Also as a Hungarian, while the laws controlling media and empowering censorship *are* rather disturbing (as is their recent ruling against gay marriage and other "moral depravity"), the nationalization of pensions and the overhaul of the tax system was a necessary evil.

There was so much corruption in the government over the past several decades. Big corporations were funneling money from pensions into private interests and out-of-country. They had their representatives create loopholes in the tax system to prevent paying taxes, where the private citizen had to pay even more. Hungary's national debt became huge because of this. The legal system is also not without its problems.

Sometimes I believe you need drastic solutions to such deep-seated corruption. That being said, however, I do think that such a concentration of power is *very* dangerous, and sets a bad precedent. This new media law is definitely a sign that something is amiss.

Say what you will about the U.S., but people more or less respect the rule of law. A case may be controversial, and the result may be unappealing, but ultimately all parties understand that without order and due process, there is no government. No matter how corrupt elements of the government are, they still have to answer, ultimately, to the people (whenever that would see the light of day). In Hungary, it's a bit different. People can get away with a lot of things, and I've seen the level of corruption that exists with my own eyes. None of that would fly here in the States.

So is the government taking so much power the right thing to do? I don't know. I'm sure you can argue that, because of this corruption, it's precisely the *worst* decision you could make (give the government more power), but short of an actual revolution by a populace, how else do you clean up your own governing institutions? The only way you can, is elect people to make sweeping changes. But, as they say, power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. I think Orban is heading in the wrong direction. I think he's made efforts to change things, but I also think his intentions are now suspect with laws demanding censorship and other restrictions. I think by doing things like that, one basically rolls back all the good one has done.

We'll see how this plays out. I'm hoping for the best. As a second generation American, I still have very close ties to Hungary (all of my extended family lives there, and I visit often), and I do my best to keep up-to-date on its politics. I don't want my country-of-lineage to have ill repute.

... use IMAP. Connecting to Exchange via IMAP doesn't enable remote wipe, but still allows you to access your mail and get access to the GAL.

But honestly, if you're needing access to a company's Exchange server, there's no reason why the company can't enforce a security policy, like a PIN or password on your phone, or remote wipe capabilities. There may be sensitive data in your emails or in your contact list, that should not be accessed on a device which has no protection (or even weak protection like a PIN). It's in the best interest of the organization to be able to remotely-wipe a device connected to their Exchange server.

That being said, if you don't want to give the company access to do that to your phone, then don't connect to Exchange. If IMAP isn't enabled, then you have to take the tradeoff.

... Ballmer et al are wringing their hands nefariously as they see the future of C#'s marketshare increase by leaps and bounds. And that's good for Microsoft in every way, since every application written in C# instead of Java means a license for Windows is being purchased to run each copy of the software. In web apps, it's a server license; in workstation applications, it's a desktop OS license. Either way, it's a win-win for Microsoft, and a massive loss for Oracle.

Not that I mind, per se. I prefer C# in every way to Java... but from Oracle's perspective, I don't see how they see this would do anything but hurt Java and their reputation that's rather ubiquitous.

Now if only Mono would get their asses in gear and not lag so far behind .Net versions, there would actually be an open source OS alternative to running modern C# applications.

I bought the game before it came out because what I read about it intrigued me. I saw gameplay footage and stuff and it looked awesome. So I bought it in preorder for $10 less and for some additional gametime. I was so happy that there was finally an MMO out there that didn't expire your gametime. I'm not a prolific player so I hated the idea of being charged $14/mo, every month, even if I didn't log in once. Since my school was starting, I decided I'd play a bit and leave the rest of the time till later. I'd played a few hours, had fun, shelved it, and was going to jump into it once again after I got my bearings in school and had a solid schedule.

That would have been in a few weeks. Well shit, now that it's shutting down, I lose $50, not having played it any more than a couple of hours, and the whole "gametime never expires" thing ended up being a farce. My gametime did expire. It was (ironically) almost five months since I've bought the game, so that's like paying $10/mo and not playing it. So in essence I won nothing, and a gaming company ran away with millions. Wonderful.

I wonder if it's actually this business model that killed it... this idea of, you don't have to pay a monthly fee, but instead you pay for gametime (or unlimited time for a monthly fee, which wouldn't be something that you'd do unless you're really into the game). Maybe it didn't make enough money? Maybe the investors realized it's better to lock people into paying a monthly fee than to paying for gametime which never expires? Maybe they never were able to address the rampant cheating that was going on (so I heard, but never experienced).

Whatever the reason, I'm very, very disappointed, and feel slightly cheated. I never did get to experience the game I paid for. I could have gotten more use out of the $50 had I burned it for heat.

Goo Gone works amazingly well, on even the most ridiculously adhesive residue I've encountered... and it's cheap.

I think the U.S. math curriculum could use some equality with the Chinese system.

That's actually not true. The TI-89 *is* allowed on the SAT; the TI-89 Plus is not (the one that has a QWERTY keyboard). I used my TI-89 on the SAT not too long ago and there were no problems. They also don't reset your memory either, and there are programs out there, like the SAT OS which aims to help you with the SAT math sections by solving things for you, and it's perfectly acceptable. You still need to know *how* to solve things.

This is disastrous. I don't even know where to begin...

While there will undoubtedly be some competition by way of cable companies vs. DSL/fiber providers (pushing video/television and what-not), on both sides there will be hefty opposition against bandwidth sinks like like Hulu and Youtube. I can see it now: "Comcast Cable is now offering unlimited bandwidth! Experience our 6mbps* high-speed Internet for a low fee of only $45.00/month! Some restrictions apply! *Certain content may not be available at full speed, such as YouTube, Hulu, and non-Comcast partners. YouTube is available at full-speed for an additional fee of $1.99/month; Hulu is available for $3.49/month; non-Comcast partners are available for a low monthly fee per site. Please see full price list for details. Comcast partners include sports sites such as NHL.com and NFL.com, as well as networks such as Comedy Central and Syfy. Switch to Comcast today to see these sites at full-speed! (Television network sites are available for $1.99/month)"

And really, nothing can stop them from doing that. They can throttle BitTorrent traffic, slow down competitors' sites, or even detect streaming media and throttle it down.

Plus, micropayments via web games such as Farmville and MMOs have proven to be a good source of income. Maybe they'll offer to unthrottle BitTorrent traffic for a "low low price of $1.99/week".

Yeah, net neutrality is a bunch of bull. If you want fast sites, you need to *pay* for fast sites, you communist. Don't expect handouts like "unlimited internet"; hell, even roads have tolls!

Conceivably, Internet speeds will only increase in the next decade. I think 60-100 mbps average household connection by 2020 isn't that far-fetched (and it may, in fact, be significantly more). At that point, streaming HD video into homes would not be difficult at all, and I think more and more distribution houses are going to start doing just that.

Case-in-point: DRM on streamed video can be implemented significantly more thoroughly than via physical medium. I wouldn't be surprised if Blu-Ray/DVD releases stopped being the norm and instead people bought streaming rights to a film from a co-op like Hulu, or straight from distributers like Universal/Paramount/etc. They can continue to charge ridiculous fees like $25-$30 per film, with extras, etc. And you get "lifetime" access (lifetime in quotes, of course, because it will never be like that if you never actually own a physical copy) for that price... or they can do things like "rent out" movies (which would put rental houses out of business; precisely what these publishers want, since because of the doctrine of first sale, they don't see any profit from rentals; this would eliminate that completely) for $5 a day or something. They can even sell the extra features separately for a few dollars a piece.

And if they implement the DRM correctly, encrypt the stream itself, and black-box the decryption system (via a TPM-like chip or something along those lines), it's very possible that it will be *extremely difficult* to pirate future content such as movies. They can even somehow embed the user's ID into the stream (via watermark/stegonography; I'm not an expert here so bear with me), so if pirates did manage to grab and release the stream, somehow, they can track down the source and prosecute.

Finally, this system would basically always work. Users wouldn't see the problems they're having right now with DRM, and, on top of that, they won't have a bunch of DVDs/Blu-Rays lying around that they'd have to find room for. Plus they get a searchable catalog and a bunch of other stuff that comes with having a purely digital library.

Not saying it's a good thing, necessarily, just that it's probably inevitable.

Sorry, bad form to reply to myself, but Slashdot ate part of my comment.

"So for a bit of attention and a..." was supposed to go:

So for a bit of attention and a $20 gift per year, you can have someone who will fight for you and treat you like a human being within the huge bureaucracy of a bank. Case-in-point: Earlier this year I had over $400 worth of overdraft fees applied to my account because of an oversight by me. I appealed to my banker, explained my situation, and she was happy to reverse the charges. She could only reverse $300, but she appealed to the assistant branch manager who reversed the last $100 for me. Last year I had a similar incident, albeit with a smaller amount ($200). She helped me then, too, with no fuss.

I've been with a number of banks, including BofA, Washington Mutual, and lately Wells Fargo. I'm not that old, but I've been banking for around 10 years, so I've had my fair share of unfair fees and what-not, but all in all, there has been one thing that has helped me over the years, and that is establishing a personal relationship with your banker.

Many banks see you as just a number with some cash tied to it. The more cash you have, the more valuable your business, but unless you have tens of thousands of cash at a branch, most banks don't care. So, in lieu of having a bunch of cash, you'll have to cash in (bad pun intended) on the human element to get human treatment.

For me, I make sure I go into the branch every now and then to make deposits, and stop by my banker's desk, ask her how her day is going, and so on. These five minute conversations are important, because they re-enforce your presence to them, and they show that you care. Once a year, for Christmas/New Year's, I buy her a small gift and write her a card (expensive isn't important; under $20 is perfect). I make sure to thank her for everything, wish her a great year, and so on.

So, for a bit of attention and a
My point is, we can all complain that banks are evil machines not caring about people, but we're part of the problem because we treat them like machines. But if we make that effort to treat them as a company run by humans, we might make some headway towards being treated as humans in turn.

(Disclaimer: YMMV of course. I left BofA because no one there gave a shit. I'd had luck with both WF and WaMu)