Your definitions are completely invalid. You call someone an "airplane user" if she has once, ever, gotten anything that was ever on an airplane.
By that reasoning, everybody uses airplanes. But that metric is not only meaningless to determine how important planes are to society, but even more useless to measure how much software development effort goes into each area.
To be at all meaningful, you should only be able to compare people who frequently travel on airplanes with those who frequently use games. Or have used them in the past year, or something.
XBox + PS2 + Gamecube
That's a minority of game systems. Add in cellphone Snake and Windows Freecell, and you can septuple those numbers.
But that whole question is pointless. The number of users of airplanes doesn't matter. You'd have to compare the users of airplane software (basically just pilots) with game players. That's where the overwhelming differential comes from!
PS. As it happens, I'm monitoring software development for a major upcoming airplane project. We're using NVidia 59xx cards, because they're the best. Our programmers despair of achieving graphically quality to rival top of the line videogames. Heck, they probably will hardly even equal the dubious quality of Battlefield 1942.
Maybe you don't understand how bad the SOTA for airplane software is. It's very, very bad.
You're missing the point too. It's not the "other person's settings" that matter, it's the default settings of the network protocol. The majority of users are unaware of the possibility of even using different programs to chat!
AIM is the default client for AIM messages. ICQ is the default client for ICQ messages. It can be assumed that people using those networks will be familiar with the behavior of the default software.
Trillian Pro is not the default feature of the AIM messaging network. Someone could claim that Trillian itself is an interception device that is hacking into the AIM network.
There's one definition that especially needs clarifying: the word "wiretap" is used incorrectly in most of these laws.
"Wiretap" really means that by listening in on an electronic transmission ("tapping" the "wire"), somebody is hearing or seeing something she otherwise wouldn't be able to. It's fine that this is a crime.
But in most states, the same law covers not just interception of conversation, but also recording of a communication which you already had permission to hear or read.
Obviously, these two offenses are of very different severity. Arguably, the 2nd offense shouldn't be illegal at all.
One might ask what is wrong about actually holding people to what they say to you? It'd discourage lying, and make an assortment of gangster-crimes like extortion much riskier to commit. Or from the other direction: Should it really be possible to commit a felony by snapping a digital camera at your own computer screen?
Well, yes, chat logs can be faked easily. But they are no easier to fake than any other kind of evidence you care to present in court.
But they are easier to fake, in important ways.
Faking a chat log can be a one-man job. Most traditional forensic evidence like blood, fingerprints, etc, has multiple collectors and technicians working over it and observing the collection. To fake it, a cop either needs to take the risk that one of his fellows will notice and spoil the game, or convince the others to play along.
And as we know, organized multiple-perpetrator crime has a high barrier to entry based on mutual trust and willingness to break the law.
(That's why, back in the OJ Simpson trial last century, his defensive claim that the prosecution faked physical evidence was so ludicrous. 55 California police worked that case, all of them wouldn't decide to frame OJ)
But faking a chat log? It would be simple for one officer with a text-editor to type a few more incriminating lines into a log he's just recorded.
I don't know about chat logs, but I know that emails are perfectly admissible in court, and those can be faked almost as easily as a chat log.
Not "perfectly". The provenance of the email can be considered, and their believability varies a lot with circumstances.
Compared to IM chat, emails can be somewhat harder to fake. Many more copies of an email typically exist than of a chat. Both the sending and recieving computers will probably keep a copy of the email, and the intermediate mail servers they both use may record either the entire message, or at least enough header information to show if it was actually sent or not. To convincingly fake an email, you might have to modify data on 4 different computers.
(Even if the sender deletes the email because he thinks its incriminating, when he's brought to trial his computer will be seized, and analysis may reveal recoverable traces on his hard drive)
Also, remember that it's entirely different standard of proof to printout an email and claim somebody sent it to you, versus to seize his computer in a search and use emails found on it as evidence.
The chat room is like a piece of paper someone has written a letter on then tossed out: now public domain.
It doesn't affect police you say? Did you read the article? Why do you think the judge claimed it specifically does affect the police? Should I belive Justice Robert Morill, or you?
I don't think it's an unreasonable expectation that the police gets a warrant before taping my phone or recording my chat sessions.
Be careful of what you write. Did you mean to say "taping", or "tapping"? Very different ways to record a conversation. (One of them is an invasion of privacy, the other is not)
It's easy to modify a chat log, it's harder to modify video.
Not very hard: 1. Find another cop with an AOL account to help. 2. Set an alias in your IM software so that your computer prints the suspect's screen-name when chatting with the other cop. 3. Give him a printout of the modified chat log to type in while you videotape the new session.
That is harder to an important extent, however. Few cops know how to replay a modified chat without assistance, and convincing an accomplice to help frame a suspect is risky for the crooked cop.
But juries should never forget how easily an internet chat can be forged.
(also, they aren't mercenaries. they are a standing army)
There's no reason someone can't be both. They're called mercenaries because they're not citizens of the country (Vatican City) they serve, but are paid foreigners.
There's a reason renaissance nobles learned to fight with rapiers and not halberds for their personal self defense.
Yes, the reason is that a rapier weighs less than 2 pounds and makes a glamorous evening-wear accessory. And also that it's awkward to carry a halberd through a narrow Venice alleyway and into a rear table at a cafe.
Perhaps a halberd is not such a great weapon if used in the style of an English knight or whatever.
No, English knights weren't stupid. They wouldn't have intentionally used a weapon wrong.
But for an experienced staff fighter who treats a halberd as a staff that happens to have a blade on one end
The techniques of staff-fighting were known in medieval England. The man-at-arms/scholar George Silver wrote in 1599 that the very best weapon for a strong, skilled fighter to carry was the quarterstaff. (Turn to section 21: "The long staff, morris pike, or javelin, or such like weapons above the perfect length, have advantage against all manner of weapons")
There are 2 basic types of ways to stop something from splitting your head open: meet and follow.
The 3rd way is actually more important than those: kill the other guy first.
And that's where the halberd really outshines any other portable melee weapon (swords, rapiers, maces, etc). With the length, you can strike the opponent before he can even reach you. With it's weight, he's unlikely to block effectively.
The only thing you'd want to "parry" with a halberd would be an even longer weapon, like a pike. (And in that situation it'd work fine too, because pikemen always lose in 1 on 1 combat)
The only disadvantages of the halberd are size and visibility. A staff is nearly as large, but doesn't look as agressive, so everyone won't interpret you as a threat (it's also less expensive). A sword is much smaller, and can be carried with you everyplace, ready for emergencies (like drunken outbursts against other men-at-arms).
no it isnt. it is never role playing to use knowledge outside of the realm of your character's experience to influence your character's actions.
The example given (about UO fighters prefering first the halberd, and then the "kitana") was not about OOC (out-of-character) information.
Which weapon was strongest was known in-character. (Fighting as many random monsters as those guys do, they'd figure it out pretty quickly by experimentation) In real life, there is no "best" weapon, because different tools are preferred for different situations. But because of the simplified game rules, it was apparent in character that halberds were useful in many more situations than they really should be.
If tommorrow all shotguns magically became more accurate than M-16s, the soldiers of the world would quickly switch to the new best weapon.
The "role" these gamers are playing isn't "swordsman" or "spearman", it's "strong fighter, using the best weapon for the situation". If the game rules are so poor as to make one weapon best in every single circumstance, the fault goes to the designers, not the players.
do you think it's role playing to read the monster manual and suddenly your character knows everything about every type monster in the game?
The article states that the main base for D&D wasn't Tolkien, but actually was Jack Vance's Tales of the Dying Earth.
And since Tolkien was the basis for Vance, that makes it doubly the basis for D&D. All swords & socercy scifi/fantasy is Tolkien-derived, to some extent.
D&D elements originated by Tolkien: A party of multiple professions (like fighter, ranger, thief, and wizard) and mixed races (human, dwarf, elf) travels through wilderness and underground mazes fighting off hordes of minor monsters (and the occasional greater one which is only vulnerable to magic weapons). They solve word-puzzles to open locked doors, drink potions to restore their health, and occasionally find magical treasure that resizes itself to fit the wearer.
D&D elements originated by Vance: Magic users forget spells upon casting and are helpless until "rememorization". (Coincidentally, one of the lamest parts of the original D&D system)
It was a LOT more black and white -- Lawful Neutral and Evil. Not to note that this makes no sense from a legitimate scale.
Nope. The 1970s D&D books used Lawful, Neutral, and Chaotic alignments. The latter term was seemingly inspired by the Elric Melnibone fantasy series from the 1950s.
Classes were limited...and levels were limited to a ceiling of around 20.
So 500 years ago, when English Bishops and Buddhist Monks were scripturally/socially forbidden from using swords (turning to maces or staves), you think that was senseless?
(Many bishops/monks had been trained knights/bushi who turned to religion for money or safety)
This is easily the best CRPG made in the last 15 years of computer gaming, and has a plotline so deep it's humbling.
Not exactly. There is a difference between "plotline" and "backstory". PS:Torrent has much backstory, but little in the way of actual plot that occurs while you are playing.
The storyline is revealed as you play, but is out of your control (since it already happened, and the protagonist is just recovering from his amnesia). Not much different from how most computer games present their story.
At least someone else seems to think so too in this rant.
Joel's rant is incorrect. His whole premise is flawed, because he's arguing from incorrect definitions.
He states anti-aliased text is bad... when what he really dislikes is scalable text.
His complaints all come from the idea that onscreen text can be scaled to an arbitrary non-integer pixel height. If nobody used scalable fonts, his problems would vanish. But given that people do wish to view 12 pt text at 115% WYSIWG magnification, antialiasing is the best option.
He shows two sample paragraphs that he labels as non-anti-aliased and anti-aliased. But if those paragraphs were redone with text scaled 21% larger, then the non-anti-aliased version would be immeasurably uglier.
Although the point could use official clarification,
There is no entity qualified to give "official clarification" except for the presiding court system. In particular, the FSF has no authority to "clarify" this point, except for software that they hold copyright to. Most "Free" programs of interest were not written by the GNU Project, but by Linus Torvalds, Trolltech, AOL, or whoever.
The intent of the GPL's author is legally irrelevant; all that matters is what he actually wrote. However, if RMS's goals were taken into account, then I doubt he'd support the GPL including a loophole huge enough to permit Microsoft to commercially fork Linux...
"Thank you for joining the Microsoft(tm) Linux(r) Club! Membership dues are $299/year. Upon reciept of your first 2 years' dues (prepaid), you'll be given download access to our exciting Microsoft(tm) Linux(r) Operating System Software Suite! Remember that this software is for internal club use only, and that distribution to non-members will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law."
this depends on how you define the entities involved in the distribution.
The definition of those entities is completely well-defined within the GPL. As I said before, the GPL contains no special exception allowing an organization or corporation to be treated as a single entity. Therefore the entities in question are simply "you" (the human reading the license) and "the recipient" (or sometimes, "any third party").
Arguably, an internal release can't be considered "distribution"
Well, I suppose you can find someone to argue even the least-defensible of positions...
"Distribution" is a simple word. It's well-defined not just in English dictionaries, but in the US legal system, where the "drug war" imposes vastly harsher penalties for possession of contraband if it is "with intent to distribute".
If you give something to other people (or just position it in several different places) that is distribution, regardless of if those people are members of your same Cannabis Club, or industrial corporation, or are total strangers.
So, this company is to be expected to establish a presence on the net and shell out the dough for bandwidth so others can get their changes? And if they don't, who is going to know?
You are making the mistake of confusing "releasing" with "publication".
The first is a passive act; by releasing something, you allow it to go out to the public. Publishing is an active action, and implies web-servers or printings-presses or whatever.
Someone who internally distributes a modified GPL program has no obligation to publish it (as you say, that'd be an unreasonable burden), but she must release it. That means that any employees recieving that software have the option to share it with friends, if they want.
This is because the only way you can legally give a modified GPL program to someone else is to also give him permission to redistribute it. To do otherwise (such as by invoking the employer's perogative to command her personnel) is to violate the GPL.
And if they don't, who is going to know?
Although that question was pursuant to implied misinformation, the answer remains that undetectability of an offense is a poor justification for criminality.
{or not released at all, just used within an organisation}
That's a myth; but one that even the FSF has helped spread (although not in the exact same form).
However, actually reading the text of the GPL will reveal that there is no special exception for organizations (or corporations). According to the license, you must apply the GPL whenever you "distribute" the modified software.
Someorganizations have thousands of locations and a million members. To give a modified program to all those people would undeniably qualify as "distribution"; the fact that they're all "internal users" is irrelevant.
(Note that copyright law also has no exception for members of an organization)
So let's carry RMS's ideas on the purity of "free" software to their logical conclusion.
You keep repeating that troll, and cleverly never attempt to justify your initial assumption- because it'd fall apart under the tiniest inspection. (That's the same tactic as if I attacked a pro-lifer by claming her logical conclusion is to ban birth-control)
"Free hardware" is not the logical conclusion of the "Free software" movement. The motivating reason for "Free" software is that software entails no per-unit reproduction cost, while hardware does. So your very first statement is absurd.
Wrong. Java is not a specification. Java is a Sun trademark, nothing more.
The only restriction is you can't claim to be API x compliant until you are. That's a real hardship, being required to actually support the feature set you claim to.
You use "real hardship" in a sarcastic sense, suggesting that it's not an imposition at all. If that's the case, then Sun could just forget about enforcing it, because we have laws against fraud already.
But they won't... because Java isn't really an open specification. It's a Sun trademark. It's their property.
If Sun decides tommorrow that Java(tm) can only run on Solaris, that's their choice to make. They can obliterate and re-write the specifications whenever they feel like it.
AT&T invented C++, but they never had an equivalent power to dictate terms to Microsft, Borland, or other vendors of C++ tools.
Slashdot Mirror
Your definitions are completely invalid. You call someone an "airplane user" if she has once, ever, gotten anything that was ever on an airplane.
By that reasoning, everybody uses airplanes. But that metric is not only meaningless to determine how important planes are to society, but even more useless to measure how much software development effort goes into each area.
To be at all meaningful, you should only be able to compare people who frequently travel on airplanes with those who frequently use games. Or have used them in the past year, or something.
XBox + PS2 + Gamecube
That's a minority of game systems. Add in cellphone Snake and Windows Freecell, and you can septuple those numbers.
But that whole question is pointless. The number of users of airplanes doesn't matter. You'd have to compare the users of airplane software (basically just pilots) with game players. That's where the overwhelming differential comes from!
PS. As it happens, I'm monitoring software development for a major upcoming airplane project. We're using NVidia 59xx cards, because they're the best. Our programmers despair of achieving graphically quality to rival top of the line videogames. Heck, they probably will hardly even equal the dubious quality of Battlefield 1942.
Maybe you don't understand how bad the SOTA for airplane software is. It's very, very bad.
You're missing the point too. It's not the "other person's settings" that matter, it's the default settings of the network protocol. The majority of users are unaware of the possibility of even using different programs to chat!
AIM is the default client for AIM messages. ICQ is the default client for ICQ messages. It can be assumed that people using those networks will be familiar with the behavior of the default software.
Trillian Pro is not the default feature of the AIM messaging network. Someone could claim that Trillian itself is an interception device that is hacking into the AIM network.
The law needs clear definitions to work well
There's one definition that especially needs clarifying: the word "wiretap" is used incorrectly in most of these laws.
"Wiretap" really means that by listening in on an electronic transmission ("tapping" the "wire"), somebody is hearing or seeing something she otherwise wouldn't be able to. It's fine that this is a crime.
But in most states, the same law covers not just interception of conversation, but also recording of a communication which you already had permission to hear or read.
Obviously, these two offenses are of very different severity. Arguably, the 2nd offense shouldn't be illegal at all.
One might ask what is wrong about actually holding people to what they say to you? It'd discourage lying, and make an assortment of gangster-crimes like extortion much riskier to commit. Or from the other direction: Should it really be possible to commit a felony by snapping a digital camera at your own computer screen?
Well, yes, chat logs can be faked easily. But they are no easier to fake than any other kind of evidence you care to present in court.
But they are easier to fake, in important ways.
Faking a chat log can be a one-man job. Most traditional forensic evidence like blood, fingerprints, etc, has multiple collectors and technicians working over it and observing the collection. To fake it, a cop either needs to take the risk that one of his fellows will notice and spoil the game, or convince the others to play along.
And as we know, organized multiple-perpetrator crime has a high barrier to entry based on mutual trust and willingness to break the law.
(That's why, back in the OJ Simpson trial last century, his defensive claim that the prosecution faked physical evidence was so ludicrous. 55 California police worked that case, all of them wouldn't decide to frame OJ)
But faking a chat log? It would be simple for one officer with a text-editor to type a few more incriminating lines into a log he's just recorded.
I don't know about chat logs, but I know that emails are perfectly admissible in court, and those can be faked almost as easily as a chat log.
Not "perfectly". The provenance of the email can be considered, and their believability varies a lot with circumstances.
Compared to IM chat, emails can be somewhat harder to fake. Many more copies of an email typically exist than of a chat. Both the sending and recieving computers will probably keep a copy of the email, and the intermediate mail servers they both use may record either the entire message, or at least enough header information to show if it was actually sent or not. To convincingly fake an email, you might have to modify data on 4 different computers.
(Even if the sender deletes the email because he thinks its incriminating, when he's brought to trial his computer will be seized, and analysis may reveal recoverable traces on his hard drive)
Also, remember that it's entirely different standard of proof to printout an email and claim somebody sent it to you, versus to seize his computer in a search and use emails found on it as evidence.
The chat room is like a piece of paper someone has written a letter on then tossed out: now public domain.
It doesn't affect police you say? Did you read the article? Why do you think the judge claimed it specifically does affect the police? Should I belive Justice Robert Morill, or you?
I don't think it's an unreasonable expectation that the police gets a warrant before taping my phone or recording my chat sessions.
Be careful of what you write. Did you mean to say "taping", or "tapping"? Very different ways to record a conversation. (One of them is an invasion of privacy, the other is not)
It's easy to modify a chat log, it's harder to modify video.
Not very hard:
1. Find another cop with an AOL account to help.
2. Set an alias in your IM software so that your computer prints the suspect's screen-name when chatting with the other cop.
3. Give him a printout of the modified chat log to type in while you videotape the new session.
That is harder to an important extent, however. Few cops know how to replay a modified chat without assistance, and convincing an accomplice to help frame a suspect is risky for the crooked cop.
But juries should never forget how easily an internet chat can be forged.
(also, they aren't mercenaries. they are a standing army)
:: Colt 45 : M-16
There's no reason someone can't be both. They're called mercenaries because they're not citizens of the country (Vatican City) they serve, but are paid foreigners.
There's a reason renaissance nobles learned to fight with rapiers and not halberds for their personal self defense.
Yes, the reason is that a rapier weighs less than 2 pounds and makes a glamorous evening-wear accessory. And also that it's awkward to carry a halberd through a narrow Venice alleyway and into a rear table at a cafe.
Rapier : Halberd
Perhaps a halberd is not such a great weapon if used in the style of an English knight or whatever.
No, English knights weren't stupid. They wouldn't have intentionally used a weapon wrong.
But for an experienced staff fighter who treats a halberd as a staff that happens to have a blade on one end
The techniques of staff-fighting were known in medieval England. The man-at-arms/scholar George Silver wrote in 1599 that the very best weapon for a strong, skilled fighter to carry was the quarterstaff. (Turn to section 21: "The long staff, morris pike, or javelin, or such like weapons above the perfect length, have advantage against all manner of weapons")
There are 2 basic types of ways to stop something from splitting your head open: meet and follow.
The 3rd way is actually more important than those: kill the other guy first.
And that's where the halberd really outshines any other portable melee weapon (swords, rapiers, maces, etc). With the length, you can strike the opponent before he can even reach you. With it's weight, he's unlikely to block effectively.
The only thing you'd want to "parry" with a halberd would be an even longer weapon, like a pike. (And in that situation it'd work fine too, because pikemen always lose in 1 on 1 combat)
The only disadvantages of the halberd are size and visibility. A staff is nearly as large, but doesn't look as agressive, so everyone won't interpret you as a threat (it's also less expensive). A sword is much smaller, and can be carried with you everyplace, ready for emergencies (like drunken outbursts against other men-at-arms).
no it isnt. it is never role playing to use knowledge outside of the realm of your character's experience to influence your character's actions.
The example given (about UO fighters prefering first the halberd, and then the "kitana") was not about OOC (out-of-character) information.
Which weapon was strongest was known in-character. (Fighting as many random monsters as those guys do, they'd figure it out pretty quickly by experimentation) In real life, there is no "best" weapon, because different tools are preferred for different situations. But because of the simplified game rules, it was apparent in character that halberds were useful in many more situations than they really should be.
If tommorrow all shotguns magically became more accurate than M-16s, the soldiers of the world would quickly switch to the new best weapon.
The "role" these gamers are playing isn't "swordsman" or "spearman", it's "strong fighter, using the best weapon for the situation". If the game rules are so poor as to make one weapon best in every single circumstance, the fault goes to the designers, not the players.
do you think it's role playing to read the monster manual and suddenly your character knows everything about every type monster in the game?
Examples like that are not what was discussed.
The article states that the main base for D&D wasn't Tolkien, but actually was Jack Vance's Tales of the Dying Earth.
And since Tolkien was the basis for Vance, that makes it doubly the basis for D&D. All swords & socercy scifi/fantasy is Tolkien-derived, to some extent.
D&D elements originated by Tolkien:
A party of multiple professions (like fighter, ranger, thief, and wizard) and mixed races (human, dwarf, elf) travels through wilderness and underground mazes fighting off hordes of minor monsters (and the occasional greater one which is only vulnerable to magic weapons). They solve word-puzzles to open locked doors, drink potions to restore their health, and occasionally find magical treasure that resizes itself to fit the wearer.
D&D elements originated by Vance:
Magic users forget spells upon casting and are helpless until "rememorization". (Coincidentally, one of the lamest parts of the original D&D system)
It was a LOT more black and white -- Lawful Neutral and Evil. Not to note that this makes no sense from a legitimate scale.
Nope. The 1970s D&D books used Lawful, Neutral, and Chaotic alignments. The latter term was seemingly inspired by the Elric Melnibone fantasy series from the 1950s.
Classes were limited...and levels were limited to a ceiling of around 20.
Quickly revised to the very strange choice of 36.
priests can't use swords
So 500 years ago, when English Bishops and Buddhist Monks were scripturally/socially forbidden from using swords (turning to maces or staves), you think that was senseless?
(Many bishops/monks had been trained knights/bushi who turned to religion for money or safety)
The designers appeared to have taken the original p&p module and turned it into a game with very little 'fleshing out'.
No fleshing you say? The developers added gay sex to the original module! How is that not fleshy?
This is easily the best CRPG made in the last 15 years of computer gaming, and has a plotline so deep it's humbling.
Not exactly. There is a difference between "plotline" and "backstory". PS:Torrent has much backstory, but little in the way of actual plot that occurs while you are playing.
The storyline is revealed as you play, but is out of your control (since it already happened, and the protagonist is just recovering from his amnesia). Not much different from how most computer games present their story.
then if they keep repeating the same actions over and over, you could potentially detect this and trigger appropriate events accordingly.
It looks like you may be trying to write a letter!
I'm completely unfamiliar with any of this legal stuff, but could Microsoft really prevent the independent implementation of a specification?
Of course, there already is an independent implementation.
there are more people who use airplanes (ie fly on them, fly them, man the airports) than there are game players
No, there are not.
At least someone else seems to think so too in this rant.
Joel's rant is incorrect. His whole premise is flawed, because he's arguing from incorrect definitions.
He states anti-aliased text is bad... when what he really dislikes is scalable text.
His complaints all come from the idea that onscreen text can be scaled to an arbitrary non-integer pixel height. If nobody used scalable fonts, his problems would vanish. But given that people do wish to view 12 pt text at 115% WYSIWG magnification, antialiasing is the best option.
He shows two sample paragraphs that he labels as non-anti-aliased and anti-aliased. But if those paragraphs were redone with text scaled 21% larger, then the non-anti-aliased version would be immeasurably uglier.
Although the point could use official clarification,
There is no entity qualified to give "official clarification" except for the presiding court system. In particular, the FSF has no authority to "clarify" this point, except for software that they hold copyright to. Most "Free" programs of interest were not written by the GNU Project, but by Linus Torvalds, Trolltech, AOL, or whoever.
The intent of the GPL's author is legally irrelevant; all that matters is what he actually wrote. However, if RMS's goals were taken into account, then I doubt he'd support the GPL including a loophole huge enough to permit Microsoft to commercially fork Linux...
"Thank you for joining the Microsoft(tm) Linux(r) Club! Membership dues are $299/year. Upon reciept of your first 2 years' dues (prepaid), you'll be given download access to our exciting Microsoft(tm) Linux(r) Operating System Software Suite! Remember that this software is for internal club use only, and that distribution to non-members will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law."
this depends on how you define the entities involved in the distribution.
The definition of those entities is completely well-defined within the GPL. As I said before, the GPL contains no special exception allowing an organization or corporation to be treated as a single entity. Therefore the entities in question are simply "you" (the human reading the license) and "the recipient" (or sometimes, "any third party").
Arguably, an internal release can't be considered "distribution"
Well, I suppose you can find someone to argue even the least-defensible of positions...
"Distribution" is a simple word. It's well-defined not just in English dictionaries, but in the US legal system, where the "drug war" imposes vastly harsher penalties for possession of contraband if it is "with intent to distribute".
If you give something to other people (or just position it in several different places) that is distribution, regardless of if those people are members of your same Cannabis Club, or industrial corporation, or are total strangers.
So, this company is to be expected to establish a presence on the net and shell out the dough for bandwidth so others can get their changes? And if they don't, who is going to know?
You are making the mistake of confusing "releasing" with "publication".
The first is a passive act; by releasing something, you allow it to go out to the public. Publishing is an active action, and implies web-servers or printings-presses or whatever.
Someone who internally distributes a modified GPL program has no obligation to publish it (as you say, that'd be an unreasonable burden), but she must release it. That means that any employees recieving that software have the option to share it with friends, if they want.
This is because the only way you can legally give a modified GPL program to someone else is to also give him permission to redistribute it. To do otherwise (such as by invoking the employer's perogative to command her personnel) is to violate the GPL.
And if they don't, who is going to know?
Although that question was pursuant to implied misinformation, the answer remains that undetectability of an offense is a poor justification for criminality.
{or not released at all, just used within an organisation}
That's a myth; but one that even the FSF has helped spread (although not in the exact same form).
However, actually reading the text of the GPL will reveal that there is no special exception for organizations (or corporations). According to the license, you must apply the GPL whenever you "distribute" the modified software.
Some organizations have thousands of locations and a million members. To give a modified program to all those people would undeniably qualify as "distribution"; the fact that they're all "internal users" is irrelevant.
(Note that copyright law also has no exception for members of an organization)
our software keeps crashing with buffer overruns (ultimately due to lack of garbage-collection)
Buffer overruns have absolutely nothing to do with garbage collection.
Adding garbage collection to C is possible- in fact it has been done- and the frequency of buffer overruns doesn't change at all.
Bounds-checked containers, on the other hand, can prevent overruns. But those can be implemented with or without GC.
So let's carry RMS's ideas on the purity of "free" software to their logical conclusion.
You keep repeating that troll, and cleverly never attempt to justify your initial assumption- because it'd fall apart under the tiniest inspection. (That's the same tactic as if I attacked a pro-lifer by claming her logical conclusion is to ban birth-control)
"Free hardware" is not the logical conclusion of the "Free software" movement. The motivating reason for "Free" software is that software entails no per-unit reproduction cost, while hardware does. So your very first statement is absurd.
Java is an open specification.
Wrong. Java is not a specification. Java is a Sun trademark, nothing more.
The only restriction is you can't claim to be API x compliant until you are. That's a real hardship, being required to actually support the feature set you claim to.
You use "real hardship" in a sarcastic sense, suggesting that it's not an imposition at all. If that's the case, then Sun could just forget about enforcing it, because we have laws against fraud already.
But they won't... because Java isn't really an open specification. It's a Sun trademark. It's their property.
If Sun decides tommorrow that Java(tm) can only run on Solaris, that's their choice to make. They can obliterate and re-write the specifications whenever they feel like it.
AT&T invented C++, but they never had an equivalent power to dictate terms to Microsft, Borland, or other vendors of C++ tools.