Precisely because not everybody and their grandmother knows how to do it, this is an issue. If everybody and their grandmother made the informed decision to send all their computer contents to Amazon with every search, this would be perfectly fine with RMS. But they are not informed (which is why we need the outcry) and usually don't know how to turn it off even if they could google it (which is why it needs to be off by default) ... I mean, do you see _your_ grandmother googling how to edit privacy settings on her computer (assuming you currently have a grandmother and she owns a computer)?

Don't worry, enough people are reading it. Noone responded so far, but that's not the point: the most useful thing is probably for you to talk about it, coping and such.

I'm really sorry for you, and I wish the things that happened to you didn't. But (here's the but): from your story, I'm not sure this guy did anything illegal at any point. Morally he's a douchebag, but it's not against the law to be an asshole. It's not illegal to be in a relationship where one side is overbearingly dominant and takes way more than it gives.
There's a reason we don't regulate emotional relationships. It's not illegal to cheat on your spouse, and from what I'm reading, I assume you think it should be. Still most people have the basic attitude that leads to viewing cheating as something that shouldn't be criminalised (me too btw).
Likewise it's not illegal to overinflate yourself just to get a woman into bed, or to keep trying unless he is stopped by things the law says are not allowed. You said you gave him (weak?) signs, but then went along. "Actions say more than words" plus his wishful thinking: "you don't say OK to having sex in order to not appear as a slut, but play along because you want it" ... quite common in men, and I think sex is the expected result. He failed to be a gentleman - not illegal. But rape by definition is... what now?

I don't want to say that it's your own fault, or that you had it coming, because you clearly are the victim of an asshole. Still I have to kinda say that you could have simply walked out of it if you wanted... that's because I can't imagine my neighbour literally pissing over me and me being OK with it (=in my actions) but not really (=in my mind). I'd kick his ass.
If this were my basic attitude, I'd think that it's a problem with myself. Maybe because I'm not a woman (here we go with sexism again :\ but men and women are obviously different), and I don't think you should "attack" yourself.
But if I were your "purely-legal-and-not-at-all-moral lawyer", based on your actions I'd have a hard time finding something to fault that guy for.

I've had requests where it wasn't possible to add some feature with the current application architecture. You may call it bad design (it wasn't me ^^), and the stupid version of "is it possible?" happens more often, but sometimes you just have to answer with a no.
If you want to argue that it is possible to write a new application from scratch that supports this particular feature, then yes, it's just a matter of time and money, but this is just theoretical and usually not what people mean by requesting a feature addition to a tool they use.

THIS. This is exactly the problem. I don't go into a Young Fundamental Christian Females meeting, acting all Casanova and handing them How-to-be-sexy pamphlets.
YOU don't go to Defcon without any appreciable technical skills* (but lots of social skills nobody cares for), handing out dating advice.

* Pardon me if you got actual technical skills, just substitute for most of those particular women. They haven't.

I respect the vast majority of women in "normal life". But when I go to Defcon, I simply look down on anyone who wants to play but lacks the skillset. I don't look down on them as human beings, but as nerds. This is completely independent on gender, race, etc.

The point that does make a difference with gender however is that men don't usually provoke a (sometimes quite strong) desire in me to have sex with them. Women do, they know it, and that's all fine and nice as long as they don't stampede into a culture they don't understand, can't contribute to but are still welcome because I can't completely turn off the sex appeal. Men who can't keep up with us simply get laughed out of the room. Nontechnical women can stay because of that desperate hope...

I don't know what the motivation of those women is... hang out with the "cool nerds", have a "good time" without regard for the other attendees, make money (there's a few prostitutes), or simply go there for no good reason and then be proud of showing their ignorance when talking to people... but extremely few could make me believe that they actually want to learn about electronics or coding. (this is different from those women who are already capable, as most of them have my greatest respect and get treated as buddies)

So we have a mixture of me looking down upon those "dummies", their demand for some kind of recognition I can't fathom what it is, and me being sexually attracted to them, which is their only non-negative point in the specific environment of a hacker conference.
Most directions are pointing downhill from here, and while I agree that it should never amount to violence and the like, it's the women who come there with expectations of dating behaviour that are the problem.

(thinking about ticking that anonymous button right now, but hey, that's my opinion even though it seems to be unpopular... basically I'm telling you that your whole posting is irrelevant because hacker conferences is where we do away with that dating stuff)

As concluded in my other reply, my point is that you're not less safe with Google just because they don't give you unlimited insurance.
Yet your comment tried to claim that. Hence the strawman.

Contribution & steering is another topic, but we can discuss that too.
You deposit 2000 right now at MPEG-LA. Will anyone care at all about your opinion? Of course not.

Hmm, not sure where you want to go with this, as your comment doesn't particularly refute any of my points. Doesn't matter, I don't think you're going to reply, seeing how this is a tad old and you don't have actual arguments anyway ;)

OK, I'm guilty of starting the previous comment with a teaser myself... but care to elaborate?
Prepending disclaimers to everything is cumbersome, but here you go: I'm not affiliated with Google, don't have a particular interest in seeing them dominate or anything like that. I do like pointing out obvious nonsense on the internet :>
What is it you're a fanboy for?

Well, I'm obviously too young (but teenager? not so much) to have had a good overview over the corporate landscape of 20 years ago... but I think it's pretty clear that Microsoft is as likely to opensource their products now as they were then.
Besides, even just 5 or so years are half an eternity in tech, and I think my point holds pretty well for such time scales.

The other "as likely as..." things? Well, people claiming this for Linux (server), laptops, Myspace (later Facebook) just lack foresight. ;P

I was just using the common knowledge standard definition. Or would you seriously claim here and now, on a tech site, that the Windows source code is open source? And then you talk about "open exactly as I want it"...

Exactly what I tried to conclude. You're not less safe with Google just because they don't give you unlimited insurance.

You deserve -1 Troll.

Seriously, Google starting to charge for VP8 at some point is about as likely as Microsoft opensourcing their most recent Windows and Office.
And comparing them to crack dealers? What's with all that hate? Got fired by Google?

Also, of course Google hasn't promised a blanko cheque for every user of VP8. MPEG-LA hasn't done it either for h264. No other tech company has ever done anything like that.
It's batshit crazy to expect something such a thing, and bringing it up in and argument only serves as strawman.

Your post is right out false.

Distributing proprietary codecs (especially encoders under a "you can do everything" license like GPL or BSDL) is illegal. Now we can bicker about where exactly etc., but the US is a pretty influential part of the world (together with Japan, and soon the EU if things keep going as they are).
While VLC can get away with their "screw the US, Japan, France, ..." attitude, most Free OSs can't.

*Certain* Free OSs and browsers cannot distribute proprietary codecs without having paid for them, and distributing them wrapped up in VLC is no different. Yes, they can (and do) call external applications if the user happens to have them installed (thus shifting the illegal part to the single user).
Works OK, but I hope you see the problem lies in distribution.
Also, isn't fighting this dismal state of things the only logical action to take?

You sound quite confused. I think those people you mentioned disagreeing with you were not evolutionists, and/or probably trolling you. Otherwise they wouldn't haggle over such straightforward stuff like what you listed (which pretty much everyone with a basic biology education understands). Either that or you are trolling yourself. Really, presenting "clear" evidence and then claiming the contrary (e.g. Earth's age) sounds a bit schizophrenic. As an aside: maybe you're not aware of it, but a lot of your wording is a bit "blurry" and thus inviting contradiction.

Those people running the site behind the "make people think more about data" link should be made to think more about server capacity

I never really understood what is with this invisibility cloak obsession anyway. It's not like research like depicted in the article enables true invisibility... it only filters a comparatively small band, so no (radar+infrared+visible light) invisible planes, tanks etc. Also, no project so far has shown even the hint of the possibility to have angle independant cloaking. So that's no inivisible soldiers either, unless they don' t turn and all enemies are looking at them from one narrow perspective.

Well, having a browser with a feature that no one else used (for a short time span, until others started using it) was great many times before, so why not now? One has to be the first.

Whoa, someone with an axe to grind... Are you seriously saying we shouldn't thank them for supporting the people of a nation because they don't host mirrors for something completely unrelated? And tell me, have you any proof that it's not possible to donate money to Wikileaks via Google Checkout? Last time I looked, there was no indicator to this... And I'm not even going to ask you what gives you the higher moral ground to attack a company that does more than any other tech giant and (presumably) more than you...

While my experiences are very similar to yours, keep in mind that they're not representative... I'm pretty sure the vast majority of users would not choose the blend, bare version.

Two weeks ago, I knew next to nothing about mail administration. I do however have enough experience as generic sysadmin. Took me about 3-4 hours reading into documentation for smtp, imap, exim (+addons), then about half an hour of configuration and now our working group (30 people) has a nicely working public facing mail server, all with aliases, mailing lists, synchronisation,...