The DMCA states that you are not allowed to circumvent a mechanism that protects a copyrighted work even if circumvention is your only means of exercising numerous rights granted by law. Basically, it is in direct conflict with far older and established laws, and so you end up in court trying to resolve this contradiction, with one side having little money to pay for a lawyer while the other finances political campaigns to see their favorite laws enacted.

I felt the parent already made that point, but of course you are right - the better the technique, the greater the range of interpretation. Put differently, ones technique is just a means to an end, with the end being the interpretation.

Precisely. Basically, technique and interpretation are not the same thing. When a score indicates a mood, it is giving an emotional direction for the given interpretation; it is not, as I understand it, detailing how to produce said interpretation. For example, a piano performance would always be unique because each performance brings an interpretation unique for that moment.

With regards to oratory skills, I couldn't agree more. A friend once read a poem he wrote which I completely fell in love with. When I tried reading it, giving my best effort, all beauty conveyed that first time was all but demolished...

No, it is not like other countries...

You have a point, there is no comprehensive version numbering scheme that is universally accepted. I think you are also wrong as the issue is about the very well accepted beta, RC and final release scheme, not simply number sequences.

No number sequence, such as 8.10 or whatever comes to mind, is going to tell you that the release is a beta, RC or final release. However, outside developer circles, people are going to assume a final release, and that is precisely why one should label a version as beta or RC if confusion is to be avoided. Obviously, confusion was not avoided with 4.0, and again, not everyone keeps track of developer blogs and announcements.

Obviously, KDE 4.0 was barely a release candidate to end users, so one could at least have expected the RC label. Had it been "properly" named, I would find it hard to imagine distros like Kubuntu or Fedora shipping a first release candidate in the manner 4.0 was delivered. It would have been an embarrassment to them. Instead, KDE was embarrassed. Needlessly.