I've often thought that Stallman was too prickly as spokesman or organisational leader, but I've never regarded him as being too extreme from a free software, ideological perspective. His thinking along those lines has always been meticulously careful and he generally sought out and found extremely competent legal advise. His basic mode of argumentation is to point out various legal exploits and note that there was no good reason to assume that government and industry won't abuse them if given the right set of circumstances.
It's a mystery why every ten years we have to have this discussion about whether we've entered a new age of ethical business and responsible government, where we somehow think that human nature and human organisations have changed permanently (through technological innovation!) in some egalitarian way.
Dvorak. One thing that was rather odd for me was that while I was learning the Dvorak keyboard and for a short time afterwards I couldn't touch type on QWERTY anymore. Then one suddenly, about six months after, it came back to me and now I can touch type in both layouts. It's almost as if the 'QWERTY typing center' of my brain had to house two layouts for a while until Dvorak got its own place.
Adding to that observation, during that same time period I could almost feel my synapses firing faster and new neuron connections being made. I felt like I got a turbo boost to my IQ during that period where I thought fast, was more creative and just generally sharper. That effect, whether placebo or otherwise has completely disappeared by now, so it's nothing intrinsic to the format.
The thing that I dislike about cancer reporting (and don't get me wrong I'm all for improving ones lifestyle through better nutrition, exercise and social engagement) is that cancer is fundamentally different from a disease like the flu. If 40% of all flu cases were caused my lifestyle then it would be reasonable to say that you could change your lifestyle and dramatically cut down on the number of flu cases. But cancer is a disease of old age. Basically all of us are going to die and the long you live the more likely it is that you'll die of cancer, if not of the esophagus, then of the stomach, if not of the stomach then brain cancer, or pancreas cancer. So a healthy life style on average will delay the onset of cancer, but will by no means reduce the like-hood that you'll get cancer in your lifetime by 40%. Actually it probably has the perverse effect of making you much more resistant to cardiovascular decease, and therefor MORE likely to die of cancer, albeit at a more advanced age than you would have otherwise.
It's a mystery why every ten years we have to have this discussion about whether we've entered a new age of ethical business and responsible government, where we somehow think that human nature and human organisations have changed permanently (through technological innovation!) in some egalitarian way.