It’s perfectly possible that the website disclosed personal information, addresses, social network details and political affiliations of the police officers. And it’s understandable that the police say they are particularly concerned about those portions. I haven’t seen the site.
But I have read the judgment. And the justification of the website ban does not mention police officer’s personal information as a reason for the ban. Instead, the Court explains that it objects to certain language on the website, and the Court gives a few examples:
“Nous n’hésiterons pas à user de termes sévères à l’égard de la Police et de la Gendarmerie, car nous considérons ces institutions comme la fosse commune de l’humanité, le charnier de l’évolution, la mise à mort quotidienne de la déontologie et de l’éthique. Nous serons sans equivoque” “We will not hesitate to use harsh terms down on Police and Gendarmerie, because we consider these institutions as the common grave of mankind, the mass grave of evolution, killing daily Conduct and ethics. We will be clear”
“Un laboratoire ou CRS [compagnie républicaine de sécurité] et PAF [police aux frontières] s’entraînent à chasser le migrant, à l’humilier, à le torturer psychologiquement. Calais possède sans doute la PAF la plus violente de France” “A laboratory or Republic’s Security Company and the Border Police are trained in hunting downs migrants, in humiliating, in torturing them psychologically. [The town of] Calais has probably the most violent border police of France”
The Court considers that such language falls under the description
“toute expression outrageante, termes de mépris ou invective qui ne renferme l’imputation d’aucun fait” “any offensive expression, contemptuous term or invective [violent denunciation] that does not reflect the imputation [attribution of a fault] of any fact”
with respect to the police, and is as such forbidden under a legal exception to the free speech/free press principle.
I agree that Spinoza is using the the word God in a meaningful sense; it's just a completely different meaningful sense than the common definition of God. I don't understand how it could be arrogant to suggest that a different word might be more appropriate when you are talking about (according to definition VI) "a substance consisting in infinite attributes, of which each expresses eternal and infinite essentiality".
Spinoza is selling pantheism. Also it is not correct to say his god-concept would can be understood as atheism. Pantheisitic concepts are quite common in all major religions/religious thinkers.
I understand why some people like to conveniently categorise Spinoza as a pantheist. But, after having read (most of) Ethica I no longer think this label quite fits.
(For a short discussion, see Steven Nadler, Spinoza the atheist, New Humanist.)
Spinoza didn't believe in a personal God either. In Ethica, his philosophical masterpiece, Spinoza says that God is "immanent" in nature, not some supernatural entity beyond the world, interfering or having feelings.
Spinoza's concept of Deus sive natura (the God from nature) does not fit in the concept that most people mean when they speak of God. Schopenhauer wrote that because Spinoza called the substance God, he created his own problem of people misunderstanding him. Schopenhauer thinks Spinoza used the term God to make his ideas less objectionable. If only Spinoza choose to call his God-concept by any other name, his ideas would be understood more frequently for what they are: atheism in awe for the Beauty of Nature and the Universe; not theism, or pantheism, etc.
Einstein has the same problem: he stated many times not to believe in a personal God; the quote from this letter is just one quote among many others, many times equally clear as in this letter. But because Einstein, like Spinoza, did use the term God (for instance in the dice comment), even if it meant something that falls outside of most people's definition of God, theists like to talk about him as if he were one of their own.
In The God Delusion, Richard Dawkins explains why Einstein's God-quotes do not contradict his unbelief.
This is a quote from Albert Einstein, which summarises his position best (in my opinion):
I am a deeply religious nonbeliever. This is a somewhat new kind of religion. I have never imputed to Nature a purpose or a goal, or anything that could be understood as anthropomorphic. What I see in Nature is a magnificent structure that we can comprehend only very imperfectly, and that must fill a thinking person with a feeling of humility. This is a genuinely religious feeling that has nothing to do with mysticism. The idea of a personal God is quite alien to me and seems even naive.
One: the difference in perception of relevance between normal Wikipedia users and zealous deletionist administrators.
I don't think the admins are being blamed per se, but rather the policies. As it is, one person can nominate a little-read article for speedy deletion, and it will be wiped before anyone in the relevant fan community has had a chance to comment on the deletion page. I think the problem is that the population of people who pay enough attention to Wikipedia to notice and respond to deletion requests is not identical to the population who read and benefit from Wikipedia, so people in the former population can delete articles useful to those in the latter population.
Two: the speed of the deletion process, which implies a consensus is made amoung a limited number of people who vote.
the community does not have a system in place for culling definitive consensus. The system currently in place is essentially plurality voting: A small slice of the population shows up, registers to vote, and then votes for one of the two candidates (Mr. "Keep" or Mr. "Delete.") Occasionally, there are write-ins, but those are usually viewed as part of the spoiler effect. The administrator presiding over the vote may choose to, at his discretion, nullify or amend the results of the vote. It's democratic, but not quite consensual.
Three: The difficulty of undoing deletions
In an article, if a large section is deleted, possibly after a quick concensus-procedure on the Talk page, the older versions with that section are still easily to be found by the public at large (particulary those who have browsed to the article before, and remember the section was there). They can simply go to History, and read the old version of the article. They can re-add that section through copy/edit/paste, and explain in Talk that there is very good reason to do so, especially if their argument to do so had not come forward during the initial short consensus-procedure.
When an article is deleted, the general public at large (most Wikipedia-users) does not see a link to the historical versions. If they want to re-create the article, they have to re-write it from memory (and explain in Talk that there is very good reason to do so, especially if their argument to do so had not come forward during the initial short deletion-procedure.)
Maybe soon for really secure accounts, we'll have a fairly painless set of layers, ala: something you have - the random PIN cards, something you know - pword, something you i.d. - (handwriting/picture/word)?
Human authentication methods are usually:
Something you are (e.g. fingerprint or retinal pattern, DNA sequence, biometrics)
(variant:) Something you do (e.g. signature)
Something you have (e.g. driver's license, credit card, cell phone, software token)
Something you know (e.g. a password, personal identification number)
or a combination of the above (e.g. a credit card with a PIN number)
The idea about handwriting recognition is not novel. In 1999 I already saw a demonstration of an authentication method where you had to write your signature with a special pen called SMARTpen, that did signature recognition, and on top of that recorded how you drew the signature: pressure, speed, differences in speed, order in which you drew the lines, etc. The idea was that somebody can easily forge your signature but never in the same way you do it; or that it's quite possible that you do your signature twice where the ink-result-on-paper is a bit dissimilar, but the computer still can match the signatures with a high probability by the way they were drawn.
Eight year later, I haven't seen it used a lot. I don't know what happened to the firm (LCI or something like it).
When people use the expression "I'm just saying", it usually means they're using circumstancial evidence to insinuate something; and they know the evidence is pretty thin but they don't want to admit to say so.
Both men who play an important role in Nina's life, her ex-husband and new boyfriend, look suspicious. No body is found, and so far I've seen no hard evidence against either of them.
So, I see 5 possibilities:
Nina is not dead. Either she's hiding, or she's lost somewhere, or possibly has lost her memory. I presume she loves her kids to much to put them through this ordeal, so I consider this hypothesis unlikely.
Nina is dead, by accident. Accidents are known to happen, but it is kind of strange that a body accidently can't be found (although it's still not entirely impossible).
Hans killed her. The strongest indication is the missing passenger's seat, and the blood in the car. The rest (his geekiness, lover of death literature, alledged row) is completely circumstancial and not very relevant.
Sean killed her. The strongest indication is that he confesses to earlier mass murder (although he denies this one). The rest (love for S&M whether he still practices this or not, him becoming Christian) is circumstancial and not very relevant.
Somebody else killed her. Probably not very likely either, but you never know. She could be killed by somebody else she kwew (an American or a Russian acquaintance from the past) or even by a stranger. You know, Sean Sturgeon is not the only (alledged) mass-murderer out there.
We've had a lot more terrorism to deal with than the US. We've had decades more experience...
The way the British authorities used to treat Northern-Irish catholic suspects, improsoning without probable cause and due process, torturing until they agreed to sign false confessions, etc. was every bit as outrageous then as the current US authorities' conduct now. Two differences:
The US seems to have scaled things up a bit.
The British did all the torturing themselves. The US outsources this practices more and more to foreign countries.
The case of the Guildford Four is the most commonly known, but only a tip of the iceberg. (I'm talking about treatment of suspects here, situations like Bloody Sunday are a whole other category.)
The logo is created by Larry Ewing, based on an idea acquired from discussions on the linux-kernel mailing list, for the intended use as Linux mascot. Linus gave a lot of input in the design, particularly on the contented look of the pinguin. Larry's terms are:
Permission to use and/or modify this image is granted provided you acknowledge me lewing@isc.tamu.edu and The GIMP if someone asks.
As far as I know, the use of the metric system and the establishment of organisations to oversee the keeping of metric standards, was agreed upon in the Convention du Mètre of 1875. The United States signed the treaty in 1878 (but is a bit late in putting it in practise!), the United Kingdom in 1884.
Also in 1884, the Greenwich Prime Meridian was standardised at the International Conference Held at Washington for the Purpose of Fixing a Prime Meridian and a Universal Day. However, I believe France abstained when the vote was taken, and French maps continued to use the Paris Meridian for several decades afterwards.
Eben gagged himself, in a way, by retiring from his work on the GPL3
Oh, come on. Eben Moglen's stepping down from the board of directors of the Free Software Foundation. That's nothing near "gagging himself". He's still a professor of law and history of law at Columbia University. He's still the Chairman of Software Freedom Law Center. He's still allowed, able, capable, and free to make as much comments on SCO as he wants.
He specifically stated in his blog post announcing his stepping down from the FSF that he wants devote more time to writing, teaching, and the Software Freedom Law Center. He considers his years-long FSF work on the GPLv3 as "almost finished", anyway.
You might remember that this was the Supreme Court case where the Freedom Software Law Center (Eben Moglen's organisation) did write an Amicus Curiæ Brief technically in support of Microsoft. The SFLC wanted the Court to decide that software isn't a (patentable) component altogether. Sadly, the Court did not follow that logic. (It was a long shot, and worth the try.)
Instead, it held that software in the abstract isn't a component. It's not the method but the apparatus capable of executing the method that can be patented.
Such an apparatus is, in pratice, a computer on which said software is installed.
The contended software was a speech encoding and compression algorithm included in a version of Windows sold to foreign manufacturers.
The Court held that since the actual copying of the Windows software on the computer was done outside the United States (Düsseldorf or Tokyo, if I recall), the United States patent law does not apply. The fact that the software (on the master disk) was created inside the United States, and copied from the United States to Düsseldorf or Tokyo, is considered irrelevant.
So basically, the Court held that software patents are unenforceable under US patent law as long as you don't load the software on any device inside the US.
The Microsoft v. AT&T ruling got mentioned in the fifth paragraph of the article of the previous story and quite a bit of the Slashdot discussion was either about the Microsoft case or both patent cases, although they did get mixed up a few times.
Microsoft wanted the Court to decide software isn't a component unless copied on a physical disk, the SFLC wanted the Court to decide that software isn't a (patentable) component altogether. The Court's decision seems to follow Microsoft's arguing more that the SFLC's.
The original Tux sucks because it looks fat, bored, lazy
This is what Linus said on that subject back in May 1996:
Now, with penguins, (cuddly such), "contented" means it has either just gotten laid, or it's stuffed on herring. Take it from me, I'm an expert on penguins, those are really the only two options.
Now, working on that angle, we don't really want to be associated with a randy penguin (well, we do, but it's not politic, so we won't), so we should be looking at the "stuffed to its brim with herring" angle here.
So when you think "penguin", you should be imagining a slighly overweight penguin (*), sitting down after having gorged itself, and having just burped. It's sitting there with a beatific smile - the world is a good place to be when you have just eaten a few gallons of raw fish and you can feel another "burp" coming.
(*) Not FAT, but you should be able to see that it's sitting down because it's really too stuffed to stand up. Think "bean bag" here.
Now, if you have problems associating yourself with something that gets off by eating raw fish, think "chocolate" or something, but you get the idea.
Ok, so we should be thinking of a lovable, cuddly, stuffed penguin sitting down after having gorged itself on herring.
Some people have
told me they don't think a fat penguin really embodies the grace of Linux,
which just tells me they have never seen a angry penguin charging at them in
excess of 100mph. They'd be a lot more careful about what they say if they
had.
What then does license compatibility really mean exactly?
Two licenses are compatible if a licensee can fulfil the conditions of both licenses simultaneously.
You're right; that's the correct definition.
Another way of saying this is that two licenses are compatible if the requirements of one are a subset of the other.
If the requirements of one licence are a subset of the other, then the licenses are compatible. However, this sufficient condition is not a necessary condition. As long as the requirements are not mutually exclusive, the licenses are compatible.
Not only that, but you can sacrifice compression to create recovery capability in the case of lost/corrupted data, especially in the newer ones.
Not only that, you can even increase compression rate and performance if you sacrifice the ability to recover/decompress losslessly. See this article on lzip, the lossy advanced file compression utility.
If your wife/significant other, or anyone else for that matter, needs access to your files, why not give her (him) an account with sufficient privileges? Could be read-only (that would be sufficient for NetSettler's example), could be full access.
That way, you have the extra security of password authentication, possibly pattern-authentication as well if the technique of the story is implemented. Telling other people your password over a (non-secured) telephone line kind of defeats the purpose of passwords in my opinion.
OLPC XO-1 manifacturer Quanta announced selling a XO-like device on the open market later this year, at a price around $200. Presumably it will have a display of the same technology.
The ex-Ximian part of Novell consistently used/uses monkeys and monkey-related project names (Bonobo, Mono, Evolution, etc). I wonder if there is, consciencely or unconsciencely, some message to the Novell folks: the monkey-named version is after all going to be the first version with an official Gnewsense-like flavour:
The Glossy Gnu will nonetheless play a role in this next release,
because Ubuntu 7.10 will feature a new flavour - as yet unnamed - which
takes an ultra-orthodox view of licensing: no firmware, drivers,
imagery, sounds, applications, or other content which do not include
full source materials and come with full rights of modification,
remixing and redistribution. There should be no more conservative home,
for those who demand a super-strict interpretation of the "free" in free
software. This work will be done in collaboration with the folks behind
Gnewsense.
I know I'm probably looking way too deep into something as playful as a name choice. The thought just occured.
I must admin I never heard of the man until a few weeks ago.
I have the habit of taking literary advice from my favourite authors though. Recently Slashdot directed me to a long unpublished interview with Douglas Adams, in which Douglas spoke highly of The Sirens of Titan.
I had luck. Even though the English section of my local library is rather limited, it has a copy. I'm now at page 98 and already I love what I'm reading.
[Maybe in chrono-synclastic infundibula I could find out what's so bloody dangerous about me reading pages 90 to 110. This is now at least the fifth time in my 20-something year old life that I learn of the death of a good author when I'm reading one of his books, and I'm around page 100.]
The.eu tld is just a money-raising exercise, nothing more
I know quite a number of individuals who have their own.eu domain, and prefer that over a domain with their country's TLD for political reasons: because they do not identify themselves too proudly as a citizen of their country.
There are several peoples with some degree of autonomist and secessionist movements in Europe:
Flanders from Belgium
Brittany and Corsica from France
Basque and Catalonia from Spain (however the latter have already the.cat TLD)
Yes, the GPLv2 was/is a great license, but it isn't perfect. The FSF's main concern is that certain companies start to distribute software/devices that is in accordance with the letter of the GPLv2, but not with its spirit (specifically freedoms 2 and 3: the freedom to change the program to your own needs, and distribute changes). Example: Tivo.
Also, GPLv2 was written at a time where software patents weren't considered possible, even in the worst nightmares. Today, they are a reality in many parts of the world.
Besides Tivoisation and patents, there are some other good things in the GPL v3, as it is currently drafted. It will be no longer necessary to provide source code via snail mail if you distribute binaries without source. This is the 21st century, providing access to copy the Corresponding Source from a network server at no charge will be sufficient.
Yes, there is resistance to the GPL v3, especially to the earlier drafts (drafts 1 and 2). That's what this long comment period is about. The FSF is taking serious comments seriously. Also, there was opposition in 1991 about GPL v2 as well. Some resistance doesn't mean the whole thing sucks.
And if the GPL v2 continues to be fine by you, you are free to continue to use GPL v2 for your own software. Or dual license "GPL v2 or v3" if you want to stay compatible with GNU software. The FSF would argue that "GPL v2, or at the user's option, any later version" is even better.
Slashdot Mirror
It’s perfectly possible that the website disclosed personal information, addresses, social network details and political affiliations of the police officers. And it’s understandable that the police say they are particularly concerned about those portions. I haven’t seen the site.
But I have read the judgment. And the justification of the website ban does not mention police officer’s personal information as a reason for the ban. Instead, the Court explains that it objects to certain language on the website, and the Court gives a few examples:
The Court considers that such language falls under the description
with respect to the police, and is as such forbidden under a legal exception to the free speech/free press principle.
I agree that Spinoza is using the the word God in a meaningful sense; it's just a completely different meaningful sense than the common definition of God. I don't understand how it could be arrogant to suggest that a different word might be more appropriate when you are talking about (according to definition VI) "a substance consisting in infinite attributes, of which each expresses eternal and infinite essentiality".
Spinoza didn't believe in a personal God either. In Ethica, his philosophical masterpiece, Spinoza says that God is "immanent" in nature, not some supernatural entity beyond the world, interfering or having feelings.
Spinoza's concept of Deus sive natura (the God from nature) does not fit in the concept that most people mean when they speak of God. Schopenhauer wrote that because Spinoza called the substance God, he created his own problem of people misunderstanding him. Schopenhauer thinks Spinoza used the term God to make his ideas less objectionable. If only Spinoza choose to call his God-concept by any other name, his ideas would be understood more frequently for what they are: atheism in awe for the Beauty of Nature and the Universe; not theism, or pantheism, etc.
Einstein has the same problem: he stated many times not to believe in a personal God; the quote from this letter is just one quote among many others, many times equally clear as in this letter. But because Einstein, like Spinoza, did use the term God (for instance in the dice comment), even if it meant something that falls outside of most people's definition of God, theists like to talk about him as if he were one of their own.
In The God Delusion, Richard Dawkins explains why Einstein's God-quotes do not contradict his unbelief.
This is a quote from Albert Einstein, which summarises his position best (in my opinion):
One: the difference in perception of relevance between normal Wikipedia users and zealous deletionist administrators.
Two: the speed of the deletion process, which implies a consensus is made amoung a limited number of people who vote.
Three: The difficulty of undoing deletions
In an article, if a large section is deleted, possibly after a quick concensus-procedure on the Talk page, the older versions with that section are still easily to be found by the public at large (particulary those who have browsed to the article before, and remember the section was there). They can simply go to History, and read the old version of the article. They can re-add that section through copy/edit/paste, and explain in Talk that there is very good reason to do so, especially if their argument to do so had not come forward during the initial short consensus-procedure.
When an article is deleted, the general public at large (most Wikipedia-users) does not see a link to the historical versions. If they want to re-create the article, they have to re-write it from memory (and explain in Talk that there is very good reason to do so, especially if their argument to do so had not come forward during the initial short deletion-procedure.)
- Something you are (e.g. fingerprint or retinal pattern, DNA sequence, biometrics)
- (variant:) Something you do (e.g. signature)
- Something you have (e.g. driver's license, credit card, cell phone, software token)
- Something you know (e.g. a password, personal identification number)
- (there's also a paper on) Somebody you know
- or a combination of the above (e.g. a credit card with a PIN number)
The idea about handwriting recognition is not novel. In 1999 I already saw a demonstration of an authentication method where you had to write your signature with a special pen called SMARTpen, that did signature recognition, and on top of that recorded how you drew the signature: pressure, speed, differences in speed, order in which you drew the lines, etc. The idea was that somebody can easily forge your signature but never in the same way you do it; or that it's quite possible that you do your signature twice where the ink-result-on-paper is a bit dissimilar, but the computer still can match the signatures with a high probability by the way they were drawn. Eight year later, I haven't seen it used a lot. I don't know what happened to the firm (LCI or something like it).When people use the expression "I'm just saying", it usually means they're using circumstancial evidence to insinuate something; and they know the evidence is pretty thin but they don't want to admit to say so.
Both men who play an important role in Nina's life, her ex-husband and new boyfriend, look suspicious. No body is found, and so far I've seen no hard evidence against either of them.
So, I see 5 possibilities:
The way the British authorities used to treat Northern-Irish catholic suspects, improsoning without probable cause and due process, torturing until they agreed to sign false confessions, etc. was every bit as outrageous then as the current US authorities' conduct now. Two differences:
The case of the Guildford Four is the most commonly known, but only a tip of the iceberg. (I'm talking about treatment of suspects here, situations like Bloody Sunday are a whole other category.)
Can you point me to the text of such a deal?
As far as I know, the use of the metric system and the establishment of organisations to oversee the keeping of metric standards, was agreed upon in the Convention du Mètre of 1875. The United States signed the treaty in 1878 (but is a bit late in putting it in practise!), the United Kingdom in 1884.
Also in 1884, the Greenwich Prime Meridian was standardised at the International Conference Held at Washington for the Purpose of Fixing a Prime Meridian and a Universal Day. However, I believe France abstained when the vote was taken, and French maps continued to use the Paris Meridian for several decades afterwards.
Oh, come on. Eben Moglen's stepping down from the board of directors of the Free Software Foundation. That's nothing near "gagging himself". He's still a professor of law and history of law at Columbia University. He's still the Chairman of Software Freedom Law Center. He's still allowed, able, capable, and free to make as much comments on SCO as he wants.
He specifically stated in his blog post announcing his stepping down from the FSF that he wants devote more time to writing, teaching, and the Software Freedom Law Center. He considers his years-long FSF work on the GPLv3 as "almost finished", anyway.
Just in case anyone is interested in the actual opinions:
The Supreme Court opinion of Microsoft v. AT&T .
For completeness: The previous story was (mainly) about KSR v. Teleflex , although it did mention Microsoft v. AT&T as well, in the fifth paragraph.
You might remember that this was the Supreme Court case where the Freedom Software Law Center (Eben Moglen's organisation) did write an Amicus Curiæ Brief technically in support of Microsoft. The SFLC wanted the Court to decide that software isn't a (patentable) component altogether. Sadly, the Court did not follow that logic. (It was a long shot, and worth the try.)
Instead, it held that software in the abstract isn't a component. It's not the method but the apparatus capable of executing the method that can be patented.
Such an apparatus is, in pratice, a computer on which said software is installed.
The contended software was a speech encoding and compression algorithm included in a version of Windows sold to foreign manufacturers.
The Court held that since the actual copying of the Windows software on the computer was done outside the United States (Düsseldorf or Tokyo, if I recall), the United States patent law does not apply. The fact that the software (on the master disk) was created inside the United States, and copied from the United States to Düsseldorf or Tokyo, is considered irrelevant.
So basically, the Court held that software patents are unenforceable under US patent law as long as you don't load the software on any device inside the US.
The Microsoft v. AT&T ruling got mentioned in the fifth paragraph of the article of the previous story and quite a bit of the Slashdot discussion was either about the Microsoft case or both patent cases, although they did get mixed up a few times.
Not really. There were 2 patent cases decided today. In one, KSR v. Teleflex, Microsoft did not take part. It did not write an Amicus Curiæ Brief.
The other case is Microsoft v. AT&T. Obviously, Microsoft did not write an Amicus Curiæ Brief either, it was the fucking Applicant. Interestingly, the Freedom Software Law Center (Eben Moglen's organisation) did write an Amicus Curiæ Brief, technically siding with Microsoft for a reversal of the Court of Appeals decision, but for a different reason.
Microsoft wanted the Court to decide software isn't a component unless copied on a physical disk, the SFLC wanted the Court to decide that software isn't a (patentable) component altogether. The Court's decision seems to follow Microsoft's arguing more that the SFLC's.
If your wife/significant other, or anyone else for that matter, needs access to your files, why not give her (him) an account with sufficient privileges? Could be read-only (that would be sufficient for NetSettler's example), could be full access.
That way, you have the extra security of password authentication, possibly pattern-authentication as well if the technique of the story is implemented. Telling other people your password over a (non-secured) telephone line kind of defeats the purpose of passwords in my opinion.
I googled in my memory.
At last FOSDEM, Jim Gettys gave a presentation of the technical specs of OLPC's XO-1 machine. I remember I found the part about the low-voltage sunlight readable display particularly impressive for a $135 device.
OLPC XO-1 manifacturer Quanta announced selling a XO-like device on the open market later this year, at a price around $200. Presumably it will have a display of the same technology.
The ex-Ximian part of Novell consistently used/uses monkeys and monkey-related project names (Bonobo, Mono, Evolution, etc). I wonder if there is, consciencely or unconsciencely, some message to the Novell folks: the monkey-named version is after all going to be the first version with an official Gnewsense-like flavour:
I know I'm probably looking way too deep into something as playful as a name choice. The thought just occured.
I must admin I never heard of the man until a few weeks ago.
I have the habit of taking literary advice from my favourite authors though. Recently Slashdot directed me to a long unpublished interview with Douglas Adams, in which Douglas spoke highly of The Sirens of Titan.
I had luck. Even though the English section of my local library is rather limited, it has a copy. I'm now at page 98 and already I love what I'm reading.
[Maybe in chrono-synclastic infundibula I could find out what's so bloody dangerous about me reading pages 90 to 110. This is now at least the fifth time in my 20-something year old life that I learn of the death of a good author when I'm reading one of his books, and I'm around page 100.]
I know quite a number of individuals who have their own .eu domain, and prefer that over a domain with their country's TLD for political reasons: because they do not identify themselves too proudly as a citizen of their country.
There are several peoples with some degree of autonomist and secessionist movements in Europe:
There's nothing mentioned for the New York city offices on the official Google Deverloper Day website.
I disagree completely.
Yes, the GPLv2 was/is a great license, but it isn't perfect. The FSF's main concern is that certain companies start to distribute software/devices that is in accordance with the letter of the GPLv2, but not with its spirit (specifically freedoms 2 and 3: the freedom to change the program to your own needs, and distribute changes). Example: Tivo.
Also, GPLv2 was written at a time where software patents weren't considered possible, even in the worst nightmares. Today, they are a reality in many parts of the world.
Besides Tivoisation and patents, there are some other good things in the GPL v3, as it is currently drafted. It will be no longer necessary to provide source code via snail mail if you distribute binaries without source. This is the 21st century, providing access to copy the Corresponding Source from a network server at no charge will be sufficient.
Yes, there is resistance to the GPL v3, especially to the earlier drafts (drafts 1 and 2). That's what this long comment period is about. The FSF is taking serious comments seriously. Also, there was opposition in 1991 about GPL v2 as well. Some resistance doesn't mean the whole thing sucks.
And if the GPL v2 continues to be fine by you, you are free to continue to use GPL v2 for your own software. Or dual license "GPL v2 or v3" if you want to stay compatible with GNU software. The FSF would argue that "GPL v2, or at the user's option, any later version" is even better.