Well, people who do not understand the issue might not be involved intellectually, but they are involved physically.

Certainly true for global climate which is affecting everyone not taking into account how much any of us understand the issue.

They should have set-up their own web server and post the content there. And set the authentication, limits, controls, ... as they see fit. And give or take accounts to/from people as they see fit.

At least that was the original idea of The Web and that's why the Mosaic browser contained also a web page editor included by default.

But then ... "commercial Internet" choose to "outsource" and people are hosting their stuff on machines belonging to "strangers", in foreign countries, ...

Well, they've got what they paid for. :)

I have a theory. I have to warn you in advance, they it might get labelled as "conspiracy theory". But just because you are paranoid does not mean they are not after you. So such label will be given ONLY by people who would like to hide the truth from us. The truth, that this theory of mine is actually true.

So, here we go:

This 22-year-young man, lets call him Mark, is in reality a secret agent of Russian federation, gathering secret "intel" for them from US officials. But he works "two ways" - he's also supplying both US and Russian secrets to Kuba, because he is a real communist. And Mark is also ecological activist, human right fighter (yes, just one, I can't tell you which one), he's supporting legalization of dangerous drugs and 3D RPS games, he's pro choice, he's gay and some other stuff. Almost like some twisted superhero.

And the FBI, well, they are trying to protect us from such twisted figures. Hero or not, he's twisted so they have to somehow take him off-line. It is hard to take down a super-hero. So they have to use some super-powers of theirs: "prove" him a paedophile - nobody will then touch him and they can do to him anything they want. Like, put him in jail, etc.

But please, keep that only between us. You know, secret super-weapons tend to loose their power when just anybody knows about them.

:)

I've got apps blocked yet I do receive various announcements from them "camouflaged" as messages from my friends, like "George just conquered last free country in The World Domination Silly Game" etc. I have to then individually click "hide" to "kill off" all further announcements from that particular app. But next week, there is some new cools app making rounds ...

Or we can learn to regulate our population, as the Chinese are trying to do.

Well, Europe is not even trying, yet it is succeeding in this area (look for example here).

Similar case in Slovakia:

We have some elections here right now and some people in capital city received "letters" (more like marketing materials) with "printed signature" of our prime minister. Those letters are from a prime minister's party and is about how the prime minister, the party and also some other figures (most notably some mayors of towns and villages) DO support some candidate.

Later on some of those mayors mentioned in the letter said "I do not know about this letter and I do not agree with the letter: I did not, do not and wont support that one candidate" etc.

So, people questioned the prime minister and his party. And the answer? Something like:

It's initiative of a party, it's essentially marketing material and only a "rubber stamp of signature of the prime minister used for marketing purposes" has been used in that letter, prime minister did not wrote nor signed it.

So yes, his party, his people did the letter, his name is used in it, picture of his signature is used in it. It is a lie. Yet it is not a problem and responsibility of a prime minister.

Thankfully there is one thing which can haunt him on that one: he likes to sue journalists if they defame him. So I guess now his own party defamed him by putting his name on letter full of lies. So he should sue them. But he is a populist so I guess he wont.

... because they can't figure out how to point and click.

Neither should you - as Linux user, you should be using CLI, no?

Of course I'm joking, but they do not know that. :)

Some time ago I saw some documentary whose message has been essentially like "There are few hundred thousands of Muslims in Europe already. With average birth rate in EU being something like 1.6 but in those Muslim families 6-8 the future is most of the Europe countries becoming a muslim states in something like 30-40 years.".

So, seeing also your post I see this:

1. Europe will be conquered by Muslims by out-birthing Europeans.
2. USA will be conquered by Chinese thanks to Americans giving Chinese american know-how, money and land in exchange for few truckloads of cheap consumer goods.

Well, future seemed quite a lot different when I was a child: all that talk about leaps in science and technology, conquest of the universe, etc. presumably mainly by "white guys" from Europe and USA.

Who would have thought?

Well, problems with contracts, laws, etc. is that they are created (we enter into them, ...) because we want something. But while doing so, some written document is produced and from that point, one big problem starts: we try to adhere to the agreement, law, whatever but some stuff can be evaluated in two different ways with two opposing results depending on whether you are interpreting "the spirit" of the contract, law, ... or "the letter".

I guess, dynamically linked kernel extensions ... are against "the spirit" of GPL (any GPL, not just v3). But such judgement will have to be individually handed out (at least by me, if i'm asked to :) depending also on what the module does, how it does that, who produced it, what is the intention of the producer, ...

All that is complex. So, "in a spirit" of what I wrote earlier, I try to avoid such "complicated matters".

Thus, I did not follow closely the debate you are referring to. I just noted "yup, there are issues, mainly if you try to make a profit off of GPL licensed code". So my commercial work .. I simply avoid GPLv3 code - good for the company, good for the authors of the GPLv3 licensed code in question too.

My opinion (also as a developer of commercial software) is, that GPLv3 is mostly "controversial", "bad", ... for those who for some reason try not to follow "the spirit", but "the letter" of that license. Maybe because they do not understand the free/open source movement. Or because they are trying to profit from the GPLv3 licensed works of others without without giving equally back.

But again, in some individual cases, such "harsh" opinion might be deadly wrong.

Reality will kick in sooner or later. If later, it usually takes form of a "global depression", "global warming" or something similar.

So I guess, the sooner it kicks in, the better. :)

I'm not a lawyer but maybe precisely because of that it seems more dangerous to me to work with something directly covered by Microsoft patents and specs - like Mono - than with the rest of the examples you gave, or those I know something about (Python and C).

We're "techies" here on /. . So it's hard to make arguments for something whose main "problem" is related to laws, contracts, copyrights, patents, etc.

On the other hand, why should "techies" even worry to much about non technical stuff? We want to do stuff, develop, deploy, install, maintain. Not to practise law. Period.

So instead of spending money on lawyers we either use tools with simple enough licence terms so that we can at least think we can understand them or we avoid the tools with licence terms we do not understand (and thus rightfully fear).

In your other post you wrote "... his [Stallman's] objections are based on fear and innuendo, not on principles or reason.". Yup, he might be "fearmongering", but IMO based on principle: "The tools comes with difficult licence terms. And company with history of ... well, questionable tactics is involved in those terms. So I better not use that tools. And warn others.". I see no problem there.

So, what I would like to see instead of debates like this would be a debate, where reasons (technical reasons) for using Mono would be given and discussed. This debate about legal issues is informative (to give warning) but in its details is mainly waste of time for me.

... or Slovak Telecom: IIRC all backbone routers with same password. (page 10 of the linked PDF)

Or National Security Agency (Narodny Bezpecnostny Urad Slovenskej Republiky) - something like NSA?: root password nbusr123 IIRC on public server facing Internet, some further authorization credentials stored on that system and used by attackers to get further inside. (page 11-13 of the linked PDF)

More info: .sk scene: from past to present.

If the Feds paid nearly 10 million bucks for that I am obviously in the wrong line of work. It looks like something I could knock off in a few weeks with Django and MySQL.

Here you're wrong also. If you used those you would produce something better than current APSX+Flash+whatever. I guess. :)

Finally.

Good idea. Hopefully implementation will be also very good and suitable also for times when there is no disaster. :)

Or alternatively we buy our hard drives from Chinese manufacturers, which I think is what they want to happen..

... and "mine" those Chinese hard-drives for this rare materials to manufacture our own hard drives. :)