First off this is nothing like the Oracle case. That was a case about reimplementing APIs, and has nothing to do with linking against someone-else's code that provides APIs. Secondly, it is a stretch to say that the RTS SCSI target is just including APIs. It is using all sorts of internal kernel functions that go far beyond what most reasonable programmers would consider to be an API to the kernel. If you interpret things that liberally, then any proprietary modifications to a GPL application would be allowed by just bundling up the list of functions you happen to use and calling it an API.

If you read the list, it is clear that no one is disputing the facts of what happened; no one is making unfounded assumptions. Rising Tide Systems has a SCSI module that they have written entirely from scratch. In the process of writing this they pushed much of it into the kernel, so much in fact that one of their employees became the Linux SCSI targets maintainer. They have kept some of it back and are shipping a modified kernel containing their code to customers without providing the source code.

They believe that this is allowed, and that their code is not a derivative work of the kernel. Basically RTS is saying: If NVIDIA can have proprietary drivers, why can't we have proprietary kernel subsystems? The other side believes that what NVIDIA is doing likely is a GPL violation, and furthermore some of the technicalities that NVIDIA claims make it legal don't apply to what RTS is doing.

This issue has been ticking time bomb ready to go off. It is entirely possible that some, all, or none of the proprietary drivers written are a violation of the GPL. It all depends on the courts interpretation of derivative work, and no one knows for certain (although some arguments have stronger precedent than others). Furthermore, it is too late to add GPL linking exception to Linux's license to clarify this (one way or the other), because there are too contributors at this point to come to an agreement. So it will remain murky as mud until someone finally sues someone over the issue. Sounds like this may actually be happening. But even then, the ruling may end up depending on the nature of the proprietary extension, and thus remain fuzzy.

I wonder if this means that some others who left in the recent past, like J Allard or Ray Ozzie will be coming back. The rumors were that Sinofsky vigorously opposed their plans, and they left after Balmer decided to back Sinofsky's way rather than them.

The vast majority of murders today don't have any eye witnesses, and yet many of those cases still get solved and the perpetrator caught. Furthermore, it really isn't hard to sneak out behind someone and shoot someone today, without even being seen by the victim. So an invisibility cloak will only make it slightly easier to kill someone, and won't make it any harder to catch them. Not much of a game changer.

I'm not saying that. I'm saying your suggestion has the exact same flaws as the current system, and won't make people feel any less disenfranchised.

No that's not what happens. For example, suppose that in state A each of 20 districts is 45% Republican and 55% Democrat so all 20 electoral votes go to Democrats. Then in state B each of 15 districts is 65% Republican and 35% Democrat, so all 15 votes go to the Republicans. Then the Democrat wins the electoral vote by 20 to 15, even though the Republican had 54% of the popular vote. This is despite the fact that the electoral votes in this example were even distributed purely based on population (each district is the exact same size).

Splitting large elections into a series of smaller winner takes all elections does not give the same result as popular vote, because it suppresses the minority vote in each district. And that's before you get into bigger practical problems like gerrymandering. If you want popular vote then go with direct popular vote. If you want to maintain the current handicap for smaller states that the electoral congress provides (I think it's good), then require all states to allocate their electoral votes in proportion to the total vote within the entire state. Don't split things up into even smaller winner-takes-all elections.

In case you were tempted to RTFA, don't. You have to click through two ad-laden pages, and there really isn't any more information than in the summary.

I won't speak for Tesla, but SpaceX does not depend on government money. The Falcon 1 was created entirely with private funding, which includes capital investments to build their entire vertically integrated production facilities (they don't contract anything), some launch facilities, and design, construction, and multiple test flights of an entirely new design of rocket. The Falcon 9 was mostly NASA funding, but it built heavily on the Falcon 1 design, and was thus less expensive to design and test than the Falcon 1 (even without including the huge facilities investments mentioned before). Furthermore, SpaceX already had financing to develop Falcon 9 when they won the NASA contract. The contract allowed them to divert that money into the Dragon Capsule instead, the majority of which is thus privately funded.

So without government funding, they would be about where they are with Falcon 1/9, but just getting started with Dragon. Government money sped them up a bit, but they aren't even close to being dependent on that funding.

I absolutely hate it. In the desert it is too fucking hot to spend time outside in the afternoon/evening during the summer. The morning is wonderful, nice warm sun but it hasn't gotten too hot yet. I would love to spend hours outside every summer morning exercising, tending the garden and just hanging out, but I have to be at work at a fixed time and some bastards thought it was a good idea to steal an hour of wonderful morning, so they can give me an extra hour of dreadful scorching evening. And since the sun sets latter I have to waste more energy getting the house down to a reasonable temperature before bedtime. This is one of the few things that Arizona got right, I wish the rest of the southern states would figure it out as well.

No they are not. Churches have lost their tax-free status because of this in the past, but usually only if someone forces the issue.

Take a look at this map. If you live live in one of the solid colored states, the electoral votes for your state are already statistically guaranteed. Voting for the lesser of two evils in one of those states is like pissing into the ocean. It has absolutely no chance of having any effect in the outcome of the election, and at best it slightly adjusts the margins of victory sending a message. Vote for the candidate that sends the best message; the one that best reflects your political views.

To elaborate on the other posters, the term curtilage refers to a very small area around your house (like a typical suburban yard), and doesn't include other private property like farmland, etc. These people had a large wooded plot of land with a house on it. They had large fences and no trespassing signs all around the property. The police set up cameras on the private property, but away from the house.

Here is a better article that also links to the full ruling, and has some very informative posts in the discussion.

Also, RedHat doesn't care about mobile devices; they care about ARM servers. 64bit will be more more relevant in that area, as java backend code often needs as much memory as you can give it.

From what I understand, there hasn't been a single piece of graphics hardware ever that implemented every single OpenGL call in hardware. The point of Mesa was to provide reference code that driver implementers could build on, replacing calls that their hardware did support with the appropriate driver hooks, and leaving the rest as is, while providing a consistent ABI (at least per-distro) to applications that need to link against libGL. It serves the same purpose today as when it was first written.

That is pretty much what they did say. Their conclusion was that the recent small earthquakes did not make it more likely that a larger earthquake was about to happen, however, this is an earthquake prone area, one could happen an any time. Furthermore, they stated that there were a lot of old unsafe buildings in the area that should be evacuated in the case of any earthquake as they do not provide any protection, and replaced as soon as practical.