This is the same reason Lost appealed to the masses, but not the thinking folk -- if you can throw arbitrary impossible bullshit in to "explain" something, it's not really an explanation. It became more like a bunch of kids playing Cops and Robbers with the one kid who decides he's got an alien spacecraft with a freeze ray that he can use at any point to immobilize his enemies. Call it a black swan if you want, but it certainly affects how interesting a story is.

Sorry, we don't have any eunuchs admin requisitions.

Multiple markets being available doesn't mean that multiple markets will survive.

Apple's free to open an Android App Market, with Apple-reviewed apps, and taking a cut for the value they add.
Ultimately, it could become the most popular Android App Market, and a de facto monopoly instead of a de jure one.

That's what open is really about.

Android provides an ecosystem. iDevice provides a homogeneous, crafted population. One evolves by natural selection, the other is a product of intelligent design. Unlike the Flying Spaghetti Monster, Steve will die some day. Then what happens? Android may take longer to "get it right", but just like with biological evolution, rapid uncontrolled iteration will ultimately lead to the fittest solutions.

Motorola, HTC, and Samsung are upping each others' game by competing based upon the value they add with their handset and OS customizations. Sure, right now they're bending over more for the carrier than the end-user, but all it'll take is one viable and open service provider to blow that open.

It might actually be Blackberry Messenger that they're up in arms about more than e-mail, with its more real-time nature being perceived as an imminent threat in a terrorism situation.

All of this hubbub comes around the time of the big Wikileaks document release.

What does it say about us that not only do our governments want to keep secrets "safe" from us, but that for us to be able to keep secrets is dangerous.

The only difference is that they presume themselves innocent, and presume us guilty.

But since speciation requires a population and not an individual, chickens had to exist before the first egg declared to be of the chicken species could have been laid, had there been a contemporary observer.

I read the headline as being about an Internet "Kill Bill" switch, which sounds like a lot more fun of a way to fight cyberterrorism.

Mmmm... Uma.

Personally, I think Google is waiting for Skype to fight the data vs. telephone case and then follow the "open" path Skype has created to swoop in with Google Voice end-to-end VoIP apps and scale out like sand in a sandstorm.

If people listened to Richard Stallman, they'd be trying to run games on their Linux machines, and not Linux on their proprietary game machines.

If people listened to Richard Stallman, the PS3 wouldn't exist in the first place.

I was responding to the way that you rephrased the OP, and inquiring because parents who use the term "the best way to raise my children" usually hide behind their ignorance.

The last line wasn't a content-free one-liner. Your response shows that you've thought it out. You know the goal, and aren't hiding behind "I know best how to raise my children". It's only meaningless for you because you've really thought through the goals.

Parents' belief that they know what's best for their children is usually egotism.

What's our responsibility when they're clearly wrong? (i.e. the vaccination-autism conspiracy theorists)

To protect parental rights? To protect the children themselves? To protect the rest of us?

Determine the goal before you look for a solution and you're more likely to find it.

The problem we have is that we are too caught up in being right that we can't have an honest discussion about fairness to find common ground.

Of course government and society are going to be hopelessly inefficient at achieving big things if we can't even agree on what the goals are. Even those who aren't corrupt, egotistical, or stupid are doomed to fail when everyone's measuring success against different criteria.

"it is our duty as humans to make it as fair as we can"

1) We can't even agree on what's fair, and can't have an honest discussion about it. We have trouble dealing with the fact that there are consequences of bad decisions or bad behavior. Warm and fuzzy isn't scalable, but politics today is about emotions and fear.
2) It's our duty as humans? Seriously, what crack have you been smoking? What duty do we have because we're humans? Are we INHERENTLY responsible for something more than a chimpanzee or a maggot? Why? Because the FSM said so?

Lastly, things that "taxation is addressing"? Taxation addresses a need to acquire revenue. What's done with the money that's collected may or may not be something that has to be addressed. The Constitution lays out the duties of the federal government and says what it can and can't do. If you want the rules changed, there's a mechanism. It's fully my right and responsibility to bitch about where the government exceeds its authority, and the most direct impact that I can address -- "standing" so to speak -- is where something's taken from me to give to someone else by someone who's not technically authorized to do so.

I understand that I'm being a purist, and I'm willing to make concessions for "the greater good", but there's no reason my contribution should go to provide something for people who have no responsibility to contribute as well.

If you want fairness, then you have to have consequences for failure.

It's a commonwealth and not a state...

It's good to know what the theoretical improvements are to see whether or not a goal is worth pursuing. There's a huge difference in discussing the science and marketing a product.

So they did the reverse of all of the people trying to legally appeal to pervs?