everyone, including MS and Intel, back. Intel wanted to kill it with Itanium but the momentum was too much. I think Intel had an ulterior motive (too many x86 licensees to compete with them) but I think they still know they could do better, and in many ways the competition has if you just judge processor performance, price, and efficiency without regard to software base.

She knew she couldn't do what had to be done as the Governor so she resigned in order to put together a rag tag group of misfits with the skills necessary to save the world.

One Family, One helicopter, One Mission.

Coming this summer! The Palins Hunt in...

Die Nature Die!

A better example would be if you took a bunch of public domain audio recording from old wax tube recordings that had been cleaned up by audio engineers to remove hisses and pops. Can the audio engineers claim copyright on the cleaned up versions? I don't know the answer, but it is a closer analogy because a different performance of a public domain work clearly adds creative value. Does good lighting and color accuracy equal artistic merit?

Sorry, I didn't mean to imply that the Comp Sci curriculum would include any of those things. I was just replying to the GP's assertion that

"Real computer science students...are smart enough to pick up Unix as they work through the CS course"

If they graduated then I would guess that would qualify them as "real" and neither of the people I refer to were smart enough to pick up fairly basic things (installing IIS is a few mouse clicks) much less smart enough to pick up Unix.