You left off the actual description of Mr. Snowden, which is "screwed."

I believe there's a rule in the US, wherein if someone likes their job that indicates a management mistake. Whenever my job starts to not suck, management messes with it so it sucks again.

Ah, but the database is the soil. And it's Net Scale. And with Oracle, the price of your license depends on how much you intend to earn from said license. And they will audit you. And you will be forever version bound and platform bound and tied to one processor size, because to change any of those you need more licenses. Please read the license carefully, then Click here to install. And be sure to check out our special deal on the Ask search bar for your browser. Oh wait, we must update your java client. Click here to accept agreement, then click install. You may be required to restart your computer after installation. Java runs on 4 billion devices. Larry Ellison must pwns all!

I don't know if Oracle is a state of mind or a social disease.

Ellison didn't invent the Oracle database, he bought the efforts of those who did. Larry Ellison is the same as every Afghan warlord, Saudi princeling, or Russian oligarch-- a twisted parasite on the planet. His efforts did not create productivity, they stole productivity.

More and more legislation is being written to guarantee profit for business ventures. Look at the Monsanto Protection legislation that was recently tacked onto the budget. When profits are guaranteed by legislation, competition no longer functions as a control to efficiency.

Privately financed infrastructure projects! Ahh, in the 18th century, that was called royalty. The lord of the manor controlled everything, paid tribute to more powerful entities, and exercised his droite de seigneur over the realm. This is all lovely until the lord succumbs to the moral cancer that invariably comes with that level of power, or until their finances fall apart and another mobster (err, I mean titled landowner) takes over. At that point Lanai will become a miniature, tropical Detroit.

This is disgusting, and it's probably worthwhile to point out that Oracle is among the largest and most successful gangster-based business enterprises on the planet. Go ahead and buy an Oracle product-- it will never go away. Get used to the license audit shake-downs, the version lock-in, the upgrades that cost more than the now-obsolete earlier version. Oracle embodies everything that's wrong with late-empire monopoly capitalism, and Larry Ellison is the grinning goof-ball poster boy.

And for the record, Oracle makes a fine piece of database software-- software so good, it finances Larry's wildest dreams.

This is not unlike 3D video, a sort-of-possibly-good feature that requires upgrades to a large subset of your electronics. I have some old but serviceable stereo components, and my TV is 5 years old, which is old in the TV industry as it is-- heck, the remote control on the TV doesn't even work, so changing inputs is tricky. Most of my stuff will not work with this rig. Airport is similar. It kind of works, with lots of gotchas (no oggs in your library, right? And that iPod Touch is too old to stay connected after it goes to sleep, and then requires a power-off reset, right?).

This new feature is an invitation to upgrade a bunch of tech. Of course, logically all that tech needs to be refreshed every 5 years or so anyway. I don't think the motion input is a compelling feature, and hence not worth the investment. I don't use Siri on my phone either. Maybe I'm just too old to learn a new input method.

Notice they've got Oracle in that list. This vendor list is a nasty bunch of international billionaires-- individuals and corporations. These are the kind of companies who want to "partner" with you if you use their products-- one doesn't "buy" Oracle (or IBM or BT) products, one carries them like an STD. Note the three local contractors and sub-contractors who sell to the government, and then sub out to a bunch of bloated global corporations who have no (non-monetary) interest whatsoever in the project working, and probably won't repatriate the profits. This does keep the salaries in the field high. And the government has no choice but to bid out another contract for a plum software project right soon. There's a lot more partnering to do.

The most important thing is to keep the investigators busy and let them have plenty of investigating to do.

You're missing the fact the government and the corporations are practically the same entity now. There's an open door between mid-level government bureaucrats, mostly regulators, who go to work for private firms, and their co-workers who.go back into government. Many people in oil, pharma, and finance, especially banking, spend time as regulators, and then go to work for the companies they previously regulated. Private individuals can't really fight corporations (viz. the oil spill in Arkansas). Only government is powerful enough to control the corporations, and smaller government will make it weaker in that regard.

This is a fine nugget of philosophical truthiness, originally coined by the carnival huckster P.T. Barnum. I have some gnawing reservations regarding the advisability of adopting it as the philosophical underpinning for my vision of the future. YMMV

And both of those were better than Bob.

The difference is measurable as decibels measured at some distance from the event. Most people are consistently against being woken by loud amplified music, no matter what the genre. The cellos playing at the lawn party down the street could not wake me up, unless they were amped and cranked, in which case I'd be disturbed. This kind of argument has fueled a generational divide for more than half a century, with the old people saying "turn it down," and the youngsters taking that as a sleight to their favorite band, musical genre, or lifestyle. My (now grown) children went through this, I did it when I was a younger, and my father did too. Before that, I guess there wasn't a lot of amplification, so I assume they had different issues.

This comment should be modded up. Impromptu concerts / house parties are very disruptive in residential areas, and the disruption is caused not just by the music, it's caused by the people and cars and the drugs. It's easy to forget, there are first responders sleeping, and people who have invested time and money to keep their neighborhood tidy and safe, who are very averse to getting woken up, having their lawns dug up by bad drivers, and having deal with the litter and general mayhem that accompanies any large crowd. If concerts are actually being closed down, that means the undercover work is at least partially successful, the egregious examples cited in the TFA notwithstanding. No matter how one feels about freedom and the police state, the fact is the police's job is to address this kind of disruption. This method seems low cost, and not too invasive. And much more cost effective than a massive turnout of force (in all their new TSA regalia) to shut down an event in progress.

Tell that to Aaron Swartz. Even if the protection mechanism doesn't work, or isn't implemented, it's still hacking in the eyes of law enforcement. And also note, even if you win you'll spend every cent you have on lawyers.