The president can't declare war on his own, but he can hire mercenaries to fight wars for him.
I'm not sure about this one. It seems that, since the legislature has its hands on the purse strings, unless the president manages to get a budget item through for "BILLIONS OF DOLLARS TO HIRE MERCENARIES", he won't have any money to do it with.
Unless the service is gov't regulated, like telephone lines. Common carrier status and all that. The telephone companies (at least the landlines) are not allowed to censor anything that goes over their lines. OTOH, without net neutrality, the telcos could very well examine packets and try to censor packets that are part of hate speech (or really anything they want to censor, like fluffy blue bunnies) with no legal repercussions. IANAL.
It was not thought of as their job when the Constitution was written. And no amendment to the Constitution has been made to make it their job. Yes, there is a theoretical "checks and balances" setup. But, as you have noted in regards to the President, it has largely been broken down by asshat politicians (including judges) trying to grab more power for themselves.
The proper (not actual today) job of the judicial branch is to decide whether the law says person A or person B is more in the right. If the laws are in conflict, the Constitution wins that battle. Saying a law is inconsistent with the Constitution is worlds away from saying "This law is fucking stupid, now take it away". If the laws do not conflict with the Constitution, there is no way in heaven or hell that any judge should arbitrarily decide to ignore the law. Yes the supreme court can make laws go away by comparing to an old piece of paper... But checks and balances only work properly if that is the only way they can change the laws.
The judges do not just sit down and say "Well, I think that person A is more right than person B". They sit down and look at the laws as they stand on the books, and determine whether the laws as they stand on the books think that person A is more or less right than person B. In short, judges do not get to strike down any law they choose just because they don't think it is a good law. Nor do they get to decide against what the law says.
If the law says "If a person sues another person because they don't have the same favorite color, then the plaintiff wins", and some dude sues some other dude because they don't have the same favorite color, the judge must either decide for the plaintiff or find some very specific and definite piece or pieces of the Constitution that are inconsistent with that law. I doubt that such a law would be unconstitutional (ridiculously stupid, but not unconstitutional), so if such a law were passed, then it should take an act of legislature, not the supreme court (or any lesser court), to do away with it again.
Now, of course, this is all in theory; this is all how the government was originally envisioned at the time of writing of the Constitution. Things have changed, and today our government only superficially resembles the original vision. So yes, today the courts can decide, oh to fuck with this old "rule of law" thing, I'm just going to set a precedent that this law will not be enforced.
Where are the judges who take a look at this case, say, "Well, this case is fucking stupid, and so is the law. *gavel* You're free to go, and here's $10,000 from every senator, for making you sit through this bullshit?"
Where are they? Well, they're off in some other country in which the judicial branch of government is also the legislative branch. Over here in civilization, we have what's sometimes called "separation of powers" (in theory anyway).
How many of the big corporations have ever been hated by anyone beyond a narrow and short-lived circle of populist reformers?
Standard Oil was a villain to the small independents. Not to the customer who found the Standard product to be cheap, predictable and safe.
Neither of these things means that SO was a good thing for even most individual people. They don't mean SO was a bad thing either. But the reason that the "short-lived circle of populist reformers" hate monopolies is that those monopolies are perceived by the reformers as being bad for nearly everyone except the monopolizing corporation itself. Perhaps the reformers are wrong (although I don't think they are). Of course, "bad" means "worse than the alternative of not having one corporation monopolize a market".
A good design is one which is general and flexible enough to easily accommodate a very large number of potential changes to the requirements. Sure, you might not be able to foresee all changes, but if you have any brains, you can usually foresee an awful lot. So, if you make a design which is general and abstract, and able to very easily be specialized to the particular requirements at hand, then you have something which is much more resilient than the "oh I'll just code something and see what happens cruft-filled junk" that I see so much of (in scientific programming), as well as something which is probably much more widely useful than what was originally envisioned.
For instance: Suppose I am supposed to write a piece of software to test some (information) connections between hardware pieces. Well, I can start by writing code to send a particular data pattern down the wire and check to see if it is right at the other end. Then when the requirements do change, sure I haven't "wasted" any time thinking about design, and I can just do the same thing over again to write the new software to test some slightly different connection. OR, I can sit down and plan things out. This might result in writing a general connection-testing framework, and specific (and simple) modules which take care of the various pieces of actually doing the test. For instance, one module might generate the data pattern to use. Another might load that data pattern onto the sending piece of hardware. Another might read the pattern off the other end of the hardware. Another might translate the pattern that was sent into the language of the receiving hardware. Another might check the received pattern against the expected pattern. Another might take the results of such a comparison and prepare a nice little error-rate report.
Now suppose I'm asked to send from a different piece of hardware. Instead of having a nasty monolithic design like I would produce by just going "ok, what is step 1? now what is step 2?", I've got something flexible, and all I have to do is write a new sending module and a new translating module. What I have to do is simple and clear.
Takes a bit longer up front, but once you've got it, you've got it. And yes, this is a real-life example. I designed and coded this. At one point, my employer asked for some changes, and I came back 15 minutes later with them done. He said he expected them to take me about 3 days. And yes, he is an experienced coder himself. (he did a project just like this for the old version of this same hardware)
So yes, a rigid, inflexible design is useless as soon as the requirements change. That means it is a poor design. But a good design is resilient and rarely actually needs to be changed unless the entire problem domain changes.
plants that have been modified dramatically and may or may not germinate true.
Heavy water is unlikely to alter the plant's genetic structure one iota. So why would the plant not germinate true?
However, I am quite skeptical of the claim that heavy water slows down a plant's metabolism. It is far more likely that sufficient heavy water to have a real effect on a plant would simply kill it outright. As I understand it, after reading a bit on wikipedia, heavy water interferes with protein folding by changing the strength of hydrogen bonding. Since proteins perform their function by having a particular shape, if you change that shape even just a little bit, you tend to destroy the function of the protein.
So, to sum up, if a plant can survive replacement of all its water with heavy water, which I doubt, then there is no reason (that I can see) that switching it back to normal water would produce a plant noticeably different from one that had been on normal water the whole time.
One, have you ever heard of the so-called Bystander Effect? The very fact that there were a lot of people around when your brother fell on the ice tends to mean that it is less likely that any of them will stop and help.
Two, at least they did walk around instead of over or on him... Seriously, what did you expect them to do?
Three, you need to move to the south. There's less ice here to slip on, and people hold doors open for others all the time. It shocks me not at all when someone holds the door open for me. In fact, if I'm just far enough behind someone that the door slams closed just as I reach it, I'm usually shocked that they didn't hold it for me (as that isn't really very far behind them at all). Maybe that means southerners have more empathy, I don't know. But it is sad that common courtesy is so rare as to shock you.
Finally, the OP said nothing about getting his understanding of Asperger's from the Internet. Perhaps the fellow really is an MD, or a psychologist, or Hans Asperger himself (oh wait, he's dead). It is certainly more likely that he is not a medical professional, but without any evidence that he is an ``Internet MD'', your blasting of him is misplaced at best.
Problem solved. Oh, you're still installing random things you download as root? Bad idea, no wonder you're having problems like this. Either stick to stuff that comes from your distro's repositories (which generally means it is quite well behaved), or install as a user other than root. Make an install group, and set any directories that you think random downloads might need to install to as being owned by that install group, and also as writable by that install group. Then set the sticky bit on those directories. Now, whenever you need to install some tarball you've downloaded, say mpg123, make a user called mpg123. Make that user a member of the install group, build the source in the new user's home directory, and install without using root. Now the new mpg123 can't overwrite any executables, libraries, etc (unless they are from a previous install of mpg123 using the same mpg123 user), it can't write into random places it oughtn't to be able to, like/etc/rc.d/init.d, but it still gets installed just fine.
If you do sometimes have programs that need to install to some normally restricted dir, either install those files manually as root, or make another group (say init) and make those dirs owned by that group, writable by that group, and sticky. Then when you have some program that needs to install init scripts, make its user a member of group init, and you're good to go. This can get quite fine grained if you need it to.
If you live in Texas, WRITE TO YOUR LEGISLATORS ! You can find out who to write to at the Texas Legislature Online's "Who Represents Me?" page. In my case, there were direct links to my Texas State Senator's and Texas State Representative's webpages, and I used the "email me!" type links I found there. If you don't want to take the time to write something yourself, you are welcome to use the same short letter I wrote:
I recently learned that a bill (SB 446) had been introduced to the Texas Legislature which would require all electronic state documents to be stored in a format described by an open standard. I am writing to lend my overwhelming support to this bill, and to express my hope that, if given the opportunity, you will vote in favor of this measure.
Open standards for documents ensure a number of things. First, the records of our great state will be preserved in a form accessible to posterity. You have no doubt heard the aphorism "Those who do not learn their history are doomed to repeat it," and how can our descendants learn our history if it is locked away in a format that can no longer be supported. It would be as if we had recorded all our state documents on 8-track tapes. Second, those who cannot afford the more expensive platforms and applications required for closed format documents would no longer be restricted from participating in the government (of the people, by the people, for the people) of the State of Texas.
Please, ensure that both the present and the future of our state can participate and learn from our government, and support this measure to require open formats for all state documents.
OTOH, the GP never said to switch everyone to linux, just to ban all MS users from the internet. Do try not to put words in people's mouths.
we will always be outnumbered by people who think that [security] isn't [worth it]
Not if we take them off the internet.
Really, though. (Analogy alert) There are certainly people who, left to their own devices, would decide that driving on their side of the road "wasn't worth the tradeoff" of having to wait behind other people. However, that would endanger the rest of us, so we as a collective group of people decided to make laws requiring not only driving on the right side of the road (left for you brits), but also some training in things like "which side of the road is the right side, then?" before driving.
Botnets and similar things are caused by people who decide that security isn't worth the tradeoff of inconvenience. However, the existence of botnets causes harm to the rest of us (significantly less grievous harm than driving on the wrong side of the road tends to cause, but harm nonetheless). The close resemblance here suggests (not necessitates, I know) that perhaps we should pass laws requiring security and training (or demonstration of the fruits of training, knowledge) before using the Internet.
Now of course requiring security is a sticky problem. What is security, and how do you check to see if someone has it? Well, back to the other side of the analogy, you're allowed to drive on the wrong side of the road in order to pass someone who is going slower than you. But, if you cause an accident while passing, it is all your fault. This side again: if your computer is demonstrably being used as part of a botnet, whether you are actively doing anything with the botnet or not, then the botnet is in some degree your fault. You can go without security, but if you experience any of the negative effects of no security (getting owned), then it is your fault, not somebody else's. This could be codified, where mandatory security could not.
Actually, every instructor I've had works in the industry. Not *DID WORK*....but *WORKS*.
It's not a degree program (yet)
Sounds to me like it is almost exactly an apprenticeship. Which I think is a good thing, if that is what you are looking for. But an apprenticeship is not to be confused with a university degree (although the two often are confused). Not that one is superior to the other, just that they are different things. The world would be a more difficult place to live if we called both apples and oranges by the name apples.
No, your goal is to not lose money from your employer while they are still your employer.:)
And how do you know this? If he said his goal was one thing, and you said it was another, I'd be inclined to trust him over you. It is his goal after all.
If I said "my goal tonight is to get drunk", would you turn around and tell me "No, your goal is to get ahead in life"? No. That'd be ridiculous.
Ok, so it sounds like you agree that the so-called "Vegas-like attitude" is neither a) the fault of the researchers, nor b) something the researchers can really do anything about.
You might say that the researchers should just use more everyday language. But that claim betrays a certain very common (apparent) ignorance. Researchers don't use jargon just to confuse the heck out of other people (for the most part). They use it because it is more precise, or because it is shorthand for something that would otherwise take a lot more words to say. In the latter case, yes, you can just expand the jargon back out into a more verbose description, but in the former case, there really isn't much you can do. "Everyday language" doesn't mean what you need it to mean, and if you put your research into everyday language, then you wind up saying things that are not true, and the issue becomes far more confused than it was before. Jargon is learnable. Imprecise language loses information, and sometimes an awful lot of it.
I never said that all problems are restricted from being solved by law. But nonetheless, some of them are. There are some things which are patented, and thus, unless we pay fees to the patent holder, we can't implement them legally. Now, in many cases like this (GIF, for one), the patents are not really enforced. But, if you hadn't noticed, prior to GIF liberation day, when you installed the GIMP, you had to do extra things (like get the package from a different source) if you wanted it to be able to write GIFs. This was because if they put the GIF writing GIMP in the standard repository, Unisys would have likely gone after them. Now, Unisys wasn't too worried about J. Random Citizen writing GIFs, so J. Random Citizen could put the GIF writing GIMP on their own server, and be just fine.
GIFs are a minor example. As I said, the patent was not really thoroughly enforced there. But in other situations, it is.
As far as WINE goes, I would presume that there are no IP laws making it illegal to emulate windows in the way that WINE does. Otherwise, it probably wouldn't be done, or if it were, it would all be very cloak-and-dagger, and you'd have to get it from some nonstandard server, rather than your distro's main repositories.
To sum up, the existence of a problem which is unrestricted does not imply the non-existence of restricted problems.
researchers typically now conduct their research with an eye toward its commercial practicability.
And you think this is an entirely good thing? Sure it has some good points. The universities get more money quicker. However, the general state of things previously was that academics did pie in the sky research, much of which never winds up being "useful" (although I would argue that increasing our general knowledge is useful...), and then industry would take what it could use from there and develop it for commercial practicability. Notice, however, that industry doing research with an eye toward commercial practicability rarely comes up with the new, ground-breaking, really great stuff. Its all kind of humdrum usage of established knowledge. The great advances (which later enable commercial applications) come from way out there pie in the sky research with no view to commercial practicability.
Of course, there is not a bright line, for instance, Bell Labs back in the day did a lot of research without view to practicability. Bell Labs is famed for being the source of an awful lot of really awesome stuff, too.
I think that Bayh-Dole may very well cause university research to fall into the same boat as industrial research. You won't be able to start a project until you can prove that it will have some commercial application. That's not a good state to be in.
BTW, this "vegas-like attitude" doesn't exist. Nobody in universities actively tries to keep their research to themselves, because that would harm them more than anyone else. Academia runs on reputations, and you can't build up a reputation (and thus get grant money) unless you release your research. The reason that a lot of university research stays in the universities is that nobody comes asking for it. Nearly all research professors are delighted to talk the ear off anyone who shows an interest in their research. So, if you want to know what they are doing, just ask!
No, logical reasoning doesn't change things, it simply tells us how things are. And the state of some problems is that we are not allowed by law to fix them. People want things that copyright/patent/general-IP law prevents us from having. Is that our fault? Somehow I don't think so. Is "dealing with the problem at our end" going to fix it? No. Is there any fix for it outside of a) waiting for IP to expire, b) praying that MSFT and others will suddenly decide to make nice, or c) trying to change the pertinent laws? No. Sorry that you don't like that answer. I don't either. But it is the plain facts. There are some problems for which there is no solution. Covering your ears and shouting at us to "Just fscking fix it already!" isn't going to do a darn thing. We can't.
If you want it so bad, fix it yourself. I'd be happy to enjoy the fruits of your labor while you enjoy your prison term or fines.
Slashdot Mirror
Unless the service is gov't regulated, like telephone lines. Common carrier status and all that. The telephone companies (at least the landlines) are not allowed to censor anything that goes over their lines. OTOH, without net neutrality, the telcos could very well examine packets and try to censor packets that are part of hate speech (or really anything they want to censor, like fluffy blue bunnies) with no legal repercussions. IANAL.
I think you meant "Your freedom to swing your arm ends where someone else's nose begins"... Doesn't make much sense otherwise.
It was not thought of as their job when the Constitution was written. And no amendment to the Constitution has been made to make it their job. Yes, there is a theoretical "checks and balances" setup. But, as you have noted in regards to the President, it has largely been broken down by asshat politicians (including judges) trying to grab more power for themselves.
The proper (not actual today) job of the judicial branch is to decide whether the law says person A or person B is more in the right. If the laws are in conflict, the Constitution wins that battle. Saying a law is inconsistent with the Constitution is worlds away from saying "This law is fucking stupid, now take it away". If the laws do not conflict with the Constitution, there is no way in heaven or hell that any judge should arbitrarily decide to ignore the law. Yes the supreme court can make laws go away by comparing to an old piece of paper... But checks and balances only work properly if that is the only way they can change the laws.
The judges do not just sit down and say "Well, I think that person A is more right than person B". They sit down and look at the laws as they stand on the books, and determine whether the laws as they stand on the books think that person A is more or less right than person B. In short, judges do not get to strike down any law they choose just because they don't think it is a good law. Nor do they get to decide against what the law says.
If the law says "If a person sues another person because they don't have the same favorite color, then the plaintiff wins", and some dude sues some other dude because they don't have the same favorite color, the judge must either decide for the plaintiff or find some very specific and definite piece or pieces of the Constitution that are inconsistent with that law. I doubt that such a law would be unconstitutional (ridiculously stupid, but not unconstitutional), so if such a law were passed, then it should take an act of legislature, not the supreme court (or any lesser court), to do away with it again.
Now, of course, this is all in theory; this is all how the government was originally envisioned at the time of writing of the Constitution. Things have changed, and today our government only superficially resembles the original vision. So yes, today the courts can decide, oh to fuck with this old "rule of law" thing, I'm just going to set a precedent that this law will not be enforced.
And you think that's a good thing?
In Soviet Russia, the Evil Empire is YOU!
A good design is one which is general and flexible enough to easily accommodate a very large number of potential changes to the requirements. Sure, you might not be able to foresee all changes, but if you have any brains, you can usually foresee an awful lot. So, if you make a design which is general and abstract, and able to very easily be specialized to the particular requirements at hand, then you have something which is much more resilient than the "oh I'll just code something and see what happens cruft-filled junk" that I see so much of (in scientific programming), as well as something which is probably much more widely useful than what was originally envisioned.
For instance: Suppose I am supposed to write a piece of software to test some (information) connections between hardware pieces. Well, I can start by writing code to send a particular data pattern down the wire and check to see if it is right at the other end. Then when the requirements do change, sure I haven't "wasted" any time thinking about design, and I can just do the same thing over again to write the new software to test some slightly different connection. OR, I can sit down and plan things out. This might result in writing a general connection-testing framework, and specific (and simple) modules which take care of the various pieces of actually doing the test. For instance, one module might generate the data pattern to use. Another might load that data pattern onto the sending piece of hardware. Another might read the pattern off the other end of the hardware. Another might translate the pattern that was sent into the language of the receiving hardware. Another might check the received pattern against the expected pattern. Another might take the results of such a comparison and prepare a nice little error-rate report.
Now suppose I'm asked to send from a different piece of hardware. Instead of having a nasty monolithic design like I would produce by just going "ok, what is step 1? now what is step 2?", I've got something flexible, and all I have to do is write a new sending module and a new translating module. What I have to do is simple and clear.
Takes a bit longer up front, but once you've got it, you've got it. And yes, this is a real-life example. I designed and coded this. At one point, my employer asked for some changes, and I came back 15 minutes later with them done. He said he expected them to take me about 3 days. And yes, he is an experienced coder himself. (he did a project just like this for the old version of this same hardware)
So yes, a rigid, inflexible design is useless as soon as the requirements change. That means it is a poor design. But a good design is resilient and rarely actually needs to be changed unless the entire problem domain changes.
However, I am quite skeptical of the claim that heavy water slows down a plant's metabolism. It is far more likely that sufficient heavy water to have a real effect on a plant would simply kill it outright. As I understand it, after reading a bit on wikipedia, heavy water interferes with protein folding by changing the strength of hydrogen bonding. Since proteins perform their function by having a particular shape, if you change that shape even just a little bit, you tend to destroy the function of the protein.
So, to sum up, if a plant can survive replacement of all its water with heavy water, which I doubt, then there is no reason (that I can see) that switching it back to normal water would produce a plant noticeably different from one that had been on normal water the whole time.
Just like IBM.
Sounds like my kind of guy. Where do I go to vote for him?
One, have you ever heard of the so-called Bystander Effect? The very fact that there were a lot of people around when your brother fell on the ice tends to mean that it is less likely that any of them will stop and help.
Two, at least they did walk around instead of over or on him... Seriously, what did you expect them to do?
Three, you need to move to the south. There's less ice here to slip on, and people hold doors open for others all the time. It shocks me not at all when someone holds the door open for me. In fact, if I'm just far enough behind someone that the door slams closed just as I reach it, I'm usually shocked that they didn't hold it for me (as that isn't really very far behind them at all). Maybe that means southerners have more empathy, I don't know. But it is sad that common courtesy is so rare as to shock you.
Finally, the OP said nothing about getting his understanding of Asperger's from the Internet. Perhaps the fellow really is an MD, or a psychologist, or Hans Asperger himself (oh wait, he's dead). It is certainly more likely that he is not a medical professional, but without any evidence that he is an ``Internet MD'', your blasting of him is misplaced at best.
sudo chmod go-w
Problem solved. Oh, you're still installing random things you download as root? Bad idea, no wonder you're having problems like this. Either stick to stuff that comes from your distro's repositories (which generally means it is quite well behaved), or install as a user other than root. Make an install group, and set any directories that you think random downloads might need to install to as being owned by that install group, and also as writable by that install group. Then set the sticky bit on those directories. Now, whenever you need to install some tarball you've downloaded, say mpg123, make a user called mpg123. Make that user a member of the install group, build the source in the new user's home directory, and install without using root. Now the new mpg123 can't overwrite any executables, libraries, etc (unless they are from a previous install of mpg123 using the same mpg123 user), it can't write into random places it oughtn't to be able to, like
If you do sometimes have programs that need to install to some normally restricted dir, either install those files manually as root, or make another group (say init) and make those dirs owned by that group, writable by that group, and sticky. Then when you have some program that needs to install init scripts, make its user a member of group init, and you're good to go. This can get quite fine grained if you need it to.
MSB has some scripts and suggestions that make all of this a little bit smoother to do at http://www.ip97.com/lfs/hints/downloads/files/mor
Yeah, I think so too. Oh wait, *NIX does.
Indeed Go Texas!
If you live in Texas, WRITE TO YOUR LEGISLATORS ! You can find out who to write to at the Texas Legislature Online's "Who Represents Me?" page. In my case, there were direct links to my Texas State Senator's and Texas State Representative's webpages, and I used the "email me!" type links I found there. If you don't want to take the time to write something yourself, you are welcome to use the same short letter I wrote:
I recently learned that a bill (SB 446) had been introduced to the Texas Legislature which would require all electronic state documents to be stored in a format described by an open standard. I am writing to lend my overwhelming support to this bill, and to express my hope that, if given the opportunity, you will vote in favor of this measure.
Open standards for documents ensure a number of things. First, the records of our great state will be preserved in a form accessible to posterity. You have no doubt heard the aphorism "Those who do not learn their history are doomed to repeat it," and how can our descendants learn our history if it is locked away in a format that can no longer be supported. It would be as if we had recorded all our state documents on 8-track tapes. Second, those who cannot afford the more expensive platforms and applications required for closed format documents would no longer be restricted from participating in the government (of the people, by the people, for the people) of the State of Texas.
Please, ensure that both the present and the future of our state can participate and learn from our government, and support this measure to require open formats for all state documents.
Not if we take them off the internet.
Really, though. (Analogy alert) There are certainly people who, left to their own devices, would decide that driving on their side of the road "wasn't worth the tradeoff" of having to wait behind other people. However, that would endanger the rest of us, so we as a collective group of people decided to make laws requiring not only driving on the right side of the road (left for you brits), but also some training in things like "which side of the road is the right side, then?" before driving.
Botnets and similar things are caused by people who decide that security isn't worth the tradeoff of inconvenience. However, the existence of botnets causes harm to the rest of us (significantly less grievous harm than driving on the wrong side of the road tends to cause, but harm nonetheless). The close resemblance here suggests (not necessitates, I know) that perhaps we should pass laws requiring security and training (or demonstration of the fruits of training, knowledge) before using the Internet.
Now of course requiring security is a sticky problem. What is security, and how do you check to see if someone has it? Well, back to the other side of the analogy, you're allowed to drive on the wrong side of the road in order to pass someone who is going slower than you. But, if you cause an accident while passing, it is all your fault. This side again: if your computer is demonstrably being used as part of a botnet, whether you are actively doing anything with the botnet or not, then the botnet is in some degree your fault. You can go without security, but if you experience any of the negative effects of no security (getting owned), then it is your fault, not somebody else's. This could be codified, where mandatory security could not.
If I said "my goal tonight is to get drunk", would you turn around and tell me "No, your goal is to get ahead in life"? No. That'd be ridiculous.
Ok, so it sounds like you agree that the so-called "Vegas-like attitude" is neither a) the fault of the researchers, nor b) something the researchers can really do anything about.
You might say that the researchers should just use more everyday language. But that claim betrays a certain very common (apparent) ignorance. Researchers don't use jargon just to confuse the heck out of other people (for the most part). They use it because it is more precise, or because it is shorthand for something that would otherwise take a lot more words to say. In the latter case, yes, you can just expand the jargon back out into a more verbose description, but in the former case, there really isn't much you can do. "Everyday language" doesn't mean what you need it to mean, and if you put your research into everyday language, then you wind up saying things that are not true, and the issue becomes far more confused than it was before. Jargon is learnable. Imprecise language loses information, and sometimes an awful lot of it.
I never said that all problems are restricted from being solved by law. But nonetheless, some of them are. There are some things which are patented, and thus, unless we pay fees to the patent holder, we can't implement them legally. Now, in many cases like this (GIF, for one), the patents are not really enforced. But, if you hadn't noticed, prior to GIF liberation day, when you installed the GIMP, you had to do extra things (like get the package from a different source) if you wanted it to be able to write GIFs. This was because if they put the GIF writing GIMP in the standard repository, Unisys would have likely gone after them. Now, Unisys wasn't too worried about J. Random Citizen writing GIFs, so J. Random Citizen could put the GIF writing GIMP on their own server, and be just fine.
GIFs are a minor example. As I said, the patent was not really thoroughly enforced there. But in other situations, it is.
As far as WINE goes, I would presume that there are no IP laws making it illegal to emulate windows in the way that WINE does. Otherwise, it probably wouldn't be done, or if it were, it would all be very cloak-and-dagger, and you'd have to get it from some nonstandard server, rather than your distro's main repositories.
To sum up, the existence of a problem which is unrestricted does not imply the non-existence of restricted problems.
I can minimize mine. Firefox 2.0.0.1 on Ubuntu Edgy.
Of course, there is not a bright line, for instance, Bell Labs back in the day did a lot of research without view to practicability. Bell Labs is famed for being the source of an awful lot of really awesome stuff, too.
I think that Bayh-Dole may very well cause university research to fall into the same boat as industrial research. You won't be able to start a project until you can prove that it will have some commercial application. That's not a good state to be in.
BTW, this "vegas-like attitude" doesn't exist. Nobody in universities actively tries to keep their research to themselves, because that would harm them more than anyone else. Academia runs on reputations, and you can't build up a reputation (and thus get grant money) unless you release your research. The reason that a lot of university research stays in the universities is that nobody comes asking for it. Nearly all research professors are delighted to talk the ear off anyone who shows an interest in their research. So, if you want to know what they are doing, just ask!
No, logical reasoning doesn't change things, it simply tells us how things are. And the state of some problems is that we are not allowed by law to fix them. People want things that copyright/patent/general-IP law prevents us from having. Is that our fault? Somehow I don't think so. Is "dealing with the problem at our end" going to fix it? No. Is there any fix for it outside of a) waiting for IP to expire, b) praying that MSFT and others will suddenly decide to make nice, or c) trying to change the pertinent laws? No. Sorry that you don't like that answer. I don't either. But it is the plain facts. There are some problems for which there is no solution. Covering your ears and shouting at us to "Just fscking fix it already!" isn't going to do a darn thing. We can't.
If you want it so bad, fix it yourself. I'd be happy to enjoy the fruits of your labor while you enjoy your prison term or fines.