Thank-you! I wish you were modded much higher!

How many Americans actually listen to what Alaskans do and want? Oh yeah nobody...

That is bs! The reason why California wakes up with New York is because those who have to do. Those that don't, don't wake up. For example, what are the store hours or a best buy in California and in New York? http://stores.bestbuy.com/428/ and http://stores.bestbuy.com/187/. See that? Same hours! So in other words the best buy in California does not give a rats arse on when stores open in New York. They open according to the local timezone. Switch that into two timezones and things become confusing because those on either end of the zone will not appreciate the lack of sun.

The idea of two time zones is absolutely insane. I lived in Vienna while my wife lived in Zurich and there was an hour difference in sunrise and sunset. It was not nice to have to live and work in Vienna as it meant very early to rise and early to bed. I like the notion of time zones, and like the notion of switching because it really does make a difference. If it were up to me I would add a few more time zones because some cities at either side of a zone have really odd sunrise and sunset.

Good for you comparing Obamacare to what the NSA is doing! The topic is NSA and not Obamacare. If Americans cared so much about their rights like they cared for their hate of Obamacare MAYBE, just MAYBE the NSA would not be doing what it is doing. But hey you are exactly the reason why the NSA is doing what it is, and thinking the real problem is Obamacare!

Oh give me a break!

Let's play devils advocate...

Obama: "NSA stop everything no more spying! I am cutting off your funds."

Reaction from the pundits: "Obama likes the evil guys and supports terrorists!" That is exactly what the pundits will say. Simply put Obama is dammed if he does, and dammed if he does not. The problem here is that this is not a president issue, but a security system that has gotten out of control!

Well, I run Linux as well. But to say that Linux does not have this crap is actually an understatement. Linux these days does have its issues. I run Ubuntu and the 13.04, 12.10 upgrade was very painful. Even now on some machines I still run 12.04 as some software simply does not work.

Did you know I can swim in water? Yeah it is pretty amazing you know!

WTF you ask? Well, in the article it says: Microsoft has pulled the 8.1 update for RT from their store....

You then wrote, "My Surface Pro (not RT) update went swimmingly". I reply? Really? No shit Einstein, especially since it seems that your system is not affected! So go ahead mod me down, and call me flame bait, but I was actually looking for comments where they talk about RT and not releasing to developers and their experiences with RT...

Oh give me a break! Yes Microsoft stole everything! Want to know what Microsoft did as innovation? They made it possible to print from any app. Sounds trivial, but Microsoft perfected the driver model. Until Windows 3 the concept of the driver model was there, but it was broken or haphazard. I was there when I needed printer drivers for Wordperfect, Lotus 123, etc. These days we assume things just work, and it was Microsoft that perfected this.

Did Microsoft innovate other areas? Yeah, but guess what Apple innovated as well, but they also stole ideas or "borrowed". The designs from Apple came from Bauhaus design school. Look at Philips, or Braun in the early days. Very similar to what Apple has now. Apple improved and refined and made things work better. The software industry works because we borrow, beg, steal and innovate along the way. In other industries there are very definite lines, but not so in the software industry. And this is why software patents suck because they hit everybody.

Now the fact that you say the industry is killing itself? Right... I was there in the 80's typing away on consoles and 64 baud internet connections using Archie, and gopher. Heck finger actually worked in those days. What we have now is WAY WAY better and I for one don't want to go back to the "glory and good ol days" because they were not better, they were worse.

Want to know how things sucked? Watch Magnum PI sometimes and look at the tech. Magnum PI is a great show and quite timeless, but the tech, computers, etc shown just makes me giggle as to how we "used to do things".

What is happening is that the industry is mature and software is mature. Makes it harder to break into new ideas.

Well, sorry I don't think it is about quality.

Let me illustrate. So I have a burger, and I serve it to people. One costs 1 dollar and another costs 10 dollars. Does the 10 dollar burger have better quality?

It reminds me of the movie "The Devil Wears Prada". Remember the scene with the "blue" belt? What people are doing is splitting hairs. Google essentially killed my profession (being quite serious here), but I am not complaining because I use Google as well. What the Internet has done is forced musicians to say, "oh wait I am not worth 10 gazillion dollars?"

This is what the Internet is doing namely reassessing what you are actually worth. I don't think this is bad because this is what happens all the time. It is called free market economics, capitalism, the invisible hand, what have you. So if somebody complains I say, "suck it up daisy!" Move on and figure it out. Ask yourself the following. When cars began to overtake horses do you want to be a buggy whip manufacturer or car mechanic?

I have this argument oh so often... Analog is not better. The reason why digital can be sucky is due to the resolution. If you want super quality digital audio it will not be a song that needs 10 MB of room. It will be a digital file that probably needs about 500 MB per song. That is the problem, not the underlying technology.

Oh come on. I live in Switzerland and we have great Internet and 3G. Sure we have a small population, but we have OODLES of mountains. And mountains are a royal pain in the arse for Internet and cell phone reception. Actually mountains make everything very very expensive. Yet our subscriptions and costs are much lower than in the states...

*cough* BS!

I have a house in the pre-alps at 1,000 meters. There are about 10 houses, with most being vacation and it is a steep mountain area. YET I have 10 Mbps Internet, and 3G telephone. So tell me, how is this population density thing?

Actually... Infrastructure should be built by a private non-profit entity comprised of various private corporations. For example GSM was managed that way and it proved to be a huge success. This approach ensures that there is a profit motive but a minimal monopoly motive. An example of where this did not work out worth a darn is 3G. That was a complete clusterf**k. They overpaid, created incompatible standards and the rollout was delayed for years.

IMO the way it would work is that there would be only a single cell tower in a region, a single cable line in a region, etc. However, those towers and cables would be owned by the non-profit entity and it would be leased out to each user. The terms would be non-discriminatory, and reflect a usage charge. That way each can provide their own service.

So your answer to this is to finger point at people who did worse things? Let me equate this, ok. The US committed a crime like robbing a bank without violence. In defence of your actions you are saying, "oh oh but look those people murdered many people and I am good!" Just because your crime is less worse does not make it better. A crime is a crime is a crime! Or are you saying that there are good crimes and bad crimes? And if there are who is to judge? Are you not starting down the slippery slope of dictatorism and authoritarian rule.

Just because some dictators don't kill people as mass crimes does not mean that they are not dictators. I will give you a really simple example, what about Hugo Chavez and Venezuela? Do you consider him a good guy or bad guy? My issue with the current American administration is its blatant disregard of basic civil rights. Like the recent Slashdot article about the guy who was a Hindu and flew at the wrong time. IMO this is not what America is about...

No abuse will happen here, No way that the forgeries will become too good... No way that no computer will be hacked for a forgery!!!

I understand what they are trying to get at. BUT this is like 3d printed guns all over. Granted it relates to overpriced pieces of paint, but hey to each their own.