1. Buy a spindle of blank CDs/DVDs. Chances are, the manufacturer put a zero-layer disc (AKA a plastic-only disc) to keep the data layer of the top disc from getting scratched. Some brands do, some don't. 2. Your choice. You can use the disc as fodder for target practice, use it as a coaster, impress your geek friends with the "zero-layer disc" bit for a few microseconds, or heck, try to build your own writable disc.
If she cares at all about her party or her country then she'll admit defeat and get her ass in gear promoting Obama to the masses in every way possible.
As other commenters have said, she's given way too much ammunition to the Republicans for her to be a viable VP. Not only this, the young voters that Obama attracted the most still remember the incredibly stupid things she said during the campaign that the mainstream media picked up days later when the evidence made the rounds on Youtube. Others have also mentioned that Bill would be difficult to keep under control, especially if you bring up the possibility of getting back to the White House (must be the interns).
No, Karl Rove and others would carpet-bomb the media advertising agencies. Obama's campaign would want her around like Ben Franklin's proverbial unwanted fish.
The biggest challenge for Obama now is to win over the Democrats who voted Clinton. I'm not talking about the nuts who showed up to protest the DNC Rules & Bylaws Committee meeting; for all we know, they voted for Perot, then Bush-- twice. I mean the voters who only voted Clinton because they recognized the name, or because they thought Bill was making another run. A start would be to show them that Obama's platform isn't very different from Clinton's. Obama has pulled off a few political jujitsu moves, let's see if he can tackle this challenge.
More to the point, let's not equate current Democrats with Harry Truman, who ultimately approved the nuclear strikes on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Let's also remember that although JFK had a role in exacerbating the mess in Vietnam and screwed up the Bay of Pigs, he also stood firm against the USSR and helped prevent a nuclear war between two superpowers.
What matters more than continuing to whine and moan about events in the past is asking whether the people today have learned from history. Those who continue to hold a grudge, I would wager, have learned little more than "the squeaky wheel gets the concessions".
I don't know if property and privacy are human rights (there are probably many who regard it as so), but the music cartel's plan to threaten anyone who trades files to pay them or risk losing everything in litigation is certainly a form of extortion. If organized crime (which they're becoming with every frivolous discovery filed) were to engage in this sort of campaign, the FBI would jump on them post haste.
Let's not forget that Media Sentry took a few lessons from the military intelligence unit under Rumsfeld that told us Iraq got uranium from Africa and generally is doing "just a cracker-jack job"...
It's especially true with the INS under DHS under the Bush administration. There is a hard-to-find clause in recent immigration law that grants the INS broad authority to kick a non-citizen out. If a green card candidate is disqualified for a questionable reason (e.g., the candidate was recently married to a citizen, but is now widowed) and fights them, the INS can invoke this trump card, even if a court orders them to let the candidate stay. There is no recourse, no appeal, and no oversight. Because of the rather obvious potential for blatant abuse, the INS so far only uses this when all other avenues are exhausted, and as such has gone unnoticed with the possible exception of public radio.
Ding ding ding! Give the man a cigar. Or better yet, a plasma cutter (always wanted one of those).
As a CEO, why pay the cost of hiring a local when you can instead import cheap labor, and give yourself a nice fat bonus/stock options package with the difference? And spread the wealth around, lest anyone dare to complain. Machiavelli would be proud.
As long as Excel and Word macros are ubiquitously used and locked tightly (not to mention the piles of features built into both apps), Google Docs will have a very hard time prying open Microsoft Office's dominance. Businesses are so dependent on them, in fact, that it would be much more feasible and secure for them to tunnel VNC/Remote Desktop sessions through SSH or VPN and run software off a central application server.
Of course, the client machine doesn't need to be Windows, so herein is a tremendous opportunity for Linux subnotebooks. Configure the client distro to use as much physical RAM as possible, and let your mobile users run everything inside VNC. No need to download files to the laptop, where you can have data leaks.
Other than a small screen, the fact that you'll still buy a pile of Windows Server and Office CALs, and possibly crummy 'net access, I can't see much to complain about this scenario. I'll leave it up to someone else to set me straight Car Talk style. Here, I'll start it for you: "You knucklehead..."
The MSFT shareholders, of course. If your company is mucking around the idea of buying a smaller company, and the release of your flagship product is panned in the press, you'd be getting your marketers to come up with some spin to keep your job.
Maybe some moderators want the Slashdot readership to not sound rabidly anti-Microsoft? I'm starting to sense the need for a "Get the Facts on Microsoft products" response to Microsoft's Linux propaganda.
To be fair (IMO generous, but what the hey), his point was that most of the problems reported by/. users is that they can't monkey with Vista the way they could with XP.
Of course, such a straw man ignores the "Is it saaafe?" experience of Vista driver compatibility (though to be honest, driver compatibility on other OS has some people begging, "pleeeease work!"), the "security by turnstile" that is UAC, the degraded performance due to the higher hardware requirements, and the high potential for bugs due to demand for legacy application support. This is not bashing, this is documented criticism that I will defer to a Google search for GP.
I think someone may have brought it up in court and got a ruling in his favor. The gist of the argument is, "How can I possibly agree to something I can't read unless I agree with the document (thus begging the question) to begin with?"
Essentially, it's an extortion of liberties, because they can put "we own your nuts and your firstborn" in the EULA and claim that it's enforceable because you used the software (yeah, that would get struck down as unconscionable, but imagine a similar but less threatening clause).
You're asserting that the buyer now has replication rights as well as distribution rights with his copy, which the seller never agreed to. This is one of many scenarios that the Copyright Act is designed to prevent; just because you sold a DVD you personally made to your friend, doesn't mean he can then turn around and make a boatload of copies to sell without your permission. Were the OP selling books rather than video, and the buyer rents the copy he purchased out to one person at a time, your point would stand on firmer ground. Easy duplication and distribution of information, i.e. the Internet, changes copyright law into a big can of worms.
And before those of you RMS types get up in arms over the above, I want to point out that the RIAA member companies could have been far more rational in handling its digital copyright conundrum, and preying on small publishers like this is the same type of asshattery that is the music cartel's racketeering by threat of litigation. Defend your rights if you must, but don't use an army of blind and drunk mûmakil to do it.
I can hear your ears turning red.... or perhaps your eyes are glazing over. I don't care. Keep reading.:-)
Surely there was a better way to convince GP? Most people's reaction to something as smug and condescending as that is: <Bender>Bite my shiny, metal ass!</Bender> (hits PgDn a few times)
I'm pretty sure the goal of an argument is to help the contrite learn, not to bash them over the head intellectually.
I seem to remember that someone commented how we somehow respect and admire sociopaths who learn to hide their true colors from the world (if someone can find the comment and link it, please do). The peons know their bosses are jerks, but no one listens to mere peons, the outside world can only see the boss making their company billions of dollars. Those who wrench productivity from their subordinates like the last drops of water from a sponge also are seen as the most capable leaders on balance sheets.
That, by the way, is how bullies and jerks become execs. When they say "Nice guys finish last," what they really mean is "You don't get into first place without smashing the feet of your foes."
What would really relieve whatever anger I have at this pathetic attempt at a cover-up is if the OSS community comes up with a superior rating software system and puts the credit agencies out of business. Sadly, to mangle yet another quote, "Rallying the OSS developers to a single cause is like herding all of New York's feral cats."
Buggy and mangled? Maybe, but they may be shooting for ODF plus Excel macros and the like. If they can crush OpenOffice acceptance before it gets off the ground with better features and the same format (on the surface), it'll render any OOXML repercussions moot. And to anyone crying antitrust foul, they'll say, "Hey, we made ODF better. Is it our fault they couldn't improve their own format?"
Probably won't survive the EU courts, but given their current behavior, that's probably what we can expect.
You forgot: They can still strong-arm OEMs through contracts, lawyers, and licenses. Oh, they botched Vista Capable, but the OEMs know they still can't get most corporate customers-- and hence the big bucks-- without Microsoft software. I detest that as much as the next/.er, especially because everywhere I turn there's a system that uses Windows when it doesn't have to.
They learned from their mistake of not getting involved enough in governments and government-like organizations, and shrewdly waited and delayed until a corporation-friendly government came into power to get the DOJ to cave.
Not only this, they learned that rather than bullying partner companies directly, using a lot of sweet deals will get them to do all the subversion of processes and requisite propaganda for them. Why else were there ardent OOXML apologists and administrative changing of ballots in ISO fast track, despite the clear inappropriateness of the venue, the fallacy of "competing formats", and the many unaddressed flaws?
They have learned that the world isn't like when the Mongols swept Asia, or when the English dominated the seas. In today's world, you don't dominate by conquest, you dominate by giving money, perks, and things away. Their primary strategy is to eliminate the voices of dissent, along with the competition, by paying their allies and neutral parties to say good things and bend the rules in their favor. They've turned from intimidation to manipulation to get what they want. The schoolyard bully, having never learned his lesson, is now a politician, and that makes him all the more dangerous.
What their allies don't realize is, once the governments are off their back and they unquestionably dominate everything they touch, they'll be even more of a bully than before. (Yeah, I'm paranoid. The realist in me says that'll never happen, but their overall marketing strategy hinges on essentially creating a good reputation that some believe excuses their past behavior and current attempts to reinforce their dominion. Most people don't taste power like they had and accept that it was only temporary.)
Perhaps the only thing keeping them from mounting a terrorist attack complete with human deaths is fear of the world's militaries coming after them. Though, after the way the US handled Afghanistan and Iraq, some of that fear may have decreased.
I suppose Japan and other nations (Norway, IIRC) would love to establish whale "pastures" much like we do cattle, sheep, and goats, if they had the know-how and the ability to rewrite international treaties...
As wrong as hunting whales has been in the past centuries, you're not going to change the governments' minds if you only attack them. "The ends justify the means" is exactly the tactic of all terrorists.
The greenest according to Greenpeace, of course, is the company that does everything they want, AND makes daily donations in excess of $100,000. No one in their right mind will do that, so Greenpeace, like greed itself, will never be satisfied.
Oh, sure, there's elements of truth in their nonprofit marketing, but the bottom line is, they are trolling for attention and money. The least they could do is publish factual information and not target the apparent market leader to maximize said attention and money.
The other reason why you're dependent on your car is, your area doesn't have the extensive rail network that Japan does. Most areas here, especially the Kanto region (the area around Tokyo bay), you can find a rail station less than 20 minutes' walk from your residence. Whereas in much of California, for example, being within an hour's walk from a railway station means you're incredibly lucky.
Then you have to figure in the distance from a railway station to your place of business...
How about viewing the Web the way the W3 consortium sees it? Y'know, the standards body that defined what various code in HTML and CSS should do so that browser developers don't have to code for rules some guy in a basement dreamed up?
When Microsoft defeated Netscape, they just about halted all new development on IE aside from the occasional security patch, because it wasn't cost-effective for them to pay developers to continue improving IE in order to follow W3's rules-- and as a result, most of the Web followed suit, because there was no viable competitor*. IE versions 4 through 6 were all notorious for using Microsoft's own positioning rules rather than W3's recommendations. Then Firefox arrived on the scene as a relatively more stable, secure, and standards-compliant alternative browser. Although it wasn't perfectly compliant, it was a great deal closer to the W3 spec than IE was.
Being closer to a standard meant that all of the websites written prior to Firefox's release now look "wrong" in Firefox. Many corporate and storefront websites look "off" because many developers still use IE's old positioning rules (or they haven't maintained the website aside from new products). So it really comes down to the Web according to W3-compliant browsers and the web according to old-school IE. Microsoft hopes to break away from IE6 by forcing standards compliance in IE7 and IE8, but I don't know if that will change years' worth of habit and de facto noncompliance, especially with Microsoft's commitment to legacy applications.
* For some reason, Opera got ignored the whole time by much of the Web. Perhaps Firefox's success is as much good marketing as it is good technology.
I think the main problem for democratic and representative governments is that a single prominent voice discrediting a campaign-- like, say, a lawsuit-- can destroy a political career. Politically savvy religious groups, including Muslim groups, know this, and they are prepared to sue the government and private citizens for discrimination and hate speech. Turning it around, they are equally prepared to instill fear even in non-Muslim groups by saying, "Look, they're infringing on our right to worship! What makes you think they won't do the same to you?" So Western politicians find themselves on an increasingly thin tightrope, hoping to maintain and/or educate the general populace (many of whom still think all Muslims are terrorists, which is like saying all Slashdotters are lab experiment subjects) while simultaneously hoping to avoid lawsuits from Islamic groups.
In cultures with significant Muslim populations or a history of Islamic government (like the former Ottoman empire), a concerted campaign to Islamize the government is easy if the government is a democracy or a republic-- just get them to vote in your prized bureaucrats, and your cause is a shoe-in when your pet party reaches a majority. It's amusing to hear US officials talking about preventing an Islamic state in Iraq, when it's just about guaranteed to happen. In Western nations, it isn't nearly as easy, because the secular, Jewish, and nominally Christian voters will naturally block any such attempt. So they go for the submarine approach: they go for "alternative education", i.e. targeting children. Because Western political mindsets are often geared for the short term, a gradual, long-term conversion of the nation's children will meet their goals. I suspect this is what the defendant in the Canadian court was saying all along, and some powerful Muslims pulled enough strings to get him "indicted".
So if it's morally reprehensible and unfair to try to Islamize a government, why do it? Radical Muslims (and even some conservatives) believe only they are in the right, and are prepared to kill and die for their cause. The current generation of Muslim leaders also believe only they know how to run a government, and will do everything short of risking people's lives to gain power. Both are also driven by the Koran's mandate to never relinquish lands conquered from the infidels, and both view much of the former Islamic empire as too secular and Westernized. Why doesn't the EU tell Turkey to come back when they're not controlled by Islamists? They want open trade with a country with a good economy; the EU is, after all, an economic alliance as well as a political one, and Turkey's economy ranks high among the nations near the Middle East. If enough people in the assembly believe that the overall good of including Turkey outweighs the potential human rights disaster, they'll look the other way-- kind of how the IOC looked the other way (and continues to do so) with regard to Beijing.
That might depend on how a court rules on the questions raised. I would hazard a guess that if a virus writer or spammer looks for damages due to mail fraud, the ISP has a reasonable defense, namely, they're protecting their customers from identity theft and fraud. If the ISP slaps on additional stuff that may obfuscate the message, however, that might be actionable.
And a lawyer, if he disagrees with his client, can stop taking further cases and providing counsel beyond his current case. I very much doubt the bar would have a problem with that.
Slashdot Mirror
1. Buy a spindle of blank CDs/DVDs. Chances are, the manufacturer put a zero-layer disc (AKA a plastic-only disc) to keep the data layer of the top disc from getting scratched. Some brands do, some don't.
2. Your choice. You can use the disc as fodder for target practice, use it as a coaster, impress your geek friends with the "zero-layer disc" bit for a few microseconds, or heck, try to build your own writable disc.
As other commenters have said, she's given way too much ammunition to the Republicans for her to be a viable VP. Not only this, the young voters that Obama attracted the most still remember the incredibly stupid things she said during the campaign that the mainstream media picked up days later when the evidence made the rounds on Youtube. Others have also mentioned that Bill would be difficult to keep under control, especially if you bring up the possibility of getting back to the White House (must be the interns).
No, Karl Rove and others would carpet-bomb the media advertising agencies. Obama's campaign would want her around like Ben Franklin's proverbial unwanted fish.
The biggest challenge for Obama now is to win over the Democrats who voted Clinton. I'm not talking about the nuts who showed up to protest the DNC Rules & Bylaws Committee meeting; for all we know, they voted for Perot, then Bush-- twice. I mean the voters who only voted Clinton because they recognized the name, or because they thought Bill was making another run. A start would be to show them that Obama's platform isn't very different from Clinton's. Obama has pulled off a few political jujitsu moves, let's see if he can tackle this challenge.
More to the point, let's not equate current Democrats with Harry Truman, who ultimately approved the nuclear strikes on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Let's also remember that although JFK had a role in exacerbating the mess in Vietnam and screwed up the Bay of Pigs, he also stood firm against the USSR and helped prevent a nuclear war between two superpowers.
What matters more than continuing to whine and moan about events in the past is asking whether the people today have learned from history. Those who continue to hold a grudge, I would wager, have learned little more than "the squeaky wheel gets the concessions".
I don't know if property and privacy are human rights (there are probably many who regard it as so), but the music cartel's plan to threaten anyone who trades files to pay them or risk losing everything in litigation is certainly a form of extortion. If organized crime (which they're becoming with every frivolous discovery filed) were to engage in this sort of campaign, the FBI would jump on them post haste.
Let's not forget that Media Sentry took a few lessons from the military intelligence unit under Rumsfeld that told us Iraq got uranium from Africa and generally is doing "just a cracker-jack job"...
It's especially true with the INS under DHS under the Bush administration. There is a hard-to-find clause in recent immigration law that grants the INS broad authority to kick a non-citizen out. If a green card candidate is disqualified for a questionable reason (e.g., the candidate was recently married to a citizen, but is now widowed) and fights them, the INS can invoke this trump card, even if a court orders them to let the candidate stay. There is no recourse, no appeal, and no oversight. Because of the rather obvious potential for blatant abuse, the INS so far only uses this when all other avenues are exhausted, and as such has gone unnoticed with the possible exception of public radio.
Ding ding ding! Give the man a cigar. Or better yet, a plasma cutter (always wanted one of those).
As a CEO, why pay the cost of hiring a local when you can instead import cheap labor, and give yourself a nice fat bonus/stock options package with the difference? And spread the wealth around, lest anyone dare to complain. Machiavelli would be proud.
As long as Excel and Word macros are ubiquitously used and locked tightly (not to mention the piles of features built into both apps), Google Docs will have a very hard time prying open Microsoft Office's dominance. Businesses are so dependent on them, in fact, that it would be much more feasible and secure for them to tunnel VNC/Remote Desktop sessions through SSH or VPN and run software off a central application server.
Of course, the client machine doesn't need to be Windows, so herein is a tremendous opportunity for Linux subnotebooks. Configure the client distro to use as much physical RAM as possible, and let your mobile users run everything inside VNC. No need to download files to the laptop, where you can have data leaks.
Other than a small screen, the fact that you'll still buy a pile of Windows Server and Office CALs, and possibly crummy 'net access, I can't see much to complain about this scenario. I'll leave it up to someone else to set me straight Car Talk style. Here, I'll start it for you: "You knucklehead..."
The MSFT shareholders, of course. If your company is mucking around the idea of buying a smaller company, and the release of your flagship product is panned in the press, you'd be getting your marketers to come up with some spin to keep your job.
If anything, this reminds me of someone sticking a Post-it saying "Everything is fine. Nothing is ruined." on a BSoD.
Maybe some moderators want the Slashdot readership to not sound rabidly anti-Microsoft? I'm starting to sense the need for a "Get the Facts on Microsoft products" response to Microsoft's Linux propaganda.
/. users is that they can't monkey with Vista the way they could with XP.
To be fair (IMO generous, but what the hey), his point was that most of the problems reported by
Of course, such a straw man ignores the "Is it saaafe?" experience of Vista driver compatibility (though to be honest, driver compatibility on other OS has some people begging, "pleeeease work!"), the "security by turnstile" that is UAC, the degraded performance due to the higher hardware requirements, and the high potential for bugs due to demand for legacy application support. This is not bashing, this is documented criticism that I will defer to a Google search for GP.
I think someone may have brought it up in court and got a ruling in his favor. The gist of the argument is, "How can I possibly agree to something I can't read unless I agree with the document (thus begging the question) to begin with?"
Essentially, it's an extortion of liberties, because they can put "we own your nuts and your firstborn" in the EULA and claim that it's enforceable because you used the software (yeah, that would get struck down as unconscionable, but imagine a similar but less threatening clause).
You're asserting that the buyer now has replication rights as well as distribution rights with his copy, which the seller never agreed to. This is one of many scenarios that the Copyright Act is designed to prevent; just because you sold a DVD you personally made to your friend, doesn't mean he can then turn around and make a boatload of copies to sell without your permission. Were the OP selling books rather than video, and the buyer rents the copy he purchased out to one person at a time, your point would stand on firmer ground. Easy duplication and distribution of information, i.e. the Internet, changes copyright law into a big can of worms.
And before those of you RMS types get up in arms over the above, I want to point out that the RIAA member companies could have been far more rational in handling its digital copyright conundrum, and preying on small publishers like this is the same type of asshattery that is the music cartel's racketeering by threat of litigation. Defend your rights if you must, but don't use an army of blind and drunk mûmakil to do it.
<Bender>Bite my shiny, metal ass!</Bender> (hits PgDn a few times)
I'm pretty sure the goal of an argument is to help the contrite learn, not to bash them over the head intellectually.
I seem to remember that someone commented how we somehow respect and admire sociopaths who learn to hide their true colors from the world (if someone can find the comment and link it, please do). The peons know their bosses are jerks, but no one listens to mere peons, the outside world can only see the boss making their company billions of dollars. Those who wrench productivity from their subordinates like the last drops of water from a sponge also are seen as the most capable leaders on balance sheets.
That, by the way, is how bullies and jerks become execs. When they say "Nice guys finish last," what they really mean is "You don't get into first place without smashing the feet of your foes."
What would really relieve whatever anger I have at this pathetic attempt at a cover-up is if the OSS community comes up with a superior rating software system and puts the credit agencies out of business. Sadly, to mangle yet another quote, "Rallying the OSS developers to a single cause is like herding all of New York's feral cats."
Buggy and mangled? Maybe, but they may be shooting for ODF plus Excel macros and the like. If they can crush OpenOffice acceptance before it gets off the ground with better features and the same format (on the surface), it'll render any OOXML repercussions moot. And to anyone crying antitrust foul, they'll say, "Hey, we made ODF better. Is it our fault they couldn't improve their own format?"
Probably won't survive the EU courts, but given their current behavior, that's probably what we can expect.
You forgot: They can still strong-arm OEMs through contracts, lawyers, and licenses. Oh, they botched Vista Capable, but the OEMs know they still can't get most corporate customers-- and hence the big bucks-- without Microsoft software. I detest that as much as the next /.er, especially because everywhere I turn there's a system that uses Windows when it doesn't have to.
They learned from their mistake of not getting involved enough in governments and government-like organizations, and shrewdly waited and delayed until a corporation-friendly government came into power to get the DOJ to cave.
Not only this, they learned that rather than bullying partner companies directly, using a lot of sweet deals will get them to do all the subversion of processes and requisite propaganda for them. Why else were there ardent OOXML apologists and administrative changing of ballots in ISO fast track, despite the clear inappropriateness of the venue, the fallacy of "competing formats", and the many unaddressed flaws?
They have learned that the world isn't like when the Mongols swept Asia, or when the English dominated the seas. In today's world, you don't dominate by conquest, you dominate by giving money, perks, and things away. Their primary strategy is to eliminate the voices of dissent, along with the competition, by paying their allies and neutral parties to say good things and bend the rules in their favor. They've turned from intimidation to manipulation to get what they want. The schoolyard bully, having never learned his lesson, is now a politician, and that makes him all the more dangerous.
What their allies don't realize is, once the governments are off their back and they unquestionably dominate everything they touch, they'll be even more of a bully than before.
(Yeah, I'm paranoid. The realist in me says that'll never happen, but their overall marketing strategy hinges on essentially creating a good reputation that some believe excuses their past behavior and current attempts to reinforce their dominion. Most people don't taste power like they had and accept that it was only temporary.)
It might be akin to preventing prescription drug interaction, only this time it's extensions possibly operating on the same module.
Perhaps the only thing keeping them from mounting a terrorist attack complete with human deaths is fear of the world's militaries coming after them. Though, after the way the US handled Afghanistan and Iraq, some of that fear may have decreased.
I suppose Japan and other nations (Norway, IIRC) would love to establish whale "pastures" much like we do cattle, sheep, and goats, if they had the know-how and the ability to rewrite international treaties...
As wrong as hunting whales has been in the past centuries, you're not going to change the governments' minds if you only attack them. "The ends justify the means" is exactly the tactic of all terrorists.
Not only that, but you'd have a nicely destructive missile if you get a bit too pissed off at the game...
And you thought the accidentally thrown Wiimote through the plasma TV was bad.
The greenest according to Greenpeace, of course, is the company that does everything they want, AND makes daily donations in excess of $100,000. No one in their right mind will do that, so Greenpeace, like greed itself, will never be satisfied.
Oh, sure, there's elements of truth in their nonprofit marketing, but the bottom line is, they are trolling for attention and money. The least they could do is publish factual information and not target the apparent market leader to maximize said attention and money.
The other reason why you're dependent on your car is, your area doesn't have the extensive rail network that Japan does. Most areas here, especially the Kanto region (the area around Tokyo bay), you can find a rail station less than 20 minutes' walk from your residence. Whereas in much of California, for example, being within an hour's walk from a railway station means you're incredibly lucky.
Then you have to figure in the distance from a railway station to your place of business...
How about viewing the Web the way the W3 consortium sees it? Y'know, the standards body that defined what various code in HTML and CSS should do so that browser developers don't have to code for rules some guy in a basement dreamed up?
When Microsoft defeated Netscape, they just about halted all new development on IE aside from the occasional security patch, because it wasn't cost-effective for them to pay developers to continue improving IE in order to follow W3's rules-- and as a result, most of the Web followed suit, because there was no viable competitor*. IE versions 4 through 6 were all notorious for using Microsoft's own positioning rules rather than W3's recommendations. Then Firefox arrived on the scene as a relatively more stable, secure, and standards-compliant alternative browser. Although it wasn't perfectly compliant, it was a great deal closer to the W3 spec than IE was.
Being closer to a standard meant that all of the websites written prior to Firefox's release now look "wrong" in Firefox. Many corporate and storefront websites look "off" because many developers still use IE's old positioning rules (or they haven't maintained the website aside from new products). So it really comes down to the Web according to W3-compliant browsers and the web according to old-school IE. Microsoft hopes to break away from IE6 by forcing standards compliance in IE7 and IE8, but I don't know if that will change years' worth of habit and de facto noncompliance, especially with Microsoft's commitment to legacy applications.
* For some reason, Opera got ignored the whole time by much of the Web. Perhaps Firefox's success is as much good marketing as it is good technology.
I think the main problem for democratic and representative governments is that a single prominent voice discrediting a campaign-- like, say, a lawsuit-- can destroy a political career. Politically savvy religious groups, including Muslim groups, know this, and they are prepared to sue the government and private citizens for discrimination and hate speech. Turning it around, they are equally prepared to instill fear even in non-Muslim groups by saying, "Look, they're infringing on our right to worship! What makes you think they won't do the same to you?" So Western politicians find themselves on an increasingly thin tightrope, hoping to maintain and/or educate the general populace (many of whom still think all Muslims are terrorists, which is like saying all Slashdotters are lab experiment subjects) while simultaneously hoping to avoid lawsuits from Islamic groups.
In cultures with significant Muslim populations or a history of Islamic government (like the former Ottoman empire), a concerted campaign to Islamize the government is easy if the government is a democracy or a republic-- just get them to vote in your prized bureaucrats, and your cause is a shoe-in when your pet party reaches a majority. It's amusing to hear US officials talking about preventing an Islamic state in Iraq, when it's just about guaranteed to happen. In Western nations, it isn't nearly as easy, because the secular, Jewish, and nominally Christian voters will naturally block any such attempt. So they go for the submarine approach: they go for "alternative education", i.e. targeting children. Because Western political mindsets are often geared for the short term, a gradual, long-term conversion of the nation's children will meet their goals. I suspect this is what the defendant in the Canadian court was saying all along, and some powerful Muslims pulled enough strings to get him "indicted".
So if it's morally reprehensible and unfair to try to Islamize a government, why do it? Radical Muslims (and even some conservatives) believe only they are in the right, and are prepared to kill and die for their cause. The current generation of Muslim leaders also believe only they know how to run a government, and will do everything short of risking people's lives to gain power. Both are also driven by the Koran's mandate to never relinquish lands conquered from the infidels, and both view much of the former Islamic empire as too secular and Westernized. Why doesn't the EU tell Turkey to come back when they're not controlled by Islamists? They want open trade with a country with a good economy; the EU is, after all, an economic alliance as well as a political one, and Turkey's economy ranks high among the nations near the Middle East. If enough people in the assembly believe that the overall good of including Turkey outweighs the potential human rights disaster, they'll look the other way-- kind of how the IOC looked the other way (and continues to do so) with regard to Beijing.
That might depend on how a court rules on the questions raised. I would hazard a guess that if a virus writer or spammer looks for damages due to mail fraud, the ISP has a reasonable defense, namely, they're protecting their customers from identity theft and fraud. If the ISP slaps on additional stuff that may obfuscate the message, however, that might be actionable.
And a lawyer, if he disagrees with his client, can stop taking further cases and providing counsel beyond his current case. I very much doubt the bar would have a problem with that.