The thing is, most people rationalise censorship even when they encounter it, either because they don't care terribly much and just want to live their lives or because they're just too powerless to do anything about it anyway. Of course we knew all our movies got censored/cut (I remember that even as a child), of course many vaguely realised the TV news was a government mouthpiece, but it doesn't do/help much to the man on the street to be aware of that. And it's so easy to rationalise or believe the official line --- in our case, the government was for example protecting us against "terrorists" and the 'swart gevaar' ('black danger') and all that, which probably seemed believably enough to many, and in any case, most people are just trying to earn a living and don't exactly have time to go double-check every news story. And day in day out it's the same sort of thing, so 'why bother'.
I think you give people more credit than they're due. It's true that some information always filters in, but so little that it's effectively negligible. Most people couldn't give a crap about learning anything about the world they live in, they want to live in bubbles of ignorance. My ex is Chinese and has family in China and who've moved in and out of China etc., and from everything I heard over the years, it's clear the masses are mostly highly 'brainwashed' into being pro-Chinese-government, very jingoistic and nationalist etc., which makes those so-called "truths" that might "filter" in look to be the 'lies'.
I still live in SA, by the way, always have, and am in my thirties now, and I guarantee you, the vast majority of whites (of any age) were always and remain not only oblivious and clueless, but *deliberately* so, they don't even want to hear the truth. People just don't give a toss, really. They care about banal entertainment, they care about booze, they care about having fun, they don't want to be bothered with that irritatingly gloomy thing called "reality". I believe this is a global, universal trait. Put some happy crap on the news and TV and people are more than glad to suck it up, as long as you don't mess with their partying and fun and rain on their parade with reality. Only the Boers have something of a clue, and only some of them. But try mention names like, say, Mxenge, or Vlakplaas, or whatever, people will get a glazed semi-irritated look and say 'WTF', grab a beer and go watch the rugby.
Even when people 'realise' things are being censored, most don't care to even want to find out more. As long as the sun keeps coming up each morning, and their house and local pub/bar are still there, and they get their paycheck at the end of the month, that's all they need/want to know.
Maybe I've just misplaced my rose-coloured glasses for the moment, but honestly, nobody actually cares about 'the truth'. And our Western notions of liberty are so abstract and foreign to other cultures that it's a non-starter.
Globalisation and technology will have negligible effect on ideals of freedom in China, I am convinced of that. True we didn't have Internet in those bad old apartheid days. But in spite of the appearance of it being difficult to control information, technology actually allows information to be controlled HIGHLY effectively, especially when people don't care (SA has very few global Internet connection points; replicating the 'great firewall' would be a breeze). The Chinese government don't care if a few ideas get in 'here and there', it'll make no difference to the masses. China will remain a repressive nationalist proud state for a very long time, and its booming economy will only reinforce its own notions of self-greatness. Once China becomes powerful and independent enough, it will become imperialist and attempt to expand and assert its rightful superior standing globally, as the West once did not long ago. They're just waiting for the day. We can only hope there remains a global 'balance of power' to keep them in check.
China is prospering economically; the massive boom and increasing prosperity is hardly going to make them say "our government is doing something wrong". QUITE the opposite.
Provoking people to do *more* of this stuff purposely perpetuates the cycle of polarisation and divisiveness; they get to vilify the West even more, thereby destabilising society further and dragging it towards a state of war --- the final conflict to eliminate their enemies (victory assured by their God) will then be underway. You don't achieve that by *not* complaining; in fact if destabilisation is your goal, then of course this is just one of the strategic tools in your toolbox, and by being the driver of it you get to frame the rhetoric.
Correct --- appeasement = submission; calls for "appeasement" = attempted domination. An expression of so-called "offense" is really an expression of a desire to subjugate, using manipulation as one of the tools available to do so.
You've obviously never lived under a fascist government if you think the Chinese would 'wonder why and would know not to trust the results'... how naive, sorry. I've lived through apartheid South Africa where basically ALL media was very heavily controlled and limited by the government, for decades all we saw was some limited government propaganda, and guess what, not only do people (even educated people) almost universally believe it (because it's all they see), they're *happier* that way, *blissfully* unaware of all the actual problems simmering beneath the surface and the people getting "disappeared" and so on. Even today ask any white South African how much they know about apartheid, they are still mostly clueless --- all we knew was fun in the sun and braais (barbecues) and what happy innocent times those 'were'. Go to any such country (e.g. Cuba) and you'll find the same.
I'm not disagreeing that you had to edit your resolv.conf file, I believe you, what I'm objecting to is your implicit suggestion that this is normal or common in any way if using Mac or Linux. It almost sounds like you're saying all users of Mac/Linux have to do this.
He's only 18 --- if you're that young, and "look" like a local, you have a VERY good chance of integrating very well into a society within 5 - 10 years. It'll never be 100%, but it can be pretty close.
It doesn't get easier as you get older. Everything about you slowly gets more 'set in stone' - your accents, your mannerisms, even your circle of friends. If you want to leave, the best time to do it is when you're young. I'm now in my early 30s and possibly interested in leaving my country of birth - I realise I would've been much better off doing it ten years ago.
He'll also likely know within five years if he's made a mistake or not, allowing him to move back again still at a very young age. At worst it'll have been an adventure and a life experience second to very few things.
Judging by the description, he probably isn't likely to fit 100% into American society either, I'm guessing, so what's to lose?
If I walk into a brick and mortar store do they have the right to investigate my background and decide to tell me that they do not want to sell their goods to me because I did something they do not like in my past?
It's their private store, so basically yes, they can refuse to sell to you.
No, it does not happen.
It's uncommon only because it makes no business sense and most businesses have competition, not because they "can't". Nobody can force you to sell something to them. The only exceptions (which themselves are highly questionable if you ask me) are the anti-discrimination laws.
WTF are you talking about? I have various Mac and Linux (and Windows) machines and I've never had to edit resolv.conf on any of them, they all access the Internet just fine. God, last time I had to edit a resolv.conf file must've been in the '90s... brings back memories.
What if the physically strongest M&Ms also tend to be the worst tasting? You may end up breeding a race of really tough but poor-tasting candy. Wouldn't it make more sense to select for taste rather?
It might be, but it's also just a fact that companies can't generate revenues without a product if the people creating the product are striking, and without revenues you really actually genuinely truly in fact can't pay people. The options for a business to keep pay people are pretty much to either sink cash (if they're lucky enough to have) or take out a loan. Such is the nature of striking.
True, but that's just one aspect of DRM, and that's just "for now". The longer-term and more general ideals surrounding DRM are potentially more sinister (or at least were, until users revolted widely at the ideas, but it wasn't for lack of trying by the industry).
Only one of the above are in the (potentially highly abuse-able) position of being able to push this onto the desktops of over 90% of all computers in the whole world, in the realm of mainstream computing - every document, every file, nearly every computer.
Each of those you've mentioned with HDCP support are in HIGHLY different situations with incredibly different potential ramifications, it is thus perfectly valid to get pissed selectively.
Seriously, wtf is Sony gonna do, at *worst* - cut you off from some games or movies? Now think about the worst-case of a company whose technology controls 90% of computers.
There is nothing subjective about it at all - the technical facets of the architecture of different systems are facts held in stone, and can, broadly speaking, scientifically and reliably even be tested by various measures. You can reliably test speed of fundamental OS X system calls (e.g. slower than the corresponding Linux calls, as I recall one benchmark showed a while back), for example, or reliably see how Windows Memory Management behaves under certain conditions (point of fact, horrible under any normal circumstances). There is nothing mystical or non-deterministic in a computer's architecture, even though computers may seem unpredictable, they are highly predictable. I have 2GB RAM but Vista hardly touches the second GB, anything above the first and it starts dumping stuff to swap, this isn't a religious or subjective point, it's a fact, and it slows things down unnecessarily - that can be measured. Maybe a low-end user isn't affected by it and so doesn't realise anything is wrong and says "but it works great on my system" - whatever, it's still wrong.
Now computers are complex and have many facets, so the balance, or overall opinion, is the sum of all the various facets against how they affect the desired tasks required of a particular user.
The only time it ever truly becomes "subjective" though is when the user is uninformed and/or doesn't really know or understand what is going on, which just happens to be 95%+ of cases when it comes to computers. But then it still doesn't become "religious" --- that's just "ignorance". If one knows nothing about computers but decides "ah well Windows seems good enough" or "Linux rocks hardcore!!111!" or whatever, I wouldn't call that religion or even subjectivity, it's just forming an opinion based on ignorance. Not knowing any better.
An analogy would be if, say, I decided I thought Porsches were better than Ferraris, just because I felt like it. I know nothing about cars, but it might well be that Ferraris are far better engineered, and engineers would be able to tell you as a matter of fact, yes, this is stronger there, that horsepower is greater there, that material is more robust, blah blah --- I don't really know anything about that stuff. That wouldn't make my preference "subjective" or "religious" - just wrong.
At least, all this holds for grounds of technical merit --- aesthetic appeal is another matter altogether, and there I'll admit, subjectivity to a degree yes, religion, definitely no. One person might like the look of OS X, another some arb X Window Manager like Enlightenment. If a person says Windows looks the best however but has never really tried the others, well, that's just ignorance, like saying my favourite ice-cream flavour is chocolate when I've never tried any other flavour.
I guess some of this boils down to, there is a difference between saying "A is better than B" and "I like A more than B". If I like Porsches because I think they look better, that's fine, that is a "subjective" matter. But I can't claim "Porsche accelerates faster" or something if it just isn't true, the objective universe out there would be able to prove me wrong... and it wouldn't make me religious, just ignorant, unless perhaps I refused to be proved wrong under any circumstances whatsoever (and that is something I've actually never really seen in computing in all my years).
There nonetheless still remains a big gap between "subjective", and "religious". I guess I dislike that term because it's commonly used around here to push a world-view that purports that all operating systems should ultimately be treated equally, like we try do with cultures/religions, and to thus push the idea that any preference is in itself ideological or zealous, which is utter crap, because all OSs are not created equal.
So you are suggesting that people are "starving on the streets" just because Microsoft's customers aren't giving them enough free food and housing (via Washington State)?
If ever there was an appropriate time for the label 'rabid pinko', this would be it. Honestly, nobody is preventing those "starving" people from working.
Just remember this whenever you parrot anti-corporatism-cult memes, every benefit that a company has, is a benefit every person has, since anybody can start their own company. When you complain about rights companies have, you are complaining about your OWN rights.
Nice 'appeal to authority' fallacy there, but could you please provide evidence of where it's been proven in history? Companies of one sort of another have existed and operated throughout history under almost every imaginable system so far; people are apt to solve problems that need solving.
Despite occasional ad hominem suggestions to that effect in forums (usually just to discredit anyone with a preference at all), I haven't seen any evidence that OS issues have become "religious" AT ALL, could you back that up with some evidence? There are sure a lot of ignorance-based preferences, but not knowing better is completely different to a religious approach.
I start to think that Microsoft effectively 'loses' whether they buy Yahoo or Google buys Yahoo. One of the things that has made MS an attractive 'safe bet' investment is its big-ass cash supply, which they are now rapidly eating into, and buying Yahoo would no doubt take another huge chunk of it, leaving them with a new big asset with its own associated operating costs, and it would be questionable in my view whether or not MS is capable of truly getting real value out of that, as they first thing they'll do is try leverage lock-ins and tie-ins and whatnot instead of streamlining and improving. If Google were to buy Yahoo, you'd end up with a larger organisation even more dominant in search and mail and online advertising (and Flickr thrown in, as Yahoo owns that).
Personally I think MS should just stay out of the online advertising market and stick with what they've succeeded at historically, OS and Office software - it's like that famous quote 'the only winning move is not to play'.
I don't know about 'deserving' a monopoly per se, I read it more as, they 'won their monopoly fair and square', i.e. best mousetrap and all that, and hence 'deserved' it as in 'earned' it, not the 'have a right to it' sense.
I honestly don't know enough about Yahoo to comment too deeply on what an MS/Yahoo deal would really mean - Yahoo is almost a non-entity to me personally, but seemingly they still have a pretty big e-mail userbase and the second-most popular search engine in the US, so I guess that if MS is mainly interested in online advertising, they would effectively be buying a lot of the 'eyeballs' (sorry to use that 90s dot-bomb cliche) portion of the market, plus the existing online advertising business of Yahoo. The real question is if this is a market that can simply be won primarily through strategic dominance (e.g. network effects, tie-ins etc.) or if online advertising is all about the 'best mousetrap' (best deals for advertisers, best eyeball-attracting products etc.). It will never even occur to MS in a million years to ever try build the best anything, so they will try win this over with size/strategy/lock-ins etc. If they succeed, and crush Google, then Google has a point and the market never was about best mousetrap - but if that's true, ironically, Microsoft ALSO have a point, because it would mean Google really can use their current dominance to help keep entrants out. If it's really about best mousetrap after all, then actually any complaining by either MS or Google is just sour grapes. It's difficult for me to say, but I'm leaning towards 'better mousetrap'; from what I can tell, AdSense has been compelling to affiliates not because "all the advertisers use it" but because they were offering higher rewards than anyone else at the time, by far. Advertisers though don't care how much affiliates get, they care how much they pay, how many 'eyeballs' they get and how well-targeted their ads will be, etc.... now MS has had Hotmail for longer than Google's existed, IIRC, so they have ABSOLUTELY NO excuse for it not being far more popular than GMail and hence building on that not only a more attractive platform for advertisers but smarter keyword-based targeting. MS have also had search engines longer than Google has existed (I think? MSN?), so again, no excuse for not being better or having gotten into that market. It really sounds like sour grapes to me.
Not necessarily a precursor to an attack or invastion, it could just be a 'warning' or other assertive display of having the upper hand, a kind of 'reminder', if you will, to 'keep in line' (this is common in military). Kind of a 'nice network you have there...' sort of thing.
It does seem like far too much of a coincidence to me to all be accidents. But if it were really a serious invastion precursor though, I imagine that far more damage would've been done by now, and they would've been closer together - I mean, at this rate, they'll mostly be fixed by the time any attack starts, and will have given a bit of extra time to sharpen the 'enemy's' defences. It looks more like a 'warning', but if it were, it's a pretty damn serious one that could be classed as an aggressive act of war if found out, so that seems unlikely, at least not from a country like the US, plus, looking at the timing, there would've been troop and equipment build-up in the region that would be obvious by now. Doesn't fit.
No, I think the most likely, apart from coincidence, is some kind of terrorism activity.
Slashdot Mirror
100 computers in his mom's basement? That's a big basement.
So what is your opinion on the images then? It makes me wonder why you felt a need to "reserve" it.
The thing is, most people rationalise censorship even when they encounter it, either because they don't care terribly much and just want to live their lives or because they're just too powerless to do anything about it anyway. Of course we knew all our movies got censored/cut (I remember that even as a child), of course many vaguely realised the TV news was a government mouthpiece, but it doesn't do/help much to the man on the street to be aware of that. And it's so easy to rationalise or believe the official line --- in our case, the government was for example protecting us against "terrorists" and the 'swart gevaar' ('black danger') and all that, which probably seemed believably enough to many, and in any case, most people are just trying to earn a living and don't exactly have time to go double-check every news story. And day in day out it's the same sort of thing, so 'why bother'.
I think you give people more credit than they're due. It's true that some information always filters in, but so little that it's effectively negligible. Most people couldn't give a crap about learning anything about the world they live in, they want to live in bubbles of ignorance. My ex is Chinese and has family in China and who've moved in and out of China etc., and from everything I heard over the years, it's clear the masses are mostly highly 'brainwashed' into being pro-Chinese-government, very jingoistic and nationalist etc., which makes those so-called "truths" that might "filter" in look to be the 'lies'.
I still live in SA, by the way, always have, and am in my thirties now, and I guarantee you, the vast majority of whites (of any age) were always and remain not only oblivious and clueless, but *deliberately* so, they don't even want to hear the truth. People just don't give a toss, really. They care about banal entertainment, they care about booze, they care about having fun, they don't want to be bothered with that irritatingly gloomy thing called "reality". I believe this is a global, universal trait. Put some happy crap on the news and TV and people are more than glad to suck it up, as long as you don't mess with their partying and fun and rain on their parade with reality. Only the Boers have something of a clue, and only some of them. But try mention names like, say, Mxenge, or Vlakplaas, or whatever, people will get a glazed semi-irritated look and say 'WTF', grab a beer and go watch the rugby.
Even when people 'realise' things are being censored, most don't care to even want to find out more. As long as the sun keeps coming up each morning, and their house and local pub/bar are still there, and they get their paycheck at the end of the month, that's all they need/want to know.
Maybe I've just misplaced my rose-coloured glasses for the moment, but honestly, nobody actually cares about 'the truth'. And our Western notions of liberty are so abstract and foreign to other cultures that it's a non-starter.
Globalisation and technology will have negligible effect on ideals of freedom in China, I am convinced of that. True we didn't have Internet in those bad old apartheid days. But in spite of the appearance of it being difficult to control information, technology actually allows information to be controlled HIGHLY effectively, especially when people don't care (SA has very few global Internet connection points; replicating the 'great firewall' would be a breeze). The Chinese government don't care if a few ideas get in 'here and there', it'll make no difference to the masses. China will remain a repressive nationalist proud state for a very long time, and its booming economy will only reinforce its own notions of self-greatness. Once China becomes powerful and independent enough, it will become imperialist and attempt to expand and assert its rightful superior standing globally, as the West once did not long ago. They're just waiting for the day. We can only hope there remains a global 'balance of power' to keep them in check.
China is prospering economically; the massive boom and increasing prosperity is hardly going to make them say "our government is doing something wrong". QUITE the opposite.
Provoking people to do *more* of this stuff purposely perpetuates the cycle of polarisation and divisiveness; they get to vilify the West even more, thereby destabilising society further and dragging it towards a state of war --- the final conflict to eliminate their enemies (victory assured by their God) will then be underway. You don't achieve that by *not* complaining; in fact if destabilisation is your goal, then of course this is just one of the strategic tools in your toolbox, and by being the driver of it you get to frame the rhetoric.
Correct --- appeasement = submission; calls for "appeasement" = attempted domination. An expression of so-called "offense" is really an expression of a desire to subjugate, using manipulation as one of the tools available to do so.
I'm surprised nobody has mentioned, that would be a perfect use for the 'evil bit'! :)
You've obviously never lived under a fascist government if you think the Chinese would 'wonder why and would know not to trust the results' ... how naive, sorry. I've lived through apartheid South Africa where basically ALL media was very heavily controlled and limited by the government, for decades all we saw was some limited government propaganda, and guess what, not only do people (even educated people) almost universally believe it (because it's all they see), they're *happier* that way, *blissfully* unaware of all the actual problems simmering beneath the surface and the people getting "disappeared" and so on. Even today ask any white South African how much they know about apartheid, they are still mostly clueless --- all we knew was fun in the sun and braais (barbecues) and what happy innocent times those 'were'. Go to any such country (e.g. Cuba) and you'll find the same.
I'm not disagreeing that you had to edit your resolv.conf file, I believe you, what I'm objecting to is your implicit suggestion that this is normal or common in any way if using Mac or Linux. It almost sounds like you're saying all users of Mac/Linux have to do this.
He's only 18 --- if you're that young, and "look" like a local, you have a VERY good chance of integrating very well into a society within 5 - 10 years. It'll never be 100%, but it can be pretty close.
It doesn't get easier as you get older. Everything about you slowly gets more 'set in stone' - your accents, your mannerisms, even your circle of friends. If you want to leave, the best time to do it is when you're young. I'm now in my early 30s and possibly interested in leaving my country of birth - I realise I would've been much better off doing it ten years ago.
He'll also likely know within five years if he's made a mistake or not, allowing him to move back again still at a very young age. At worst it'll have been an adventure and a life experience second to very few things.
Judging by the description, he probably isn't likely to fit 100% into American society either, I'm guessing, so what's to lose?
If I walk into a brick and mortar store do they have the right to investigate my background and decide to tell me that they do not want to sell their goods to me because I did something they do not like in my past?
It's their private store, so basically yes, they can refuse to sell to you.
No, it does not happen.
It's uncommon only because it makes no business sense and most businesses have competition, not because they "can't". Nobody can force you to sell something to them. The only exceptions (which themselves are highly questionable if you ask me) are the anti-discrimination laws.
WTF are you talking about? I have various Mac and Linux (and Windows) machines and I've never had to edit resolv.conf on any of them, they all access the Internet just fine. God, last time I had to edit a resolv.conf file must've been in the '90s ... brings back memories.
What if the physically strongest M&Ms also tend to be the worst tasting? You may end up breeding a race of really tough but poor-tasting candy. Wouldn't it make more sense to select for taste rather?
It might be, but it's also just a fact that companies can't generate revenues without a product if the people creating the product are striking, and without revenues you really actually genuinely truly in fact can't pay people. The options for a business to keep pay people are pretty much to either sink cash (if they're lucky enough to have) or take out a loan. Such is the nature of striking.
Guess I'm a bit slow :)
True, but that's just one aspect of DRM, and that's just "for now". The longer-term and more general ideals surrounding DRM are potentially more sinister (or at least were, until users revolted widely at the ideas, but it wasn't for lack of trying by the industry).
Or are you talking about "religion" as in the view from within Microsoft?
Only one of the above are in the (potentially highly abuse-able) position of being able to push this onto the desktops of over 90% of all computers in the whole world, in the realm of mainstream computing - every document, every file, nearly every computer.
Each of those you've mentioned with HDCP support are in HIGHLY different situations with incredibly different potential ramifications, it is thus perfectly valid to get pissed selectively.
Seriously, wtf is Sony gonna do, at *worst* - cut you off from some games or movies? Now think about the worst-case of a company whose technology controls 90% of computers.
There is nothing subjective about it at all - the technical facets of the architecture of different systems are facts held in stone, and can, broadly speaking, scientifically and reliably even be tested by various measures. You can reliably test speed of fundamental OS X system calls (e.g. slower than the corresponding Linux calls, as I recall one benchmark showed a while back), for example, or reliably see how Windows Memory Management behaves under certain conditions (point of fact, horrible under any normal circumstances). There is nothing mystical or non-deterministic in a computer's architecture, even though computers may seem unpredictable, they are highly predictable. I have 2GB RAM but Vista hardly touches the second GB, anything above the first and it starts dumping stuff to swap, this isn't a religious or subjective point, it's a fact, and it slows things down unnecessarily - that can be measured. Maybe a low-end user isn't affected by it and so doesn't realise anything is wrong and says "but it works great on my system" - whatever, it's still wrong.
... and it wouldn't make me religious, just ignorant, unless perhaps I refused to be proved wrong under any circumstances whatsoever (and that is something I've actually never really seen in computing in all my years).
Now computers are complex and have many facets, so the balance, or overall opinion, is the sum of all the various facets against how they affect the desired tasks required of a particular user.
The only time it ever truly becomes "subjective" though is when the user is uninformed and/or doesn't really know or understand what is going on, which just happens to be 95%+ of cases when it comes to computers. But then it still doesn't become "religious" --- that's just "ignorance". If one knows nothing about computers but decides "ah well Windows seems good enough" or "Linux rocks hardcore!!111!" or whatever, I wouldn't call that religion or even subjectivity, it's just forming an opinion based on ignorance. Not knowing any better.
An analogy would be if, say, I decided I thought Porsches were better than Ferraris, just because I felt like it. I know nothing about cars, but it might well be that Ferraris are far better engineered, and engineers would be able to tell you as a matter of fact, yes, this is stronger there, that horsepower is greater there, that material is more robust, blah blah --- I don't really know anything about that stuff. That wouldn't make my preference "subjective" or "religious" - just wrong.
At least, all this holds for grounds of technical merit --- aesthetic appeal is another matter altogether, and there I'll admit, subjectivity to a degree yes, religion, definitely no. One person might like the look of OS X, another some arb X Window Manager like Enlightenment. If a person says Windows looks the best however but has never really tried the others, well, that's just ignorance, like saying my favourite ice-cream flavour is chocolate when I've never tried any other flavour.
I guess some of this boils down to, there is a difference between saying "A is better than B" and "I like A more than B". If I like Porsches because I think they look better, that's fine, that is a "subjective" matter. But I can't claim "Porsche accelerates faster" or something if it just isn't true, the objective universe out there would be able to prove me wrong
There nonetheless still remains a big gap between "subjective", and "religious". I guess I dislike that term because it's commonly used around here to push a world-view that purports that all operating systems should ultimately be treated equally, like we try do with cultures/religions, and to thus push the idea that any preference is in itself ideological or zealous, which is utter crap, because all OSs are not created equal.
So you are suggesting that people are "starving on the streets" just because Microsoft's customers aren't giving them enough free food and housing (via Washington State)?
If ever there was an appropriate time for the label 'rabid pinko', this would be it. Honestly, nobody is preventing those "starving" people from working.
Just remember this whenever you parrot anti-corporatism-cult memes, every benefit that a company has, is a benefit every person has, since anybody can start their own company. When you complain about rights companies have, you are complaining about your OWN rights.
Nice 'appeal to authority' fallacy there, but could you please provide evidence of where it's been proven in history? Companies of one sort of another have existed and operated throughout history under almost every imaginable system so far; people are apt to solve problems that need solving.
Despite occasional ad hominem suggestions to that effect in forums (usually just to discredit anyone with a preference at all), I haven't seen any evidence that OS issues have become "religious" AT ALL, could you back that up with some evidence? There are sure a lot of ignorance-based preferences, but not knowing better is completely different to a religious approach.
I start to think that Microsoft effectively 'loses' whether they buy Yahoo or Google buys Yahoo. One of the things that has made MS an attractive 'safe bet' investment is its big-ass cash supply, which they are now rapidly eating into, and buying Yahoo would no doubt take another huge chunk of it, leaving them with a new big asset with its own associated operating costs, and it would be questionable in my view whether or not MS is capable of truly getting real value out of that, as they first thing they'll do is try leverage lock-ins and tie-ins and whatnot instead of streamlining and improving. If Google were to buy Yahoo, you'd end up with a larger organisation even more dominant in search and mail and online advertising (and Flickr thrown in, as Yahoo owns that).
Personally I think MS should just stay out of the online advertising market and stick with what they've succeeded at historically, OS and Office software - it's like that famous quote 'the only winning move is not to play'.
I don't know about 'deserving' a monopoly per se, I read it more as, they 'won their monopoly fair and square', i.e. best mousetrap and all that, and hence 'deserved' it as in 'earned' it, not the 'have a right to it' sense.
... now MS has had Hotmail for longer than Google's existed, IIRC, so they have ABSOLUTELY NO excuse for it not being far more popular than GMail and hence building on that not only a more attractive platform for advertisers but smarter keyword-based targeting. MS have also had search engines longer than Google has existed (I think? MSN?), so again, no excuse for not being better or having gotten into that market. It really sounds like sour grapes to me.
I honestly don't know enough about Yahoo to comment too deeply on what an MS/Yahoo deal would really mean - Yahoo is almost a non-entity to me personally, but seemingly they still have a pretty big e-mail userbase and the second-most popular search engine in the US, so I guess that if MS is mainly interested in online advertising, they would effectively be buying a lot of the 'eyeballs' (sorry to use that 90s dot-bomb cliche) portion of the market, plus the existing online advertising business of Yahoo. The real question is if this is a market that can simply be won primarily through strategic dominance (e.g. network effects, tie-ins etc.) or if online advertising is all about the 'best mousetrap' (best deals for advertisers, best eyeball-attracting products etc.). It will never even occur to MS in a million years to ever try build the best anything, so they will try win this over with size/strategy/lock-ins etc. If they succeed, and crush Google, then Google has a point and the market never was about best mousetrap - but if that's true, ironically, Microsoft ALSO have a point, because it would mean Google really can use their current dominance to help keep entrants out. If it's really about best mousetrap after all, then actually any complaining by either MS or Google is just sour grapes. It's difficult for me to say, but I'm leaning towards 'better mousetrap'; from what I can tell, AdSense has been compelling to affiliates not because "all the advertisers use it" but because they were offering higher rewards than anyone else at the time, by far. Advertisers though don't care how much affiliates get, they care how much they pay, how many 'eyeballs' they get and how well-targeted their ads will be, etc.
Not necessarily a precursor to an attack or invastion, it could just be a 'warning' or other assertive display of having the upper hand, a kind of 'reminder', if you will, to 'keep in line' (this is common in military). Kind of a 'nice network you have there ...' sort of thing.
It does seem like far too much of a coincidence to me to all be accidents. But if it were really a serious invastion precursor though, I imagine that far more damage would've been done by now, and they would've been closer together - I mean, at this rate, they'll mostly be fixed by the time any attack starts, and will have given a bit of extra time to sharpen the 'enemy's' defences. It looks more like a 'warning', but if it were, it's a pretty damn serious one that could be classed as an aggressive act of war if found out, so that seems unlikely, at least not from a country like the US, plus, looking at the timing, there would've been troop and equipment build-up in the region that would be obvious by now. Doesn't fit.
No, I think the most likely, apart from coincidence, is some kind of terrorism activity.