Depends. A lot of sites seem to get built these days that assume the user has a way to trigger onmouseover events. This isn't necessarily true.

Javascript is used by most malware installation systems. The typical route is that a trustworthy hacked site is modified to include a <script> tag with its source on the malware hosting domain. The resulting script will then use some mechanism to attempt to install malware, either simply dropping an executable download on the visitor and hoping they run it, or attempting to exploit either a browser or a browser plugin bug. Turn off javascript, and the exploit is never downloaded, so can't run.

There are also direct browser attacks that would require javascript to function, e.g. http://www.mozilla.org/security/announce/2013/mfsa2013-53.html or http://www.mozilla.org/security/announce/2013/mfsa2013-46.html (to pick a couple from the last month or two).

So, yes, your system is still less secure if you have JS enabled than if you don't.

Well, sure. But not *all* of them.

Ok, but that leaves a few problems. The various binary-only hardware drivers for Linux will only compile and run on a Linux kernel. Are you saying, therefore, that these can't be distributed with Linux without violating the GPL?

You're right. The Return of the Jedi was a decent film. Not up to Empire Strikes Back standards, but with Lucas writing rather than Leigh Brackett, what do you expect?

The lines are more blurred than you suggest. What about, say, the Linux kernel and Apache? The latter makes use of the services provided by the former, in much the same way that a plugin for a web application uses services provided by that application, but does that mean Linux builds of it can only be distributed under the terms of the GPL? Most people seem to assume otherwise, and I fail to see the practical distinction between the two cases discussed here.

Because the owner says so, and I don't have enough influence to convince him otherwise?

Because providing our code to competitors could cause us to lose our competitive edge?

Because there's no point releasing code that wouldn't be useful to anyone other than us?

There are a whole stack of reasons for not open-sourcing business code, which is why 99%+ of businesses never do it.

You clearly haven't learned media-science-speak, in which "fossil" means "any remnants of something that lived more than a handful of thousands of years ago, no matter how it has been preserved".

It *also* applies to anything that is combined with GPL code to form "a larger program". This could be interpreted as anything linked (and in GPLv2 this was explicit; GPLv3 is [presumably intentionally] more ambiguous, e.g. to cover interpreted or run-time linked programs).

You're missing the effect of the "mere aggregation" clause (the paragraph after 5(d) in GPLv3), which means a distributor can distribute something that is "the work" alongside (and potentially intermingled with) something that isn't "the work" without causing the two to become mixed and without requiring their additional content to be GPL-licensed. The GPL only requires the two to be considered the same work if one is actually derivative of the other. It would be pretty hard to argue that CSS or images are derivative of the original code, IMHO. Javascript less so, but still tricky and could go either way. The question is do they combine to form "a larger program", or are they independent programs communicating over an open channel. The latter is a pretty convincing explanation, so they would be considered an aggregate rather than a single work by the GPL, IMO.

(This is not legal advice. Consult a qualified expert rather than rely on this.)

Which is why the article you cited goes on to state "[t]he DNA would cease to be readable much earlier — perhaps after roughly 1.5 million years, when the remaining strands would be too short to give meaningful information." Given that 1.5Myear figure, why is 700Kyear surprising? It's not like they're expecting a technological breakthrough to make that 1.5My figure possible: we can already sequence pretty-much any single DNA strand we want, and reconstruction from short fragments is also an existing and thoroughly-developed technology.

Technology has always advanced in fits and starts. That enthusiasm for a particular field has waned and our achievements in it have regressed does not mean it will not begin advancing again.

A Freudian nipple-slip, I suspect.

AIUI, in some states non-profits don't have to pay towards unemployment benefits for an employee as long as the employee continues working for them. If they have good staff retention, this can turn out to be a huge saving.

So you'll stop claiming when they've paid you as much as you've paid in, right?

This is true. There is no other language which enables programs written in COBOL to run.