The CRU made sure it was never published?

If that were true, then you'd be able to find perfectly good articles were "censored". Perhaps you think that the CRU had the scientists bumped off and their hard disks melted. That would explain why there is no evidence, right? The scientists, the papers, EVERYTHING is gone.

Either that, or you'd be able to back up your accusation.

Let me guess. You have no idea what papers the CRU never published, AND YOU COULDN'T FIND THEM IF YOU TRIED.

Remember, you are not paranoid if everyone really is against you.

How antiquated !

We use papyrus, and a few slav- I mean scriveners to enter our bugs.

The problem is that we only fix the latest bugs, because the older papyri are buried below a huge stack.

Fans of the walled garden may be happy with what they get, while those who are unhappy with that choice may be looking elsewhere for their OS environment, thus VLC for Mac may not be on their radar.

If "freedom" is a desirable feature for certain users, they can certainly weigh that appropriately themselves.

You could say the same about any feature. Which is just another way of saying that these aggregate scores are pretty much meaningless. Which is true, but not really a useful observation.

I had heard, at the Oregon Coast Aquarium, on an overnight stay with my son in their shark tube IIRC, that octopuses are about equal in intelligence to domestic cats.

They allowed signed packages to be installed without entering the password.

This was bad for multi-user, as it allowed someone to re-install a package, and alter settings (my understanding of the problem).

It really I think has more to do with:
1) FC people wanted to show off new security framework
2) FC people not thinking multi-user.

But I don't really know. I personally don't see a problem with allowing anyone that can sudo to install something, install the trusted packages without it.

Okay, I concede that in the case of a made-up insurance company with only one customer, that's how it would work. Further, I'll concede that if I had wings and could navigate using sonar I might be a bat. Neither of these things are based in reality though. In the real world, insurance companies have thousands, or tens of thousands of subscribers, all of whom are paying far more for the insurance than they are using in care on a day-to-day basis. A small number are using far more than they're paying in, based on catastrophic circumstances (cancer, heart disease, brain surgery, whatever). That money is coming from the other subscribers. This is why insurance companies run at a profit, not at a loss. If the investors were the source of the payouts, there would be no profit, the stock would plummet and there would be no more investors. Seeing as how that isn't what's happening, I think we're safe to say that investors are *not* paying for claims.

While ASCAP is "not for profit", it has paid employees, particularly its board of directors. This provides it motive to seek every drop of money it can, particularly if it is not "cost effective" to do so. The largest part of those costs are, after all, employee wages.

It has the muscle to extort money out of business owners even when it knows it is in the wrong; it is fully aware of the cost of defending a lawsuit, and that the vast majority of small businesses and performers cannot afford to do so. (And guess what? More overhead!)

This is by no means the first such story I've heard, even here on slashdot. If you've got potentially deep pockets and are high-profile, they may back off, but if you look sueable, they may sue to make an object lesson of you. Much like the RIAA.

Just as an aside, I found a reference saying that ASCAP does not automatically pay royalties for general live performances. I bet, though, that it still collects them. As you seem more informed about ASCAP particulars, would you care to speak about that?

I was standing on top of a mountain and could get 4 networks.

Same thing happened to me. Standing at the top of a mountain and noticed that I had full signal. Then I turned around, and noticed that the restaurant behind me had a radio mast on top of it.

I was going to reply with pretty much the same thing, but you about covered it.

I switched to Ubuntu about 3 years ago, and haven't used windows on my desktop system since.

If I were to install Windows XP on my system now, I would spend hours trying to track down the right drivers for my system.
If I were to install Windows Vista on my system now, It would be unstable and slow, and I would have to track down drivers for my hardware.
I tried to install Windows 7 on my system to try it out. I never did get the sound to work, and the wireless networking barely worked through a cludged generic driver.

If I install Ubuntu, everything works, and its done in like 20-30 mins, a complete usable system. Even my printer works.

Exactly. This smacks of someone getting very very angry and lashing out without giving any thought to what he's trying to accomplish, and how to achieve them. Sometimes an uncivil riot gets results. This isn't one of them. Stupid tactics, stupid strategy.

No more IE being forced down our throats... Except when we need to access our corporate intranet.

"... nor would it disallow anyone from modifying the original BSD code to mimic the closed-source project's new functionality "

How do you make that leap? As I mention above, neither BSD or public domain prevents the commercial vendor (or an individual for that matter) from copyrighting their deltas. Were you to do something similar, it is an open question whether they would have a court case against you. Worse, of course, if they got a software patent.

"It's simple and boring, and doesn't really make good cocktail party conversation. Maybe that's why it gets overlooked..."

Uh, yeah, I am SO sure that is why IBM, HP, Oracle, etc, etc choose to participate in GPL projects, even though BSD has been around so much longer. Couldn't have anything to do with the guarantee of a level playing field. I think you nailed it. It must be the cocktail party conversation value ......

Damn, I see bold, itallic, where is irony?

"The best protection is public domain."

As has been pointed out numerous times, public domain is no "protection". BSD is no "protection". Either allows someone else to claim ownership of code changes based on your work. Maybe you are a week away from similar - even better extensions, but if they beat you to copyright, you are hosed.

And since when did "emacs getting "ripped off" by other people" have anything to do with him getting started in open source? Seems the published account that has been around all these years somehow missed that ....

"... but who trust Stallman?"

Who cares. Read what it says.

Of course, if you would look at the history, revisions and the very fact that _you_ choose the version that _you_ feel best fits the philosophy, it is hard to argue about trust.

It just isn't _necessary_ to take advantage of the result.