It's a sign that, 1) you probably didn't even look, and 2) you can't ask for what you are looking for, and instead use someone elses words to ask the question, and it isn't even a question, but a belittling of their statement by indicating it isn't worth believing because it isn't substantiated, with the apparent hope that they'll answer the question that you didn't ask and haven't even tried to answer for yourself.
1) You're right. I didn't look. I had never even heard of it before.
2) I thought it seemed straightforward enough, and I always thought the reference was funny, since it's out of place, yet succinct.
I once got a ticket on approx June 10. The court date appeared to be "Jul 12", which seems like a reasonable amount of time in the future, to me. I show up a month late for my June 12 appointment, show the ticket to the Judge. End up spending 10 days in jail for missing court.
I don't know where in NYC you've been driving but I've never seen a $5 ticket, or even $20 for that matter. Forget to renew your registration, around $65. Illegal parking below 96th Street: $105!
I've never been to New York, so I wouldn't know. I was thinking of parking fines more in line with just about everywhere else I've been. Those fines are outrageous.
In New York City, the government offers to settle a ticket for 50% if you just challenge the ticket. The company takes half of the value you save, so they probably make a killing telling everyone to challenge and pay the settlement.
So, basically, in the end, you pay 75% of the ticket price? Doesn't sound like that good a deal to me. Most tickets are in the $5 to $20 range. Maybe you'd be better off determining how to challenge local tickets for yourself.
The problem was he had presented the evidence once before. The boarder officer saw the files, pictures or videos, and said 'damn, that looks like CP.' They seized the computer right then, and asked 'hey, why do you have CP on your computer?' Boucher said he didn't, the usenet program downloaded it sometimes because of the newsgroups he was on. Boucher waives his Miranda rights, and helps the officer navigate back into the encrypted part of the drive. Cop finds more CP, arrests Boucher. Cop turns off computer, and turns it over to forensics.
Now, Boucher didn't give the cop the password, just showed him around the computer. But, he showed him enough to incriminate himself and was stupid enough to waive his Miranda rights. The cops know what the files are, know where they are, and he showed them to him after waiving his rights. The guy is screwed. He waived his right to silence, and the police have the ability to use anything he said or showed them as evidence. They can't get that evidence because it is now encrypted. He's not being asked to turn over the key, to decrypt anything else, just to reopen the file that he opened when he waived his rights. It's reasonable, and doesn't seem all that scary of a judgement.
Does that help calm you a bit from the thought-crime worries? It's not great that this is the case-law as it stands, but it's not really a travesty of justice either. And it's no further down the slippery slope.
You make a good point. However, let me pick out a few issues here.
If I provide the police some sort of evidence, which they then decide incriminates me and then arrest me. Then, through carelessness or ignorance, they destroy that very evidence that I just gave them.
For our purposes, let's define "destruction of evidence" as unrecoverable without the direct support of the accused. That would apply it to an encrypted dataset that the police can't crack for whatever reason.
An analog to this is the cop who gets a signed confession from you, but throws it away with the rubbish by accident instead of mailing it to the prosecutor, then having the court compel the defendent to sign another confession.
Now, if the police held the only instance of evidence (in the case of a physical object, non-duplicable), there would be no way to force the accused to give them another. Now, consider that without the password, unencrypted data is non-duplicable from the encrypted set. When the cop turned off the computer, he inavertently destroyed the only instance of unencrypted data.
Now, they know what the unencrypted data generally was. However, they can't really prove it in court, beyond testimony of what the guy said and what the cop says he saw. Essentially, they're trying to compel him to replace what they were careless with the first time.
Again, I hope this guy's lawyer is instructing him to "forget" how to access the drive, or to have a sudden bout of senility, or whatever. The penalties for contempt are far less severe than those for kiddy porn.
That aside, this guy probably deserves whatever he gets in the end, simply for being stupid enough to show the cop anything or say anything in the first place.
If I find myself without a job, I oftentimes find myself more driven to work on open source things and personal projects, rather than coming home from work and vegging out with wikipedia all night.
I like having the income a job provides, but by the same token, I also like having the energy and drive that a job takes out of me.
It's nothing like your "similar case". If they found a bag full of what looked like pot on the drawer, and compelled the suspect via subpoena to turn it over, then you would have a similar case. An empty bag is only rarely accepted as proof of owning drugs.
What will likely happen is that the SCOTUS will say "You can't retract self-incriminating evidence you provided on your own, but you can refrain from providing any more at any time. If the police are careless with evidence, you don't have to give them more of it."
I doubt it. The best this guy can hope for is a charge of destruction of evidence if he can not turn it over to the police, or contempt if he does not. I suspect SCOTUS will, with the current Justices, force him to turn it over.
Cut me some slack here. I didn't have time to check through the annals of legal history. I was at work, so I came up with a hypothetical scenario. I never said the drug example was exactly like the porn one. However, I was getting at the problems with "without evidence, you can't be convicted, so the court orders you to provide exactly that evidence."
I'm not sure I really understand the whole bit of "foregone conclusions", though. After all, if the gov't knows I'm doing something illegal, but they don't have evidence, then what part of the 5th amendment of the constitution don't they understand about me "not being compelled to testify against myself"? That seems a little fishy to me.
If the gov't can force me to turn over self-incriminating evidence it knows I have, but can't get at itself, that would be a problem. What happens if it knows I've committed thoughtcrime? If I refuse to cooperate and give them proof of this crime, they throw me in jail for it anyway.
Quite literally, this bothers me because it essentially says "Well, you won't give us proof of the crime which we've accused you, so we're going to assume you did it. Guilty!"
Not only is your post unlike the case at hand (as discussed by the other children), you fail to apply the proper standard for criminal cases -- it's not "beyond the shadow of a dobut", it's "beyond a reasonable doubt." This makes a big difference.
I was at work when I wrote that. I omitted "reasonable" for brevity. I didn't realise there was any other standard involving shadows of doubt. For instance, I would find it odd to hear of a "beyond the (partially illuminated) shadow of an unreasonable doubt".
sohp notes that "the order is not that he produce the key â" just that he provide an unencrypted copy."
Of course, that's putting the cart before the horse.
This probably won't fly in the SCOTUS. Even if it did, it would be quite impractical to enforce.
Take for example, a suspected drug dealer. He cooperates a bit with the police who want to search his house. They find no illegal substances. But they saw an empty baggie sitting in a drawer. They tell him to hand over the stash, because they know he has one. Without the stash, they have no case. He refuses. Eventually it gets to the point of the court telling him to "hand over the stash". Therein lies the problem. Without the stash, there can't be any charges. So he conveniently says again "I have nothing to show you." What will they do? Hurl insults at him? Even if there was some way they could get him in jail, the accused would be better off taking 6 months for contempt of court or obstruction of justice (really tenuous) than 99 years for having the stash.
This case is similar. The cops saw the images, then turned off the computer, which required a passcode for them to regain access. Now he's been ordered to produce an unencrypted copy of the data for them to use against him (not his password). I fail to see how those two are separate. Unless he has an unencrypted copy of the hard drive somewhere, this is going nowhere fast. Why? "Gee, your honor. With all of the stress of being in court and all, I seem to have forgotten the password to that hard drive. In fact, I don't remember what's on it, either."
They need the porn for to convince the jury beyond the shadow of a doubt. The cops might be able to testify they saw something, but for all a jury knows, they could be lying, or they may not be remembering things clearly. What will likely happen is that the SCOTUS will say "You can't retract self-incriminating evidence you provided on your own, but you can refrain from providing any more at any time. If the police are careless with evidence, you don't have to give them more of it."
"OS bugs that they'll actually pay for the bugfix^H^H^H^H^H^Hupgrade"
Gee I wish you folks would get your stories straight.
Here is what we have so far:
1. The/. crowd thinks that Apple rocks for updating OS X 5 times in about 5 years even though they charged for all but one of the updates.
2. You think that Microsoft relies on users paying for bugfixes/upgrades even though XP received two major updates over the course of 6 years at no charge.
Someone is either bias or just fucking stupid.
I'm not a hypocrite. I use Linux. I don't care much for Apple, either.
I liked the desktop effects. Please implement the POSIX standard though.
regards,
beta tester
That would make too much sense. Also, it would be seen as a sign of giving into Linux. Of course, Microsoft can always just claim they own the patent for POSIX and sue the pants off everyone.
Really, I think we'd all prefer if they released a finished product that wasn't buggy as all get out- sure, it may take longer to finish it, but we've learned that good products sell better once they're released than shitty products that are released too soon.
That would be suicide for Microsoft. Their business model relies upon people wanting badly enough to remedy OS bugs that they'll actually pay for the bugfix^H^H^H^H^H^Hupgrade.
> What makes you say that? The people who understand software and software patents well enough to understand what's going on already dislike Microsoft. Those who don't
> aren't going to change their mind over this.
Because people who aren't patent/tech nerds but who have tomtoms are going to hear about this and go `what the fuck?`...
So I really don't see why TomTom users will get all outraged over this.
Maybe Tom Tom and Apple can come to a nice agreement. Apple provides resources (legal and technical) to Tom Tom, and Tom Tom issues a press release and aggressively casts Microsoft as the villian who wants to take away their easy-to-use experience, and starts promoting using Tom Tom with Apple (it just works). And what's bad for Microsoft is usually good for Apple, and oftentimes Linux (especially on the lower levels of the operating system)
You know, if you hadn't used the 'n' word (and if your post wasn't completely off-topic) you'd actually have a cogent, valid argument there.
Buuuut, instead, you're just Flamebait. (And I should've ignored you, but I had to chime in -- albeit as an AC.)
While off-topic, he has a valid point. The word "nigger" still doesn't invalidate his argument any more than any other label. It just colors your perception of it. It also triggers your societal programming to lynch that person.
Try: 1054 A.D. which is when man observed the birth of the Crab Nebula
One thing I'm curious about. Does this mean that we admit freely that extra-solar events affect the climate of this planet? Anyone have a slide rule handy and some star charts or galactic weather maps? Can we calculate probable effect on current climate conditions from extra-solar events?
In any case, I will start to use linux as my main os as soon as there is a linux version that:
(1) has windows UI,
Each UI is different. Explorer.exe has its merits. It also has its flaws.
(2) can run all software I want to use (either runs the same program or has an alternative),
See www.winehq.org. They'll fix you up. Aside from that, most things have analogues in linux/open source spaces.
(3) use setup.exe (.sh,.whatever) file for installation of additional software that do not depend on some third party (apt-get, yum) database and have all needed files included (.so files,.dll files) (can have some exceptions, like LinuxD3D, Lin.net, LinVBrun),
You've never had to hunt down that blasted Windows Installer 3.1 Redistributable, have you?
(4) is compatible with majority of old software, written 15 years ago,
See #2. Dosemu and Bochs are also quite useful here.
(5) uses GUI (for most options) or registry (for obscure options) for configuration, instead of text files,
Only in a perfect world. Config files have their strengths. The registry can be quite confusing. Even if you know where to look for things. Ever had to add an undocumented value to a registry key that wasn't already there?
(6) supports any currently made device that Windows supports (including a USB thermometer)
This is a chicken-egg problem!
Please, please, please call up the food chain at the company that makes your device and demand alternate OS support, or at least opening the device spec to allow others to write drivers. I get tired of reading "company x doesn't support linux, so linux sux0rs!" This has been a problem with modems and consumer printers for years. People don't use linux because their hardware doesn't have drivers to support it, so they don't use linux, so the drivers don't get written...ad infinitum. Want drivers? The squeaky wheel gets the grease. And if enough wheels are squeaky, then someone is going to fix the real problem, rather than applying grease.
(7) is compatible with games.
It is. See #6 for the problem. Most games are written with the engine and assets (scripts, art, sound, etc) separated. SCUMM games did this, Doom was like this. Duke Nukem was like this. Halflife is like this. MSFS is like this. Flightgear (www.flightgear.org Open source) is like this. The problem is that they compile the engine to run on windows, using directx (instead of an API found on other systems). See also, #2. Wine can run a lot of windows games. Including quite recent ones. At a semi-decent framerate.
(8) is so better (faster, more stable) than windows that I do not mind reinstalling the OS.
Just because you don't know it as well as windows doesn't mean it's not as good. It's every bit as good.
It is at least as fast and more stable than windows. I hate reinstalling my OS, even if I like it and it's better/faster/stable. Why not try linux in a VM, or a dual boot? Linux can read windows NTFS just fine, even if Windows can't read linux partitions.
In my experience (in the midwest and the South), town vs city is subjective, but generally, people consider a town to be rural in attitude, and a city to be more urban. From what I can tell, if I had to put an absolute number on it, anything bigger than population 5000~7000 is a city, with anything from 2000~5000 a big town. Another way to judge would be economic activity. The closest towns to me don't even have a a pharmacy, and only one has a school. The one with the school is the biggest (at ~1500. up from ~1000 in the mid 90's).
Slashdot Mirror
TERRORIZE!!!
I think "EXTERMINATE!!!!!! EXTERMINATE!!!!!!" is more appropriate here.
Just throwing that out there.
It's a sign that, 1) you probably didn't even look, and 2) you can't ask for what you are looking for, and instead use someone elses words to ask the question, and it isn't even a question, but a belittling of their statement by indicating it isn't worth believing because it isn't substantiated, with the apparent hope that they'll answer the question that you didn't ask and haven't even tried to answer for yourself.
1) You're right. I didn't look. I had never even heard of it before.
2) I thought it seemed straightforward enough, and I always thought the reference was funny, since it's out of place, yet succinct.
No hard feelings. I got my answer.
I once got a ticket on approx June 10. The court date appeared to be "Jul 12", which seems like a reasonable amount of time in the future, to me. I show up a month late for my June 12 appointment, show the ticket to the Judge. End up spending 10 days in jail for missing court.
Sounds like grounds for a lawsuit to me.
I don't know where in NYC you've been driving but I've never seen a $5 ticket, or even $20 for that matter. Forget to renew your registration, around $65. Illegal parking below 96th Street: $105!
I've never been to New York, so I wouldn't know. I was thinking of parking fines more in line with just about everywhere else I've been. Those fines are outrageous.
In New York City, the government offers to settle a ticket for 50% if you just challenge the ticket. The company takes half of the value you save, so they probably make a killing telling everyone to challenge and pay the settlement.
So, basically, in the end, you pay 75% of the ticket price? Doesn't sound like that good a deal to me. Most tickets are in the $5 to $20 range. Maybe you'd be better off determining how to challenge local tickets for yourself.
The problem was he had presented the evidence once before. The boarder officer saw the files, pictures or videos, and said 'damn, that looks like CP.' They seized the computer right then, and asked 'hey, why do you have CP on your computer?' Boucher said he didn't, the usenet program downloaded it sometimes because of the newsgroups he was on. Boucher waives his Miranda rights, and helps the officer navigate back into the encrypted part of the drive. Cop finds more CP, arrests Boucher. Cop turns off computer, and turns it over to forensics. Now, Boucher didn't give the cop the password, just showed him around the computer. But, he showed him enough to incriminate himself and was stupid enough to waive his Miranda rights. The cops know what the files are, know where they are, and he showed them to him after waiving his rights. The guy is screwed. He waived his right to silence, and the police have the ability to use anything he said or showed them as evidence. They can't get that evidence because it is now encrypted. He's not being asked to turn over the key, to decrypt anything else, just to reopen the file that he opened when he waived his rights. It's reasonable, and doesn't seem all that scary of a judgement. Does that help calm you a bit from the thought-crime worries? It's not great that this is the case-law as it stands, but it's not really a travesty of justice either. And it's no further down the slippery slope.
You make a good point. However, let me pick out a few issues here.
If I provide the police some sort of evidence, which they then decide incriminates me and then arrest me. Then, through carelessness or ignorance, they destroy that very evidence that I just gave them.
For our purposes, let's define "destruction of evidence" as unrecoverable without the direct support of the accused. That would apply it to an encrypted dataset that the police can't crack for whatever reason.
An analog to this is the cop who gets a signed confession from you, but throws it away with the rubbish by accident instead of mailing it to the prosecutor, then having the court compel the defendent to sign another confession.
Now, if the police held the only instance of evidence (in the case of a physical object, non-duplicable), there would be no way to force the accused to give them another. Now, consider that without the password, unencrypted data is non-duplicable from the encrypted set. When the cop turned off the computer, he inavertently destroyed the only instance of unencrypted data.
Now, they know what the unencrypted data generally was. However, they can't really prove it in court, beyond testimony of what the guy said and what the cop says he saw. Essentially, they're trying to compel him to replace what they were careless with the first time.
Again, I hope this guy's lawyer is instructing him to "forget" how to access the drive, or to have a sudden bout of senility, or whatever. The penalties for contempt are far less severe than those for kiddy porn.
That aside, this guy probably deserves whatever he gets in the end, simply for being stupid enough to show the cop anything or say anything in the first place.
can I send a lump of coal to Danowsky, Pontén and Wadsted?
Sure. Just send it to IFPI.com. For added effect, sprinkle some flour on it.
I don't get paid for any open source work I do.
If I find myself without a job, I oftentimes find myself more driven to work on open source things and personal projects, rather than coming home from work and vegging out with wikipedia all night.
I like having the income a job provides, but by the same token, I also like having the energy and drive that a job takes out of me.
[Citation Needed] This and "fixed that for you" are two phrases that indicate to me that the poster is an idiot.
Actually, I just didn't think that would come up on google. I was hoping he'd respond with the webpage he read it on.
It's nothing like your "similar case". If they found a bag full of what looked like pot on the drawer, and compelled the suspect via subpoena to turn it over, then you would have a similar case. An empty bag is only rarely accepted as proof of owning drugs.
What will likely happen is that the SCOTUS will say "You can't retract self-incriminating evidence you provided on your own, but you can refrain from providing any more at any time. If the police are careless with evidence, you don't have to give them more of it."
I doubt it. The best this guy can hope for is a charge of destruction of evidence if he can not turn it over to the police, or contempt if he does not. I suspect SCOTUS will, with the current Justices, force him to turn it over.
Cut me some slack here. I didn't have time to check through the annals of legal history. I was at work, so I came up with a hypothetical scenario. I never said the drug example was exactly like the porn one. However, I was getting at the problems with "without evidence, you can't be convicted, so the court orders you to provide exactly that evidence."
I'm not sure I really understand the whole bit of "foregone conclusions", though. After all, if the gov't knows I'm doing something illegal, but they don't have evidence, then what part of the 5th amendment of the constitution don't they understand about me "not being compelled to testify against myself"? That seems a little fishy to me.
If the gov't can force me to turn over self-incriminating evidence it knows I have, but can't get at itself, that would be a problem. What happens if it knows I've committed thoughtcrime? If I refuse to cooperate and give them proof of this crime, they throw me in jail for it anyway.
Quite literally, this bothers me because it essentially says "Well, you won't give us proof of the crime which we've accused you, so we're going to assume you did it. Guilty!"
Not only is your post unlike the case at hand (as discussed by the other children), you fail to apply the proper standard for criminal cases -- it's not "beyond the shadow of a dobut", it's "beyond a reasonable doubt." This makes a big difference.
I was at work when I wrote that. I omitted "reasonable" for brevity. I didn't realise there was any other standard involving shadows of doubt. For instance, I would find it odd to hear of a "beyond the (partially illuminated) shadow of an unreasonable doubt".
sohp notes that "the order is not that he produce the key â" just that he provide an unencrypted copy."
Of course, that's putting the cart before the horse.
This probably won't fly in the SCOTUS. Even if it did, it would be quite impractical to enforce.
Take for example, a suspected drug dealer. He cooperates a bit with the police who want to search his house. They find no illegal substances. But they saw an empty baggie sitting in a drawer. They tell him to hand over the stash, because they know he has one. Without the stash, they have no case. He refuses. Eventually it gets to the point of the court telling him to "hand over the stash". Therein lies the problem. Without the stash, there can't be any charges. So he conveniently says again "I have nothing to show you." What will they do? Hurl insults at him? Even if there was some way they could get him in jail, the accused would be better off taking 6 months for contempt of court or obstruction of justice (really tenuous) than 99 years for having the stash.
This case is similar. The cops saw the images, then turned off the computer, which required a passcode for them to regain access. Now he's been ordered to produce an unencrypted copy of the data for them to use against him (not his password). I fail to see how those two are separate. Unless he has an unencrypted copy of the hard drive somewhere, this is going nowhere fast. Why? "Gee, your honor. With all of the stress of being in court and all, I seem to have forgotten the password to that hard drive. In fact, I don't remember what's on it, either."
They need the porn for to convince the jury beyond the shadow of a doubt. The cops might be able to testify they saw something, but for all a jury knows, they could be lying, or they may not be remembering things clearly. What will likely happen is that the SCOTUS will say "You can't retract self-incriminating evidence you provided on your own, but you can refrain from providing any more at any time. If the police are careless with evidence, you don't have to give them more of it."
"OS bugs that they'll actually pay for the bugfix^H^H^H^H^H^Hupgrade"
Gee I wish you folks would get your stories straight.
Here is what we have so far:
1. The /. crowd thinks that Apple rocks for updating OS X 5 times in about 5 years even though they charged for all but one of the updates.
2. You think that Microsoft relies on users paying for bugfixes/upgrades even though XP received two major updates over the course of 6 years at no charge.
Someone is either bias or just fucking stupid.
I'm not a hypocrite. I use Linux. I don't care much for Apple, either.
Lots of small towns in the US already outsource their local news. The one FOX station in Huntsville, AL has its news produced somewhere in Iowa.
I sthink they have ome local people with cameras for clips, but the on air personalities are in Iowa.
[Citation Needed]
Dear Microsoft!
I liked the desktop effects. Please implement the POSIX standard though.
regards, beta tester
That would make too much sense. Also, it would be seen as a sign of giving into Linux. Of course, Microsoft can always just claim they own the patent for POSIX and sue the pants off everyone.
Really, I think we'd all prefer if they released a finished product that wasn't buggy as all get out- sure, it may take longer to finish it, but we've learned that good products sell better once they're released than shitty products that are released too soon.
That would be suicide for Microsoft. Their business model relies upon people wanting badly enough to remedy OS bugs that they'll actually pay for the bugfix^H^H^H^H^H^Hupgrade.
> What makes you say that? The people who understand software and software patents well enough to understand what's going on already dislike Microsoft. Those who don't > aren't going to change their mind over this.
Because people who aren't patent/tech nerds but who have tomtoms are going to hear about this and go `what the fuck?`...
So I really don't see why TomTom users will get all outraged over this.
Maybe Tom Tom and Apple can come to a nice agreement. Apple provides resources (legal and technical) to Tom Tom, and Tom Tom issues a press release and aggressively casts Microsoft as the villian who wants to take away their easy-to-use experience, and starts promoting using Tom Tom with Apple (it just works). And what's bad for Microsoft is usually good for Apple, and oftentimes Linux (especially on the lower levels of the operating system)
You know, if you hadn't used the 'n' word (and if your post wasn't completely off-topic) you'd actually have a cogent, valid argument there. Buuuut, instead, you're just Flamebait. (And I should've ignored you, but I had to chime in -- albeit as an AC.)
While off-topic, he has a valid point. The word "nigger" still doesn't invalidate his argument any more than any other label. It just colors your perception of it. It also triggers your societal programming to lynch that person.
Justin Timberlake sells a lot more records than Caruso. That must make him a better singer, too.
Billy Caruso? I love that guy!
No. David Caruso.
Moscow in flames, missiles headed toward New York...Film at 2011
I'm not wearing any pants...Film at 2011
--Sincerely, Verisign; RIP 2009
Can anyone imagine a beowulf cluster of these? I could take over the world! Or at least a small chunk of Nantucket, RI.
Try: 1054 A.D. which is when man observed the birth of the Crab Nebula
One thing I'm curious about. Does this mean that we admit freely that extra-solar events affect the climate of this planet? Anyone have a slide rule handy and some star charts or galactic weather maps? Can we calculate probable effect on current climate conditions from extra-solar events?
I thought that was a foregone conclusion.
In any case, I will start to use linux as my main os as soon as there is a linux version that: (1) has windows UI,
Each UI is different. Explorer.exe has its merits. It also has its flaws.
(2) can run all software I want to use (either runs the same program or has an alternative),
See www.winehq.org. They'll fix you up. Aside from that, most things have analogues in linux/open source spaces.
(3) use setup.exe (.sh, .whatever) file for installation of additional software that do not depend on some third party (apt-get, yum) database and have all needed files included (.so files, .dll files) (can have some exceptions, like LinuxD3D, Lin.net, LinVBrun),
You've never had to hunt down that blasted Windows Installer 3.1 Redistributable, have you?
(4) is compatible with majority of old software, written 15 years ago,
See #2. Dosemu and Bochs are also quite useful here.
(5) uses GUI (for most options) or registry (for obscure options) for configuration, instead of text files,
Only in a perfect world. Config files have their strengths. The registry can be quite confusing. Even if you know where to look for things. Ever had to add an undocumented value to a registry key that wasn't already there?
(6) supports any currently made device that Windows supports (including a USB thermometer)
This is a chicken-egg problem!
Please, please, please call up the food chain at the company that makes your device and demand alternate OS support, or at least opening the device spec to allow others to write drivers. I get tired of reading "company x doesn't support linux, so linux sux0rs!" This has been a problem with modems and consumer printers for years. People don't use linux because their hardware doesn't have drivers to support it, so they don't use linux, so the drivers don't get written...ad infinitum. Want drivers? The squeaky wheel gets the grease. And if enough wheels are squeaky, then someone is going to fix the real problem, rather than applying grease.
(7) is compatible with games.
It is. See #6 for the problem. Most games are written with the engine and assets (scripts, art, sound, etc) separated. SCUMM games did this, Doom was like this. Duke Nukem was like this. Halflife is like this. MSFS is like this. Flightgear (www.flightgear.org Open source) is like this. The problem is that they compile the engine to run on windows, using directx (instead of an API found on other systems). See also, #2. Wine can run a lot of windows games. Including quite recent ones. At a semi-decent framerate.
(8) is so better (faster, more stable) than windows that I do not mind reinstalling the OS.
Just because you don't know it as well as windows doesn't mean it's not as good. It's every bit as good.
It is at least as fast and more stable than windows. I hate reinstalling my OS, even if I like it and it's better/faster/stable. Why not try linux in a VM, or a dual boot? Linux can read windows NTFS just fine, even if Windows can't read linux partitions.
They are still a long way from "Government 2.0," which is starting to catch on here in the U.S.
And even in the U.S., we are still quite a long way from true "open source governance."
Nice try.
When you feel like it, feel free to come play with the rest of us in the real world.
In my experience (in the midwest and the South), town vs city is subjective, but generally, people consider a town to be rural in attitude, and a city to be more urban. From what I can tell, if I had to put an absolute number on it, anything bigger than population 5000~7000 is a city, with anything from 2000~5000 a big town. Another way to judge would be economic activity. The closest towns to me don't even have a a pharmacy, and only one has a school. The one with the school is the biggest (at ~1500. up from ~1000 in the mid 90's).