This row wasn't "legal" at all. Thanks to the fucking DMCA copyright infringement is now generally sorted out with the content "owners" functioning as judge and jury (because they're not at all biased or greedy). If the legal system isn't involved it's hardly a "legal" row, it's more like a shakedown.
Oh really?
They're "solid democrats" who just happen to also run a site at beastobama.com where they write -- and I quote -- "Barack Obama is the Antichrist, and is leading doomed america to her final destruction and the destruction of the world!"
"They are not an extreme version of what the people controlling this country believe
So they're not an extreme version of what the people controlling this country believe, they're just in line with some of the more extreme media darlings of the cable news network that does an astonishing amount of tone-setting for the national dialogue? Oh wait.
Westboro Baptists can get away with it because they're white, and are simply the extreme version of what the dangerous people who control this country believe. I promise you if brown people who believe in a slightly different god did what they did they'd be hauled in for questioning and quite possibly extraordinary rendition-ed off to be tortured by the CIA.
On the Microsoft front they should specifically be going after Microsoft AND Intel together.
Do you want to do whatever the fuck you want, with no regard whatsoever for the wishes of your constituency? Do you want to then get reelected over and over again because only 200 old-ass white people show up at the election to vote straight down the party line?
Sound like paradise? Can't possibly be real?
But wait! It is real! It's local government! Getting in is easy, too! Just wait for an incumbent to die or retire, then take their place in whatever party they came from. Unless you get redistricted, you're now set for life. Congratulations!
I'm inclined to agree with you.
I'm as entrenched as anyone could possibly be in the Google ecosystem, and it's not because they're force-feeding me their products. I frequently try alternatives when comes to stuff like online calendars, documents, email, whatever.
The reason my attempts to use other services never stick is simple: they're just not as good as Google's offerings.
I can kind of see where they're coming from if Google is in fact promoting their own services in their search, but I suspect that their own algorithms are picking out their own services because the most people use and talk about them...again because they're just the best offering.
Personally it's tough to sell me on the idea of a provider of free web services getting into antitrust territory, because a different search engine is always one different URL away. The same goes for all their other services. It's tough to even call them out on vendor lock-in, because thanks to the data liberation front they're one of the best companies I've ever seen on the internet when it comes to avoiding lock-in.
I'm dubious.
Lots of them. Here are a few pulled from my Goodreads list, in no particular order
His Dark Materials Trilogy by Philip Pullman - these are kids books, but when I reread them recently I realized that they had a profound effect on my adolescent mind.
Neal Stephenson - his science fiction gave me a taste of what the world could be.
Born to Run by Christopher McDougall - It's kind of silly, but a few years ago this book planted the seeds that got me running -- and not just running but running almost daily and LOVING it. Now I'm coming up on thirty with my fitness level tracking upwards. It's amazing.
Deep Economy by Bill McKibben
That's not the point.
The problems with ideas like this boil down to two major points:
1) It's your tool, and you shouldn't have to dial up a DRM server every time you want to use it.
2) Even if you disregard such anarcho-handyman ideals it's still utterly unenforceable. There are plans galore for increasingly high-quality DIY CNC and 3D printing machines on the internet, and if I build one in my garage I'm sure as hell not going to make it dial into a DRM server. Doing that would be a lot of extra work and amount to crippling my own creation. Guess what? Neither will criminals building their own devices like this to mass-produce knockoffs.
All a system like this does is make lawyers and executives warm-and-fuzzy. All the while inconveniencing legitimate users, not even fazing criminals, and making a few new criminals out of people who choose to bypass the system so that could...say...operate such a device without the need for an internet connection.
The assignee of this patent is "The Invention Science Fund I, LLC." Sounds like a zany R&D lab, right?
Wrong.
They appear to be a law firm specializing in patent law. I smell an up-and-coming patent troll.
I'm confused. Was Costco selling these drives at a loss or something, just to get people in the door?
I can't think of many good reasons that they would look at customers coming in and buying assloads of their merchandise and say "NO! Get out of here and don't buy stuff from us ever again!"
But 'are' you 'qualified' to 'use' so many 'scare quotes?'
You forgot to mention the overabundance of full suspensions, too. Those things are ridiculous for city riding.
I've seen the clientele of Walmart, I promise you that statistically speaking NONE of them are hardcore downhill mountain bikers.
They're just [fat/dumb]asses who buy full suspensions because they look cool, then think bikes suck because that suspension eats up so much of their power bouncing around.
Why does tethering make it worth more? Stop drinking the Kool-Aid and get it through your thick skull that a bit is a bit, no matter its source.
That said, I appreciate how T-Mobile does it now. You get a finite amount of that sweet, sweet 4G, and then are throttled down (usually to 3G speeds, which are plenty fast for most things IMHO). Once I'm sure they're doing it that way (and not throttling too badly over the 4G limit) I may switch to one of their smaller month-to-month plans, which could potentially save me $5-15/mo
Say "twenty-three-skiddoo" to logout.
