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And this is Canada, we go for security through co-operation and support, rather than intimidation and manipulation.

I would have agreed with you prior to the G20 in Toronto in June. But Canada is becoming just as fascist as any other western state, maybe more so, complete with intimidation, beatings, and groundless mass arrest. You may be thinking of the old Canada, where if they wanted to abrogate rights, they had to do so legally through an act like the War Measures Act. Now they don't even bother with the legal niceties.

How I Got Arrested and Abused at the G20 in Toronto, Canada

The real battle is between Google and Microsoft. Google's OS/hardware initiatives may incidentally have negative effects for Apple iPhone and Linux on netbooks.

Sugar is written in Python. It wasn't designed to be fast, at it isn't terribly, but rather discoverable and very tweakable.

I've had the XO running with ubuntu and KDE 3. Ok, perhaps with KDE 'running' isn't such a good term, but with XFCE instead it can function as a little netbook. The biggest drawback for me was actually physical, namely its little keyboard. You can extend its functionality loads with USB devices, including keyboard, but it winds up being an octopus that takes twenty minutes to set up and get going.

If you've ever seen a small chunk of pure sodium tossed into a sink full of water in a high school chemistry class ... and then think how much this guy has ...

Here's a blog post with a couple of vids of sodium water reactions. The US military's post WWII disposal of sodium in a lake is particularly impressive.

I knew that ice didn't disappear because of so called sublimation .

Mars is probably crawling with all kinds of tiny critters.

I want my sexbot! I don't want a cute dog robot, I don't want a dinosaur robot, what, is there no market for sexbots?

Damn the nephews for all spam

So it is you, you nephews and brothers-in-law and husbands of co-workers, who are facilitating the creation of massive bot-nets of compromised Windows machines, you who are not clueless yet commit the sin of settling for shit. Do everyone a favour and switch to a superior operating system, OS/X or Linux, it doesn't matter, and then, when a clueless Windows user calls for help, be firm and say, "Wouldn't know anything about that, I use Linux [or OS/X]. If you want to switch, I'd be happy to help you out."

"We could blame Microsoft for creating crappy operating systems, but if people wanted to pay us billions for our shit, which of us would not rejoice in every bowel movement?"

Damn the nephews for all spam

That's a nice breakdown. Another difference between material objects and copyable files is that there's a sort of coercive element to the material -- we've got it, if you want it, you gotta pay what we're asking. Files can, with some effort, be gotten for free. The value of the commercial product is in quality of the files and overall packaging, as well as ease of access. These are things worth paying for, even if you could get the content for free, though as you outline, what people are willing to pay will vary. However, the lower the price, the more people there are who will be willing to pay.

For myself the only exception is music sold by RIAA member labels (EMI, Sony BMG Music Entertainment, Universal Music Group, Warner Music Group, others). As far as I'm concerned, it doesn't matter how they price their product, they aren't going to get one red cent from me until they stop suing their customers, especially the weakest amongst us like children, single mothers, people on disability.

And there's the rub. They didn't install it. It came preinstalled on their computer. And when they run into troubles, they call their nephew. Damn the nephews for all spam. Damning the average user is just a waste of breath.