You can encourage clear thinking, and avoid gratuitous confusion, by
shunning the term "intellectual property" when you write about this
case.

This case is about one specific law -- patent law. The term
"intellectual property" identifies that law with a dozen or so
unrelated disparate laws, which have nothing in common in practice.
They don't work the same, and their good or bad effects are different
too. The only way to understand any of them is to keep them mentally
separate. You can help readers do that by not mixing them up.

See http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/not-ipr.html for more explanation.

This story doesn't mention that Ustream is bad for another reason even
when it does "work": because it requires viewers to run nonfree
software.

If a con or any event is going to do streaming, the organizers should
contact me; I can put them in touch with people who can show them how
to stream it themselves with free software. One secondary advantage
is that no company can censor the transmission.

You could turn it into an opportunity for organizing. Say, loud
enough for other passengers to hear, "You are working for the people
that hate our freedoms. You are not protecting us, you are the
threat. Your job is to make Americans scared so we will give up our
freedom without a fight. But we the American people will overcome
you. If you are a patriot you should quit your job."

The idea isn't that you convince the cops, it's to wake up the other
passengers.

Be prepared with responses to the usual fallacious arguments of the
other side, and if the cop spoke quietly, your response needs to tell
passersby what the issue is as well as respond to it.

It's a useful thing that so many people are paid to contribute to a
free software program such as Linux, the kernel typically used with
the GNU system. Much of the development of the GNU Compiler
Collection, which I started in the 1980s, is also done by paid
programmers, and we appreciate their contribution.

However, in trying to clear up the misconception that free software
development is done only by volunteers, it spreads another
misconception: that volunteers must be unemployed. Most free programs
are written by volunteers, and these volunteers typically have jobs of
some sort. They contribute to free software in their free time.

If you happen to become unemployed, as so many have due to the insane
deregulation of the banks, using your time to write free software is
one way to draw something positive out of this trouble. But when you
find work again, you won't have to stop contributing.

Hi, I'm Chinese, and I would say that I'm mostly not that horrible. And like most average joe's, I don't know much about human rights. Thanks for the blanket statement, Mr Obese-American-Gun-Nut. :)

There are several "provably secure" computer systems. As in you can demonstrate they fulfil certain mathematical constraints and those constraints are absolute. Then you have to write the code and prove the code, then you have to hope the prover is correct and the hardwareis correct. Nothing is 100%.

As to the randomisation stuff - yes I've got examples, and we've hit the same thing in Linux with randomisation. You get cases where memory scribbles cause a problem only if the layout happens to be a specific variant (especially with stack randomisation). From "either it dies or it works" you get "1 in 10,000 times xyz app blows up". That does make debugging much much harder. Of course a good reply to that is "so improve the debugging tools".

IMHO, it is great that image processing software provides a set of command-line programs. It is easy to extend the functionalities of the software by writing some scripts that utilize those command-line programs. I did write some perl scripts that combine some command-line programs of ImageMagick. These scripts help me to organize a lot of images taken by DC. They do great jobs.

I also expect some commercial image procssing software (e.g., Adobe photoshop) may export some command-line programs.

The person whose name comes out as Dick Stallman isn't me (I never use any of the nicknames of "Richard"). But he seems to be trying say what I would have said, and doing a pretty good job of it. I wonder, is he my twin who was given up dor adoption and that I never heard about before now?

Dick Stallman, if you are reading this, would you please send me mail that I can answer?