That Yahoo article was a nice summary. Thanks for the link.

I can tell you what happened, at least from the people I know in doc and training.
You mostly got it right, btw.

Documentation used to be a big investment area.
Then training came along. Training made money; Documentation cost money.
Companies started by de-investing in doc, and investing heavily in training departments.
After a while, organizations would start to ask their doc teams to intentionally include less information so that customers would be 'encouraged' to buy training.

But, there was a problem. Where did the training teams get their information from?
Documentation.

Documentation fills the role of a primary researcher for the training departments. They know what's going into the product, how it is supposed to work, and what it actually does as soon as the product is released. Training teams follow a several month lag, as they need to train what's installed on the customers site, not what's in development. Without the source material coming from Doc, it's a lot harder for trainers to pull together great content. They now have to do both the primary and secondary research, but with the added difficulty that the developers are now working on the *next* iteration, and aren't really that interested in talking about the last release.

"otherwise we'll be like europe where if you don't do well on the high school tests they give you will never go to college and never have a chance to change your life in the future"

When I first moved to France, it was the season when test results were just coming out.
A major paper ran a story about 'What do do if your kid doesn't get into a Top 10 school?'
The answer: enroll them in an IT program, or ship them to America.

Kinda took the wind outta my sails a bit to read that what I'd considered a good career choice (Ok, I went to a Canadian school but still) was the second rate choice here. After spending two more years here, I've realized that it was only partly a jab. While it's true that IT careers are not typically highly regarded over here, it's also true that in both North America, and IT worldwide, your test scores are not considered a primary qualifier for success.

Let's be open here -- these people were highly educated, yes, but where they using their education in this role?
I think not.

What they were doing was simply reading through mounds of material looking for something that could be interesting to the case. It requires some deduction, some common sense, a good grasp of the concepts of the problems they are trying to solve, etc. But, it does not require a law degree. This is grunt work. One could easily imagine a situation where several legal assistants do the same work, and report into a senior person who really does need that education.

From other job sectors, one could make this distinction between Nurses and Doctors. (Yes, i know Nurses are also skilled, but not as much so as a Doctor for most definitions of 'Nurse'). You don't need your MD to answer a slough of 'Does this rash look funny to you?' questions at a health clinic. Just a simple 'No, put this cream on it' or 'OMG, what did you do? You need to see a Doctor' will suffice. Four good nurses and one doctor is as effective as 5 doctors for most family style medicine, and a heck of a lot cheaper.

Or, closer to home, you don't need someone with a degree and 6 certifications to work Tier 1 tech support. Tier 2 or 3, perhaps. But not Tier 1.

This does make some sense, if you think about it.

Apple charges a 30% tarrif on things sold through their store. Part of this is the cost that the developer pays to have crazy amounts of customer visibility. (Think: Walmart takes a cut to cover operational costs, and their own profits, in trade, the manufacturer gets a ton of views.)

So, the last thing that Apple, as a company, will want to do is allow you, as a manufacturer, the ability to use Apple's platform to give away an app that is essentially a platform of it's own. Amazon, as an example, will give away the app on the appstore, and take 100% of the profit through their own book site. They get all of the benefits of Apple's appstore, without any of the costs.

I don't know about savings ads for a long time, but I would love a queue of the last 100 ads that I've seen pass my screen.
So many times I've clicked a link on a web page and at the last second seen some interesting looking ad out of the corner of my eye. When I hit back on the browser, the random-ad-generator hates me, and won't show what I've just been looking at.

Sounds stupid, but it would be really super useful.

Slashdot is actually one of the biggest offenders here (that, and a few of the webcomics I frequent).

Yes, I have the "Disable Advertising" option.
No, I don't use it.

That was a really great summary -- thanks for that.

Please be aware that we don't have 'Free Speech' laws in Canada like those protected by the First Amendment in the USA.

What we have instead is a freedom of expression (Section 2b of our Charter of Rights and Freedoms). The Freedom of Expression is very similar, but not quite as wide reaching as those rights protected by the 1st Amendment in the US Constitution.

One of the subtle differences is that you are free to express anything you like, as long as neither the message, nor the means of conveying that message, is considered illegal under another law. There aren't many cases where another law infringes on the freedom of expression, but one notable example is the Canadian Hate Crimes laws, which prohibit the proliferation of hate material based on ethnicity, religion, sexual preference, etc.

Sure, I'd fully expect MS to try to slap the shit out of, say, OpenOffice if it's threatening their proprietary formats as a global standard.

FTFY.

That would be known as "political suicide."

Even countries that have extradition treaties with the US have the caveat that the law that the person is being extradited for should be one that is a law in the country doing the extradition. It's not that they're breaking the law, it's that they're breaking an AMERICAN law that isn't a SWEDISH law.

It's more just falling in line with the party, and offering another level of protection for the site.

The reason that Sweden's Pirate Party got political support in the first place was because Americans pushed political pressure on the Swedish government to take action, thus causing the first raid on The Pirate Bay. When the public got wind of this, there was massive public outcry saying that they shouldn't allow American corporate interests (and American copyright law) dictate what the Swedish government did. So all of a sudden there was a ton of political support for people that opposed American-style copyright.

This is a political move not to equate wikileaks to the Pirate Party, but instead to show that the Pirate Party operates as a safe haven for information so it cannot be tampered with by foreign interests (most notably, the American government and American corporations, who seem to believe that they are the authorities to determine what copyright law SHOULD be rather than the constituents of these so-called democracies).

This just falls in line with what the party represents. I think that the Swedish people would sooner resent America for trying to impose its beliefs on their democratically elected governments than they would be worried of the consequences of staving those companies off. It's not like America is about to bomb them because they run filesharing sites. And if they did, then Sweden would have an entire international body of allies who would object.

Back in 2006: Hawking Says Humans Must Go Into Space
And again in 2000: Hawking on Earth's Lifespan

Wha, you countin' my gnome-sanes? You takin' a gnome-census?