I turned up to an exam with a golliwog for a mascot and a student with an aristocratic background shook its hand before sitting down next to me.

Sun was what was right about the '90s. They produced top-end stuff for producers. But at least that created an environment for...

Apple is what was wrong about the last decade. They produced mass-marketed shiny for consumers. And that's creating an environment for...

The next decade of unemployment and engineered debt recovery.

I like your argument because it counts the sunken cost and would like to hire you as a management consultant at five times the employee rate to turn my workforce from client-focused to target-focused.

The short term bonus I receive for savings on paper will do nicely for when the firm goes under. Besides, managers get fired last.

mynameisboxee, surely?

And don't call me Shirley. mynameisboxee

Sorry, luv, wrong continent. Yes, access to healthcare for a 2 year old is, on the civilised side of the pond, considered "a human right". Recall that "right" is simply a label for some long-standing privilege regarded as universally applicable by common consensus. Recall also that consequent action/inaction is the result of human diplomacy and legislation, not any inherent natural property or gift from on high, regardless of what the (often very sensible) Founding Fathers said.

You are welcome to put forward an argument that you, as an ill 2 year old, should have been helped to live because your parents could afford healthcare, whereas another ill 2 year old should be left to die because his parents could not afford healthcare. Proceed.

UN and OAS - they have their place, I guess. But when in doubt - send the Marines!

A brief glance at any period in history suggests that even when a population doesn't have enough to eat, its children won't receive a pproper education, and its freedom is at the whim and mercy of whoever has the guns, they are still bothered about identity and borders.

See also every mammal.

How many people will the US government kill by gun, by bomb, by manipulating foreign regimes? How many in its own country will be left destitute or gratuitously incarcerated, unable to access good healthcare and with challenges far beyond most man's capabilities, because of an unequal law and unequal balance of power? How many vulnerable people will be will be denied the help they need because of some bureaucratic box-checker with a quota to achieve, then die because they can't afford the heating bill?

Under Mugabe and Chavez, the method of torture is simple and honest: you beat or you crush or you cut to physically injure. In a modern state, the method of torture is to overwhelm with bureaucracy and to hoard readily available resources, so that people are left alone to wither away or to kill themselves.

Give me Mugabe any day. Even if he kills me, I know that his method is not sustainable, and one day he will be old and everyone will be tired of him. The country will then yearn for and achieve freedom, and while still new will cherish the freedoms it has achieved. The West, on the other hand, has forgotten the difference between freedom and oppression, with insurmountable technology to monitor dissenters. Breaking out of our current death spiral will be much harder.

True Slashdot hardcore does not even involves TITTIES, much less the mammaries.

Do you reserve any sympathy for those using Easy Bake® ovens, though?

I'm paranoid for suggesting that Apple uses its gateway to neuter competitors, when developer agreement terms have been in place against duplicating functionality in Apple apps? I'm paranoid for accusing Google of cooperating with government for profit, after the Great Firewall of China acquiescence? I'm paranoid for stating that Google sells information about its products to advertisers, when it's owned Doubleclick since 2007? I'm paranoid because I think that Google may accidentally leak information, even when that's precisely what happened in Google China? Even when several vulnerabilities in Android show a distinct lack of engineer perfection? I'm paranoid because I don't trust every Google employee personally? Why am I paranoid, oakgrove?

I'm still waiting for your credit card details. Remember, I promised not to abuse them. My promise is legally binding and nothing can possibly go wrong thanks to a malicious third party either.

Take your hand off your cock and on to the braille reader a moment: I mentioned that Office 2000 works great on decade-old PCs. A decade-old PC will enjoy a CPU/memory performance bottleneck with locally hosted Office 2010 (yes, I've tried it), so resource-intensive operations are faster with Google Apps. Something 5 years old will do fine for Office 2010, however, while you've still got to wait for the network on Google. Speed of light's a bitch, and that's just a best case.

Get Sergei Brin's dick out of your mouth for a moment and perhaps use his only worthwhile offering to find out how many collaborative editors there are. Hell, fire up emacs right now and make-frame-on-display.

Please, please tell me why I would prefer keypress-by-keypress broadcast edits rather than being able to commit when I've finished an atomic unit of work which takes my document from one consistent state to another. It's almost as useful as a transaction processing system which logs and broadcasts the exact position of the drive heads during any operation - useless, distracting noise.

Spring '02, it seems. OK, 900MHz Celeron, which actually is a decade old (although manufactured almost 11 years ago now). I have an Office document double-clicked, open and can start editing it (quicklaunch off) about 20 seconds before Firefox has launched, I've gone to the Google Apps URL, I've waited for the Google Apps word processor page to load. Almost any action gives an irritating subsecond delay which is completely absent from local Office. Scrolling is jolty and slow on complex documents, while Office just doesn't bother trying to render if I scroll quickly enough. Office 2010 would likely not behave well on this particular machine, but I have the choice not to use it. What choice do you get in 10 years time if you choose Google Apps today?

I'm saying that Google Docs lacks features because there is no /optional/ and /visible/ locking of /parts/ of the document, and because you don't get a choice about when to commit your changes (making them visible to others). I thought it was Mac users who go about telling you that a lack of features is for your own benefit, but I guess Apple and Google aren't that different.

Anyone who actually uses Office for more than writing employment covering letters knows that the Office 2010 + SharePoint is actually fairly fucking powerful when compared to the Internet based Microsoft Works that is Google Apps.

So you do or you don't have clients? I'm confused.

That's probably not unreasonable - I mean, it's not as if Apple uses its "app store" to knock out competitors to its own offerings, so allowing some big company to be your gateway is always safe. However, why aren't you worried that Google might sell on information to a large competitor? That an individual Google employee will sell it? Accidentally leak it? Provide it to the government without warrant? Google are not audited, they're not regulated, and they're infants in terms of reputation.

And providing information to help sponsors.

Arms manufacturers win by selling to both sides.

OK, I'll give you $50 in cash if you give me your credit card number. I promise not to abuse the information. My promise is legally binding. Today and for the rest of my soulless, corporate life.

Don't you mean the other way round? MS Office gives proper versioning control, i.e. locking of parts of document (if desired) and commits precisely when the user wants to commit. Whereas Google offers a cheap mess, like giving 10 people a sheet of A4 and allowing them all to write on it at once. Sure, it's fine for kindergarten drawing, but unmanageable for efficient, real work.

Like a bird in a helicopter, that analogy makes no sense.

Yeah. And I don't need or want them accessible at every computer across the world. Can you figure out why, perhaps? Funnily enough, by using a combination of local caching and enterprise serving, I've never found myself unable to access what I need to, even when I'm sufficiently remote that I'd need a satellite phone to get Internet access (not exactly unusual, if you're not a sheltered city troll). Google manage that for ya?

What nonsense. I have 10-year-old machines running Office 2000 perfectly with near-instant responsiveness, while I have to watch the "web page" that is Google Apps redraw. Oh, that's right, another problem with web apps - my choice of versions are the version provided and... well, that's it. And good luck if they're having an off day.

Collect more straw.

Yes, and it is intellectually dishonest to claim that only Google Apps support realtime collaboration just because the server component forming Microsoft's offering doesn't come by default with its Office packaged product.

Google makes the majority of its money from advertising and from mining your data, i.e. you are the product. You're likely to get everything thrown at you because Google wants as many products as possible to sell to advertisers. Microsoft actually sells software, i.e. you are the consumer, so you need to pay for each product you consume. This is a commercial difference, not a technical one.