If a few people move out, that would be a benefit. Don't they have a growing people vs resources problem over there, hence the relatively strict immigration rules?
(for the emotionally/intellectually deficient out there who need this pointing out: yes, I'm being facetious here)
> >...you are Google's product which they sell to their customers.
> And said customers are getting swindled when they buy me.
No, they are aware that they are buying the potential for XYZ,000 people to see their ad with an expected A% blocking it and B% just not noticing and C% ignoring it. You are not swindling them, you are part of the expected response pattern.
But advertisers would consider Google to be swindling them (or, at least they would expect to pay less) if they added a further D% (those paying for no adverts/tracking) to those that would already be useless to the advertiser.
Perhaps, yes. I would, though I don't know if the amount I'd be wiling to pay woudl be enough to make it worth anyones while running such a scheme - Google's ads are not at all irritating compared to other options so I really don't mind them enough to be bothered enough to pay more than, say, a few per year. Some might pay for "not being tracked", but that isn't going to work because if you are not tracked how will they track whether or not they should track you...
Even if there are a minority wiling to pay, and that minority would total enough income to make implementing such a system worth while, Google probably wouldn't want to go for it as they would be diluting their product which would not look good when competing with providers with undiluted product. Repeat after me: you are not Google's customer, you are Google's product which they sell to their customers. Google's customers are the advertisers.
The information might be more valuable, on a per-amount-of-data basis. The data will have a greater bias towards those who think they have something worth hiding. Then again, any sensible person (or proper tinfoil-hat wearing freak) who thinks they have something worth hiding won't be knowingly using a proxy run by anyone else, so maybe the bias won't be that strong.
There are other search engines. Google, otoh, loses a huge market.
But does that huge market actually make Google enough money to be worth the hassle and the public derision (in other markets) for bowing to the Chinese censorship laws? Without a close look at the relevant financials and internal costs we just don;t know. If what they stand to gain (reputation in other marks, reduced hassle/expense through not running google.cn and other admin, and so forth) is worth more to them than what money being able to advertise users based in China might bring in, then it might make commercial sense to leave that market and let others put up with the hassle.
Actually, the CPU overhead of encrypting any given request+response is pretty trivial on modern hardware. For small objects there is very little to do (the encryption stage, while not taking zero time, will be dwarfed by network latency and file/database access timings and so on) and for large objects (chunky attachments for instance) bandwidth is the bottleneck.
The initial SSL negotiation probably adds more to the user experience, though this is mitigated somewhat by enabling HTTP keep-alives (if the client supports this, which any modern browser does and most not-so-modern ones too, and the web servers have the extra resource it will require, which I'm guessing Google's web farm has).
The real kicker for a dynamic web app like gmail is that fact that nothing should ever be cached if it comes in through a HTTPS connection, so even static content such as script files, css files, and images have to be re-requested much more regularly than when using HTTP. This means more bandwidth and latency seen by the user, and of course a chunk more bandwidth use seen by the servers.
After 3.0, I've had severe performance issues with firefox off of a flash drive.
That'll be the writing to the urlclassifier3.sqlite, file amongst others. I sorted this on my Ubuntu setup (running on a netbook with an internal SSD that had *very* bad write performance) by moving my profile to a RAM drive on boot (and rsyncing it back to the on-disc copy on shutdown and every now and again via cron). You might be able to do something similar on Windows if you have a decent RAM drive implementation but you are unlikely to have that in most circumstances where you are using a portable install of a browser. You could try explicitly enabling write caching for the USB device, but again you may not have the right perms for that in all cases when using a portable setup and it isn't a great idea anyway.
Mostly that will be people with older wireless APs, from before WPA was common, that use WEP by default. Many (A)DSL routers with built in wireless provided by ISPs come pre-configured with the ISP's current standard (now usually WPA, but previously WEP was common) with the default key for the unit printed on a sticker attached to the bottom of the unit. Most people never change these security settings (hence there are many APs left with the default of no security at all) so will stick with WEP until such time as they have reason to get a replacement router/AP and the new one comes pre-configured with WPA instead.
If they managed to hack the computers, why not set up a spamming botnet the good old fashion way?
If a company advertises on TV, why both with radio and print also? Simple: multiple outgoing streams of your information improves the total number of people that will see your advert. This works the same for spammers as it does for people who bombard our senses with product information and/or brand identity by more legitimate means.
Maybe the fishing attacker got lucky and at the same time as picking up a new account to use, the browser used to enter the information was also vulnerable to some sort of drive-by install. Or the other way around: a drive-by install dropped in a botnet client and a key-logger in at the same time, and that logger eventually picked up a username+password.
Also, replying to my own post with bits I forgot before, things seeming smooth somewhere up to 25fps doesn't mean they don't appear smooth*er* at higher rates. And to complicate things further apparently our peripheral vision, which comes into play when sat close to a large monitor as many gamers do, is more sensitive to higher frequency changes than the rest.
The 30fps myth is simply an over simplification. The eye+brain starts to naturally perceive movement at around 10fps, usually a little lower. Motion usually starts to appear smooth somewhere between 15 and 25fps though it depends on many factors other than just the framerate (smoothness of the frame rate, relative change velocities of objects (or parts thereof) in the image, absolute colour and tone, colour and tone contrasts within the image, the existence or not of dropped frames and other inconsistencies,...).
People often take this (the "15 to 25fps" bit, ignoring the "depending on..." complications) as meaning there is no need to go above 30fps, and in many cases there probably is no need, but in a number of conditions a higher framerate can affect the perception of movement quite significantly especially for fast moving objects/scenes.
The key problem for game servers is latency, not bulk bandwidth speed or the total bandwidth consumed. If your connection is ADSL based (or similar) then even on a good business plan your connection is going to have a higher round-trip latency (between your equipment and the ISP, before the latency of the player connections and the backbone in between are added to the mix) than "big time" gamers (the sort who would be wanting to run their own game server) would be interested in.
If you have a good fibre or ethernet link to your ISP then your idea is more feasible. Though I wouldn't bother myself as you will end up dealing with people who expect *everything*, expect it to be *perfect* and expect it to be so cheap it might as well be free. It just wouldn't really be practical unless large scale (which you'll not run practically on a home link) or just for friends and family (in which case remuneration isn't really an issue and you can screen out the complete idiots easily if there are any in your circle).
There are firms out there who specialise in renting out game server resources if that is what people want - just be sure that the company you go with has servers in your country/state in order to reduce latency issues.
From what I understand, I thought each of these games on consoles, that one of the players will be the 'server' - and that the role of the EA server is matchmaking etc, but clarification would be cool.
I'm pretty certain that in all cases none of the consoles involved is acting as a server. If one was than that player could have a significant advantage due to relative latency issues. Also having a console act as a server means having to deal with NAT, firewalls and other routing/network issues - the only guaranteed way for all the consoles to see the server being if the server is public (i.e. not on a console on someone's home ISP connection) or for a public server to act as a relay for those that can't connect directly.
engadget said that you would probably need to charge the phone every day, but said "the battery performs admirably"
Ah. They obviously work to a very different definition of "performs admirably" than I do!
While I can easily run down the battery in my current phone (a nearly two year old "candy bar" style Nokia with its original battery) in a day (three hours constant data access over 3G/GPRS from my netbook via bluetooth would probably do it), it can go three or four days in normal use (a couple of short calls per day, texts, a little data access).
What are the charging times and use-between-charges metrics for this phone? The only Android based phone I've seen is a friends that sometimes barely lasts a day without a recharge even if you don't use it at all for calls/data/anything during that time, and it was that bad from new. That would make that phone useless to me as I am sometimes a day or two between convenient power outlets during which time I need to use my phone... Also, can the battery be easily and cheaply replaced if it degrades, unlike the batteries in Apple's product line?
Form factor? Looking at the pictures on the page linked to increasing the screen depth would mean widening the unit (unless you mean you want a higher res but with oblong pixels). Also widescreen format displays are probably cheaper on account of being mass produced for the current netbook market.
can i install unbuntu/kubuntu on it?
The summary does say "Android or Linux" so almost certainly yes, hardware support permitting.
Ignoring the 3D buzzword, as my eyes are buggered in such a way that I can barely be considered to have 3D vision normally so tricks to improve the apparent depth of film visuals don't tend to work for me at all, is it still impressive enough as switch-your-brain-off-and-eat-the-eye-candy type fantasy goes? Or are people just flocking to see it primarily for the 3D gimmick?
But that still does not explicitly mean that the contract (well, that part there-of) is legally enforceable in all jurisdictions.
It is not uncommon for employment contracts, which are supposed to be read in detail before signing, to have clauses that are not actually enforceable and therefore effectively void. Overzealous non-compete or IP related clauses are the most regular examples of this. A clause being in a contract does not necessarily mean that is it legally enforceable, or legal at all, and even if it is legal in some jurisdictions local variations in the law can mean clauses are void in some places even if they are fine in others.
Don't most phone cards say the minutes actually DON'T have a cash value?
Can't most governments ignore such small print unless it is somehow enshrined in law (so the lawyer fight induced by trying to ignore said small print would be more costly than the potential gain). Many software EULAs state things that are quite patently not legally enforceable in most jurisdictions - I'm guessing the small print on phone cards and similar have no more basis in law than an EULA.
I can't say as I see racism. Yes it taking a rather direct stab at a bunch of coloured people from a poverty stricken country, but it isn't having a go because they are coloured but because they are fraudsters (well, they are attempting to be fraudsters) and stupid enough to fall for that shit. I'm sure the effect would be much the same no matter what racial/social/other grouping was involved.
Having said that, I find myself seriously doubting that recent 419eater reverse scams are true. This one in particular. It is just too far - I can't see even the most thick and desperate scammer not picking up on the fact that the piss is being taken in industrial quantities.
Does anyone else find themselves considering that "Hello Mr Black African, I'll pay you and some friends $X to send me some photos of you all looking stupid so I can use them to massage my e-penis and try look clever" would not require a large value for X in order to get the mark interested? Even that wouldn't be racism, to go back to the original point I replied to - the people most likely to take a small X for such a thing while still having some access to the Internet in order to take part are more likely to be black Africans or a similar populace (where there is much poverty, but relatively reliable access to Internet resources via charity/government funded education programs) than, say, western Europeans (less poverty) or rural Chinese (little easy access to the tech). Gross exploitation, yes, but not racism (at least not directly - maybe people would be less willing to laugh if the nationality and/or skin-tone of the targets was one they cared more for).
Funny side note- I thought one of the big points of "green" tech was to cut down on Americas dependence on other countries when it comes to energy.
No, but it is one of the biggest draws for Americans (politicians mainly, but populous too) too short sighted enough to not see the importance of the other key factors.
Another related factor which might in some area be more convincing is that despite the fact America does have untapped oil reserves of its own people are not keen pollute their local environment to get at it especially while buying supply in is actually cheaper (short term) and keeping it in reserve for later is also an attractive idea.
Though the above doesn't alter that fact that the west (not just Americans) have been outdone by the Chinese on the matter of securing supply. We didn't put much effort in because we didn't need the supplies short term as China is/was doing most of the manufacturing for us anyway, so there was little incentive for politicians to encourage our industry base to invest in more direct access to the available materials. China did make such investments though, partly due to industry simply needing to (in order to keep up with demand for more and new products) and partly due to their rulers spotting a chance to take advantage of our short sightedness (a move that is now set to really pay off for them).
which suggests that Microsoft's new-found eagerness to 'engage' with open source has nothing to do with a real desire to reach a pacific accommodation with free software, but is simply a way for Microsoft to fight against it from close up, and armed with inside knowledge.
There are many reasons to acknowledge a threat, and I'm not sure getting up close and personal is the tree that they are barking up here.
If Microsoft were to go around saying they they had no threats worth considering it would look like they have little competition and bring them under greater scrutiny from a monopoly policing point of view. Also such hubris would look iffy to current and potential inverters - investing in a company that is, or seems to be, resting on its laurels is not a good long-term strategy especially in a market where there are alternatives currently available (whether they are acknowledged by said company or not).
Ignoring the more cynical interpretations above for a moment: knowing the competition is important to any business. Whatever your opinion of the strengths (absolute or relative to other products) of OO.o it is a competitor in that particular market and MS would be foolish not to recognise that and be seen to be appropriately aware of the situation.
My 5 year old niece uses W2007, how hard can it be?
This comment you are replying to is not how hard it is, especially not to a newcomer as you niece, but about familiarity.
One of the key arguments against MS Office alternatives prior to Office2007 was the inconvenience, and possible financial costs, of retraining for people already familiar with Office. It wasn't that the alternatives were harder to use (Office was no paragon of truly intuitive design and neither were the alternatives so the difference in that respect was a close to naught as makes not odds), it was that they were different. Pro MS commenters quietly dropped the argument shortly before Office 2007 arrived and the same argument is now being landed on the newer MS products by promoters of alternatives.
I've not used Office 2007 enough to form a definite opinion though I suspect I won't particularly care either way - if it does the job without being too irritating I'll use what-ever tool I have available. I use Office 2003 those few times I need such a thing at work (I'm a developer/DBa/SysAdmin at a small company so have little time to use office applications even when I would want to (documentation and test plans usually falling to someone else with some guidance and later editing from myself and others in my position, and documentation intended for users and/or trainers is definitely better prepared by people not like me) and OO.o for personal stuff (both on my main home PC and netbook). I have encountered Office 2007 at work, but only briefly. I know people who do use it regularly though and their opinions range from love to hate covering everything between, and there seems to be little correlation (after the initial training/retraining period) between the sort of person (in terms of their overall techie-ness and level of previous experience with such applications) and which end of the spectrum they sit closet to - so I suspect that in the long run it simply comes down to difficult-to-objetify personal preference.
At the end of the day though, someone somewhere at the hosting company is still going to be able to reboot your server into a rescue environment and reset the root password. Go colocation if you're really that paranoid about it.
A good encrypted filesystem setup can be sorted such that nothing can be mounted without your external influence. At this point the host will not be able to get hold of the data from a rescue environment as the keys are external to the server. Of course this means that in a genuine reboot situation (such as a power outage that lasts longer than the UPS can survive) you will have to intervene (providing the keys) to start the services again which will be a hassle if it happens at a bad moment like the middle of the night if you have no support cover who have access to the keys too.
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Because then no one would live in Australia.
If a few people move out, that would be a benefit. Don't they have a growing people vs resources problem over there, hence the relatively strict immigration rules?
(for the emotionally/intellectually deficient out there who need this pointing out: yes, I'm being facetious here)
The project will be compose of the lowest bidders for each constituent part. I find you *abundance* of faith disturbing!
> > ...you are Google's product which they sell to their customers.
> And said customers are getting swindled when they buy me.
No, they are aware that they are buying the potential for XYZ,000 people to see their ad with an expected A% blocking it and B% just not noticing and C% ignoring it. You are not swindling them, you are part of the expected response pattern.
But advertisers would consider Google to be swindling them (or, at least they would expect to pay less) if they added a further D% (those paying for no adverts/tracking) to those that would already be useless to the advertiser.
Would anybody pay Google to not show ads to them?
Perhaps, yes. I would, though I don't know if the amount I'd be wiling to pay woudl be enough to make it worth anyones while running such a scheme - Google's ads are not at all irritating compared to other options so I really don't mind them enough to be bothered enough to pay more than, say, a few per year. Some might pay for "not being tracked", but that isn't going to work because if you are not tracked how will they track whether or not they should track you...
Even if there are a minority wiling to pay, and that minority would total enough income to make implementing such a system worth while, Google probably wouldn't want to go for it as they would be diluting their product which would not look good when competing with providers with undiluted product. Repeat after me: you are not Google's customer, you are Google's product which they sell to their customers. Google's customers are the advertisers.
The information might be more valuable, on a per-amount-of-data basis. The data will have a greater bias towards those who think they have something worth hiding. Then again, any sensible person (or proper tinfoil-hat wearing freak) who thinks they have something worth hiding won't be knowingly using a proxy run by anyone else, so maybe the bias won't be that strong.
There are other search engines. Google, otoh, loses a huge market.
But does that huge market actually make Google enough money to be worth the hassle and the public derision (in other markets) for bowing to the Chinese censorship laws? Without a close look at the relevant financials and internal costs we just don;t know. If what they stand to gain (reputation in other marks, reduced hassle/expense through not running google.cn and other admin, and so forth) is worth more to them than what money being able to advertise users based in China might bring in, then it might make commercial sense to leave that market and let others put up with the hassle.
Actually, the CPU overhead of encrypting any given request+response is pretty trivial on modern hardware. For small objects there is very little to do (the encryption stage, while not taking zero time, will be dwarfed by network latency and file/database access timings and so on) and for large objects (chunky attachments for instance) bandwidth is the bottleneck.
The initial SSL negotiation probably adds more to the user experience, though this is mitigated somewhat by enabling HTTP keep-alives (if the client supports this, which any modern browser does and most not-so-modern ones too, and the web servers have the extra resource it will require, which I'm guessing Google's web farm has).
The real kicker for a dynamic web app like gmail is that fact that nothing should ever be cached if it comes in through a HTTPS connection, so even static content such as script files, css files, and images have to be re-requested much more regularly than when using HTTP. This means more bandwidth and latency seen by the user, and of course a chunk more bandwidth use seen by the servers.
After 3.0, I've had severe performance issues with firefox off of a flash drive.
That'll be the writing to the urlclassifier3.sqlite, file amongst others. I sorted this on my Ubuntu setup (running on a netbook with an internal SSD that had *very* bad write performance) by moving my profile to a RAM drive on boot (and rsyncing it back to the on-disc copy on shutdown and every now and again via cron). You might be able to do something similar on Windows if you have a decent RAM drive implementation but you are unlikely to have that in most circumstances where you are using a portable install of a browser. You could try explicitly enabling write caching for the USB device, but again you may not have the right perms for that in all cases when using a portable setup and it isn't a great idea anyway.
there was a surprising amount of people using WEP
Mostly that will be people with older wireless APs, from before WPA was common, that use WEP by default. Many (A)DSL routers with built in wireless provided by ISPs come pre-configured with the ISP's current standard (now usually WPA, but previously WEP was common) with the default key for the unit printed on a sticker attached to the bottom of the unit. Most people never change these security settings (hence there are many APs left with the default of no security at all) so will stick with WEP until such time as they have reason to get a replacement router/AP and the new one comes pre-configured with WPA instead.
If they managed to hack the computers, why not set up a spamming botnet the good old fashion way?
If a company advertises on TV, why both with radio and print also? Simple: multiple outgoing streams of your information improves the total number of people that will see your advert. This works the same for spammers as it does for people who bombard our senses with product information and/or brand identity by more legitimate means.
Maybe the fishing attacker got lucky and at the same time as picking up a new account to use, the browser used to enter the information was also vulnerable to some sort of drive-by install. Or the other way around: a drive-by install dropped in a botnet client and a key-logger in at the same time, and that logger eventually picked up a username+password.
Also, replying to my own post with bits I forgot before, things seeming smooth somewhere up to 25fps doesn't mean they don't appear smooth*er* at higher rates. And to complicate things further apparently our peripheral vision, which comes into play when sat close to a large monitor as many gamers do, is more sensitive to higher frequency changes than the rest.
The 30fps myth is simply an over simplification. The eye+brain starts to naturally perceive movement at around 10fps, usually a little lower. Motion usually starts to appear smooth somewhere between 15 and 25fps though it depends on many factors other than just the framerate (smoothness of the frame rate, relative change velocities of objects (or parts thereof) in the image, absolute colour and tone, colour and tone contrasts within the image, the existence or not of dropped frames and other inconsistencies, ...).
People often take this (the "15 to 25fps" bit, ignoring the "depending on..." complications) as meaning there is no need to go above 30fps, and in many cases there probably is no need, but in a number of conditions a higher framerate can affect the perception of movement quite significantly especially for fast moving objects/scenes.
The key problem for game servers is latency, not bulk bandwidth speed or the total bandwidth consumed. If your connection is ADSL based (or similar) then even on a good business plan your connection is going to have a higher round-trip latency (between your equipment and the ISP, before the latency of the player connections and the backbone in between are added to the mix) than "big time" gamers (the sort who would be wanting to run their own game server) would be interested in.
If you have a good fibre or ethernet link to your ISP then your idea is more feasible. Though I wouldn't bother myself as you will end up dealing with people who expect *everything*, expect it to be *perfect* and expect it to be so cheap it might as well be free. It just wouldn't really be practical unless large scale (which you'll not run practically on a home link) or just for friends and family (in which case remuneration isn't really an issue and you can screen out the complete idiots easily if there are any in your circle).
There are firms out there who specialise in renting out game server resources if that is what people want - just be sure that the company you go with has servers in your country/state in order to reduce latency issues.
From what I understand, I thought each of these games on consoles, that one of the players will be the 'server' - and that the role of the EA server is matchmaking etc, but clarification would be cool.
I'm pretty certain that in all cases none of the consoles involved is acting as a server. If one was than that player could have a significant advantage due to relative latency issues. Also having a console act as a server means having to deal with NAT, firewalls and other routing/network issues - the only guaranteed way for all the consoles to see the server being if the server is public (i.e. not on a console on someone's home ISP connection) or for a public server to act as a relay for those that can't connect directly.
engadget said that you would probably need to charge the phone every day, but said "the battery performs admirably"
Ah. They obviously work to a very different definition of "performs admirably" than I do!
While I can easily run down the battery in my current phone (a nearly two year old "candy bar" style Nokia with its original battery) in a day (three hours constant data access over 3G/GPRS from my netbook via bluetooth would probably do it), it can go three or four days in normal use (a couple of short calls per day, texts, a little data access).
What are the charging times and use-between-charges metrics for this phone? The only Android based phone I've seen is a friends that sometimes barely lasts a day without a recharge even if you don't use it at all for calls/data/anything during that time, and it was that bad from new. That would make that phone useless to me as I am sometimes a day or two between convenient power outlets during which time I need to use my phone... Also, can the battery be easily and cheaply replaced if it degrades, unlike the batteries in Apple's product line?
1024 by 600? Why not 1024 by 768?
Form factor? Looking at the pictures on the page linked to increasing the screen depth would mean widening the unit (unless you mean you want a higher res but with oblong pixels). Also widescreen format displays are probably cheaper on account of being mass produced for the current netbook market.
can i install unbuntu/kubuntu on it?
The summary does say "Android or Linux" so almost certainly yes, hardware support permitting.
Ignoring the 3D buzzword, as my eyes are buggered in such a way that I can barely be considered to have 3D vision normally so tricks to improve the apparent depth of film visuals don't tend to work for me at all, is it still impressive enough as switch-your-brain-off-and-eat-the-eye-candy type fantasy goes? Or are people just flocking to see it primarily for the 3D gimmick?
But that still does not explicitly mean that the contract (well, that part there-of) is legally enforceable in all jurisdictions.
It is not uncommon for employment contracts, which are supposed to be read in detail before signing, to have clauses that are not actually enforceable and therefore effectively void. Overzealous non-compete or IP related clauses are the most regular examples of this. A clause being in a contract does not necessarily mean that is it legally enforceable, or legal at all, and even if it is legal in some jurisdictions local variations in the law can mean clauses are void in some places even if they are fine in others.
Don't most phone cards say the minutes actually DON'T have a cash value?
Can't most governments ignore such small print unless it is somehow enshrined in law (so the lawyer fight induced by trying to ignore said small print would be more costly than the potential gain). Many software EULAs state things that are quite patently not legally enforceable in most jurisdictions - I'm guessing the small print on phone cards and similar have no more basis in law than an EULA.
I can't say as I see racism. Yes it taking a rather direct stab at a bunch of coloured people from a poverty stricken country, but it isn't having a go because they are coloured but because they are fraudsters (well, they are attempting to be fraudsters) and stupid enough to fall for that shit. I'm sure the effect would be much the same no matter what racial/social/other grouping was involved.
Having said that, I find myself seriously doubting that recent 419eater reverse scams are true. This one in particular. It is just too far - I can't see even the most thick and desperate scammer not picking up on the fact that the piss is being taken in industrial quantities.
Does anyone else find themselves considering that "Hello Mr Black African, I'll pay you and some friends $X to send me some photos of you all looking stupid so I can use them to massage my e-penis and try look clever" would not require a large value for X in order to get the mark interested? Even that wouldn't be racism, to go back to the original point I replied to - the people most likely to take a small X for such a thing while still having some access to the Internet in order to take part are more likely to be black Africans or a similar populace (where there is much poverty, but relatively reliable access to Internet resources via charity/government funded education programs) than, say, western Europeans (less poverty) or rural Chinese (little easy access to the tech). Gross exploitation, yes, but not racism (at least not directly - maybe people would be less willing to laugh if the nationality and/or skin-tone of the targets was one they cared more for).
Funny side note- I thought one of the big points of "green" tech was to cut down on Americas dependence on other countries when it comes to energy.
No, but it is one of the biggest draws for Americans (politicians mainly, but populous too) too short sighted enough to not see the importance of the other key factors.
Another related factor which might in some area be more convincing is that despite the fact America does have untapped oil reserves of its own people are not keen pollute their local environment to get at it especially while buying supply in is actually cheaper (short term) and keeping it in reserve for later is also an attractive idea.
Though the above doesn't alter that fact that the west (not just Americans) have been outdone by the Chinese on the matter of securing supply. We didn't put much effort in because we didn't need the supplies short term as China is/was doing most of the manufacturing for us anyway, so there was little incentive for politicians to encourage our industry base to invest in more direct access to the available materials. China did make such investments though, partly due to industry simply needing to (in order to keep up with demand for more and new products) and partly due to their rulers spotting a chance to take advantage of our short sightedness (a move that is now set to really pay off for them).
which suggests that Microsoft's new-found eagerness to 'engage' with open source has nothing to do with a real desire to reach a pacific accommodation with free software, but is simply a way for Microsoft to fight against it from close up, and armed with inside knowledge.
There are many reasons to acknowledge a threat, and I'm not sure getting up close and personal is the tree that they are barking up here.
If Microsoft were to go around saying they they had no threats worth considering it would look like they have little competition and bring them under greater scrutiny from a monopoly policing point of view. Also such hubris would look iffy to current and potential inverters - investing in a company that is, or seems to be, resting on its laurels is not a good long-term strategy especially in a market where there are alternatives currently available (whether they are acknowledged by said company or not).
Ignoring the more cynical interpretations above for a moment: knowing the competition is important to any business. Whatever your opinion of the strengths (absolute or relative to other products) of OO.o it is a competitor in that particular market and MS would be foolish not to recognise that and be seen to be appropriately aware of the situation.
My 5 year old niece uses W2007, how hard can it be?
This comment you are replying to is not how hard it is, especially not to a newcomer as you niece, but about familiarity.
One of the key arguments against MS Office alternatives prior to Office2007 was the inconvenience, and possible financial costs, of retraining for people already familiar with Office. It wasn't that the alternatives were harder to use (Office was no paragon of truly intuitive design and neither were the alternatives so the difference in that respect was a close to naught as makes not odds), it was that they were different. Pro MS commenters quietly dropped the argument shortly before Office 2007 arrived and the same argument is now being landed on the newer MS products by promoters of alternatives.
I've not used Office 2007 enough to form a definite opinion though I suspect I won't particularly care either way - if it does the job without being too irritating I'll use what-ever tool I have available. I use Office 2003 those few times I need such a thing at work (I'm a developer/DBa/SysAdmin at a small company so have little time to use office applications even when I would want to (documentation and test plans usually falling to someone else with some guidance and later editing from myself and others in my position, and documentation intended for users and/or trainers is definitely better prepared by people not like me) and OO.o for personal stuff (both on my main home PC and netbook). I have encountered Office 2007 at work, but only briefly. I know people who do use it regularly though and their opinions range from love to hate covering everything between, and there seems to be little correlation (after the initial training/retraining period) between the sort of person (in terms of their overall techie-ness and level of previous experience with such applications) and which end of the spectrum they sit closet to - so I suspect that in the long run it simply comes down to difficult-to-objetify personal preference.
At the end of the day though, someone somewhere at the hosting company is still going to be able to reboot your server into a rescue environment and reset the root password. Go colocation if you're really that paranoid about it.
A good encrypted filesystem setup can be sorted such that nothing can be mounted without your external influence. At this point the host will not be able to get hold of the data from a rescue environment as the keys are external to the server. Of course this means that in a genuine reboot situation (such as a power outage that lasts longer than the UPS can survive) you will have to intervene (providing the keys) to start the services again which will be a hassle if it happens at a bad moment like the middle of the night if you have no support cover who have access to the keys too.