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Comment Re:Russia? Please... they were amateurs. (Score 3, Informative) 549

"Many groups were suppressed before and during the 2012 election by the IRS targeting"

Do you hear yourself? Political groups are not supposed to be tax exempt. That is what the IRS was looking for: "Is this 501c4 application for a civic group or a political group?" You say that these groups couldn't engage in political activity because of the IRS investigation. That means you are saying they are political groups, not civic groups, and therefore should not have received tax exempt status.

I'm not saying the IRS didn't make very serious mistakes: they did. But your claim that it effected the election is by definition off point.

Submission + - Most projects on GitHub aren't open source licensed (theregister.co.uk)

PCM2 writes: Kids these days just don't care about open source. That's the conclusion of the Software Freedom Law Center's Aaron Williamson, who analyzed some 1.7 million projects on GitHub and found that only about 15% of them had a clearly identifiable license in their top-level directories. And of the projects that did have licenses, the vast majority preferred permissive licenses such as the MIT, BSD, or Apache licenses, rather than the GPL. Has the younger generation given up on ideas like copyleft and Free Software? And if so, what can be done about it?
Programming

Submission + - Why Coding at Fifty May be Nifty 4

theodp writes: Enough with the dadgum naysayers. Google's Vivek Haldar lists some good reasons for why you would want to program at fifty (or any other age). Haldar's list would probably get a thumbs-up from billionaire SAS CEO Jim Goodnight, who had this to say about coding when interviewed at age 56: 'I would be happy if I just stayed in my office and programmed all day, to tell you the truth. That is my one real love in life is programming. Programming is sort of like getting to work a puzzle all day long. I actually enjoy it. It's a lot of fun. It's not even work to me. It's just enjoyable. You get to shut out all your other thoughts and just concentrate on this little thing you're trying to do, to make work it. It's nice, very enjoyable.'

Comment Re:Evil Monopoly (Score 2, Interesting) 314

The point is that Apple is suing HTC because they are using a map to pinpoint a location. I bet that in the last month, there have been a thousand courses taught in colleges and high schools that tell students how to pinpoint locations on maps. Why isn't Apple suing those community college profs instead of HTC?

Do I really need to answer that?

Who came up with mapping technology first? Was it perhaps Google Maps?

Comment Re:Good (Score 1) 292

Well even if they are scummy, and I'm not saying they are, it is better to be scummy and use solar power than to be scummy and use carbon based power. I'm always ready to hear some good news....

Comment Congress and the Press Clash Incongruously (Score 2, Insightful) 571

Granted, one can always find individual cases that demand outrage, but overall, the reporting on Congress is more alarmist than accurate. Put 600 people in a room and ask them to make a decision. Any 600 people, any decision. If you'd like, you can just put the people designing C++ or HTML in a room and ask them to come up with a spec. Now give reporters full access to everything they say and do. If, in one week's time, reporters can't make everyone on that random committee look like an idiot, then they aren't trying.

The point is that Congress is not supposed to look pretty. It never has been pretty. It never has been noble. It has always, regardless of who is in power, been preoccupied with petty squabbles and produced absurd compromises. It is, as many have pointed out, the worst system imaginable -- except for all the rest.

The right is now having fun shooting ducks in a barrel by making fun of Congress, just as the left has had fun maligning Congress when the right was in power. All this is very entertaining, but it is shows a fundamental misunderstanding of how government works. All this attention from the press just makes congressman grand stand, and promotes the silliest and most disruptive sound bites without promoting anything useful. The problem is not so much Congress, but the way Congress and the press interact.

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