The "Western" governments I value highly are not those who engage in secret (or not so secret) assassinations when they want someone "out of the picture".

There are governments who just make people disappear, put them in indefinite detention or just assassinate people with car bombs or poison - and then there are governments who respect their citizens (and foreign citizens as well!) rights and don't do those things. The former ones tend to be dictatorships and oppressive regimes, but indeed there are also few "Western" nations using those means. So I do not subscribe to the notion that "ANY Western government" would do things like that. Yours may, and that is a pity.

As others have already pointed out - embassies you see on action movies and where these kinds of "situations" are even possible to think of are embassies of USA, Russia and UK and a few others (and even they don't have private buildings nearly everywhere). Your typical embassy of a typical country in a typical city is an apartment in a building with other apartments, or even a rented office in office hotel - not gated mansion.

It is not wrong.

You could replace "Microsoft" with "Nokia" on that article. Both have great basic understanding of their field. They have lots of fundamental technology under their grasp - even patent, like it or not.

But both are failing for simple reasons:

- Too many meetings, not enough innovation and basic research done without interruptions. Everyone wanting to be "manager of something".
- Red tape all over the place, teams competing with each other inside the company.
- Management has lack of perspective.

Yes, I'm oversimplifying things and Microsoft is not as of yet failing, but they might be if they do not get other cash-cows than Windows and Office, and so far they have not been very successful at that.

Measurable: yes. Dangerous: no. Big difference (and I happen to live in Norhern Europe and remember the hoobla over Chernobyl - in the end it was reduced to "don't eat bucketloads of mushrooms in a short time"). And I do agree with you in principle, Fukushima was a major screwup. And nuclear operators elsewhere have show to cut corners (or at least tried to, in good environment they are caught). By the way - a lot of militaries seem to handle nuclear just fine (both engines on subs and nukes) - maybe we should outsource nuclear electricity to them?

But he did not plow into people with SUV. He did not build a homemade bomb. Yes, he might have done that if guns were not available but he took the easiest route this time, which was shooting people.

So...how many high-speed mass killings with a car have happened lately?

Yes, it is possible but for some reason mass murderers prefer guns - some also try home-made pipe bombs and other explosives, but I have not seen yet a mass-murderer doing his deed with a car alone... (maybe because a car massacre is not efficient, yes, you can probably kill and injure a few in a crowd, but is is a one-shot, once you are done you can't really do that again (people are quite quick to realize what is happening and can run) - with gun, you are dangerous as long as you have ammo and can shoot).

War on drugs and terrorism is quite far-fetched from what is going on in Israel. Even USA had communists during the cold war - the nation was not *that* united behind anti-communism as Israel is towards Palestinians (and I do not accuse all of them being evil, and the other side is as much to blame as Israelis, firing rockets to your neighborhood is not a good idea towards peace).

Israel has a long mandatory military service (for both men and women) - they have a very real everyday threat among them. Liberal gun policy works in that kind of environment, but I sure would not like to live in that kind of society.

I would not take Israel as a good example of good liberal gun control. Yes, you might have nice numbers on gun crime but you also have unified people with "common enemy" - the Palestinians. For a small group getting gun control "right" is easy, and Israel is a prime example of that, but good luck trying the same with larger population with different religions and world views....

I highly recommend the Udvar-Hazy - admission is free, the collection is incredible and they even have comprehensive free tours if you like that.

Of course they are in Virginia in the middle of nowhere compared to Intrepid which is a short walk away from Broadway. The most interesting part in my opinion on Intrepid is the ship itself, not the planes on the deck.

Yes, generally. But there are places in the world where just taking pictures of people on the street without their consent will get you beaten up. It is wise to check beforehand and obey not just local laws but local customs. I really don't know if restaurants are considered a public or private space in France or do people get generally annoyed if they are filmed in a restaurant (I would, I'd like to eat please, not be a part of someones home movie).

Geeks are often very black and white in these issues (and sometimes it is /extremely/ important to hold on to your rights) but common courtesy should come first in normal life, and that is what many geeks do not get for some reason.

Scumbags deserve justice too and the playground should be the same. And Dotcom is not likely to live in poverty right now, he just maybe can't go to Germany for his annual supercar-fest and has to rent a helicopter ride, not ride in his own. But this is a side-track, scumbags always stash money, even to the bitter and the dictators and criminals keep the last case of dollars/gold/jewelry with them. The real question is is the process done properly and should Dotcom have access to the material he seeks for his defense? That is not money, that is a principle of the justice system. And how are international cases handled and which laws are applied as more and more alleged criminals are citizens of country a, live in country b and are prosecuted in country c while their crime has happened in country d - this needs to be addressed more clearly.

It is shame rich scumbags (like Dotcom) usually do get better terms when facing for an example individuals that are victoms of a scam. But now he faces the mighty copyright-conglomerate of US of A and that means the opposite side can influence the rules as well.

It should not be this way, but we have to play with what we have, and I fear that two evils will make a deal in the end.

That doesn't correlate with history I remember - at first Youtube was *the source* for music videos and short tv shows and comedy clips. Which were there totally illegally and they knew it, nobody was interested in *somerandomguy* ranting about gas prices on his videoblog. Shortly they began to comply because they knew they had to at least when they would be start serving ads to takedown-requests and implemented all kinds of music-detectors (hello, Germany) to different markets and made deals with tv shows on ad-sharing revenue and encouraged them to post their content legally. And then the big G came and suddenly everybody just made threats to sue but ultimately wanted just a piece and now it's all good and nice. Minus the occasional take down by some script-generated message.

But the start was only possible with sharing copyrighted works, it would have never risen up if all content was user-made and copyrights strictly enforced. There are not *that many* good artists to create momentum who like to share freely (and Vimeo has captured most of them - those who actually provide 100% original work, including music they use etc.) and Youtube would have been a fringe site without for an example people uploading (illegally) old music videos which gained huge popularity.

Cheaper, from Apple, you got to be kidding.

Windows 8 may be a failure or maybe not, some even say it is a game-changer thing for Microsoft and it it defines if they will succeed in the future, but Apple is not really an option if you want to go cheaper.... (maybe, just maybe with some twisted math with Office on full retail price thrown in you can end up with Apple and web services being cheaper, if you really try hard).

I dislike what Cisco had done on this case, really, really bad,

But geek-rage has gone over the top here, people are calling a Cisco employee a "dumb whore" on their Facebook page, how mature is that?

Yes, I understood that - just corrected your choice of example because Sweden is a better one.

And lots of European countries are not outside EU, the main exceptions are Iceland, Norway and Switzerland who have chosen to stay outside (Iceland is applying for membership) + ex-Yugoslavia states (who are presumed to be accepted as would-be members or are already negotiating in the near future and Croatia becoming member on 1.1.2013) and Turkey. It is true however that EU is not a state union but rather a collection of treaties, including Euro as a currency, and we are not as tight as for an example the USA. But regarding the future of Euro as a currency, well, it is wrong to say that is on the verge of breaking-up because there are strong countries and there are weak countries, it is now a matter of decision if the weak should be supported (this means also supporting the banks of the strong ones) or not. One could predict doomsday scenarios for US $ also, but in reality things don't usually fall apart quickly and uncontrollably nowadays (thankfully).