A 50% chance of passing away prior to the start of the gathering and a 50% chance of passing away after the start of the gathering.

I don't think you have much of a future as an insurance actuary.

Linus' foul mouth, more than anything else, is due to his consistent overestimation of his own importance. It's just arrogant, alpha wannabe bluster; and occasionally, as in the case with nVidia, it can be really destructive.

From the article: "Vortex isn't available publicly or even in a closed beta form..."

As vapourwear goes, it would seem rather vapid then.

Are you sure the damage is just limited to the configuration changes you made? The attorneys in my organization believed that the language could be extended to anything that runs on the same set of servers, and anything that interacted with the same database.

And it's even worse for libraries (e.g. iText) - there, the thought was that it could require sharing every bit of code used to run the web site. Not surprisingly, we're not using or contributing to anything licensed under the AGPL.

Bruce Schneier agrees with you:

Why do otherwise rational people think it's a good idea to profile at airports?

From paper discussed here: http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2009/07/another_new_aes.html

In the case of AES-128, there is no known attack which is faster than the 2^128 complexity of exhaustive search. However, AES-192 and AES-256 were recently shown to be breakable by attacks which require 2^176 and 2^119 time, respectively.

Is it sexist that male strippers exist?

If the answer is no, then it isn't sexist that booth babes exist either.

The problem is the fact that anything else gets said. If that is what the license requires, then that is what the license requires. The stuff about, "being a big believer in free and open," is extraneous, subjective garbage; and is exactly the issue, here.

If I do what I am legally required to do, then I should neither be applauded for being a member of the cult, or condemned if I am not a member of it. If I am legally in compliance, then I should not have to know or care about the opinion of "the community," one way or the other.

If the opinion of "the community," matters, then put it in the license as something I am legally required to do. Otherwise they can and should shut the fuck up.

As another point, when you say that this is basic ethics, you make it sound as though you're talking about something universal; when in fact, you are not. You're talking about the ideology of one specific group of people; and said ideology for the most part doesn't have anything in common with how the rest of the population thinks, at all.

So in other words, you're damn right that I'm going to be pedantic to the point of legalism, and demand anyone else engaging in this conversation to do likewise.

Then this should be made specific and overt. If a relevant or necessary demand is missing from the license, the license needs to be rewritten to include said demand.

The term, "spirit," by its' very nature, refers to something undefined, non-specific, and acorporeal. I'm surprised that anyone who identifies as an atheist in particular, would be comfortable with using it.

I say again; if there is a "spirit," or an "ethos," associated with the FSF or the GPL, and such has heretofore been implicit and "intuitive," then it should be made explicit, specific, and tangible, so that there can be no misunderstand, and no excuse.

My understanding of version 2 of the GPL, as the clearest example, was that if I modify the source code of a work governed by said license, I must make publically available, both the unmodified source code, AND the source code of my own modifications, to anyone who asks for it, as a condition of using/developing said work.

My understanding was not, however, that I am required to subscribe to any other belief, whether it be political, social, or in any other form, that may or may not be advocated by the Free Software Foundation.

In other words, if I use the GPL, I need to provide source with binaries. That's all.

I do not need to worship Richard Stallman as God. I do not need to subscribe to the philosophy of Karl Marx or Leon Trotsky in general terms. I don't need to believe Stallman's self-aggrandizing lies about how the very concept of source code availability supposedly originated with him, and did not exist before him. Hell, I don't even need to like him, or anyone else associated with the FSF, as people at all.

All I need to do, is provide source with binaries. That's it. Nothing else.

They've started doing that around here, now? I've been gone for a while. Given how fascist everything is getting everywhere else, it would be consistent.

I've got mod points today, and I figured that a good use of them would be beating the Stallmanite trolls into submission, who I knew would be infesting this thread. Unfortunately, there are far too many of them to be stopped by a measly five points.

The vitriol directed towards Aaron Swartz, additionally, is nothing short of disgusting. Until someone is able to offer me concrete proof to the contrary, I am going to continue to believe that Swartz was the victim of assassination by the American government. If you want to convince me that I am wrong in believing that, then as I said, you had better have an extremely compelling argument.

Jimmy Wales does not deserve induction into the Hall of Fame, either. Wikipedia has long since degenerated into a cess pit of pro-establishment pseudoskeptics, who ruthlessly delete anything which is not entirely in line with their agenda. Wales has also done absolutely nothing to try and restrain said people.

It's a strategy which attempts to rely on consumer apathy and inertia. From a moral perspective, it's terrible business practice, but if they get away with it, then it means more control for them.

The real problem with Microsoft, is the fact that they never learn, where this sort of thing is concerned. No matter how many times they get caught and prevented from doing the wrong thing, they just keep trying.

... run wires in conduit at a uniform height in every wall ...

OK, I'm confused. Is the conduit running horizontally through the wall? And then you reach through the new hole in the wall to tee into the conduit?

I'm not aware of anything UL listed / permitted by code that works that way.

Who the 10x developer or 25x programmer is is often highly context dependent. And it also tends to discount people who play supporting roles, who I think can often be even more valuable than your main developers.

I consider H1-B's to be very problematic because of how dependent they make someone on an employer. I think there's a real risk of the employer employee relationship becoming too coercive and akin to slavery.

But, I have no problem with more immigration if the result is full citizens with the same rights as everybody else.

Perhaps we should have an accelerated citizenship process for people who've been here on an H1-B visa for over a year. That, in combination with actually reducing the number of H1-B visas granted would be something I could get behind.

The main negative effect I see from my proposal is that it reduces these large corporations incentive to improve the educational and vocational rehabilitation system to create the workers they need from our existing citizenry.