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Man Arrested for Refusing to Show Drivers License
NMerriam writes "Michael Righi was arrested in Ohio over the weekend after refusing to show his receipt when leaving Circuit City. When the manger and 'loss prevention' employee physically prevented the vehicle he was a passenger in from leaving the parking lot, he called the police, who arrived, searched his bag and found he hadn't stolen anything. The officer then asked for Michael's driver's license, which he declined to provide since he wasn't operating a motor vehicle. The officer then arrested him, and upon finding out Michael was legally right about not having to provide a license, went ahead and charged him with 'obstructing official business' anyways."
Let me be the first to say, fuck the police.
As far as I recall (IANAL), you are only required to show your identification to law enforcement when pulled over while operating a motor vehicle, or entering the country from another country.
First there was the fiasco of laying off experienced sales staff.
Then they closed 62 stores in Canada and a bunch in the US.
Their stock has dropped 50% from a high of about $20 in Jan/Feb to about $10 now.
Then, there was the NYTimes article recently how retailers like CC are overstocked on Flat-Panel HDTVs that they can't get rid off - a problem that will only get worse as prices drop even more for Christmas-time sales.
Now, there's news like this about customers geting into trouble ouside their store.
Looks like the devil has 'em tagged and their days are numbered.
The GPL is hypocritical.
Allow me to elaborate:
Let's say I write some code and place it under a BSD license. Someone else comes along and uses/relicenses it in a GPL project. That's legal. But what is the spirit and intent of the GPL? Giving back your changes. Locking away BSD code under a GPL license means you aren't giving back your changes. Do as I say, not as I do.
To be fair, RMS (Richard Milton Stallman) is not hypocritical; he thinks existing "free enough" software (licensed under BSD, Apache, public domain like TeX, MIT, etc) software should continue to be developed as such for practical purposes, but new software should be written as GPL.
There is an elephant sitting in the corner of the room. No one wants to talk about it but it is there nonetheless. Facts of the matter are that BSD is essentially a failure with dwindling market share, no commercial enterprise support, and has fallen technologically behind.
As BSD continues to recede technologically, we are likely to see more and more cases of code theft by BSD developers. It is either steal the code or drop support. There is no other way BSD can keep its head above water featurewise. Not enough talent, too few developers, and the diminishing size of its user base mean trouble with a capital "T" for BSD.
Is BSD dying? You betcha!
...which makes it settled law in the state of Nevada. Rulings by the Nevada Supreme Court have zero effect on state law in Ohio.