Either they were materially connected with the coup, in which case there's conspiracy for treason and they should face whatever punishment may warranted for such; or they were just talking smack, in which case, leave them alone, even if they are wrong. The short answer is that the station WAS materially involved in the coup, station owners funded and backed the conspirators and collaborated directly with the coup government. Critics of Chavez have called on him to prosecute the station owners for treason, which seems a little silly. Would you prefer that that station staff and owners be imprisoned or executed rather than merely having the station shut down?
Chavez is certainly aware that we would draw much more political flak for prosecuting the media moguls in Venezuela than for this administrative action, which is the USA equivalent to revoking a stations FCC license. Chavez also does not seem to have much faith in the courts which failed to convict anyone of the coup so perhaps he distrusts that avenue.
My first thought when I saw the sales figures was: "Hey, those look like laserdisc numbers!"
For those not familiar, LaserDisc was an analog optical disc format introduced at roughly the same time as VHS/Beta and could be considered the predecessor of DVD. It is relevant here because the format never really died (it was eventually replaced by DVD), but remained viable in it's hi-end videophile niche. I suspect that either Blu-Ray or HD-DVD will remain as a niche product, probably Blu-Ray due to the technical advantages the videophile market prefers.
I think this picture is a bleaker in the audio world with SACD, DVD-Audio, DualDisc and others competing in a desperate attempt by the big record labels to maintain their marketshare. I think all of these formats are doomed. Music distribution is rapidly moving to a purely online model. I think that online video, especially hi-def video, will take a lot longer to eclipse disc formats due to bandwidth issues but strikes me as a major reason why neither is likely to be widely adopted.
Even if the hacker does use encryption, can he really be sure that his machine hasn't been rooted and keylogged? Can today's hackers verify even the microcode inside their processors and BIOS? If he can cover his tracks, so can the FBI. Yeah, if you assume Orwellian powers on the part of the FBI. No, the FBI doesn't have secret backdoors in all the hardware and software because it would take a VERY short period of time before those backdoors became public knowledge, making them near-useless AND compromising everyone's security. This is exactly what has happened in the past and I don't see them repeating these mistakes. I can't think of a worse idea than the FBI distributing troyjan rootkits into the wild.
Maybe the hacker compromised a bank - or maybe, the bank is in cahoots with the FBI, and he's just knocked over the honeypot. He won't know until he goes to the bank - and withdraws his cash, or gets arrested. I don't think you understand how most of these investigations work. 9/10 the hacker in your example won't be caught by ANYTHING related to computers. Some "friend" of his will rat him out or the police will get a tip or something and they'll start investigating HIM. Or alternatively they'll get a complaint from the bank (unlikely) and start looking into the "usual suspects", hackers they've "identified" before. Eventually they'll find some people who said the suspect bragged about it or about his "mad hacking skillz" and then serve a search warrant which reveals he actually owns computers.
And that's it. No forensics whatsoever. They get a few witnesses to say "he's a hacker", show that he had lots of computer equipment, and then they pin whatever it is they wanted to pin on him. This is usually how these cases go.
Encryption is the only thing that'll stand any serious investigation. Though I suppose it'll get you past the "should be bother to check his computer just in case" checks, there is plenty support for not "IE/Windows" machines. The year is 2007. As far as I'm aware disk encryption tools like PGPDisk and similar have been around since at least the early 90s and they remain nearly as difficult to break into now as they once were. The issue has always been performance. Anyone who knows even a little bit about computer security should know this. Therefore, anyone doing illegal activities and who is halfway competent will be using encryption.
As other people have pointed out, the police are very good at catching incompetent "blue collar" criminals and very poor at catching competent "white collar" criminals. Most computer criminals fall into the latter category so are rarely caught, and when caught are rarely seriously punished (white collar criminals are smart enough to have money and lawyers). That's why organized crime is more powerful than ever and the FBI can't seem to catch any real terrorists.
BTW, I believe the OP was talking about European police, which are generally even less competent when it comes to computer crimes.
I've never been to Thailand, but I have been to Denmark. And in Denmark the Queen is indeed "universally loved" by her subjects. You never hear a bad word about her or the Danish royal family except occasional gossip about who's sleeping with whom.
The difference is that Denmark is a liberal democracy and Thailand is a vicious military dictatorship. And no, it wasn't much of a "democracy" before the coup either. The Queen of Denmark would never consider jailing someone for insulting her, nor would the parliament pass such a law.
The Thai people are simply WRONG, as in immoral or evil. Google/YouTube should not cooperate with Thailand, nor should the US Government.
The other big case is when two Border Patrol agents shot at an armed drug smuggler, who later (after escaping back into Mexico) that he was hit in the butt, and the two agents are now facing charges of attempted murder here, and the drug smuggler has received immunity (!).
Apparently, the Bush Administration thinks it's OK to smuggle drugs across the border.
The drug mule was not armed. They beat him and tried to kill him and then they tried to cover it up. Other agents on the scene testified against them. They lied to investigators about every aspect of the incident. AND they received the absolute minimum sentence possible under the law.
It is not for you to say how much he can sell his OWN stuff for. Judging from the amount of work he put into it, and that he didn't want to give it up, it's obvious to me that he was not asking for too much. No, he doesn't OWN shit. MYSPACE OWNED HIS WEB PAGES. I haven't gone over MySpace's Terms of Service with a fine-toothed comb but I'm willing to bet that they say that MySpace owns everything posted to MySpace. So if MySpace wants to they can delete his account or move, edit, or alter it however they see fit for whatever reason they want. And that includes sucking up to Barack Obama, or anyone more powerful than you. The same is true of Geocities and other free hosting providers.
What? No. They transfered it to another URL and dropped his friends. All myspace did was transfer his text to another account. He lost EVERYTHING of value. He should have set up his OWN website on his OWN server. Y'know, one he actually created himself instead of using MySpace? People who care about their web content do not use free hosting providers because their service can be suddenly terminated for any number of reasons, most often because of too much traffic.
Of course, as the OP said, if he'd set up barackobama.com the result would have been the same. The OP was right, if you want to hold onto you website don't name it after a well-known public figure or major name brand. This should be common sense for web designers.
You really think GW Bush, with his demonstrated ability to just barely put two words together correctly about half the time, is the intelligence manipulating things like the justifications offered to the public to go into Iraq? I really think that GW Bush, a graduate of Yale university, is smarter than the average American adult. This perhaps says more about the intelligence of Americans than the intelligence of Bush.
He's being run. By who? The Trilateral Commission? Bill Gates? The Bechtel family? Space aliens?
This isn't a democracy; it is a mutated republic with an ultra-powerful upper class whose primary concern is the welfare of the corporate citizens. I think you're making the mistake of thinking that it hasn't always been this way. Things were a bit better in the postwar period (1948-1960) in terms of income distribution, but that's ONE fucking decade. It was way worse before the World Wars, remember the so-called Gilded Age? Slowly but surely things are getting better.
And if you really want to blame someone for the class disparity in America, blame the Chicago School economists that support "supply side" economics (aka "trickle down" economics or Reganomics) which has wrecked nations all over the world.
Right now, there is exactly one presidential candidate that stands out as really backing a lot of the ideas we, as citizens, hold dear. That is Texan Ron Paul Ron Paul is exactly who we don't need. You seem to be concerned about income inequality in America, but Ron Paul promotes Gilded Age-economic polices (aka "supply side") which is basically redistributing income form the poor to the rich. All taxes except progressive income taxes and inheritance taxes screw poor people. Ron Paul wants to eliminate those taxes and shift the tax burden entirely to poor people. He also approves of debtor's prisons for the poor people screwed by his policies. Basically, he's pro-slavery and wants slaves. Like most Republicans. That's the main reason he's so anti-immigrant (more specifically, anti-Latin immigrant). Illegal Latin immigrants are uneducated, work in unsafe conditions, receive no government services, are heavily taxed, and are paid a pittance. Ron Paul wants to make ALL Americans (except him and and buddies) like this. Or it might be simple racism. His candidacy has been endorsed by numerous white power groups. He has ties to the White Citizen's Council. And he IS a Republican, so it's not like voting for him will break the two party system. Looking at his record, he seems to be to be a typical conservative Republican, with a bit of a libertarian and racist bent.
He does support civil liberties (he's for drug decriminalization for example), but he seems to be pretty selective on what civil liberties he's willing to support.
He is an improvement over the guy who replaced him though: Tom Delay, the most corrupt politician in modern history.
Clinton didn't help the gays. Clinton DID help gays in any number of ways. Hate crime legislation, AIDS spending and awareness, and most importantly government money for education (sex education, help for teenagers, etc.) Ron Paul actually wants homosexuality to be illegal. Oh, and he's pro-life so he hates women too.
Ron Paul hates gays, women, non-whites, and poor people. He's a great candidate if you're in the Klansman that wants to live on the street.
threaten to pull advance copies of their next game if any game got a bad review They could just buy the games when they come out, or bribe company insiders for review companies before release. It's a lot more about the fact that the same game companies advertise in the magazines and threaten to pull advertising. Exactly the same situation as at PC World.
Near as I can tell, OLPC is the one project that least resembles vapourware of all the announced projects out there. The ClassmatePC is shipping, the OLPC isn't. Why does it more closely resemble vaporware?
Actually, they almost certainly counted almost all of the returns because almost all of those returns were sent back to Sony. The retailers do not soak up the costs of defective merchandise. I suspect a fair number of these discs were getting RMA'd and that's the main reason for this recall.
... that leaves us with economic engagement. Its already produced results. All of China or parts of China? There are bright spots in China, but overall the population is still oppressed peasants and workers. When has propping up dictators lead to democratic reform within a nation? Are not the current rulers of China becoming further entrenched in power?
A tariff that high would raise prices for many many products that Americans buy by a great deal. Why? The primary reason that so many goods are produced in China is low wages, and people are paid poorly all over the world. Why not simply move production to other nations, DEMOCRATIC nations like India, former Soviet bloc nations like the Ukraine, and most importantly, our southern neighbors Central and South America?
China isn't enveloping its neighbors under an "iron curtain." Tell it to Tibet. Or Taiwan. Or Korea.
As China urbanizes they are looseing authortarian control very slowly but surely. The heavily urbanized Soviet Union did not have "loose control", so it is unlikely that the same would hold true in China. Economic reform does not automatically translate to political reform. Economic engagement is a "carrot", but that carrot should have strings attached, like political reform. There is a difference between limited economic aid and the massive US development effort in China. There SHOULD be be political demands placed on China for all this economic aid, and there are in terms of international relations, but there is no pressure for China to engage in meaningful domestic reform.
I've hashed this out before. Citadel has issues. It's based on IMAP, and IMAP is messed up. Currently, the only feature-complete way to use the system is to use it through the web clients which are slow and slightly buggy. At least this is my superficial impression for m very limited testing. Citadel also needs a dedicated desktop client for Linux and Windows.
I don't think this has been applied in actual criminal cases. RIAA civil claims do not seem to be be resulting in criminal cases for theft or grand theft. Large scale producers of copied DVDs are usually charged with producing counterfeit goods, as that is a more applicable statute.
It used to be that the moment you installed iTunes it took you to the iTunes store. All this is tracking is whether or not people installed iTunes (essentially) which they HAVE to install to use their iPods. Steve Jobs says that the Apple isn't selling very much DRM music. This jives with statistics I've seen from the record labels. I will consider this definitive until I see significant information that PROVES otherwise.
Ripping off? The GPLv2 allows whatever Google is doing to be done! They're not disobeying any part of the license. If they were they could be sued. Simple as that. So now you want to attach imaginary wishful violations to the way they do business? It's called a "loophole". Stallman says they're using a loophole and violating the spirit of the GPL. He wrote it. I agree with him.
Also correct me if I'm wrong but haven't most of the most objectional parts of the GPLv3 been toned down as Linus Torvalds now agrees with the GPLv3? I don't know. The "objectionable" parts of the GPLv3 were EXACTLY the parts that tried to close this loophole in the GPL. Linus was undoubtedly bribed by one of the companies (like IBM and Google) that are making money off this loophole. The controversy is still far from over.
In any case Google can continue to use GPLv2 versions of Linux for its servers or even fork Linux for itself along the GPLv2 codebase and then release their own version of Linux to the world.... If worse comes to worse Google could switch to FreeBSD which is what Yahoo uses. Unlikely. It's a lot more work that you seem to think and the vast majority of kernel developers do not work for Google, nor will they. It's much easier just to threaten people into doing what they want.
And Google is going to keep their public/consumer services free for the simple fact that the money they make selling the information they collect on you is a lot more than they could make if they outright charged you for their services. You might be right. I think it's more likely that they have two versions: a paid and an advertiser-supported. It would be easy to implement. I can filter the advertisements, but if I couldn't, I wouldn't use Google.
An argument can be made that increasing economic activity in nations like China and helping them to liberalize their markets and increase the ranks of the middle class who live there will in its own due time bring about political change once everyone there gets used to a higher standard of living instead of the mostly agrarian standard they have today or have had in the past. Stop companies from doing business there and you possibly put a stop to that progress. That's an incredibly self-serving argument that you wouldn't make for any other industry. Should we give US arms manufacturers who sell torture devices to the Chinese a pass because they're "increasing economic activity" and helping them "liberalize their markets"? We don't. That's why we don't sell electric shock generators or pain drugs to China (they get those from Israel).
China's problems aren't economic, they're POLITICAL. The POLITICAL situation in China is the PRIMARY SOURCE of their economic hardships. Helping the current Chinese regime control the media, which is exactly what Google is doing, props up the Chinese government and makes the economic situation WORSE. We WANT the Chinese government to collapse. We WANT there to be a revolution in China. This crap about "transitioning" the nation by propping up the Communist government is insane. Was that our strategy with the Soviet Union? No. Is that our strategy with Cuba? No. Dictatorships do not liberalize without force or substantial threat of force.
You want to do something for the Chinese? Push Congress to impose a 50% trade tarrif on all goods to and from China unless the Communists allow the Chinese people unfiltered access to American media. We should choke the rich aristocrats running "Communist" China, not give them more money.
The key is that, year over year, Apple's sales are still increasing, even though last year they didn't have to compete with Vista and this year they do. Sure, when the iPod first came out 5 years ago, maybe MP3 players were all that was keeping Apple alive. However, today Mac sales are self sustaining and rising. They are rising only because the market is expanding in general. Apple little presence in Russia, South Korea (practically an MS nation), China, and India. MS puts MASSIVE effort (everyone else's pales in comparison) into localization, which is why they dominate these markets. Apple's marketshare remains steady at about 1.5%.
The fact that Vista didn't slow Mac sales is bad for them. Very bad. Nobody at MS gives a fuck about Vista. It's seen as a "gaming" extension to XP (and MS is increasingly divided on this issue as the PC is seen as a "competitor" to the 360, despite the fact MS own both platforms). The most interesting features are those intended help corporate IT departments with deployment and management. Everyone at MS is much more concerned about Longhorn, the new version of Windows Server and the next version of Exchange (2007 was originally supposed to ship with Longhorn). Apple users don't seem to grasp that the bread and butter of MS is the corporate LAN market, and the most important product there is Windows Server, not Vista. It's seen primarily as a Windows Server client, nothing more. Until somebody makes a replacement that is VASTLY SUPERIOR to Active Directory/Exchange, Microsoft will continue to dominate the corporate desktop and thereby the global desktop.
Apple isn't even trying to go after this market. Linux is, and I think that eventually one of the Linux vendors will get their shit together and present a real competitor to Windows.
Given the Apple emphasis on support for open standards (such as a standards-compliant web browser and email client) and the UNIX base of Mac OS X, I'd say Apple users are relatively much less locked in than Windows users. How is Apple Mail more "standards-compliant" than Outlook Express?
Is the mail storage format for Apple Mail easy to export to other mail programs on different platforms? Everyone I've talked to says no. I've only tried from Apple Mail on MacOS to Thunderbird on Windows and it doesn't work very well. This is a REAL compatibility issue, not the non-issues you're bringing up. It's not about "standards", because Apple makes no serious attempt to follow public standards for data formats (like UNIX does). Neither does Windows. So it comes down to who has better data import/export tools, and I think they're better on Windows.
And before you bring up that Apple has a UNIX base, that isn't relevent. You are not using your MacOS box as a POSIX workstation. You are not using pine for your email. We are talking about Apple's proprietary apps here (like iLife).
All this will do, literally, is further screw poor kids with the digital divide. Does anyone honestly think this will be an issue for rich kids? They have computers at home. Or if the school is moving towards wifi hotspots (many are), they have a laptop. Hell, the rich kids might even have cellular internet on their laptops. So typically it's only the POOR kids that don't have access to computers at home or elsewhere that use the school computers. So by screwing their ability to do research, we're just increading the divide between rich and poor. Of course, that seems to be a major policy goal of the current government (I include both Democrats and Republicans in this).
They're a destroyer of technology. What "technology" has Microsoft "destroyed"? Be specific.
It would require a major reworking of Google's DNA. Microsoft from the get-go has been all about locking up technology and making sure its not open.... The problem is that there really isn't a future for technology while Microsoft remains dominant.... For those who don't really care about superior quality again its not a big deal for them. You clearly do not understand Google's business model. Google rips off open source tools and community hardware to develop super-proprietary hosted software solutions. Google currently makes money by gathering as much personal information about you as possible and selling it to marketing companies. Sure, it's free for now, but that's only a come-on to encourage lock-in. Do you REALLY think that there won't be lock-in for their hosted apps? It's right there in their fucking stock reports. And Google has no problem dealing with despicable regimes, like China and Uzbekistan, as long as it will make them a few bucks. Yeah, a lot of Burners and other lefty assholes work for Google.
I just don't get why the open source community loves a company that is almost entirely based on ripping off the open source community. Why do you think Stallman is so pissed off at Google? The GPLv3 is all about closing the loopholes that Google is exploiting.
How would making their server code freely available for use on internal LANs get people to go to Google's sites and watch ads? Think about it.
Google is paranoid about internal security and leaks because what they really have is their own "special sauce", based on open source and commodity hardware, that they can't sell. Google is going to be "hosted only" for the forseeable future, and I for one would never consider an ASP or outside vendor for my groupware server. It's actually ILLEGAL in many US organizations due to Sarbanes-Oxley.
It'd be nice if you would at least familiarize yourself with the product before you bash it. Maybe he has, because his criticism is dead on.
# Redundant storage by duplicating it across multiple drives, and the ability to easily add/remove drives. Also, drive letters are gone; WHS treats all drives as one big pool of space. # Remote access of files beyond the LAN, plus the ability to setup a personalized domain to access your server. All of this is optional and disabled by default if you're concerned about security. This is available in existing NAS boxes you can buy off the shelf. Linksys, etc. Mine is by Buffalo.
# Backup and restore entire computers on the network. It backs up one copy of duplicate files across the network to save space. You can also restore individual files. I'm not sure what this means or why I would want to do this. If you're talking about rsync, I've got that. I can also do HD images. The Windows Backup software is horribly bugged and if you're using it you hate your data. If this software is based on that, it WILL suck.
Ability to install your own apps on WHS. It's based on Windows Server 2003 R2, and there aren't any restrictions on installing software on it. I'll give you this. Sort of.
The big problem is that the Home Server is competing with NAS units (like I describe above) that will cost less than half the price.
Now if you wanted to build a PC system you use for your home server, you could run this Home Server software on it (which will cost, what, $150 at least?) or you could run one of the many free and mature Linux distributions that are excellent for this purpose. I'm not a big fan of Linux on the desktop, but for THIS purpose, the home or small business LAN server, Linux has lots of advantages, the biggest being that it can easily run on cheap commodity hardware you have lying around.
My current system is actually a hybrid of these approaches: It's a Kuro-box, a NAS that has it's own Linux distribution. It can run Samba, but I'm also running P2P clients and a few little daemons on it for VPN and such. I actually wouldn't reccomend it to other people. I basically wanted a cheap PPC development system. For the money you're much better off building a PC for this task. It is small and quiet though.
I for one am in favor of this move. Not because I think people should be paying more taxes (When people are going to great lengths to avoid a tax, it's a sign that tax is unfair. Nobody should be paying income taxes that makes less than $100,000 per year.) but because this might do something to prevent the rampant fraud we see on eBay. The fraudsters aren't likely to want to pay taxes, and collecting taxes will probably require eBay to collect more information on sellers, which will reduce fraud. Especially if eBay faces financial penalties for not properly collecting tax revenue.
One can argue, that if your company can't afford the outlay for a working exchange environment, your company doesn't need it, and it would probably be a waste of time trying to replicate its features. Until he's proven wrong, this statement is true. There ARE NO free groupware solutions, there never have been, and I'm starting to think there never will be. The support costs are simply to brutal and impassible an issue for the open source community to deal with.
In the distant future there may be a commercial groupware solution based on open source, but it will almost certainly cost as much or more than Exchange.
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Chavez is certainly aware that we would draw much more political flak for prosecuting the media moguls in Venezuela than for this administrative action, which is the USA equivalent to revoking a stations FCC license. Chavez also does not seem to have much faith in the courts which failed to convict anyone of the coup so perhaps he distrusts that avenue.
My first thought when I saw the sales figures was: "Hey, those look like laserdisc numbers!"
For those not familiar, LaserDisc was an analog optical disc format introduced at roughly the same time as VHS/Beta and could be considered the predecessor of DVD. It is relevant here because the format never really died (it was eventually replaced by DVD), but remained viable in it's hi-end videophile niche. I suspect that either Blu-Ray or HD-DVD will remain as a niche product, probably Blu-Ray due to the technical advantages the videophile market prefers.
I think this picture is a bleaker in the audio world with SACD, DVD-Audio, DualDisc and others competing in a desperate attempt by the big record labels to maintain their marketshare. I think all of these formats are doomed. Music distribution is rapidly moving to a purely online model. I think that online video, especially hi-def video, will take a lot longer to eclipse disc formats due to bandwidth issues but strikes me as a major reason why neither is likely to be widely adopted.
And that's it. No forensics whatsoever. They get a few witnesses to say "he's a hacker", show that he had lots of computer equipment, and then they pin whatever it is they wanted to pin on him. This is usually how these cases go.
As other people have pointed out, the police are very good at catching incompetent "blue collar" criminals and very poor at catching competent "white collar" criminals. Most computer criminals fall into the latter category so are rarely caught, and when caught are rarely seriously punished (white collar criminals are smart enough to have money and lawyers). That's why organized crime is more powerful than ever and the FBI can't seem to catch any real terrorists.
BTW, I believe the OP was talking about European police, which are generally even less competent when it comes to computer crimes.
I've never been to Thailand, but I have been to Denmark. And in Denmark the Queen is indeed "universally loved" by her subjects. You never hear a bad word about her or the Danish royal family except occasional gossip about who's sleeping with whom.
The difference is that Denmark is a liberal democracy and Thailand is a vicious military dictatorship. And no, it wasn't much of a "democracy" before the coup either. The Queen of Denmark would never consider jailing someone for insulting her, nor would the parliament pass such a law.
The Thai people are simply WRONG, as in immoral or evil. Google/YouTube should not cooperate with Thailand, nor should the US Government.
The other big case is when two Border Patrol agents shot at an armed drug smuggler, who later (after escaping back into Mexico) that he was hit in the butt, and the two agents are now facing charges of attempted murder here, and the drug smuggler has received immunity (!).
Apparently, the Bush Administration thinks it's OK to smuggle drugs across the border.
The drug mule was not armed. They beat him and tried to kill him and then they tried to cover it up. Other agents on the scene testified against them. They lied to investigators about every aspect of the incident. AND they received the absolute minimum sentence possible under the law.
Of course, as the OP said, if he'd set up barackobama.com the result would have been the same. The OP was right, if you want to hold onto you website don't name it after a well-known public figure or major name brand. This should be common sense for web designers.
And if you really want to blame someone for the class disparity in America, blame the Chicago School economists that support "supply side" economics (aka "trickle down" economics or Reganomics) which has wrecked nations all over the world. Right now, there is exactly one presidential candidate that stands out as really backing a lot of the ideas we, as citizens, hold dear. That is Texan Ron Paul Ron Paul is exactly who we don't need. You seem to be concerned about income inequality in America, but Ron Paul promotes Gilded Age-economic polices (aka "supply side") which is basically redistributing income form the poor to the rich. All taxes except progressive income taxes and inheritance taxes screw poor people. Ron Paul wants to eliminate those taxes and shift the tax burden entirely to poor people. He also approves of debtor's prisons for the poor people screwed by his policies. Basically, he's pro-slavery and wants slaves. Like most Republicans. That's the main reason he's so anti-immigrant (more specifically, anti-Latin immigrant). Illegal Latin immigrants are uneducated, work in unsafe conditions, receive no government services, are heavily taxed, and are paid a pittance. Ron Paul wants to make ALL Americans (except him and and buddies) like this. Or it might be simple racism. His candidacy has been endorsed by numerous white power groups. He has ties to the White Citizen's Council. And he IS a Republican, so it's not like voting for him will break the two party system. Looking at his record, he seems to be to be a typical conservative Republican, with a bit of a libertarian and racist bent.
He does support civil liberties (he's for drug decriminalization for example), but he seems to be pretty selective on what civil liberties he's willing to support.
He is an improvement over the guy who replaced him though: Tom Delay, the most corrupt politician in modern history. Clinton didn't help the gays. Clinton DID help gays in any number of ways. Hate crime legislation, AIDS spending and awareness, and most importantly government money for education (sex education, help for teenagers, etc.) Ron Paul actually wants homosexuality to be illegal. Oh, and he's pro-life so he hates women too.
Ron Paul hates gays, women, non-whites, and poor people. He's a great candidate if you're in the Klansman that wants to live on the street.
Actually, they almost certainly counted almost all of the returns because almost all of those returns were sent back to Sony. The retailers do not soak up the costs of defective merchandise. I suspect a fair number of these discs were getting RMA'd and that's the main reason for this recall.
... that leaves us with economic engagement. Its already produced results. All of China or parts of China? There are bright spots in China, but overall the population is still oppressed peasants and workers. When has propping up dictators lead to democratic reform within a nation? Are not the current rulers of China becoming further entrenched in power? A tariff that high would raise prices for many many products that Americans buy by a great deal. Why? The primary reason that so many goods are produced in China is low wages, and people are paid poorly all over the world. Why not simply move production to other nations, DEMOCRATIC nations like India, former Soviet bloc nations like the Ukraine, and most importantly, our southern neighbors Central and South America? China isn't enveloping its neighbors under an "iron curtain." Tell it to Tibet. Or Taiwan. Or Korea. As China urbanizes they are looseing authortarian control very slowly but surely. The heavily urbanized Soviet Union did not have "loose control", so it is unlikely that the same would hold true in China. Economic reform does not automatically translate to political reform. Economic engagement is a "carrot", but that carrot should have strings attached, like political reform. There is a difference between limited economic aid and the massive US development effort in China. There SHOULD be be political demands placed on China for all this economic aid, and there are in terms of international relations, but there is no pressure for China to engage in meaningful domestic reform.I've hashed this out before. Citadel has issues. It's based on IMAP, and IMAP is messed up. Currently, the only feature-complete way to use the system is to use it through the web clients which are slow and slightly buggy. At least this is my superficial impression for m very limited testing. Citadel also needs a dedicated desktop client for Linux and Windows.
I don't think this has been applied in actual criminal cases. RIAA civil claims do not seem to be be resulting in criminal cases for theft or grand theft. Large scale producers of copied DVDs are usually charged with producing counterfeit goods, as that is a more applicable statute.
It used to be that the moment you installed iTunes it took you to the iTunes store. All this is tracking is whether or not people installed iTunes (essentially) which they HAVE to install to use their iPods. Steve Jobs says that the Apple isn't selling very much DRM music. This jives with statistics I've seen from the record labels. I will consider this definitive until I see significant information that PROVES otherwise.
China's problems aren't economic, they're POLITICAL. The POLITICAL situation in China is the PRIMARY SOURCE of their economic hardships. Helping the current Chinese regime control the media, which is exactly what Google is doing, props up the Chinese government and makes the economic situation WORSE. We WANT the Chinese government to collapse. We WANT there to be a revolution in China. This crap about "transitioning" the nation by propping up the Communist government is insane. Was that our strategy with the Soviet Union? No. Is that our strategy with Cuba? No. Dictatorships do not liberalize without force or substantial threat of force.
You want to do something for the Chinese? Push Congress to impose a 50% trade tarrif on all goods to and from China unless the Communists allow the Chinese people unfiltered access to American media. We should choke the rich aristocrats running "Communist" China, not give them more money.
Apple isn't even trying to go after this market. Linux is, and I think that eventually one of the Linux vendors will get their shit together and present a real competitor to Windows.
Is the mail storage format for Apple Mail easy to export to other mail programs on different platforms? Everyone I've talked to says no. I've only tried from Apple Mail on MacOS to Thunderbird on Windows and it doesn't work very well. This is a REAL compatibility issue, not the non-issues you're bringing up. It's not about "standards", because Apple makes no serious attempt to follow public standards for data formats (like UNIX does). Neither does Windows. So it comes down to who has better data import/export tools, and I think they're better on Windows.
And before you bring up that Apple has a UNIX base, that isn't relevent. You are not using your MacOS box as a POSIX workstation. You are not using pine for your email. We are talking about Apple's proprietary apps here (like iLife).
All this will do, literally, is further screw poor kids with the digital divide. Does anyone honestly think this will be an issue for rich kids? They have computers at home. Or if the school is moving towards wifi hotspots (many are), they have a laptop. Hell, the rich kids might even have cellular internet on their laptops. So typically it's only the POOR kids that don't have access to computers at home or elsewhere that use the school computers. So by screwing their ability to do research, we're just increading the divide between rich and poor. Of course, that seems to be a major policy goal of the current government (I include both Democrats and Republicans in this).
I just don't get why the open source community loves a company that is almost entirely based on ripping off the open source community. Why do you think Stallman is so pissed off at Google? The GPLv3 is all about closing the loopholes that Google is exploiting.
How would making their server code freely available for use on internal LANs get people to go to Google's sites and watch ads? Think about it.
Google is paranoid about internal security and leaks because what they really have is their own "special sauce", based on open source and commodity hardware, that they can't sell. Google is going to be "hosted only" for the forseeable future, and I for one would never consider an ASP or outside vendor for my groupware server. It's actually ILLEGAL in many US organizations due to Sarbanes-Oxley.
# Remote access of files beyond the LAN, plus the ability to setup a personalized domain to access your server. All of this is optional and disabled by default if you're concerned about security. This is available in existing NAS boxes you can buy off the shelf. Linksys, etc. Mine is by Buffalo. # Backup and restore entire computers on the network. It backs up one copy of duplicate files across the network to save space. You can also restore individual files. I'm not sure what this means or why I would want to do this. If you're talking about rsync, I've got that. I can also do HD images. The Windows Backup software is horribly bugged and if you're using it you hate your data. If this software is based on that, it WILL suck. Ability to install your own apps on WHS. It's based on Windows Server 2003 R2, and there aren't any restrictions on installing software on it. I'll give you this. Sort of.
The big problem is that the Home Server is competing with NAS units (like I describe above) that will cost less than half the price.
Now if you wanted to build a PC system you use for your home server, you could run this Home Server software on it (which will cost, what, $150 at least?) or you could run one of the many free and mature Linux distributions that are excellent for this purpose. I'm not a big fan of Linux on the desktop, but for THIS purpose, the home or small business LAN server, Linux has lots of advantages, the biggest being that it can easily run on cheap commodity hardware you have lying around.
My current system is actually a hybrid of these approaches: It's a Kuro-box, a NAS that has it's own Linux distribution. It can run Samba, but I'm also running P2P clients and a few little daemons on it for VPN and such. I actually wouldn't reccomend it to other people. I basically wanted a cheap PPC development system. For the money you're much better off building a PC for this task. It is small and quiet though.
I for one am in favor of this move. Not because I think people should be paying more taxes (When people are going to great lengths to avoid a tax, it's a sign that tax is unfair. Nobody should be paying income taxes that makes less than $100,000 per year.) but because this might do something to prevent the rampant fraud we see on eBay. The fraudsters aren't likely to want to pay taxes, and collecting taxes will probably require eBay to collect more information on sellers, which will reduce fraud. Especially if eBay faces financial penalties for not properly collecting tax revenue.
Here's hoping.
In the distant future there may be a commercial groupware solution based on open source, but it will almost certainly cost as much or more than Exchange.