That doesn't imply violence, but violence is an easy way to achieve fear.

I think you may be trying to re-define common understanding of terrorism -- threat of violence is typically included as part of definition. This is supported by Wikipedia's definition (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terrorism). And if "making someone worried" would be sufficient grounds for terrorist label you would include pretty much any and all activist organizations: many corporations fear ACLU might decide to target them; but I doubt many could be comfortable calling ACLU a terrorist organization (feel free to replace ACLU with a conservative-side organization -- this is not about political worldview).

As such I do not see how you could credibly consider WikiLeaks a terrorist organization, nor Assange a terrorist.

This is a bogus argument if anything: government actually does not have copyright over said documents (see http://www.cendi.gov/publications/04-8copyright.html , section 3.1.2: "In the United States, U.S. Government works are covered by 17 USC 105.59 "Copyright protection is not available for any work of the United States Government,").

And since when has it been Amazon's business to pro-actively go after possible infringement even with no formal request, complaint or court order? If anything, I would think AWS would ideally not have to moderate content -- if they do, they become publishers and open themselves up for more lawsuits in cases where they did not proactively censor content that was found to be illegal. AWS is ideally just a data storage and delivery mechanism, not a content moderation system.

This is not to say I agree with attacks, of course; it was not only a stupid idea but wrong. I just think Amazon royally pooped up this case and that they deserve all and any flak they get (even if only from geeks like slashdot readers).

A lot of people here like this country just the way it is and don't want anyone, Moore, Obama, or anyone else changing it in to something else.

And many, many more would like to change it in one way or another. Most of them fully disagreeing in actual changes.

If you are uncomfortable with such a state of things, where changes happen over time; and often in conflicting directions, you might want to considering moving yourself. There are still dictatorships where things change more slowly and in more predictable direction. Ironically enough Cuba has been such a country at least until recently.

My problem with him on a personal level is he doesn't let the evidence speak for itself.

Minor nitpick: that would be your problem with his professional side, not personal, unless this bothers you when directly interacting with him. Maybe this confusion may stem from common but misguided use of "I personally believe" (instead of plain old "I believe").

Yeah, certainly should be considered; but I am not one deciding what to use. I personally prefer Postgresql, and would start by investigating it but others have different opinions. And in the end I think both can be made to work. Decisions to use MySQL were done quite a while ok so Oracle ownership was not a factor back in the day when opinions seem to have formed.

but everyone's scared to death of Oracle quadrupling the price for next year's service contract and making a mess of support.

True. And while I don't know the exact details (wrt is it factor of 4 or something else), I do know that support contract costs have already risen; and this is big part of why my employer is urgently working on moving systems that still run on Solaris boxes (minority) to run on linux systems (which is already majority). Likewise there are projects to move DBs off of Oracle; although mostly to MySQL which may not be complete solution. But at least for now MySQL support is still much less expensive than Oracle DB, and may remain so because of different profiling (expensive "enterprise" DB, slightly less expensive "medium-size" mysql).

These fears are well-founded; Oracle is competent at squeezing more money out of existing customers. That's why they are so profitable.

I don't know very much beyond the basic idea that one can trade with securities that are pre-IPO, unfortunately.

But the idea as I understand it is that since shares can not be sold and bought in regular stock exchanges (due to there not having been a public offering), this works more like a single-equity-type exchange, essentially matching buyers and sellers. One downside would be that there are fewer sellers; second that due to lack of regulation there are more things that could go wrong and so forth. Upside is that you can invest early, without being a VC, early on so potential profits are also big as are risks.

Who's the terrorist? The one who did the *acts* reported in the documentation? Or the one who's letting others know they did it?

How about neither? Or which one is using acts to spread actual terror (fear)? While there is no commonly accepted strict definition, "Terrorism is the systematic use of terror especially as a means of coercion." seems like a reasonable consensus definition (as per wikipedia).

Word terrorist is as misused as word liberal these days, at least in US (not much of news, but worth reiterating).

Did you read the article? It said exactly that increased levels of CO2 will be mitigated by increased growth of green plant life, and that the current models are too aggressive in their estimations of negative effects....

The bottom line is that we don't really know what's going on.

Huh? No -- put simply, all report suggested was "not changing as rapidly as other studies suggest". It did not question consensus that what is going on is human-induced changes to CO2 levels, which are very likely to cause significant climate changes. It just claimed that magnitude of changes may be over-estimated.

Which part again would support your position of "but one really knows anything" again?

More specifically, not a "scientific theory" (as per http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_theory). Term theory is used for other kinds ("philosophical theories"), too, but given context this should obviously be scientific one. :-)

There is actually marketplace for selling such securities ("Secondary Private Equity Sales"?), so Facebook equity is actually quite liquid. So there is nothing odd about this; he does have assets that are easy enough to liquidate.

So by your logic, assuming (quite possibly incorrectly) that wealth was obtained by illegal or immoral means, it should not be now shared? That is, the action of distributing wealth to charitable causes is no better than leaving it as inheritance to offsprings? Your moral view differs a lot from mine.

The whole idea (of BillG's and others project) is that publicly stating intent does make it MUCH more likely that person follows it. If you want to understand how and why, you can read any reasonable modern behavior psych book; anything from the classic "The Psychology of Persuasion" or newer. Turns out that human behavior often follows backwards route (from how I feel to what the situation must be like); and in this case it starts with "I am a good person since I will give money to charity" and increases chances of actually acting this belief. This is much simplified explanation but the underlying principle is sound and based on clinical research.

So, yes, technically he could just change his mind and not do it; it just is less likely than what you seem to think.

Plus from what I have read, it does not look like Z is actually obsessed with personal wealth; either for accumulating or spending it. And he has started doling out charitable contributions already; so I would give him quite a bit of benefit of doubt here.

I truly have no fucking clue what you trying to convey here, nor much interest in grokking it. I had no difficulty understanding the original comment or arguments. I suggest you stop reading material that is too challenging to your level of reading comprehension.

Nice apples to oranges comparison here. Followed by ad-hominem attack, you managed to negate any validity your argument might have.

Obviously there are cases where one should restrain from desperate measures; just as clearly as there are cases where passengers absolutely should use their superiority in numbers to storm hi-jackers. The main problem with latter is just coordination; not the fact that with 10x as many participants it is possible subdue hi-jackers even when they are armed and passengers are not.