we have countless examples of restrictions made in the name of national security actually being used against the country's own citizens. East Germany, Russia, China, most of the old communist countries and so on.
AND UK/USA. It is illegal under both our laws for the security services to spy on civilians. So we spy on yours, you spy on ours, data exchanged, all nice and legal.
And what's with this "how long until it is used on American soil?" attitude? Are you the only people on the world who are allowed to have privacy or something? Do you see a breach of someones civil liberties in some random country as "OK", provided Americans aren't affected? What's with that attitude?
Well, it should be free in all directions. You are sending around messages that weigh in at a little more than 160 bytes. Yes, BYTES, not kb, not Mb. It's barefaced cheek charging for these, but the telcos have to otherwise everyone would use SMS and stop making voice calls.
There is another solution that could be used temporarily with the present clients, until full anonymity is possible.
Simply obtain a list of the IP address used by the RIAA/MPAA and set your firewall to drop any incomming requests. I'm sure there are lists of these IP addresses out there, I've seen the odd post on Usenet before.
Downside would be that they would be able to get anonymous IPs themselves, by getting residential lines not directly traceable to them. It would completely blow their operating costs out of the water though!!
But there is nothing in the registry you want. It's just application settings. Unless you reinstall everything the exact same, same versions, patches etc, you're in for a rough ride and a lot of trouble. The registry is the equivalent of/etc. You couldn't copy/etc fom debian to redhat and expect it to work. In fact, I'm 100% certain that it wouldn't.
But that is the point, in windows you don't know where the #@%^^%* data is stored.
As an experienced user, I do. It's really pretty easy. I reimage machines all the time, and taking the stuff I want to keep is a breeze. For true flexibility, do it the Unix way. Create a D partition and put your "Documents and Settings" on there. It can be done, but it's a bit of a kludge really.
I challenge you to setup a typical windows machine on a network enviroment where the users won't know in advance which machine they will use on any given day.
It can be done, but as you are saying it is pretty tough. However windows was never designed that way. Linux is based on Unix which is inherently a multi-user platform. It started off with dumb terminals and mainframes. It is designed to work in exactly this environment, and as such all of the user software (mail clients etc) utilises it. Windows doesn't have this history, and many apps even have problems with the XP/2000 multiuser implementation.
However, even setting this Unix environment up isn't a piece of cake. Every client must be identical in terms of software paths etc. Great for universities and companies with large banks of similar machines, but a logistical nightmare away from that. I've been working in enviornments like this for years and it's a great advantage. To do the same on Windows requires one of the Server variants, a very expensive undertaking. Not worth it half the time.
writes something, saves it, and then can't find it again.
Half the problem is that you are basically root in Windows. If users set themselves down do a more restrictive user type, then this wouldn't happen, because you can't write to these strange places. "Runas" isn't all that useable or obvious, and the lack of sudo and su type things basically are the downsides of this approach, making it just not worth it.
Which is much better than just dropping the cost on the taxpayer and calling it "free", but the point is, the money has to come from somewhere.
In the West, the goverments would auction off the specrum itself to maximise profits, at which point commercial companies would own the network and charge us an arm and a leg to use it, with ever changing AUP polices. At least someone somewhere in the world has got it right. Do they have a tech industry that's hiring?..;-)
Yeah, apt's a great system, but it'll only take you from debian to debian. One of the points of Lindows is that it's heavilly optimised for ease of use. Chances are that although it's based on debian, many things will be in different places. That would be a messy upgrade, you'd be best to dump personal data, wipe and then install the new OS instead.
Way off the mark, you're not even talking about the same thing. Firstly, Linux partitioning is far from simple. I've been working with Unix/Linux for years and partitioning is still the most vexing part of any installation on any distribution.
We are talking here about migrating new users to Lindows (or other distribution) WITHOUT the person having to know what the difference between/dev/hda,/dev/hda1 and/dev/hda2
In any OS it's easy to migrate personal data, if you know what you are doing and where the data is stored. There's nowt special about Linux there.
until windows developers pull their heads out of their asses
Copy "C:\Documents and Settings\username". Problem solved, you don't want anything else really. Unfortunatly, you don't want to overwrite every homedir file/directory on the new system (just key ones), but that's life. On the other hand, you can't just copy a Linux home from one machine to another. It ain't as simple as that. Unless you write very well formed & crafted environment files, and create separate temp areas for app data, you are going to run into trouble. You are safer creating "Documents", "Favourites", "Scripts" etc folders that are shared, rather than doing the whole homedir, giving each distro it's own home root.
Buying the Distro is one thing, however upgrading to it is another.
If "your momma" (sorry!) wanted to keep all her favourites, e-mail address and documents, there is no way that she'd be able to migrate between the two systems. It's relatively easy if you know how, but until Lindows can do this, they are only really viable as an OS for a new PC.
The next step for Lindows would be a disk that you put in a Windows PC that does some trickery to store your set up somewhere, install Lindows, then restore it.
Oh oh. I might be what you consider to be a "zealot". An ironic acusation, given the clear anti-MS slant present in any MS discussion here.
This is the best phone I have ever owned, or seen. It offers functionality that is about a year ahead of the competition (at it's release). However, it is very complicated. You need to know a hell of a lot about tech to get the most out of it. Hooked up to a PC in the hands of someone who knows what they are doing, this phone is spectacular. Seriously. It's a geeks dream phone. I've got NES/Gameboy/Atari 2600 emulators. VNC, SSH is on the way. MSN Messenger and other IMs on the way. DivX/mpeg/wmv playback. Appointments/Tasks/Contacts and mail syncs seamlessly with Outlook. You can remote-display it and control it from your PC.
However, in the hands of a non-techie, without a PC, it offers them very little that you can't get with other phones. It depends what you are looking for. I want a phone that I can tweak everything, including the OS front end. I want a phone that I can download lots of free software for, classic games etc that you have to pay for with other phones. I want a phone you can make your own wav ring tones, in cool edit etc.
Here is my response to the critisms you listed:
Battery life is barely sufficient to last a day
Before SP1, the phone would light the display on any key press, even with the keypad lock. This is fixed and battery life is improved with other various fixes. I get 2-3 days per charge. It runs a full colour TFT screen. They are battery hogs, as any laptop owner can tell you. Using the phone to play movies or surf the internet is the same as talking on a normal phone. You can't expect 2 days of continous use from any portable device.
Most other phones have bugs as well (some very serious, e.g. you can get free ROM upgrades in shops for many models here), but at least with this one you can patch it yourself. This sort of thing plauges any companies entrance to a new market, e.g. look at the number of bugs and faults in the first production run of Sony Playstations. It's the same with just about anything, and is the curse of the early adopter.
Bugs crash the phone on occasion
Pre SP1, yes. Not anymore. The only crashes I get are from the freeware beta apps I play with, and that's to be expected now and then.
After which it requires 40 seconds+ to boot and connect
So did my Motorola non-smart phone. It takes longer than some phones, but to be expected as you are running a much more complicated OS than most generic phones. The Symbian platform takes a while to boot as well.
You can't dial your synchronised Outlook contacts directly (this might, or might not be fixed, alas it doesn't thing high praise on the much touted integration)
It depended on how you put your contacts in Outlook. If you had the forsight to put them in as international numbers e.g. +44 7123 xxx xxx, then it was fine. Fortunatly I had done this, as many of my contacts are abroad. This was a pain in the ass bug tho for many users.
Oh, and the bug wasn't that you couldn't dial them directly. There's never been a problem with that. The issue was with incomming calls/messages and mapping them to contacts. If you didn't use the right format, it wouldn't recognise the number. That's all it was, a minor annoyance.
With the mapping working, it's another plus for this phone. It's all hyperlinked, so you can click on a contacts name (e.g. in the missed call list, or mail inbox), and from there you get their address, and various phone numbers, click their e-mail to mail them, or click on any contact number to dial that number. If there is only one thing that MS know how to do right, it's how to make an UI.
Look at it this way...other phones don't have this bug because they don't have this facility. They had to use third party (manually operated) sync software that took care of this kind of thing. The problem here lies in the testing, and the root i
I didn't say it in some huge conspiricy way. People are just unconfortable about teaching things like that. It's not as though there is some guy in a chair dictating this policy. Nationalism is a scary beast, and we are all guilty of it.
America would be a lot different if the tribes orginized against a common threat instad of back stabbing each other.
Tell me about it...I am Scottish you know. That's pretty much the same history as mine.
Easy. Here you go. Hope you feel proud and "free".
Here is a quote:
Among its graduates are many of the continent's most notorious torturers, mass murderers, dictators and state terrorists. As hundreds of pages of documentation compiled by the pressure group SOA Watch show, Latin America has been ripped apart by its alumni.
I recommend reading the whole article. It's from a very highly respected British newspaper.
Everything you believe about the USA is false. It used to be all true about the freedom loving nation, up to around the 50s, but after that things went sour and everyone put their heads in the sand and sought out to ignore anything nasty that their country does. Schools began to teach less and less about things that put their country in a bad light, instead focusing on the prowd and admiral things (e.g. the declaration of independance). For example, did you know that the population of the Native Americans was reduced from around 20 million to half a million in the space of 50 years? Ethnic cleansing perhaps? Another holocaust? The figures are similar, but hardly anyone knows about it.
I believe that countries should teach children about the bad things they have done, in order to prevent similar things happening in future. However, the American phsyce is that of someone who can do no wrong, and that is a very dangerous situation.
Sorry, I'm not trolling or being anti-US, but that's the way it is. I'm in the UK, and my government is just as bad. We talk of Saddam bombing the Kurds, but Winston Churchill did the exact same thing in 1920s. We supplied crackpots like Saddam with powerful WoMD. Popular history has a very selective memory.
Joking aside, terrorism is terrorism. I'm sure there are many Saudi's that want the US out of their country, and they believe that terrorism is a way to do it. Exactly the same scenario and neither is morally acceptable.
So Cuba didn't have missiles?
Yeah, they did have missiles, however the USA also had missiles in Turkey at the time. The Soviets wanted to put missiles on Cuba to even the playing field, remember this is before the days of ICBMs and nukes had a relatively short range. Turkey could strike Moscow, Cuba could strike Washington. The big lie about the Cuban Missile Crisis is that no one knew about the Turkey missles except the relevant governments. The deal that led to us all being alive today was hinged on the mutual removal of both Turkey and Cuban missiles. The US kept the Turkey part of the deal secret and for 30 years proclaimed that they managed to get an "overly agressive" Russia to back down.
I'm saying he was going to become a part of the Soviet Bloc from the beginning.
If so, he would have used their support from the begining. It took a long time for him to reach power, including several failed revolutions.
At first, he was a really good leader. Not all dictators are arseholes! Like most politions though, he became corrupt with power. However, you shouldn't let your US-taught racism to automatically assume all things "socialist" are evil. There are many socialist states in Europe that are fairing much better than Capitism is, in terms of business and standard of living.
Remember, socialism != communism and communism != Stalinism. Only the last one is the one you should fear.
do I really frantically want to search a hot spot every hour in order to download my 7 mails from which usually 7 are spam?
Speak for yourself. Me and most of my friends use e-mails and SMS to arrage meeting up, nights out etc. SMS is more popular because of it's instancy, but e-mail will catch up when proliferation of mobile e-mail becomes more widespread.
Microsofts attempt to lure (GSM-)manufacturers/network providers in can only be described as a spectacular failure up to now.
What failure? Please elaborate on what you think is a failure.
WiFi is not the GSM killer; a notion which seems popular in the US, but it's just plain wrong. Those are two very, very different technologies with very different objectives.
True, but I'd love to have a portable device that uses both GSM and WiFi. GSM is fine while on the move, but at home I don't want to be paying for network access when I already have a fat internet pipe into my home.
Nope. The USA did invade Cuba. Twice. And yes, it was by terrorists who were paid for, armed and trained by the USA. It was only after this that Castro turned to the USSR for their own defence. Cuba is socialist, not communist, while there are many similarities, there are also differences. Socialism is more of a middleground between the two cold war ideologies.
Trade was a another key factor. Prior to the Cuban revolution, Cuba was essentially an American province, with strong USA trade links and Cuba was a popular holiday location. The prior leadership was a corrupt military dictatorship that had sold off most of Cubas national resources to large businesses, mainly in the USA.
When Castro came to power, one of the first things done was to re-nationalise all of the resources. The USA didn't like that, as threatening US business interests is a big no-no around the world. Cuba then gets a trade embargo from their largest trade partner. What's more, the USA refuses to do any business with any country with ties or trade with Cuba. Turning to the USSR was their only option, and the similarites between the two political systems helped.
Google for the terms "Bay of Bigs" and "School of the Americas". They don't teach you this in school, a tragic mistake as people need to learn from past mistakes, not sweep them under the carpet!
The story taught about the Cuba Missile Crisis in schools is also mostly phony. Any account of it that doesn't mention Turkey heavily is way off-the-mark. Lot's of info on the web about that, but there are also a couple of Discovery/History channel documentaries that cover the lies we have been told.
True, however the death reports from Iraq are very skewed. It's not that our leaders are lying about the counts, it's just not very prominent. Tens of thousands of people on all sides lost their lives (how many dead Iraq soldiers? ever hear that figure?)
The West may hold the value of life higher than many countries (is that true, or just the nationalist propaganda we all grow up with?), but we are damn fine at sweeping it under the carpet when required.
they can meddle all over the world (eg: USSR in Cuba, US in Iraq)
It was the USA's meddling in Cuba that made Cuba turn to the USSR. The USA funded terrorists to attack the political centres of Cuba. Google for "Bay of Pigs". They don't teach you it in school.
It's not just scientific. There is an element of prestege. One of the prior posts mentioned that they want to become superpowers, the fact is that they already are due to their population. However, being on the 10 O'clock news with a moon landing is damn good PR for the country, and it gives them more exposure. Raising the global profile of your country is good for business and politics.
Exposure is good for business. Look at the Beckams.
Which is pretty much why Cuba embraced all things Soviet...the USA sought to invade Cuba. And did. Twice. With "Terrorists". So the Cubans turn to the Ruskies, get the bomb as a self-defence, last resort, and WW3 nearly kicks off.
Most strategic alliances are based on self-interest rather than ideology.
Perhaps he was confusing it with battery usage, the old "one start needs 30 mins driving to recharge the battery" rule. Don't know how much truth is in that one either, but at least it's backed up by high-school physics.
Slashdot Mirror
Not all that different to how the "anti-terrorist" legislation was passed through. Little by little your rights (and freedom) gets erroded away.
AND UK/USA. It is illegal under both our laws for the security services to spy on civilians. So we spy on yours, you spy on ours, data exchanged, all nice and legal.
And what's with this "how long until it is used on American soil?" attitude? Are you the only people on the world who are allowed to have privacy or something? Do you see a breach of someones civil liberties in some random country as "OK", provided Americans aren't affected? What's with that attitude?
Speak for yourself. I've had a GSM phone for 9-10 years, and in that time I've received about two of them.
Well, it should be free in all directions. You are sending around messages that weigh in at a little more than 160 bytes. Yes, BYTES, not kb, not Mb. It's barefaced cheek charging for these, but the telcos have to otherwise everyone would use SMS and stop making voice calls.
Simply obtain a list of the IP address used by the RIAA/MPAA and set your firewall to drop any incomming requests. I'm sure there are lists of these IP addresses out there, I've seen the odd post on Usenet before.
Downside would be that they would be able to get anonymous IPs themselves, by getting residential lines not directly traceable to them. It would completely blow their operating costs out of the water though!!
But there is nothing in the registry you want. It's just application settings. Unless you reinstall everything the exact same, same versions, patches etc, you're in for a rough ride and a lot of trouble. The registry is the equivalent of /etc. You couldn't copy /etc fom debian to redhat and expect it to work. In fact, I'm 100% certain that it wouldn't.
As an experienced user, I do. It's really pretty easy. I reimage machines all the time, and taking the stuff I want to keep is a breeze. For true flexibility, do it the Unix way. Create a D partition and put your "Documents and Settings" on there. It can be done, but it's a bit of a kludge really.
I challenge you to setup a typical windows machine on a network enviroment where the users won't know in advance which machine they will use on any given day.
It can be done, but as you are saying it is pretty tough. However windows was never designed that way. Linux is based on Unix which is inherently a multi-user platform. It started off with dumb terminals and mainframes. It is designed to work in exactly this environment, and as such all of the user software (mail clients etc) utilises it. Windows doesn't have this history, and many apps even have problems with the XP/2000 multiuser implementation.
However, even setting this Unix environment up isn't a piece of cake. Every client must be identical in terms of software paths etc. Great for universities and companies with large banks of similar machines, but a logistical nightmare away from that. I've been working in enviornments like this for years and it's a great advantage. To do the same on Windows requires one of the Server variants, a very expensive undertaking. Not worth it half the time.
writes something, saves it, and then can't find it again.
Half the problem is that you are basically root in Windows. If users set themselves down do a more restrictive user type, then this wouldn't happen, because you can't write to these strange places. "Runas" isn't all that useable or obvious, and the lack of sudo and su type things basically are the downsides of this approach, making it just not worth it.
In the West, the goverments would auction off the specrum itself to maximise profits, at which point commercial companies would own the network and charge us an arm and a leg to use it, with ever changing AUP polices. At least someone somewhere in the world has got it right. Do they have a tech industry that's hiring?.. ;-)
Yeah, apt's a great system, but it'll only take you from debian to debian. One of the points of Lindows is that it's heavilly optimised for ease of use. Chances are that although it's based on debian, many things will be in different places. That would be a messy upgrade, you'd be best to dump personal data, wipe and then install the new OS instead.
We are talking here about migrating new users to Lindows (or other distribution) WITHOUT the person having to know what the difference between /dev/hda, /dev/hda1 and /dev/hda2
In any OS it's easy to migrate personal data, if you know what you are doing and where the data is stored. There's nowt special about Linux there.
until windows developers pull their heads out of their asses
Copy "C:\Documents and Settings\username". Problem solved, you don't want anything else really. Unfortunatly, you don't want to overwrite every homedir file/directory on the new system (just key ones), but that's life. On the other hand, you can't just copy a Linux home from one machine to another. It ain't as simple as that. Unless you write very well formed & crafted environment files, and create separate temp areas for app data, you are going to run into trouble. You are safer creating "Documents", "Favourites", "Scripts" etc folders that are shared, rather than doing the whole homedir, giving each distro it's own home root.
If "your momma" (sorry!) wanted to keep all her favourites, e-mail address and documents, there is no way that she'd be able to migrate between the two systems. It's relatively easy if you know how, but until Lindows can do this, they are only really viable as an OS for a new PC.
The next step for Lindows would be a disk that you put in a Windows PC that does some trickery to store your set up somewhere, install Lindows, then restore it.
This is the best phone I have ever owned, or seen. It offers functionality that is about a year ahead of the competition (at it's release). However, it is very complicated. You need to know a hell of a lot about tech to get the most out of it. Hooked up to a PC in the hands of someone who knows what they are doing, this phone is spectacular. Seriously. It's a geeks dream phone. I've got NES/Gameboy/Atari 2600 emulators. VNC, SSH is on the way. MSN Messenger and other IMs on the way. DivX/mpeg/wmv playback. Appointments/Tasks/Contacts and mail syncs seamlessly with Outlook. You can remote-display it and control it from your PC.
However, in the hands of a non-techie, without a PC, it offers them very little that you can't get with other phones. It depends what you are looking for. I want a phone that I can tweak everything, including the OS front end. I want a phone that I can download lots of free software for, classic games etc that you have to pay for with other phones. I want a phone you can make your own wav ring tones, in cool edit etc.
Here is my response to the critisms you listed:
Battery life is barely sufficient to last a day
Before SP1, the phone would light the display on any key press, even with the keypad lock. This is fixed and battery life is improved with other various fixes. I get 2-3 days per charge. It runs a full colour TFT screen. They are battery hogs, as any laptop owner can tell you. Using the phone to play movies or surf the internet is the same as talking on a normal phone. You can't expect 2 days of continous use from any portable device.
Most other phones have bugs as well (some very serious, e.g. you can get free ROM upgrades in shops for many models here), but at least with this one you can patch it yourself. This sort of thing plauges any companies entrance to a new market, e.g. look at the number of bugs and faults in the first production run of Sony Playstations. It's the same with just about anything, and is the curse of the early adopter.
Bugs crash the phone on occasion
Pre SP1, yes. Not anymore. The only crashes I get are from the freeware beta apps I play with, and that's to be expected now and then.
After which it requires 40 seconds+ to boot and connect
So did my Motorola non-smart phone. It takes longer than some phones, but to be expected as you are running a much more complicated OS than most generic phones. The Symbian platform takes a while to boot as well.
You can't dial your synchronised Outlook contacts directly (this might, or might not be fixed, alas it doesn't thing high praise on the much touted integration)
It depended on how you put your contacts in Outlook. If you had the forsight to put them in as international numbers e.g. +44 7123 xxx xxx, then it was fine. Fortunatly I had done this, as many of my contacts are abroad. This was a pain in the ass bug tho for many users.
Oh, and the bug wasn't that you couldn't dial them directly. There's never been a problem with that. The issue was with incomming calls/messages and mapping them to contacts. If you didn't use the right format, it wouldn't recognise the number. That's all it was, a minor annoyance.
With the mapping working, it's another plus for this phone. It's all hyperlinked, so you can click on a contacts name (e.g. in the missed call list, or mail inbox), and from there you get their address, and various phone numbers, click their e-mail to mail them, or click on any contact number to dial that number. If there is only one thing that MS know how to do right, it's how to make an UI.
Look at it this way...other phones don't have this bug because they don't have this facility. They had to use third party (manually operated) sync software that took care of this kind of thing. The problem here lies in the testing, and the root i
I didn't say it in some huge conspiricy way. People are just unconfortable about teaching things like that. It's not as though there is some guy in a chair dictating this policy. Nationalism is a scary beast, and we are all guilty of it.
America would be a lot different if the tribes orginized against a common threat instad of back stabbing each other.
Tell me about it...I am Scottish you know. That's pretty much the same history as mine.
Here is a quote:
Among its graduates are many of the continent's most notorious torturers, mass murderers, dictators and state terrorists. As hundreds of pages of documentation compiled by the pressure group SOA Watch show, Latin America has been ripped apart by its alumni.
I recommend reading the whole article. It's from a very highly respected British newspaper.
Everything you believe about the USA is false. It used to be all true about the freedom loving nation, up to around the 50s, but after that things went sour and everyone put their heads in the sand and sought out to ignore anything nasty that their country does. Schools began to teach less and less about things that put their country in a bad light, instead focusing on the prowd and admiral things (e.g. the declaration of independance). For example, did you know that the population of the Native Americans was reduced from around 20 million to half a million in the space of 50 years? Ethnic cleansing perhaps? Another holocaust? The figures are similar, but hardly anyone knows about it.
I believe that countries should teach children about the bad things they have done, in order to prevent similar things happening in future. However, the American phsyce is that of someone who can do no wrong, and that is a very dangerous situation.
Sorry, I'm not trolling or being anti-US, but that's the way it is. I'm in the UK, and my government is just as bad. We talk of Saddam bombing the Kurds, but Winston Churchill did the exact same thing in 1920s. We supplied crackpots like Saddam with powerful WoMD. Popular history has a very selective memory.
So that makes this sort of thing alright then? ;-)
Joking aside, terrorism is terrorism. I'm sure there are many Saudi's that want the US out of their country, and they believe that terrorism is a way to do it. Exactly the same scenario and neither is morally acceptable.
So Cuba didn't have missiles?
Yeah, they did have missiles, however the USA also had missiles in Turkey at the time. The Soviets wanted to put missiles on Cuba to even the playing field, remember this is before the days of ICBMs and nukes had a relatively short range. Turkey could strike Moscow, Cuba could strike Washington. The big lie about the Cuban Missile Crisis is that no one knew about the Turkey missles except the relevant governments. The deal that led to us all being alive today was hinged on the mutual removal of both Turkey and Cuban missiles. The US kept the Turkey part of the deal secret and for 30 years proclaimed that they managed to get an "overly agressive" Russia to back down.
I'm saying he was going to become a part of the Soviet Bloc from the beginning.
If so, he would have used their support from the begining. It took a long time for him to reach power, including several failed revolutions.
At first, he was a really good leader. Not all dictators are arseholes! Like most politions though, he became corrupt with power. However, you shouldn't let your US-taught racism to automatically assume all things "socialist" are evil. There are many socialist states in Europe that are fairing much better than Capitism is, in terms of business and standard of living.
Remember, socialism != communism and communism != Stalinism. Only the last one is the one you should fear.
Speak for yourself. Me and most of my friends use e-mails and SMS to arrage meeting up, nights out etc. SMS is more popular because of it's instancy, but e-mail will catch up when proliferation of mobile e-mail becomes more widespread.
Microsofts attempt to lure (GSM-)manufacturers/network providers in can only be described as a spectacular failure up to now.
What failure? Please elaborate on what you think is a failure.
WiFi is not the GSM killer; a notion which seems popular in the US, but it's just plain wrong. Those are two very, very different technologies with very different objectives.
True, but I'd love to have a portable device that uses both GSM and WiFi. GSM is fine while on the move, but at home I don't want to be paying for network access when I already have a fat internet pipe into my home.
Trade was a another key factor. Prior to the Cuban revolution, Cuba was essentially an American province, with strong USA trade links and Cuba was a popular holiday location. The prior leadership was a corrupt military dictatorship that had sold off most of Cubas national resources to large businesses, mainly in the USA.
When Castro came to power, one of the first things done was to re-nationalise all of the resources. The USA didn't like that, as threatening US business interests is a big no-no around the world. Cuba then gets a trade embargo from their largest trade partner. What's more, the USA refuses to do any business with any country with ties or trade with Cuba. Turning to the USSR was their only option, and the similarites between the two political systems helped.
Google for the terms "Bay of Bigs" and "School of the Americas". They don't teach you this in school, a tragic mistake as people need to learn from past mistakes, not sweep them under the carpet!
The story taught about the Cuba Missile Crisis in schools is also mostly phony. Any account of it that doesn't mention Turkey heavily is way off-the-mark. Lot's of info on the web about that, but there are also a couple of Discovery/History channel documentaries that cover the lies we have been told.
The West may hold the value of life higher than many countries (is that true, or just the nationalist propaganda we all grow up with?), but we are damn fine at sweeping it under the carpet when required.
they can meddle all over the world (eg: USSR in Cuba, US in Iraq)
It was the USA's meddling in Cuba that made Cuba turn to the USSR. The USA funded terrorists to attack the political centres of Cuba. Google for "Bay of Pigs". They don't teach you it in school.
Exposure is good for business. Look at the Beckams.
The USA had many problems in the 60s and 70s, and it didn't stop them. Civil rights protests, poverty, the Cold war, 1967 and so on.
Bollocks. The USA seems to be the only superpower that is hell-bent on 0wning the world. We are more scared of you than China!
More people around the world are scared of the USA than Iraq.
Most strategic alliances are based on self-interest rather than ideology.
Perhaps he was confusing it with battery usage, the old "one start needs 30 mins driving to recharge the battery" rule. Don't know how much truth is in that one either, but at least it's backed up by high-school physics.