'As a nearly lifelong reader of The Post, I could not read this article in the paper I pay for and subscribe to; instead I came on it accidentally while scrolling online for business reasons.'

Who else thinks he came across it with a "gay polyamorous" Google search instead of "business reasons"?

It seems to me that the print media wants more eyeballs for greater ad revenue and it wants subscriptions at the same time. They pretty much have to choose one or the other. They can have a hybrid, but they have to put part of the website behind a paywall. And they'll have to give up some advertising money in exchange for subscription. With the Google lawsuits, it seems that a lot of newspapers expect Google to cover their red ink.

The MPAA has every intention of limiting your access so it can sell you it bit by bit. They want to sell you a different copy for each medium you use it in. If they can sell you more than one copy in a given medium (standard edition and then 2 years later director's cut), they certainly will. They want you to pay for a movie ticket, buy it on Blu-Ray, pay for DRM protected copy for your laptop and then pay for higher resolution DRM protected copy for your next laptop. Of course different countries will have different price scales.

It's not just piracy that threatens this, it's DRM free content. The reason they don't want the cable company to buffer content is that you should pay extra for that, preferably in a Blu-Ray box set. And then again for a DRM-protected version for portable use.

Open source is about the ability of the community to freely access and manipulate, as long as the changes are documented. Regulation is about the control of access and manipulation. Which special interest groups are allowed to look at it before the public? What idea offends which group? Does the example use gender neutral language? Restrictions, restrictions, restrictions...

If it was creationists who were the special interests groups, it would be in the article. If creationists go anywhere near science there are people screaming about it. Which special interest groups do you think are involved? Maybe the Scientologists will be able to write the text book on psychology?

I'm not really recommending it, in fact I doubt regulation would accomplish what the government wants. It would be very difficult to enforce for users who could download a copy of FreeBSD from overseas. It would come to play when someone bought a computer. It would certainly penalize free versions of Linux in the same manner that you can't make your own free drugs and hand them out without FDA approval. A company would have to take a free version of Linux, pass it through the tests and sell it for a profit.

Let's say we have every single consumer operating system pass rigourous security tests before it is sold to the public. Will that decrease the number of infections or will the malware industry simply take longer to compromise the more secure systems? There is a concept about locks that no lock is fool proof, the better locks merely increase the time to compromise it.

I am deeply against penalizing the average citizen for having their computer run government approved security software. Most people barely understand their computer. The security within the operating system could lead an average user to believe that their system is secure. It's not someone having a gun stolen from their unlocked house and being sued by the victim shot by it. It's someone breaking into your house and using a blowtorch to get into your gun cabinet and then using that gun to shoot people.

I'm not an American, but I'm glad that ICANN is run by Americans. For the most part, the United States has a great deal of respect for different view points and allows for free thought. I can certainly imagine Europeans banning Internet websites for fear that they will anger Muslims, gays, atheists, Christians, animal rights activists, etc.. You can imagine European bureaucrats coming up with a handbook of acceptable thought and using that as a guide for website banning.

If this guy's a big of an idiot as you say he is (your logic is pretty accurate), what is the threat level of a competent hacker? Someone who knows what they're doing and isn't going to grandstand. It's pretty clear that there are very poorly defended databases with valuable information. I wonder what percentage of Slashdotters have already had their data stolen? Not from their secure system, but from a lowest bid security system. You can use Linux all you want, but the people who hold your private information are using unpatched Windows.

You know what I'm talking about. The big bag of Google money supposed to go to every newspaper because they are so gosh darn important. The bag of monthly money that was being legislated because driving hits to their websites wasn't funding their business model. Many newspapers were fooled into going deeply into debt by the premise that nothing would ever change, why can't Government just fix this?

With Google losing half a billion a year, how long until they pull the plug on Youtube? I guess it could turn a profit, but when? My guess is the next downturn will cause shareholder pressure to force their hand.

It's not that I'm against scientific funding. But is he talking about private funding or public funding. It's seems that it's public funding. Ok, what is he willing to cut? Or will there be a science tax? Why didn't he spend the stimulus money on this? It doesn't just fund scientists, but engineers, technicians and the staff to support them. Obama seems to be full of fancy ill-formed ideas that go absolutely nowhere. I also think that George W. Bush's "Let's go to Mars" plan was ill-conceived.

Now if there is to be research done, I want fusion fully funded. There is too much of a drain on Western civilization's resources sending money to Saudi kleptocrats (who only remain in power by backing terrorists). It will also solve the energy to mass problem (enormous amounts of rocket fuel to put something in orbit) preventing a viable space program. I would rather money be spent on regenerating lost limbs with adult stem cells than focus on prosthetic replacements. I can guarantee that there are companies putting a lot of effort into reducing the cost of solar cells (think, a laptop which recharges by leaving it out in the sun because it has a cheap solar cover) and into educational software (or any software which has a market). These are all engineering projects as opposed to science projects.

Why put your neck on the line? If you make a cable and anything goes wrong, even if it happens later on, you're blamed. If something happens with the Belkin cable, you can blame Belkin. Even if it isn't Belkin's fault. Especially after your boss has told you to do something. Whenever you go up against an authority figure, the best you can hope for is proving them wrong. It's better to say "What a great idea boss!" and buy the cable. If it works, great. If it doesn't work, don't rub it in. Besides, do you really want to crimp your own cables?

I somehow feel that terrorists would not want to pay for a license from Microsoft or Apple. And even a pirated version of Windows would make them very nervous everytime automatic updates ran, would you like your system connecting to an American company's servers when American Predator drones are flying overhead waiting for intelligence on your location. I guess you could run Windows unpatched, but that's just going to make suicide bombers press the detonator early. Linux has a more international flavor, which would appeal to the global jihadist.

Maybe I'm wrong and Osama has an iBook.

If this was completely intentional, it wouldn't be such a big deal. Non-political censorship is a minor matter. It would be terrible news if Amazon was de-ranking liberal or conservative books. But this is a minor issue. Worst case scenario, men will have to go back to jerking off to Sears catalogues. How difficult is it to find "adult content" on the Internet? My guess is that 90% of people trying to buy adult oriented books have a pretty good idea of what they're looking for. They probably have a name or saw something online. Otherwise you might buy something that includes she-male porn. Or does not include she-male porn (I didn't want to leave the Apple guys out).

Gay and lesbian books are a niche market. So are many other things. Dan Brown novels and Harry Potter books appeal to a general audience. Not saying that they're great, just that a wide scope of people buy them. Pregnancy books are an example of a niche market. People who want to find pregnancy books, search for pregnancy books. They are completely irrelevant to other people. The same for deck repair. Most non-gays are not interested in gay material. Joe Hetero-Average or Jane Hetero-Average do not benefit from getting gay book hits on their generic searches. If you want a gay cowboy story, search for "gay cowboy". If you want a book on kitchen repair, search for "sink disaster".

If this wasn't a glitch, it's because the vast majority of the world's population is repulsed by homosexual sex. The same way that the vast majority of the population do not want to see a man and a woman who have a BMI of 50 have sex. The media image of sexy lesbians is pretty much lesbian blackface, they are usually presented as two straight women who are having sex to arouse a man. This does not mean that people want homosexuals imprisoned or punished, the public just doesn't want to watch them "exercise" their freedom. Just as most people do not want to watch a burn victim have sex with someone with a colostomy bag.

As far as sales figures go, I've never understood why people are so likely to follow them. I don't have grey hair and I've known for a long time that sometimes half the people in the country buy drek. Popularity and Quality are independent of each other.

With scanners at $100, who do they think this will stop. People will scan their books or borrow them from a friend and scan them. These scans will end up on the Internet. Wizards of the Coast is going to stop as much piracy as the RIAA. All they've manage to accomplish is cutting off a source of revenue. People who pirate will continue to pirate, people who don't pirate won't be able to buy your books in digital format. Not to mention reducing revenue from people who want to look at a pirated PDF to see if the book is useful before spending $20 to $30 on a non-pirated book. Now they're just not going to buy.

The only way to stop piracy is to lock down every system in the world and then destroy all knowledge of computer technology. And that will only work until some guy in his basement re-discovers the knowledge.

Were the prosecutors Republicans or Democrats? It's one thing to have an impartial prosecution of a politican before an election, but a crooked deeply partisan is unacceptable. He does sound guilty though, but who knows what the prosecutors lied about.