More importantly what happens when some one creates a firefox plugin that randomly accesses web sites, thus obfuscating your any actual web usage and poisoning perverts data base mining efforts. A similar tool to track me not https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/3173, perhaps making a random selection from logical IP address ranges. Whta happens if you are a frequent user of stumbleupon https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/138, who is liable for those choices, you or stumbleupon, I've pressed that button more than 100,000 times and I certainly take no responsibility for where it ends up. Then there is change of IP address, what was once a child safe IP address can months latter become a child porn address and, vice versa. Now add IPv6 into that and naughty web sites can literally have thousands of IP addresses, scattered and not tied to a particular range. One could image the 2 year databases could become huge and contaminated with millions even billions of false connection records.
D) People who need a cheap portable 2nd computer that wont be too painful when they drop it, step on it, run it over, spill coffee on it, one they expect to replace about once a year. Hmm, I wonder if they will start selling netbooks as an option without any drive at all so you simply plug your old drive from your dead unit into it, maybe a 2nd drive slot.
E) Millions and millions of school children, similar to 'D' but not the same.
I wasn't really talking about stories so much as all the other stuff, non-fiction, computers, science, history, philosophy, psychology etc., and fiction, conspiracy theories, news pretending to be the truth etc, and then of course there is slashdot and other forums for sharing ideas and opinions. So novels or even short stories just lack that current living and varied interaction that the internet offers. I currently have several hundred science fiction novels collecting dust, I doubt I will ever again add to them in either dead tree or digital format.
Why would anyone bother with a ebook reader. The smallest computer I would read a book on is a net book preferably twelve inch screen. In most instances I would not even bother to read the whole book, just the parts I am interested in. There is so much fiction on typical websites there seems hardly any point in reading a novel any more.
Typical of Murdoch, he would blithely destroy more trees and, create far more pollution simply because it is more profitable for him, basically damn the rest of the planet as long as he can make more more. His attitude is disgustingly short sighted and driven by nothing but insatiable self serving greed, when will ass hats like him ever have enough.
I am all for open electronic books, where people from all over the planet contribute and everyone has free access http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Main_Page, it will take time, perhaps even the life of existing copyright but all that dead tree literature will be die. Publishers and their B$ PR machine have simply reached the end of their useful (often quite useless) life, they really serve no other other than to enrich themselves and impoverish everyone else.
Shot twelve times, let me just remind you of innocent bystanders and the effective lethal range of un-aimed bullets. Each and every shot presents an additional risk of shooting some innocent bystander, a child, someone's grandmother, a father blithely working in a building down the block or a mother in her kitchen. Twelve shots in completely unacceptable in an urban environment.
Aimed accurate fire, one shot and one shot only and, if they are not absolutely certain of that shot and, under no other circumstances should that shot be taken. Hollywood styled covering fire whilst of limited facility in the battlefield should absolutely never occur in policing. Any officer who fire 12 bullets at an assailant should immediately be fired as they represent to great a risk to be allowed in public space with a fire arm (either for being a crap shot or some trigger happy whack job).
Every single shot fired by an officer needs to be justified, every single one and a penalty needs to be applied for each and every unwarranted shot. Those in charge of delinquent officers should also suffer severe penalties, of late getting promoted seems to be all about getting additional money with zero additional responsibilities and with consequences for being a completely incompetent political appointee.
There biggest problem seems to be the management method used when new ideas are presented. They apparently aggressively challenge any new idea and force the presenter to actively defend their stance and provide fiscal justifications. This of course immediately cuts off a lot of the more creative less combative types who simply more to another company with those ideas. The creates an environment where it isn't the best ideas that win simply an environment where the best liars win, only to see those lies fail as actual products.
The most adamant proof of M$'s failure in the nurturing and promotion of creativity, the abject failure of MSN to generate a profit, a content portal that is totally dependent on creativity and the ability of staff to effectively express themselves. All they seem to be able to do is let Ballmer come up with some new whacked idea from rebranding the search component of a web portal, whilst the portal continues to bleed capital ('BING' seriously WTF).
Why is the word 'licence' so reminiscent of the typical activities M$. I would guess that they also want the issuing and charging for internet access licences to be privatised, lest 'teh evil gubernment' have excessive control over who can and cannot access the internet. That should obviously be left up to the corporations whose greed would not allow them the opportunity to charge you the internet access licence fee, especially when the fee would be based upon all the costs of supervising internet access, including private jets to visit the cities with naughty internet users, to pay for luxury yachts needed for accommodation at the secluded locations where internet abusers like to hide and of course the luxury mega mansions 'er' private tax deductible office and accommodation complexes.
I am sure private corporations wouldn't use it as a opportunity to kick anyone off the internet that disagrees with the latest PR=B$ marketing campaign. Nah, they'd just settle for a guilty (any accusation from any corporation) until you prove yourself innocent (a few thousand dollar court appearance, a few months latter, at your own experience), 'er' whoops we wrong so (no penalty) sorry, kind of system, which of course would exclude corporation from being disconnected.
Double plus bonus on the ruling, not only does it set precedent but also "The Australian Federation Against Copyright Theft representing the film industry, has been ordered to pay iiNet's costs", loser pays in Australian Civil courts, which is why they never played around with suing end users. You lose one case, you lose them and then have to pay everyone's court costs.
Well perhaps they believe the original marketing that came out with XP, what are you saying the marketdroids were exaggerating and perhaps even telling out and out lies and XP is nowhere near as good as they claimed to be. Besides M$ was really hot on the idea of tying the software licences to hardware, so when hardware died you had to pay for those software licences all over again.
So why bother upgrading, you'll be forced to pay for additional software licences when the hardware fails anyhow (compulsory OEM sales), you would have to be a real schmuck to fall for that scam. So switch to windows 7, blah, take whatever software your forced to buy with the machine. Of course if you got screwed over with Vista instead of XP, well, why not reward M$ for selling you beta software pretending it is a final product.
Yours is not the hybrid, yours is the electric bike, no pedals and it is and electric scooter, not a bicycle. The balance in electric bikes is efficiency, how much braking energy is recovered, how much energy storage capacity is provided, is there any solar recharge capacity, pedal style chain to drive wheels or straight pedal to generator, also there is the tricycle.
They certainly do make sence, not only should they be allowed on streets but the should be tax and other advantages for using them instead of less efficient fossil fuel burning vehicles, especially when you add in the space saving, in terms of roads and parking, even with tricycles. For those that want to claim that power stations generate as much carbon (depending upon type), remember they are far more efficient energy produced than you typical infernal combustion engine and they can be supplemented with non polluting renewable energy sources, and of course major power plants are not embedded inside major city centres, so healthier cities.
The planet the other person of course refers to, is the planet run by psychopaths and narcissists. Those who no longer see themselves as part of human society but as exploiters that prey upon human societies. In accurate terms they are in fact no longer a part of human society as a result of their genetic psychological dysfunction. That inherent mental disability that prevents them from being an effective contributing part of human society rather than a destructive corruptive burden upon human society.
Obviously they represent a considerable problem that must be dealt with, so that human society (we are a group species, who evolve along with the society that we are a part of, we are not lone reptiles). In human terms survival of the fittest is based up the whole species not lone individuals. In evolutionary terms eliminating psychopaths and narcissist improves the collective quality of the human species and improves it survivability. It should be pretty obvious by now that if left to their own devices with out restraint, the psychopaths and narcissist, would blithely destroy the rest of humanity and planets ecosystem to further their own immediate ego (destroying their own progeny as well), so emphatically an evolutionary dead end. It simply remains upon society to remove that dead end before they remove us.
Tablets as a market segment just don't make sense. Of course I forget the final piece of the near future digital suite, to be accurate, the smart phone connects to the smart book and the smart book connects to the smart theatre. So you can use the smart phone as a fully functioning remote for your smart theatre and of course your smart book as the keyboard and second screen (detached picture in picture) for the smart theatre. The smart theatre is connected to the net, has the digital tuners, dvd players, is a full featured server as well as a big screen TV. So a three piece package, with additional smart books and smart phones as required. So a tablet doesn't really fit, especially when you will be able to get cheaper smart books with rotating screen providing tablet functionality at a marginal extra price. The proper direction for apple would have been the complete digital suite but it doesn't really work with iDRM up the wazoo (people would be unlikely to completely surrender digital control of their ihome).
For a start, your money does not exist, it is a function of society, of government, all the money like all the assets in a society are owned by that society and it is based upon that society/government, how control over those assets is distributed and defined. You own nothing (except that bag of mostly water) and your are nothing but a cranky short haired rock throwing monkey on your own. It is only by being part of a society, being a part of government (voting and sharing you opinion counts just as much as standing for election as a representative of the rest of society). It is time get over the really rather juvenile fantasy of 'mine, mine, mine' and wake up to the mature reality of 'ours'.
As to being able to guess a person political standing by their appearance, listen to your grannies, if you keep pulling that face and it will stay like that for ever ie spend the bulk of your time smiling and laughing and the wrinkles in your face will show it, spend all your time angry and frowning and that expression will be locked in (apart from of course the plastic fantastics but on the whole they tend to be shallow conservatives). So if you're a grumblebum your're gonna end up looking like one on the other hand if you're caring and sharing and happy go lucky people will visibly recognise you as such.
Even posture counts, walk around like you've got half a dozen brass rods shoved up your Kyber Pass ( http://www.cockneyrhymingslang.co.uk/slang/khyber_pass_1 ) and people will pretty much accurately guess your a conservative.
Doesn't really matter the iPad is an iKaboom, it just wont work. All the sales, marketing and forum hype (could apple trolls be considered maggots) are not gonna get that platform moving. Likely the iPad will just end up damaging the 'i'Apple branding, remind everyone of overbearing iDRM and iClosed, rather than being an open and flexible device. I can't help but feel the iPad will be Jobs, iSwan song.
Sticking an i in something doesn't make it more saleable, the tablet has always had the one big problem, drop factor, it is to large to be effectively hand held, a keyboard is the quickest input device and the tablet has always been this only for pose platform.
Being a bit older I can remember doing stuff like stock takes with a clip board, how often you would need to put it down (where it falls or is knocked), how often you would drop it, it was big enough to do the job but to big to be really comfortable, if you can't carry it in a pocket it is to big to carry around.
The proper current market segment is a smart book in conjunction with a smart phone, with the two devices tightly linked together via wireless, so you can readily access one from the other and exchange and manipulate data stored on either. Phone for walk around and netbook for casual sit down (even then it needs to be a pretty sturdy design). In fact you can envisage buying them together as a single package, even with a phone contract.
That is all still based on that smart book being a second computer, which together with the phone, connects to your main computer, a desktop (be it a large form factor notebook or an actual desktop).
The biggest reason for any net based company to leave China, is quite simply by far the majority of Chinese living in China, can not afford to buy much of anything beyond immediate basic necessities and buying a computer even the cheapest most simple variety is a major expenditure and is only viable because the internet is the cheapest form of entertainment. Even based upon that, the majority of Chinese still connect to the internet at an internet cafe. So lots and lots of searches but absolutely no money in them. So the attack was most likely the straw that broke the camel's back, an excuse to bail on a not very profitable enterprises which likely leaked at lot of information and expertise to it's major competitor in China Baidu.
That really kind of defeats the purpose of paying people slave wages of cents per hour in the first place. So yeah, provide them with TV, a three bedroom furnished house, a fridge full of food, a garage with a car in it, comfortable clothing and of course reasonable working conditions, hmm, well that's why the middle class fought for a reasonable wages in the first place.
You can't really pacify people while exploiting them, at least not without drugs and, those drugs that leave them happy while still able to work can produce unreliable 'revolutionary' consequences. They have pushed that exploitation about as far as it can go and the Chinese factory workforce are starting to realise there is no escape from those extreme work conditions or the pathetic remuneration, not for them nor their children. As the greedy who created conditions, have always done, once the conditions are in place they will never ever let them go unless they are forced to and they will violently and brutally resist all attempts of peaceful reform.
So censorship, disruption of communications, isolation of groups, random arbitrary arrests, abuse with in the detention system are all the markers of increasing levels of violence being used by those in control, forcefully attempting to resist reasonable reforms. Either they reform, or the violence they use to halt change will forment greater violence in return. Of course greed is blind and stupid and what should be logically avoided, instead is being actively advanced.
Far easier to tackle the source forge specific question upon legal technicality. As open source code, that is technically freely owned by anyone the chooses to use it as long as they adhere to the conditions of redistribution, is source forge actually exporting anything.
It can be claimed that FOSS users in "Syria, Sudan, Iran, N. Korea and Cuba" already own access to the code and are in point of fact not importing the code. There is no exchange, no purchase and, no change of ownership. These are nothing more than straight forward open communication, no different to other already allowed communications, that the communications contain lines of code, does not alter their inherent nature as communications and not the exportation and importation of product upon any recognised trade basis.
Either ban all communications, because it is the energy transmissions that form the communications that are being exported and imported or legally allow to pass through to those people, that by copy right treaty, already have legal access. Unless the US declares via that ban, that those countries are free from the conditions of international copyright treaties by which then can already claim legal access to those code elements.
Perhaps one day, you might wish to investigate the difference between efficiency and security and how it has impacted upon modern human society and how it already has an impact on computer system performance.
Me thinks you have never heard of remote admin and auto configuration files, a likely source of revenue for full service ISP's and even google, yahoo et. al. think of it as part of real cloud distributed services, why maintain a full data centre when you can distribute a large portion of the service back out with the user, the data cloud.
It is inherently corrupt as it financially excludes the use of all other competing software, be it open source or proprietary. I assume the contract would also be for an extended number of years. The purpose of the contract is quite simply to burden every industry that wants to hire those students with the cost of retraining them to open source software and then the marketdroid schills claiming those cost as a disadvantage of using open source and all of it willing supported by the New Zealand government.
All this when there was a free choice that would not burden the citizens of New Zealand with additional foreign debt as well as loading New Zealand business with additional foreign debt to buy the locked in from childhood software so that they make immediate use of the students upon their leaving school. the contract is corrupt in every method of it's application and, it is impossible to believe the people responsible for making the purchases where blind to the long term costs to New Zealand for the choices they were making, unless of course the blindness was induced by things other than what was in the best interests of the New Zealand people.
Something else will also happen, business with lots of IPv4 addresses, available for hire, will do everything they can to fend of IPv6, corporate lobbyists, marketing lies etc. Why, obviously as new addresses become unavailable they can significantly via artificiality induced scarcity ramp up the price and profit margins.
On the other side, the shear number of IPv6 addresses means that every network connected device can have it's own unique IP address hard coded at the factory, specific for the region where it is to be sold.
IPv6 for the end user means, that the modem, firewall, router, switch, wireless hub, will also become a mail, web, file, P2P, sever via a built in SSD (or an aold fashioned hard drive) with simple browser based gui configuration (most likely ISP specific supplied configuration file, it is cheaper for them if you do your own email). Want some privacy in your email, do your own mail serving.
It is under the principle of better to pay a little bit more once, then paying over and over and over again and end up paying a whole lot more. Then there is also control, building of reputation and expertise. Not to mention to disruption of existing monopoly advantages.
When code competes rather than marketing, you get better code and better applications, when marketing competes you just get bigger lies and endless pay for the privilege beta testing.
That is the real battle, the battle between corporate donations and the idiot box versus volunteers and the internet. It has already been demonstrated who wins that battle, the internet, the catch with those volunteers is they must have policies they believe in, they will not mindlessly cheer from the sidelines in ignorance blindly supporting a political party, that's for the idiot box party (currently the conservatives).
No amount of money can battle the number of genuine supporters generated by the internet (techinically buying the majority off is an act of futility as it would costs far more than you could ever gain as a result of that corruption). US politics is still struggling to make that shift away from party rah rah, to policy support, from being focused on the President (the administrative), to the Senate and Congress (the law makers). In fact the whole US political system is still locked into the magicians trick of 'look at the hand', the presidency, whilst the trick is being perpetrated on them in Congress and the Senate.
If the US population fails to get more independents, non-Republicans and non-Democrats, in position in the Senate and Congress, then they will never be able to truly shake things up. Congress and the Senate control the president not visa versa (scrap the B$ presidential veto law for a start).
Of course rather than burning algae we could eat it. Specially breed and genetically modified algae of the larger varieties, with stem, leaves and storage pods. Algae modified to imitate other food sources, fruit, vegetables, dairy, meat, carbohydrates and sugars, designed to be eaten raw or processed, and all designed with low allergen rates. It can all be done pretty closed cycle apart from nutrient and energy inputs, with the only output being safe, edible and low harm foods, all with the least possible environmental impact assuming the use of reusable "non-combustion" energy sources.
We are never going to clean up the environment if we continue to believe it is OK to burn enough stuff to support a population of billions.
It was more likely the source of the exploit, the Government of China using the source code provided by M$ to attack users of M$ software, pretty much a double attack, one aimed at Google and the other aimed at M$. Ballmer is likely throwing around more furniture than just chairs at the moment, "Because you, Mr. Bill Gates, are a friend of China, I'm a friend of Microsoft," http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/04/19/politics/main1510792.shtml?source=related_story, with friends like M$ and the government of China, who needs enemies.
Slashdot Mirror
More importantly what happens when some one creates a firefox plugin that randomly accesses web sites, thus obfuscating your any actual web usage and poisoning perverts data base mining efforts. A similar tool to track me not https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/3173, perhaps making a random selection from logical IP address ranges. Whta happens if you are a frequent user of stumbleupon https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/138, who is liable for those choices, you or stumbleupon, I've pressed that button more than 100,000 times and I certainly take no responsibility for where it ends up. Then there is change of IP address, what was once a child safe IP address can months latter become a child porn address and, vice versa. Now add IPv6 into that and naughty web sites can literally have thousands of IP addresses, scattered and not tied to a particular range. One could image the 2 year databases could become huge and contaminated with millions even billions of false connection records.
5 types of people.
D) People who need a cheap portable 2nd computer that wont be too painful when they drop it, step on it, run it over, spill coffee on it, one they expect to replace about once a year. Hmm, I wonder if they will start selling netbooks as an option without any drive at all so you simply plug your old drive from your dead unit into it, maybe a 2nd drive slot.
E) Millions and millions of school children, similar to 'D' but not the same.
I wasn't really talking about stories so much as all the other stuff, non-fiction, computers, science, history, philosophy, psychology etc., and fiction, conspiracy theories, news pretending to be the truth etc, and then of course there is slashdot and other forums for sharing ideas and opinions. So novels or even short stories just lack that current living and varied interaction that the internet offers. I currently have several hundred science fiction novels collecting dust, I doubt I will ever again add to them in either dead tree or digital format.
Why would anyone bother with a ebook reader. The smallest computer I would read a book on is a net book preferably twelve inch screen. In most instances I would not even bother to read the whole book, just the parts I am interested in. There is so much fiction on typical websites there seems hardly any point in reading a novel any more.
Typical of Murdoch, he would blithely destroy more trees and, create far more pollution simply because it is more profitable for him, basically damn the rest of the planet as long as he can make more more. His attitude is disgustingly short sighted and driven by nothing but insatiable self serving greed, when will ass hats like him ever have enough.
I am all for open electronic books, where people from all over the planet contribute and everyone has free access http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Main_Page, it will take time, perhaps even the life of existing copyright but all that dead tree literature will be die. Publishers and their B$ PR machine have simply reached the end of their useful (often quite useless) life, they really serve no other other than to enrich themselves and impoverish everyone else.
Shot twelve times, let me just remind you of innocent bystanders and the effective lethal range of un-aimed bullets. Each and every shot presents an additional risk of shooting some innocent bystander, a child, someone's grandmother, a father blithely working in a building down the block or a mother in her kitchen. Twelve shots in completely unacceptable in an urban environment.
Aimed accurate fire, one shot and one shot only and, if they are not absolutely certain of that shot and, under no other circumstances should that shot be taken. Hollywood styled covering fire whilst of limited facility in the battlefield should absolutely never occur in policing. Any officer who fire 12 bullets at an assailant should immediately be fired as they represent to great a risk to be allowed in public space with a fire arm (either for being a crap shot or some trigger happy whack job).
Every single shot fired by an officer needs to be justified, every single one and a penalty needs to be applied for each and every unwarranted shot. Those in charge of delinquent officers should also suffer severe penalties, of late getting promoted seems to be all about getting additional money with zero additional responsibilities and with consequences for being a completely incompetent political appointee.
There biggest problem seems to be the management method used when new ideas are presented. They apparently aggressively challenge any new idea and force the presenter to actively defend their stance and provide fiscal justifications. This of course immediately cuts off a lot of the more creative less combative types who simply more to another company with those ideas. The creates an environment where it isn't the best ideas that win simply an environment where the best liars win, only to see those lies fail as actual products.
The most adamant proof of M$'s failure in the nurturing and promotion of creativity, the abject failure of MSN to generate a profit, a content portal that is totally dependent on creativity and the ability of staff to effectively express themselves. All they seem to be able to do is let Ballmer come up with some new whacked idea from rebranding the search component of a web portal, whilst the portal continues to bleed capital ('BING' seriously WTF).
Why is the word 'licence' so reminiscent of the typical activities M$. I would guess that they also want the issuing and charging for internet access licences to be privatised, lest 'teh evil gubernment' have excessive control over who can and cannot access the internet. That should obviously be left up to the corporations whose greed would not allow them the opportunity to charge you the internet access licence fee, especially when the fee would be based upon all the costs of supervising internet access, including private jets to visit the cities with naughty internet users, to pay for luxury yachts needed for accommodation at the secluded locations where internet abusers like to hide and of course the luxury mega mansions 'er' private tax deductible office and accommodation complexes.
I am sure private corporations wouldn't use it as a opportunity to kick anyone off the internet that disagrees with the latest PR=B$ marketing campaign. Nah, they'd just settle for a guilty (any accusation from any corporation) until you prove yourself innocent (a few thousand dollar court appearance, a few months latter, at your own experience), 'er' whoops we wrong so (no penalty) sorry, kind of system, which of course would exclude corporation from being disconnected.
Double plus bonus on the ruling, not only does it set precedent but also "The Australian Federation Against Copyright Theft representing the film industry, has been ordered to pay iiNet's costs", loser pays in Australian Civil courts, which is why they never played around with suing end users. You lose one case, you lose them and then have to pay everyone's court costs.
Well perhaps they believe the original marketing that came out with XP, what are you saying the marketdroids were exaggerating and perhaps even telling out and out lies and XP is nowhere near as good as they claimed to be. Besides M$ was really hot on the idea of tying the software licences to hardware, so when hardware died you had to pay for those software licences all over again.
So why bother upgrading, you'll be forced to pay for additional software licences when the hardware fails anyhow (compulsory OEM sales), you would have to be a real schmuck to fall for that scam. So switch to windows 7, blah, take whatever software your forced to buy with the machine. Of course if you got screwed over with Vista instead of XP, well, why not reward M$ for selling you beta software pretending it is a final product.
Yours is not the hybrid, yours is the electric bike, no pedals and it is and electric scooter, not a bicycle. The balance in electric bikes is efficiency, how much braking energy is recovered, how much energy storage capacity is provided, is there any solar recharge capacity, pedal style chain to drive wheels or straight pedal to generator, also there is the tricycle.
They certainly do make sence, not only should they be allowed on streets but the should be tax and other advantages for using them instead of less efficient fossil fuel burning vehicles, especially when you add in the space saving, in terms of roads and parking, even with tricycles. For those that want to claim that power stations generate as much carbon (depending upon type), remember they are far more efficient energy produced than you typical infernal combustion engine and they can be supplemented with non polluting renewable energy sources, and of course major power plants are not embedded inside major city centres, so healthier cities.
The planet the other person of course refers to, is the planet run by psychopaths and narcissists. Those who no longer see themselves as part of human society but as exploiters that prey upon human societies. In accurate terms they are in fact no longer a part of human society as a result of their genetic psychological dysfunction. That inherent mental disability that prevents them from being an effective contributing part of human society rather than a destructive corruptive burden upon human society.
Obviously they represent a considerable problem that must be dealt with, so that human society (we are a group species, who evolve along with the society that we are a part of, we are not lone reptiles). In human terms survival of the fittest is based up the whole species not lone individuals. In evolutionary terms eliminating psychopaths and narcissist improves the collective quality of the human species and improves it survivability. It should be pretty obvious by now that if left to their own devices with out restraint, the psychopaths and narcissist, would blithely destroy the rest of humanity and planets ecosystem to further their own immediate ego (destroying their own progeny as well), so emphatically an evolutionary dead end. It simply remains upon society to remove that dead end before they remove us.
Tablets as a market segment just don't make sense. Of course I forget the final piece of the near future digital suite, to be accurate, the smart phone connects to the smart book and the smart book connects to the smart theatre. So you can use the smart phone as a fully functioning remote for your smart theatre and of course your smart book as the keyboard and second screen (detached picture in picture) for the smart theatre. The smart theatre is connected to the net, has the digital tuners, dvd players, is a full featured server as well as a big screen TV. So a three piece package, with additional smart books and smart phones as required. So a tablet doesn't really fit, especially when you will be able to get cheaper smart books with rotating screen providing tablet functionality at a marginal extra price. The proper direction for apple would have been the complete digital suite but it doesn't really work with iDRM up the wazoo (people would be unlikely to completely surrender digital control of their ihome).
For a start, your money does not exist, it is a function of society, of government, all the money like all the assets in a society are owned by that society and it is based upon that society/government, how control over those assets is distributed and defined. You own nothing (except that bag of mostly water) and your are nothing but a cranky short haired rock throwing monkey on your own. It is only by being part of a society, being a part of government (voting and sharing you opinion counts just as much as standing for election as a representative of the rest of society). It is time get over the really rather juvenile fantasy of 'mine, mine, mine' and wake up to the mature reality of 'ours'.
As to being able to guess a person political standing by their appearance, listen to your grannies, if you keep pulling that face and it will stay like that for ever ie spend the bulk of your time smiling and laughing and the wrinkles in your face will show it, spend all your time angry and frowning and that expression will be locked in (apart from of course the plastic fantastics but on the whole they tend to be shallow conservatives). So if you're a grumblebum your're gonna end up looking like one on the other hand if you're caring and sharing and happy go lucky people will visibly recognise you as such.
Even posture counts, walk around like you've got half a dozen brass rods shoved up your Kyber Pass ( http://www.cockneyrhymingslang.co.uk/slang/khyber_pass_1 ) and people will pretty much accurately guess your a conservative.
Doesn't really matter the iPad is an iKaboom, it just wont work. All the sales, marketing and forum hype (could apple trolls be considered maggots) are not gonna get that platform moving. Likely the iPad will just end up damaging the 'i'Apple branding, remind everyone of overbearing iDRM and iClosed, rather than being an open and flexible device. I can't help but feel the iPad will be Jobs, iSwan song.
Sticking an i in something doesn't make it more saleable, the tablet has always had the one big problem, drop factor, it is to large to be effectively hand held, a keyboard is the quickest input device and the tablet has always been this only for pose platform.
Being a bit older I can remember doing stuff like stock takes with a clip board, how often you would need to put it down (where it falls or is knocked), how often you would drop it, it was big enough to do the job but to big to be really comfortable, if you can't carry it in a pocket it is to big to carry around.
The proper current market segment is a smart book in conjunction with a smart phone, with the two devices tightly linked together via wireless, so you can readily access one from the other and exchange and manipulate data stored on either. Phone for walk around and netbook for casual sit down (even then it needs to be a pretty sturdy design). In fact you can envisage buying them together as a single package, even with a phone contract.
That is all still based on that smart book being a second computer, which together with the phone, connects to your main computer, a desktop (be it a large form factor notebook or an actual desktop).
The biggest reason for any net based company to leave China, is quite simply by far the majority of Chinese living in China, can not afford to buy much of anything beyond immediate basic necessities and buying a computer even the cheapest most simple variety is a major expenditure and is only viable because the internet is the cheapest form of entertainment. Even based upon that, the majority of Chinese still connect to the internet at an internet cafe. So lots and lots of searches but absolutely no money in them. So the attack was most likely the straw that broke the camel's back, an excuse to bail on a not very profitable enterprises which likely leaked at lot of information and expertise to it's major competitor in China Baidu.
That really kind of defeats the purpose of paying people slave wages of cents per hour in the first place. So yeah, provide them with TV, a three bedroom furnished house, a fridge full of food, a garage with a car in it, comfortable clothing and of course reasonable working conditions, hmm, well that's why the middle class fought for a reasonable wages in the first place.
You can't really pacify people while exploiting them, at least not without drugs and, those drugs that leave them happy while still able to work can produce unreliable 'revolutionary' consequences. They have pushed that exploitation about as far as it can go and the Chinese factory workforce are starting to realise there is no escape from those extreme work conditions or the pathetic remuneration, not for them nor their children. As the greedy who created conditions, have always done, once the conditions are in place they will never ever let them go unless they are forced to and they will violently and brutally resist all attempts of peaceful reform.
So censorship, disruption of communications, isolation of groups, random arbitrary arrests, abuse with in the detention system are all the markers of increasing levels of violence being used by those in control, forcefully attempting to resist reasonable reforms. Either they reform, or the violence they use to halt change will forment greater violence in return. Of course greed is blind and stupid and what should be logically avoided, instead is being actively advanced.
Far easier to tackle the source forge specific question upon legal technicality. As open source code, that is technically freely owned by anyone the chooses to use it as long as they adhere to the conditions of redistribution, is source forge actually exporting anything.
It can be claimed that FOSS users in "Syria, Sudan, Iran, N. Korea and Cuba" already own access to the code and are in point of fact not importing the code. There is no exchange, no purchase and, no change of ownership. These are nothing more than straight forward open communication, no different to other already allowed communications, that the communications contain lines of code, does not alter their inherent nature as communications and not the exportation and importation of product upon any recognised trade basis.
Either ban all communications, because it is the energy transmissions that form the communications that are being exported and imported or legally allow to pass through to those people, that by copy right treaty, already have legal access. Unless the US declares via that ban, that those countries are free from the conditions of international copyright treaties by which then can already claim legal access to those code elements.
Perhaps one day, you might wish to investigate the difference between efficiency and security and how it has impacted upon modern human society and how it already has an impact on computer system performance.
Me thinks you have never heard of remote admin and auto configuration files, a likely source of revenue for full service ISP's and even google, yahoo et. al. think of it as part of real cloud distributed services, why maintain a full data centre when you can distribute a large portion of the service back out with the user, the data cloud.
It is inherently corrupt as it financially excludes the use of all other competing software, be it open source or proprietary. I assume the contract would also be for an extended number of years. The purpose of the contract is quite simply to burden every industry that wants to hire those students with the cost of retraining them to open source software and then the marketdroid schills claiming those cost as a disadvantage of using open source and all of it willing supported by the New Zealand government.
All this when there was a free choice that would not burden the citizens of New Zealand with additional foreign debt as well as loading New Zealand business with additional foreign debt to buy the locked in from childhood software so that they make immediate use of the students upon their leaving school. the contract is corrupt in every method of it's application and, it is impossible to believe the people responsible for making the purchases where blind to the long term costs to New Zealand for the choices they were making, unless of course the blindness was induced by things other than what was in the best interests of the New Zealand people.
Something else will also happen, business with lots of IPv4 addresses, available for hire, will do everything they can to fend of IPv6, corporate lobbyists, marketing lies etc. Why, obviously as new addresses become unavailable they can significantly via artificiality induced scarcity ramp up the price and profit margins.
On the other side, the shear number of IPv6 addresses means that every network connected device can have it's own unique IP address hard coded at the factory, specific for the region where it is to be sold.
IPv6 for the end user means, that the modem, firewall, router, switch, wireless hub, will also become a mail, web, file, P2P, sever via a built in SSD (or an aold fashioned hard drive) with simple browser based gui configuration (most likely ISP specific supplied configuration file, it is cheaper for them if you do your own email). Want some privacy in your email, do your own mail serving.
It is under the principle of better to pay a little bit more once, then paying over and over and over again and end up paying a whole lot more. Then there is also control, building of reputation and expertise. Not to mention to disruption of existing monopoly advantages.
When code competes rather than marketing, you get better code and better applications, when marketing competes you just get bigger lies and endless pay for the privilege beta testing.
That is the real battle, the battle between corporate donations and the idiot box versus volunteers and the internet. It has already been demonstrated who wins that battle, the internet, the catch with those volunteers is they must have policies they believe in, they will not mindlessly cheer from the sidelines in ignorance blindly supporting a political party, that's for the idiot box party (currently the conservatives).
No amount of money can battle the number of genuine supporters generated by the internet (techinically buying the majority off is an act of futility as it would costs far more than you could ever gain as a result of that corruption). US politics is still struggling to make that shift away from party rah rah, to policy support, from being focused on the President (the administrative), to the Senate and Congress (the law makers). In fact the whole US political system is still locked into the magicians trick of 'look at the hand', the presidency, whilst the trick is being perpetrated on them in Congress and the Senate.
If the US population fails to get more independents, non-Republicans and non-Democrats, in position in the Senate and Congress, then they will never be able to truly shake things up. Congress and the Senate control the president not visa versa (scrap the B$ presidential veto law for a start).
Of course rather than burning algae we could eat it. Specially breed and genetically modified algae of the larger varieties, with stem, leaves and storage pods. Algae modified to imitate other food sources, fruit, vegetables, dairy, meat, carbohydrates and sugars, designed to be eaten raw or processed, and all designed with low allergen rates. It can all be done pretty closed cycle apart from nutrient and energy inputs, with the only output being safe, edible and low harm foods, all with the least possible environmental impact assuming the use of reusable "non-combustion" energy sources.
We are never going to clean up the environment if we continue to believe it is OK to burn enough stuff to support a population of billions.
It was more likely the source of the exploit, the Government of China using the source code provided by M$ to attack users of M$ software, pretty much a double attack, one aimed at Google and the other aimed at M$. Ballmer is likely throwing around more furniture than just chairs at the moment, "Because you, Mr. Bill Gates, are a friend of China, I'm a friend of Microsoft," http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/04/19/politics/main1510792.shtml?source=related_story, with friends like M$ and the government of China, who needs enemies.