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There are only two ways socialized health care can save money:

1) lower availability and quality of care

2) offer the same quality of care for less money through innovation and efficiencies delivered like magic by the Federal bureaucracy.

There are actually a few other options that can happen. Some of them are more likely to happen too.

Right now, the government takes a rolling account of medical costs in different areas, creates an average and a payable amount based on that. When they take control they can just lower the amounts and force nurses, doctors, to take less of the pie, cause hospitals to close down decreasing overhead, and redirect many of the medical research grants to cover expenses.

Alternatively, they could outlaw private insurance coverage and force people into the public system or pay out of pocket then mandate the maximum pay a doctor or nurse or staff can make then limit the maximum profits they can make if they participate in the public system. This right here is how they get around insufficient medicare payments currently. If they accept government medicare-medicaid payments, they have to fit their bill within a list prices they figured for procedure and the area your in. You then have to waive any overages if your bill is more without justification.

That is one reason why medical costs are so expensive. Hospitals, doctors, and everyone in between found out long ago that if the uninsured regular costs were as high as possible, the averages would go up. Most insurance companies also attempt to use this list of approved payments in order to negotiate their costs. I know a guy who broke his ankle recently. They need to install pins to fix it. His original hospital bill was over $15,000. When they found out there was no chance in hell of him ever paying it, they adjusted it to just under $3,000 if he agreed to making payments of a certain amount per month.

It's a racket, one that Obama's wife (and presumably Obama himself) knows all about. When he was a state senator, a hospital created a job position making a over a hundred grand a year in hopes to get Obama's support on some grant money for the hospital to treat the poor. When he became senator, her salary nearly tripled. After it came through, the hospital started rejecting the least profitable patients from it's emergency room care. Of course that job has since been eliminated now that she is the fashion first lady. Most first ladies strive to be more but I guess she didn't have to do much at the old job but stay married to Barrak and keep him happy enough to help the hospital out in free money.

BTW, this administration has a way at hiding the intent of what they are doing. Take the recent GM buyout for instance. They were claiming that everyone should buy a new fuel efficient car and evern pondered the idea of a government payment for the trade in of your older less efficient car. Then the recession hit, the lending crisis, and not to many people can afford a new car right now. So they blamed GM's and Chrysler's woes on building Big SUVs which people were buying instead of the more fuel efficient offering that they still sell today. Now they are going through bankruptcy, the government under Obama's control, purchased controlling interest, they are closing a lot of shops down and guess which ones were the first to be cut, the ones which make replacement parts for older cars and the less efficient newer ones. Now aftermarket vendors make replacement parts too, but less of them on the shelf with little financing availible for expanding operations means they will start costing more as they get rarer. All the sudden, Poof, it's cheaper to buy a new

I'm not sure if you were being sarcastic or not.

Take a look at NewYorkCountryLawyer's blog. He's been covering the RIAA's silly legal war for quite some time and is something of a Slashdot fixture. The blog is a great resource for learning about the absurdity that is the recording industry.

Malcolm Gladwell and others say that you are incorrect and that in fact practice is a huge factor. Now, I suspect that a certain level of talent or inclination is necessary for someone to be willing to put in the 10,000 hours necessary to become exceptional. People don't tend to put in that much time if they have no aptitude and show no improvement. But there is a strong indication that you can't rely on talent; you really do have to practice a lot to get to Carnegie Hall. Also read the first comment here.

Now, you can put in a lot of time without any progress. There's a saying that you have dancers who have been dancing for twenty years, and you have dancers who have danced for a year twenty times. One can even refer to the old schoolyard taunt, "Yeah, and I bet Grade 7 was the best 3 years of your life!". Time is not equivalent to effort. The GP referred to one and you confused it with the other.

Of course we can't trust them. I've found not one, but two people on the internet that say so. See http://www.lagriffedulion.f2s.com/math2.htm/ and http://motls.blogspot.com/2008/07/janet-hyde-boys-girls-in-math-not.html/.

I agree. Trinity Rescue Kit is all you need if you're getting your mother's vacations pictures from a hard drive that isn't fully dead yet. That and a fridge

Dr. Nebel Inherited Robert Bussard's legacy; Aneutronic fusion. For the cost of a single DC10 it could be yours too. ($200 Million) 1 100 MW plant and the Physics is sound. http://iecfusiontech.blogspot.com/2008/01/wb-7-first-plasma.html http://www.emc2fusion.org/

Kidnapped? The girl's probably dead... See this video.

Monsanto has applied for a patent on pigs here and here

They are also seeking to enforce these patents on independant farms across the globe.

Don't just take my word for it - a small investment of your time will yield sufficient information to scare the hell out of anyone who can really see where this is going..

The RIAA was just the start - and all they wanted was our money - Monsanto wants nothing less that to dominate the worlds food supply. And our silence will allow them to succeed.

Fuck iphone.

There's an app for that!

Fuck iphone.

There's an app for that!

any new informfation for this topic? Tun Jang http://rejang-lebong.blogspot.com/

1) This is a great time for whiskey. American and Scottish producers are producing wonderful, wonderful spirits these days.

Don't leave Japan out of that list, my friend. The Japanese distilleries are now starting to mature, and Japanese whiskeys are raking in the awards these days.

If you want to try something really wonderful, see if you can find some Taketsuru 21 year. It may be the most amazing single malt I've ever had (I'm really partial to Compass Box's blends, as well).

Should you find yourself in Tokyo sometime, be sure to check this place out. The guy there is incredibly knowledgeable about whiskeys, especially Japanese, and has an astonishing collection. He's also a really laid-back, nice guy, which is uncommon for specialty shops of any kind in Japan (so many of those places are run by self-important asswipes). He even speaks some English, and sampling the tastiness there feels a lot more like you're kind of hanging out with some cool guy who has the same hobby as you. Great spirits at a really relaxing place.

They had asbestos plaintiffs who were diagnosed with asbestosis but not silicosis, rediagnosed with silicosis but not asbestosis, by the same doctor, with the same X-ray. They laid the seeds for their own destruction."

Or how about in New Mexico where the attorney general seems to give good contracts to those who pay? Or maybe that's just a general politician thing.

Or how about doctors who are no longer paying for malpractice insurance as a way to ensure against lawsuits? Here's a quote from one of those doctors:

"I have a strong feeling I'll never hear from another attorney again," Rosenbaum said. "Sure, I'm nervous. But I practice carefully. The first thing lawyers do when they have a case is [check] all the doctors involved to see who has how much coverage."

In theory the law is great: it prevents doctors from malpracticing by allowing lawsuits. In practice, it's only turned to increase expenses for everyone, while enriching customers (and a few lucky clients).

These are not isolated examples. The list goes on and on. If lawyers want to have a good reputation, they sure don't act like it (of course there are exceptions).

This reminds me of something that I read a while ago, when world of goo was released for linux, the developers had some trouble as well, but that time the culprit was pulse audio.

There were a few small technical hurdles, but Maks is either a genius, or the port was not much trouble at all! One technical hurdle was with Pulse Audio, which apparently comes standard on major distros like Ubuntu. It introduces quite a bit of audio lag. This would be fine for most applications, but it's not good for games, where the goal is to build an extremely responsive system that feels snappy. We were able to work with it, and get the game feeling right, but it took a bit of effort. I realize I'll get shot for saying this, but in Windows, it just worked right away!
[..]
Also, and I've mentioned this before - Linux is created by too many smart opinionated people! There are a lot of very good ideas, but it can become difficult for developers to support all the different distro formats, bundles, audio/video systems. For linux to REALLY take over, it has to be easy for developers to make stuff, and easy for users to get stuff. It's one of those things where too many options can be suffocating, and ultimately hurt the cause.

I just finished watching the video, and I was blown away. I was amazed at how content-centric this is. Any type of content can theoretically be added to a wave: chats, e-mail, documents, images, spreadsheets, code, video, twits, etc.--anything you wish. Even extensions are exposed as content within waves. This completely breaks down the barrier between different forms of content (and applications) and unifies it all as waves. This means that, theoretically, all of Google's services can be unified within Google Wave. They wouldn't necessary have to go away, but their interfaces would be used less, as all their content would be exposed through Google Wave's interface. Not just that, but any service could be added and exposed as waves, from Google Reader and Gmail to competing services like Flickr and Facebook. Just like RSS feeds pull in the web to us, Wave could eventually pull in all our online activity into one organized place. And we'd rarely need to leave it!

The best part of all this is how open this is. Anyone can offer a competing services, and anyone can theoretically take all his waves with him to a competing service. One could even run a Wave server at home, solving the privacy issues of using a third-party service.

In short, this has the potential to change not just the web, but how we compute in general. I can't wait to see where it goes.

While Google Docs is more stable, its features are still wanting compared to Zoho Writer. Google Docs still has nothing to challenge Zoho Writer's Zoho Creator after all thins long!

Sometimes I wonder whether it was a mistake not to buy Zoho. Those folks at Zoho are quite amazing. There is a an almost 2 year old comparison of the two in which I'd say Zoho beats Google hands down.

It's in there already: http://jeremymanson.blogspot.com/2008/11/g1-garbage-collector-in-latest-openjdk.html

Check the posting date.

How about you google it. (Hint: It already exists, see for example http://cdtdoug.blogspot.com/2009/05/its-android-time.html)

A good website about thorium fluoride reactors: Energy from Thorium

Another good (informative and technical) general nuclear website: Nuclear Energy Institute (a.k.a. lobby) Nuclear Notes

A good website about thorium fluoride reactors: Energy from Thorium

Another good (informative and technical) general nuclear website: Nuclear Energy Institute (a.k.a. lobby) Nuclear Notes

Oh, we'll fight for our freedom alright. Just give it a little more time... keep taking away our rights. Watch what happens. All I know is, I don't want any part of it because it's going to be very, very ugly. Don't believe me? Read this wacko. Don't think she's credible? There's a hundred thousand more out there, each with a different agenda.

I wrote about this in my cancer blog a few months back:

I lost some feeling in my hands and feet due to the various chemotherapy drugs I've taken over the past five years. I also lost my fingerprints thanks to Xeloda, which irritates the palms and soles in a reaction called hand-foot syndrome.

When I went to Disney World in 2007 I found that the entry gates use fingerprint scanners to ensure that the person using an electronic ticket is the same one who registered it. The scanner choked when I tried to register and an attendant had to override it. I bet that enough of the population has similar issues that it's in their training manual. I suppose it also means that people like me are a headache for anyone else trying to use fingerprints for identification.

Some of the numbness is nerve damage, particularly from the platinum-based drugs. The nerves do slowly heal, so I am getting some feeling back. In fact, now that I've been off of systemic chemo for four months I have enough feeling to realize that I lost more than I appreciated. Except for a period after a massive dose in 2005, the numbness hasn't been enough to interfere with tasks like holding a pen or buttoning a shirt. It's just been a dullness of sensation.

Today I learned that there's another explanation. According to research published in Science, fingerprints enhance the sense of touch. The ridges vibrate as they encounter bumps on a surface and transmit stronger signals to the nerve endings. So part of my numbness to texture is not just the nerve damage but the lack of fingerprints. I wonder if they, too, will regrow over time.

The first "client" is actually a web app. A pretty one, at that.

Screenshot here~

Still valid, but this is not the question. They are trying to determine wether big bodies of water existed on Mars. About Mars having huge quantities of water ice, we know it from several years, we even have pictures of it and even a map of Mars' aquifers.

"Hell I could put out a Netbook with an embedded Win2K and support more consumer level hardware out of the box that Linux does right now."

"For the little guy it would be suicide. Just look at Tom Tom and getting sued over Linux. Had to cave and pay up, didn't they?"

"Can I do that in Linux? Nope a chance in hell. I can't do that because Linux has NO stable ABI or framework for me to write devices to. None at all."

It is clear that you're trolling to your heart's content, so this is going to be my last reply.

The problem you highlight about ABIs is off mark. While the ABI is constantly improving, they aren't neglecting backwards compatibility. Only ancient calls that have no further purpose are depreciated. If a driver is missing in a Distro, its usually either because they couldn't be bothered to recompile it and include it or they think that the hardware it supports is too old to be supported.

Secondly, if a driver isn't compatible with a newer kernel it is normally because the manufacturer has shitty coders - really shitty coders. This happens often; the developers say its too hard because they can't be bothered to write quality code. So many of these 'drivers' are just quickly constructed hacks that could have been done better by a group of monkeys.

Either way, the problem you allude to is not the fault of the Linux kernel so much as it is the fault of the crappy programmers that can't be stuffed to write maintainable code. I'm not saying they have to release the source, but I've seen the source of some of these proprietary drivers - its enough to make you blow chunks.

Lastly, you are skipping over a big logical bomb that rains on your party; namely, that Microsoft are afraid of Linux because it will catch on.

Consider this, the netbook market started with tiny Linux machines. According to you, this wouldn't sell because no 'real' consumer could possibly use it. Wrong. They were selling like hotcakes. In fact, Linux was selling so well that Microsoft had to offer the only operating system they had for this hardware basically for free just to stem the flow of Linux getting to the public. For you to deny that Microsoft is afraid of Linux is for you to tell Ballmer he's wrong. Go on, ask him - whats Microsoft's biggest threat? He said it himself.

You quoted some return rates and market penetration statistics. I'm not going to bother repeating myself on this, so just read this article: http://socceroosd.blogspot.com/2009/03/netbooks-missing-bleeding-obvious.html

Long story short, Microsoft used its monopoly control over the market to bend manufacturers to its will. They are the ones who removed the Linux choice on netbooks and then lied to the market about how the 'consumer had chosen'. Load. Of. Bollocks.

Finally, this was originally a discussion on how you believed that Linux couldn't run 10% of hardware and that even Windows 2000 supports more hardware out of the box. It comes down to this: you're trolling, and you don't know what you're talking about! =)

Adios

http://dwarmstr.blogspot.com/2005/06/plants-in-near-infrared.html
As the pictures in the above link show, plants are white (ie. highly reflective) to near infrared light.

3 separate realms.

Policy to define what's allowed (you haz a policy, whether it is written down or even thought about).

Enforcement of that policy. FW, IPS, application fw. The higher in the stack the fw goes, the closer it should be in the net topology to the target it defends.

Audit the enforcement of that policy. IDS, stats, flow.

And rather than tie everything together, how about focus on the 3-4 sources that really kick ass? FW logs are not useful. Focus on what your targets are doing, not what the millions of bots are prevented from doing.

http://taosecurity.blogspot.com/ is your source for clear thinking on this subject.

Microsoft need's to aim a little higher. Or include a "FREE MAGNIFYING GLASS."

http://www.mp4nation.net/catalog/

ONDA VX545HD - 5" TFT Screen
Onda VX777LE 8GB Touch Screen - TV Out + FM Transmitter
Onda VX787 16GB Touch Screen + TV Out + FM Transmitter

I am not even saying buy Onda, hell just about any player on the website kicks Zune's ass.
http://mp4nation.net/catalog/index.php?main_page=index&cPath=1

Want BIGGER? The 7" tft

http://thegadgetsite.blogspot.com/2009/04/onda-vx797hd-with-7-inch-screen.html

None of these players have drm, or proprietary connectors, or other such nonsense.

I have a different take on it. I think Marx was indeed railing against capitalism, but not against free markets. If that sounds like a total contradiction, I encourage you to read David Korten and Kevin Carson.

Capitalism is a system run by, and for, the capitalist. There are a number of ways an economy can be organized that aren't dependent either on the state or a capitalist. Are they socialist? That depends on your definition of "socialist."

Additional information has come to light since the original posting. Some interesting blog posts from:

• Michael Geist
• Howard Knopf, and
• Jeremy de Beer

Instead of one central purchasing order they will go after each state/county and government organisation parallely and independently.

And they'll say "Whoa, you're thinking of using what filthy hippy app? ...

The 1990's called, they want their talking points back. Notice that after all these years, the best MSFTers can do to counter RMS is to call him names? Can't handle any of the ideas or technologies, can they?

We've known for decades that FOSS is about making money. Some discussions which might make the point that FOSS concepts dovetail with that:

• Open Source Means Business
• Open Source and Capitalism
• Capitalist view of Open Source
• Is Open Source capitalist or communist?
• • Open Distribution vs Open Source
  • Open source is a capitalist's game
  • It's about capitalism, not freebies

and so on...

urban dictionary = idiots making up words.
At 27 years old I am now an old fart.

New punctuation update "~" at the end of a line to indicate sarcasm. http://harns.blogspot.com/

Are you being ~ ?

Nope. If they banned this just because of its name then Red Bull must change their manufacturing process or shit brix.

As modern programming languages (Python, Ruby, and Scala) are implementing Common Lisp features (closures, variable capturing) and the online availability of Practical Common Lisp, it seems now is a good time for younger people to learn CL. The icing on the cake here is that there are alternatives for Vim users to develop Lisp without using SLIME.

If you know ahead of time that you'll be re-installing you can save/restore your package selections and save a bunch of time: http://jwoffenden.blogspot.com/2009/03/yet-another-great-trick-with-apt-get.html

Essentially you just dump a list of installed packages to a file then when you re-install you tell apt to install them. Tricks like that and having a separate /home partition brought my time from re-install to up and running like normal to practically nothing.

I always thought that Donald Crowdis was the oldest blogger and I still have him on my blog roll but he has not posted anything for more than two years at http://dontoearth.blogspot.com/ so now I am wondering if he is actually still around. Does anybody know about him? His last post says that he is not dead, but after two years you never know...

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_rLV-ZuNPwJ4/R31LQI8DQLI/AAAAAAAAA08/CC_Hz_AByQ0/s1600/FantasticFour05-04.jpg

Uuuuhhhhh....sorry, but that was XP and Vista starter. Those folks will now be getting Win7 Basic. They have already stated that Win7 Starter WILL get sold on Netbooks in the good old US of A. And as I said, that is just to start. I can easily see a scenario where MSFT prices Win7 sooooo cheap that pretty much all the desktops and laptops that get Vista Basic or XP Home now end up with Starter. Then MSFT can "maximize their IP" by trying to push upgrades on all those poor saps that got boned.

Remember one of the bigwigs IN MSFT ended up with a $2100 email machine because he didn't know the difference between Vista Capable and Vista premium Experience. You honestly expect Joe and Velma Home user to know the different Win7 SKUs and the level of cripple in each? As someone who work retail i can tell you that 90%+ of home users think "I have Windows" and that is it. They can't tell you if it is XP Pro or Home, or what the difference is, they can't tell you if it is Vista Basic, Premium, Or Ultimate Electrolyte Edition. They just know "I have Windows".

Hell I have been building PCs since Win3.x and even I, am confused over exactly what will qualify as an "app" under Starter. Things that run in the tray and as a service don't IE does but with unlimited tabs, huh? I as a user would have no fricking clue when I launched a program whether it would fit under MSFT's idea of an "app" or not. And even the shittiest machines today can run 3 apps without breaking a sweat.

Just let me say that if this isn't proof that Ballmer needs firing I don't know what is. It was bad enough with the..what was it? Six or seven flavors of Vista? But now while the economy is in the crapper and his profits are down to pull this level of bone headed move is just ridiculous. At least No Aero on Basic made sense, since it was being put on machines that wouldn't run Aero anyway. I smell a whole lot of lawsuits coming down the pike for MSFT. All those clueless customers that went to "buy a Windows PC" and get burned by Starter is going to have an easy class action if they don't make it really obvious, as in a big sticker that says "this computer can only run 3 programs at a time" which I'm sure the OEMs are gonna love, and any company whose app is counted under the three app limit will point to some app that don't get counted and scream "the monopolist is using his power to twist the market! We'll sue!"

They are gonna take what looked like it could be a good OS and thanks to Ballmer and his marketing drones they are gonna turn it into a giant clusterfuck. The only good that may come of this is the board get tired of his dumbass maneuvers and fire the Ballmer monkey. I thought the Pepsi guy that nearly drove Apple into bankruptcy was a shitty CEO. Hell he looks like a genius compared to Ballmer. This is a boneheaded move from a company that has made nothing but boneheaded moves since Bill stepped down and gave the reins to the monkey. Maybe the next guy will be somebody from the Office team and they will actually make Win8 a winning OS.

Don't be jealous. You too can spread some joy.

The reason people are "hating" on Verizon so much is because Verizon so often sucks. It's really that simple. So people naturally assume that they are guilty of this as well.

Back in 2000, maybe 2001, Verizon bought out my cell phone company, AirTouch. I had been an AirTouch customer for 4 1/2 years without any problems. Within just one month under Verizon, I called them up, told them to disconnect my service, and that as long as I had a choice, I would never do business with them again for the rest of my life. Yes, it was that bad.

You may or may not be familiar with the now-famous "verizon math fail" recording that was posted on YouTube. That recording was about 22 minutes long, and has since been removed from YouTube for some unknown reason. A greatly abbreviated version of the recording is available here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lCJ3Oz5JVKs&feature=PlayList&p=95B5172372D9931E&index=0&playnext=1

The full transcript of the phone conversation is available here: http://verizonmath.blogspot.com/2006/12/transcription-jt.html

Even more astounding than this massive, multiple-empoloyee FAILURE, is this reply he received via mail later: http://verizonmath.blogspot.com/2006/12/just-got-email-from-verizon.html

This astounding and almost unbelievable blunder caused a huge number of emails and phone calls to Verizon, and at first they still refused to get the point: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WdKwRdWocco

And just for good measure, here is a recording of another service call made to Verizon: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nGCOiC6YQ18&feature=related

The reason people are "hating" on Verizon so much is because Verizon so often sucks. It's really that simple. So people naturally assume that they are guilty of this as well.

Back in 2000, maybe 2001, Verizon bought out my cell phone company, AirTouch. I had been an AirTouch customer for 4 1/2 years without any problems. Within just one month under Verizon, I called them up, told them to disconnect my service, and that as long as I had a choice, I would never do business with them again for the rest of my life. Yes, it was that bad.

You may or may not be familiar with the now-famous "verizon math fail" recording that was posted on YouTube. That recording was about 22 minutes long, and has since been removed from YouTube for some unknown reason. A greatly abbreviated version of the recording is available here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lCJ3Oz5JVKs&feature=PlayList&p=95B5172372D9931E&index=0&playnext=1

The full transcript of the phone conversation is available here: http://verizonmath.blogspot.com/2006/12/transcription-jt.html

Even more astounding than this massive, multiple-empoloyee FAILURE, is this reply he received via mail later: http://verizonmath.blogspot.com/2006/12/just-got-email-from-verizon.html

This astounding and almost unbelievable blunder caused a huge number of emails and phone calls to Verizon, and at first they still refused to get the point: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WdKwRdWocco

And just for good measure, here is a recording of another service call made to Verizon: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nGCOiC6YQ18&feature=related

It's not a problem until he flunks out of school, gets booted from the house for not paying rent, ...

My god, you'd fit well into the medical establishment. Studying to become a doctor?

Q: My friend survives on a diet of poutine and coke. A: It's not a problem until his heart palpitates.

I guess nothing is a problem in life until the condition is so severe that the poor sop is ready to cut a large cheque (supposing any funds remain) for quadruple bypass surgery performed by someone who didn't flunk out of school.

Great advice from the perspective of the doctor's retirement fund, not such good advice from the perspective of the future patient.

The underlying anger thing suggests this person is not ready to confront his inner conflict in the context of the larger world. Probably the best move is to distance yourself from the impending conflagration.

If you set yourself up to become the lightening rod for your friend's anger, and you have the patience of a saint, your friend might recover, but your friendship won't. One way or another, your friend will ultimately classify you in the "before" or "after" category.

You do have an opportunity to provide your friend with a small glimpse of leadership and self determination by taking responsibility for your own emotional content.

"I don't like hanging around with you when you play games 15 hours a day. It worries and irritates me to think about where your life might end up if you continue to behave this way. We need to think about different living arrangements. I hope we'll continue to be friends. I'll be very upset if we end up falling out over this. One of us needs to start looking for a new place to live. How are we going to sort this out?"

I've been reading a lot of economic theory lately. Apparently, according to economists, humans are rational agents in almost every respect.

This via Colby Cosh, my favourite lucid and agreeable wingnut.
http://offsettingbehaviour.blogspot.com/2009/04/berl-redux.html

Who's to tell me that my utility function is wrong?

Unfortunately, there is a lot of truth to this. Where he means to put the emphasis on "wrong", I would put the emphasis on "who", as it concerns your friend. If you solve for x and x = yourself, I'd harbour some grave doubts about *your* utility function after you showed the common sense to look before leaping.

Although it's no longer updated, the "Everquest Daily Grind" blog was filled with the kind of stories that scared me away from MMO (or indeed any game) addiction. Have him read a few of those stories, written by the addicts themselves.

and I will say it again, the entertainment industry's thud and blunder litigation tactics have transformed a gang of thieves into folk heroes.

Take a look at this: http://popcopy.blogspot.com/2008/12/enable-multi-user-concurrent-logon-for.html

Facebook issues reports everynow and then, but its a moving target as most of the sites are. Somethings only scale so far. Facebook & Google seem to be on the Map Reduce train for the majority of their services. Yet, Google is one of the major third party contributers to Mysql, although its not clear exactly where they use it ( I've heard rumors of adwords being done via mysql). They've reported uptimes of 2-6 years ( for the whole stack Hardware, OS & Mysql under load) here

First, you know in all of those products automatic updates can be turned off, right? You don't have to un-install them, the company is just trying to provide a service (and make sure they stay in your mind for such services).

Yeah, with registry hacks: Acrobat, or with this or that homegrown solution. There's no excuse for that-- Acrobat is now gone, and the alternative is quite a bit faster as well...

Second, Acrobat (reader), QT Player, RealAudio Player, Firefox, and Safari are already free, did you pay for them? If so, you got scammed son.

I didn't mean to imply they're not free-- but so are the alternatives so it's not like I'm saving money by using Acrobat Reader.

Third, you know browsers can handle all of those things but the editing, and ripping right? And I wouldn't be surprised if local versions of web services weren't made available at some point, browsers are very flexible and there are web based services for most all of these functions.

No, that's not correct. While there may be browser-based paint programs, show me the browser-based programs of the quality of Corel Painter, Z-Brush, Maya, Cubase, Pro-Tools, Sonar, Pinnacle Studio, Vegas Pro, Poser, etc. Given the speed of web-based tools of this nature, I'd have to say-- don't quit your day job.

Lastly, why would a BIOS browser OS preclude a monolithic OS as an alternate boot option?

Because it's cheaper not to include and have to support something I have no need for? If you're going to boot an alternative "monolithic" OS, exactly what was the point of a BIOS based browser again?

It must be time to go back and revisit why service-bureau computing waned in the face of the desktop machine-- people wanted more control over their data, people wanted more control over their computer performance, people wanted more control over their computer access, and people wanted more control over their privacy. "always-on" internet based computing requires a constant internet connection, a utility that does go down or get slow now and then, and doesn't do well in remote environments, including environments as remote as about 20 miles outside of town in rural areas.

Yes, they do! And I heard it goes great with Pabst Blue Ribbon...

Dennis

GNU thing started because a large corporation refused to give specs of a printer. I know.

I would like someone with large amounts of experience, who knows all the tricks of the trade, and who knows how the RIAA fights.

Ordinarily that would probably be true. However, in this particular case the large amount of legal decisions and materials gathered on blogs, such as Recording Industry vs The People, and the reams of semi-expert and amateur technical commentary make the job much easier and less obscure than it might otherwise be. Also, a large number of third parties, on both sides, are very interested in the outcome of these RIAA cases in general and RIAA vs Thomas case in particular. This means that the ac briefs, legal arguments, and expert testimony (well, the non-RIAA "expert" testimony anyway) are likely to be accurate and of high quality. Jammie Thomas has a much better chance with the notoriety and publicity than she would if the case was argued in obscurity as just another lawsuit.

This should be very interesting. K.A.D. Camara is not only a very bright young lawyer, he also has credentials in computer science and would probably be accepted by the Court as an expert witness on the technology (except for the conflict of roles). Not that he would do that. Just that he could do that. There is no question that he is going to be more knowledgeable about the technology than any other lawyer or judge involved in the RIAA cases. If Camara wants to rapidly establish himself as THE expert on IT law, this pro bono work is an excellent start. The RIAA lawyers should be afraid. Very afraid. For whatever his reason might be, they are now facing a crusader who knows the landscape better than they do.

Also, unlike the first trial, this time he will have an expert witness, thanks to the grant Jammie received from the Free Software Foundation enabling her to hire an expert. See Expert Witness Report of Prof. Yongdae Kim.

Your likely right with the videos, and as for play-lists, I am guessing it makes finding deleted data a lot easier if you know the track name that will be neatly in the ID tag within the start of the file. Means the person can be "done" not only for what they have on their computer, but what they had on their computer as well. I am guessing it would be a pretty big thing to someone if, questionable, content were found on their drive, and they were told that it had been found, and would be entered into public court documents, might make a person real eager to settle a case. My opinion of them just reached a whole new order of low, knowing that they have done such a thing, and of the legal system for letting that happen ;(

Barny, here's my blog post about the Tennessee case in which they purposely sought to, and did, humiliate a member of the armed services by making a public record of some off color videos he had on his computer. After they'd made the point, and made a public record of the whole thing, they thereafter moved to strike their own irrelevant disclosure. But not until everybody who knew the army sergeant in question knew his embarrassing secret.

I don't care how low your opinion of them gets, you should always make room for it to get lower.