You know, this may be the first valid argument I've ever seen for the uber-lockdown thing Apple has with the iPhone/iPad OS. As much as I hate recent Apple products, I can do nothing other than agree with this statement. Good job, sir.

Money

No, I just thought pixie dust might aid in the delivery of "magical" products...

This is one of the worst flamebaiting articles I've seen in awhile. The title is

But then they go on to prove something completely unrelated:

How exactly does this make the piracy number any easier for developers to swallow? They put their hard work into a game and 80% of people using their work have not paid for it. The only thing we really learn from this article is that people will do anything to spin piracy into a positive action.

"Beaver - damn; visible from space!" :P

There are potholes in the roads near my house that are visible from space (on Google).

No we do it here too. We just have been messing with the internet longer so it is no longer news, damn n00bz.

I suspect that Google has this so sandboxed to hell they don't give a fuck what you do to it. VM inside a VM inside a VM inside a VM rebooting and losing state every 5 minutes sounds about right. Also alternate between linux and windows in the VMs, and make sure to run Norton antivirus on all hte Windows ones.

For optimal security, randomly vary the VM recursion depth so attackers can't figure it out.

You can already get stuff to do this for free. Is this stuff that's getting sold made for the less technical crowd or something?

It's unlikely to do any good lobbying Harper. Harper's unfulfilled dream is to be President of the U.S.A. He's as much big business, especially big oil business, as any American President could be. Further Harper's modus operandi demands he serve the wishes of the copyright lobby. His use of the media to cast his opponents in the worst possible light is his guiding star as a politician. He's a consummate sophist, seemingly utterly without any philosophy, other than to win and hold onto power. He has done cameos in various popular TV shows in slick, self deprecating clips. A politician who relies as heavily on superficial, mass media self promotion as does Harper will cut a wink 'n nod, tacit deal with big media companies. I think it's critically important to note the heavy use politicians in all countries make of mass media to further their political agendas. In the U.S.A. a loop is closing around the American citizenry. Big government, the military industrial complex and big, mass media corporations comprise an unholy trinity. In Canada the military industrial complex is missing but the possible crippling of the rights of individual citizens remains as much of a threat as corporations are given greater entitlements while being able to shield themselves from just punishments for their wrong doings. Two main problems come from the need to create jobs and compete internationally. Politicians need job creation programmes to bring home the bacon to their constituents and big business can deliver massive job creation programmes as well as threaten massive job losses. Further the majority of advanced, industrialized countries seemed to have opted for promoting mega corporations as a new, privileged class akin to medieval knights whose resources better ensure successful international competition.

Yes, that occurred to me too. I just have this feeling that if I ever get this project truly off the ground, somebody's going to use it to spot UAVs in Afghanistan and I'll suddenly be a terrorist.

I'm not a Buddhist either, just an interested of under-informed outsider, so I ask with all sincerity:

Wouldn't they likely contend that "total X abandon is physically and emotionally damaging"
for all values of X?

The users on Facebook who have the most to lose when their private information is displayed for all to see are exactly the people who have no idea how to manipulate the privacy settings. On the other hand, tweens and teens who have nothing to lose by sharing their info have the know how to keep their profiles sealed shut. Different generations learn differently. Facebook needs to accomodate its policies to what "The Everyman" can understand. The Everyman is the average person on the street, and he certainly doesn't understand that one day Facebook is going to "change it's policy" to release all of his personal information unless he goes to his privacy settings and carefully manipulates them. This is all a ploy by Facebook to share our personal information with the world. Privacy Schmivacy.

Except electric cars, even if 100% powered by electricity from gasoline plants, would still be a massive improvement. Internal combustion engines have a maximum theoretical efficiency of 30%, but large stationary plants can afford to be much more efficient. Collecting the energy from a gasoline plant, piping it through wires to a person's home, putting it into a battery, taking it out of the battery, and operating an electric motor adds up (or, rather, multiplies down) to a total efficiency of... 48%. That's right, 60% more bang for your buck, even if nothing else changes.