I don't remember Stallman missing an opportunity to explain why he does something or what he believes to be important. Certainly not something on the scale of leaving FSF. He also gathered massive amounts of hatred and mockery from people much more influential than some shitty journalist, and probably someone somewhere still calls him an extremist at least few times a second. So this complete lack of comments is so far outside of his normal methods, I can only attribute it to some obligation. As opposed to Media Lab guys, he has no meaningful obligations toward MIT, and I doubt that he gives rat's ass about reputation of MIT or Media Lab management. Silence may be related to some lawsuit or investigation, and leaving MIT may be a way to avoid a conflict of interests, however that would not explain leaving FSF. Therefore either, there is some completely separate reason for leaving FSF, or he had encountered a form of media bullying that he never had to deal with. What sounds truly terrifying considering what he had to deal with in the past.

Yeah, those are totally safe. :-)

I disagree. I've regularly negotiated better salaries than my co-workers. In many cases, I've negotiated better salaries than my bosses. I can do this because I have a strong basis upon which to negotiate. I'm generally better at what I do than most of my co-workers. I don't say it to brag. But I am and I negotiate from that position: I deserve more because I'm better at it than the average person and I have the track record to back that up. Should I now be paid what the average guy is paid? I'm not going to want to work for a company that doesn't appreciate the value I bring to the job (unless, of course, the job is just really cool, in which case salary takes a back seat).

Jesus said nothing. Paul did comment on it, however, so Christians often use that as the basis of their new testament argument. Also the new covenant doesn't mean you completely ignore mosaic law, but I admit to being quite confounded by the distinction. Bottom line, though is that Jesus said to "love your neighbor as yourself." It's in two of the gospels. He didn't make exceptions for homosexuals. And Jesus DID comment on divorce (Matthew 19:9) and you don't see a lot of Christians denying services to remarried people whose original spouses didn't commit adultery.

The problem with all this hate disguised as religion is that it doesn't hold up. It's complete and utter hypocrisy. Homosexuality is called a sin in both Leviticus and 1 Corinthians. Leviticus and 1 Corinthians also say that tattoos are a sin. My wife and I attend an evangelical church in the south and it doesn't escape our attention that there are a great many congregants with tattoos. Especially those cute ankle and back of the neck ones... You don't see Christians up in arms about them getting married or refusing them service. In Matthew 19:9, Jesus said that a man who divorces his wife, except for adultery, and remarries is himself committing adultery. 1/3-1/2 of all divorces in the U.S. don't involve adultery, and yet do you see Christians refusing these people service or refusing the remarry them? Jesus said the second most important commandment was to "love your neighbor as yourself." It's quoted in two Gospels, Mark and Matthew. He didn't say there's an exception for homosexuals. In fact, he never said anything about homosexuals. The Christian right in this country reminds me of the Pharisees in the bible. Trying to interpret who God would judge and passing their own judgment instead of leaving the judgment to God and loving their neighbor, regardless of their neighbors sins because, after all, the bible tells us that we are all sinners.

In all seriousness, though, I think Sony ought to release the movie and I think everyone who believes in free speech ought to buy a ticket, whether they see it or not. Let's turn this movie into a blockbuster! That's the American thing to do! Well, at least back when Americans acted like Americans.

I wasn't planning on seeing the movie, but I'm going to see it if they release it now and I think ever American who believes in free speech ought to do what they can to make this movie into a blockbuster. You don't even have to watch it if you don't want to. Just buy a ticket. How better to show that free speech will not be run off by a bunch of hackers. Or are we going to tuck tail and run? Right now it's looking like tuck tail as movie theaters are pulling it and Sony might even pull it. How pathetic.

As someone who lives in the U.S. South (Arkansas), this is not the belief of most evangelicals. My wife is a devout Christian and our church is an evangelical church (though not like most that you're probably familiar with. Our church is very into being Christians and not so much talking about how Christian they are. They spend the vast majority of their money helping people in poverty while meeting in a Boys & Girls Club gym instead of building a real church.) But among the religious around here, there's very little belief in evolution or the big bang. That said, the local Christian university (John Brown University) has a pretty good evolutionary biology program. So there's some hope for the future, but not as much as I'd like. Science is definitely taking a back seat with evangelicals in the South. It's a pretty tragic state for the future of science in this country. The South certainly won't be contributing a lot to modern cosmology or evolutionary biology.

But they're trying to sell it as a scientific debate, but they're only using religion. Religion vs. Science doesn't work. There's not enough common ground.

That's all fine, but when people want to have "scientific debate" but they don't want to bring their science along, it's no longer a scientific debate. They want to try to "debunk" evolution and big bang, but to legitimately do that, they need to bring science into the equation and they can't, because they don't have scientific claims that can be validated. I'm perfectly fine with them having a conference at a church or wherever people want to debate religion. But it must be sold as a religious debate to be fair, not a scientific debate. The bottom line is creationism isn't science and to try to sell it as such as disingenuous at best, fraudulent is more apt. It's faith. And science doesn't have a place for faith (which is not the same as saying science doesn't have a place for people of faith). Once they have a testable hypothesis, I'm all about letting them join the scientific debate.

The FTDI driver license states "The license only allows use of the Software with, and the Software will only work with Genuine FTDI Components. Use of the Software as a driver for a component that is not a Genuine FTDI Component may irretrievably damage that component. It is your responsibility to make sure that all chips you use the Software as a driver for are Genuine FTDI Components." Surely they neglected to share this with their lawyer. You can't punish users because the manufacturers are breaking the law. How is my mother going to know if she has a genuine FTDI chip or not? That's just asinine.

Oh but they tried that in the past -- those products had a consistent result of killing the whole market segment then themselves.

1. Windows CE PDAs -- almost completely replaced healthy PDA-oriented OS due to Windows name, then wiped out the first generation of non-phone PDAs due to being absolutely inadequate in all ways possible. Survivors were iPAQ (Windows CE/Mobile), Palm (PalmOS), Visor (PalmOS), Blackberry (Blackberry OS, a phone but from PDA generation).

2. Windows Mobile phones -- sold to carriers, disappointed users, lost all market to dumbphones and Symbian-based Nokia, then completely wiped out by iPhone.

3. Windows Phone phones -- Survive by being produced by zombified Nokia, can't get any presence on the market due to iPhone and Android competition.

4. Windows RT tablets -- No one bought them in the first place.

Please re-read what you are responding to.