At my work this would be just ideal. We are a medium sized electrical contracting company(I am an electrician, not an IT person and we don't have one on staff, but there is a company on retainer should anything go wrong) with about 65 people on the payroll. At our office/warehouse we have one server that sits in a mess of wires and a variety of workstations. All our computers are aging Win XP machines which are clunky, occupy space and electrically inefficient. The server handles email, file serving, backups and maybe the website...I don't know if we host it ourselves or have it hosted elsewhere. In a year or two we are going to be due for an upgrade and due to as the level of dissatisfaction with Simply Accounting increases I feel tempted to suggest switching our office entirely to Macs running MoneyWorks Gold. We would retain one Windows computer to run our estimating and bidding software, Accubid and BidWinner Plus.

This mini server would complete the picture and do it without requiring a server closet...which is good because we don't have the room for one. We don't need or want massive processing power...we want compactness, reliability and energy efficiency. Our server is mounted on the wall of a warehouse room where we store large quantities of wiring, tools and other supplies, and as we are short on space this would be very welcome. I imagine the reduced frustration would increase our productivity and make management a lot easier without needing to call up the IT company all the time. We install a lot of renewable energy equipment so energy consciousness in our own office is something we pay attention to. People who scoff at this thing simply don't work with or see applications where this would be a perfect drop-in solution. Apple is once again offering something that nobody else is capable of and I am glad they have paid attention to something a lot of people need but cannot otherwise find. At my company Linux is not even remotely an option, so fanboys can go pound sand.

If they think 48kbps sounds better, that right there is grounds to objectively say....they're a bunch of idiots. Not much more to read into.

The story of David Hahn, the "radioactive boy scout" sticks out in my mind...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Hahn

Really? Citation please? Especially the part where it says it's alright to do it "to defeat the west" ?

None of you ignorant free-speech-hugging white boys have ever been on the receiving end of real racism. Oh sure maybe someone called you a few names in elementary school and you felt sad, then you went home and ate your unsalted mashed potatoes, cried into your pillow, and went back to being the ignorant majority for whom life is pretty easy, all told - and believed you had a "racism" experience and that "gee it wasn't so bad so why can't everyone else just STFU and let it slide?". Or worse, you get wound up about someone making a joke that white people can't dance - and in that situation all of a sudden it's racist. The problem is most of you guys might be well intentioned but are hopelessly clueless about what it's like to actually be a victim of this behaviour and in what way it hurts. This lack of insight makes you guys prone to believing it doesn't exist or isn't a problem. It does exist and it is always a problem. The reality is that it is the least humane behaviour and there is no honor or intellectual upshot to defending hate just because on paper it qualifies as free speech.

In Canada, we don't like morons who shoot their mouths off spewing racial epithets, and that's why we have laws to shut these people up. Yes, censorship! A bad word! It's not an inherently bad concept. We like it because it serves a purpose, which is not subjugation and silencing of the general public as the alarmists would have you believe. These laws don't get used on just anybody and frankly the government is too busy wasting money on General Motors...it doesn't have time to go around silencing anybody it doesn't like, so take off that ugly tinfoil hat. This is why Canada is a cultural quantum leap ahead of other western societies. Don't believe me? Travel. Oh but this kind of censorship's not in the Charter? Fuck that. The charter was written by a bunch of WASPs who had no inkling of what the country would become - i.e. sustained by hard-working immigrants while the existing population became, old, lethargic, unmotivated and allowed its birth rate to fall below 2 children per couple. Oh, and the "Canadian founding fathers" were racists too, living in a time when it was commonplace and acceptable. Today it is not, and if that means some 150 year old laws need amending, so be it. The government does need to meddle in people's affairs in this matter because quite obviously average people are just too ignorant or lazy to conduct themselves properly 100% of the time. Stop crying about "regulation this" and "communist" that. Don't like it? There's a country just to the south of us where you can say all the dumb crap you like, and possibly you will even inspire a crowd of inbred rednecks to consider you some kind of great thinker while you're at it. Take Alberta with you. You can write books and become the next Ann Coulter, the poster child for what defending "free speech" is all about. Idealistic "people should just do blah blah blah theoretical solution and then we won't need regulation" blather doesn't work. This is the real world, and real people are real dumb, and really need to be spoon-fed to be kept in line.

I get some robocalls but not that many, and zero of them are politically affiliated. What I do get though are ethnically targeted telemarketers calling me up and speaking in hindi or urdu. Somehow someone sold the company information which includes my ethnic background and they try to cater to me by speaking my language. I ask them where they're calling from and most of them say they are in India or Pakistan, and sometimes a Middle Eastern place like the UAE where lots of South Asians have moved. They sell all sorts of stuff from insurance to long distance plans to duct cleaning service and travel packages. There's nothing I can do to stop these guys and when I answer the phone they speak as though they are some seldom-spoken-to relative calling me after a long time. Friggin annoying. I'm on the Canadian National Do Not Call List which reduced telemarketing calls by about 75% despite its huge list of exceptions...but of course it doesn't apply to international efforts to sell crap.

rundll32...let us never forget

It's India. If you don't understand, spend some time there, and not just going to touristy sites. It just has no chance of succeeding as a universal replacement IMO.

So when are they going to make it desirable for the non-tech literate to use?

'Suppose we have the capacity to make it possible for the president of the United States at will to communicate with hundreds of thousands of Iranians at no risk or limited risk? It just changes the world.'

What a pathetic example of typical Western arrogance. The usual "America is the best place in the world and everyone should want to be like us" bullshit. Fuck off and learn your place in the world already...what exactly is any Western leader going to say to the Irani population that would "change the world" ? Iranis are using anti-censorship tech to get access to information they want, which doesn't happen to be your propaganda message. Maybe you conveniently forgot but they still vividly remember how the US financed and supplied Saddam's war against Iran in which biological and chemical weapons were used. How about lifting your sanctions and shutting your hypocritcal cakehole about state sponsored terrorism when America supports Saudi Arabia and Israel, the two REAL biggest state sponsors of terrorism? Those actions would speak a lot louder than some pointless, hollow two minute webcast. That won't happen however...as they need both Saudi oil and the Jewish vote. For the US government, those two things are, figuratively speaking, as addictive and judgement-clouding as heroin.

Let 'em die. AOL has done far too many disservices to the internet for any sympathy to be forthcoming.