return ArtistFormerlyKnownAs(ArtistFormerlyKnownAs(Prince));

And by "more federated" we really mean "more feudal". What Schmidt is worried about is Google's loss of world hegemony, which is inevitable as the rest of the second and third world gets wired and/or broadband. When he talks about concerns about US spying, he's really worrying about the loss of Europe.

"It's a harder problem to solve because it's seen as personal," he [Schmidt] said. "We're very concerned that there will be a sort of 'Buy European' movement."

He doesn't really need to worry about that as much as he needs to worry about Net Neutrality. That's what's going to "break the Internet", when Comcast gets their wish of charging different content providers different rates, everyone, down to the ISP (last mile) level will eventually follow suit. Schmidt will end up paying a different rate to deliver YouTube to each individual customer. Eventually he'll have BIGGER server farms dedicated to billing, cross-licensing, etc. than he has for content today.

I'll go for an A-10 myself, much more useful when you're stuck behind a slowpoke in the fast lane.

In other news: "too cheap to meter" fusion power available ten to twenty years from today. Whenever "today" might happen to be.

Fuckin' PHP programmers! You guys need to die off. How about a GetReallyFor ReallyHonestThisTimeIMeanItVersionNumber()? Or are we going to be using a GetVersionEx47() at some point?

So you're telling me that Microsoft decided/had to skip a version number because of existing Java code? Rly? Srsly?

Good to know. I know that nobody on Slashdot is interested in what Paul Allen might be up to.

Sure, but then there's question of miles driven per day. I think there's a lot more bang-for-buck in school buses.

What starts with "F" and ends with "U-C-K"? Fire truck.

SCHOOL BUSES. Usually low-speed, frequent starts & stops, usually only out for 2-3 hours at a time. Time to recharge between morning and afternoon routes. Current diesel models get terrible mileage. Perfect for teslafication.

... the NSA (or some other spooks)...

I thought I touched that base. Meanwhile, the NSA is still the most likely source.

They made up how they found out. In your analogy, the person following the script then went to court and *swore* that he set up Apache on his own by reading the manuals.

It matters because it means the intelligence/evidence was gathered some other way, that the government doesn't want to admit to, and so they made up this story to cover how they supposedly found out this information. It's called "parallel construction", and it basically means that the NSA (or some other spooks) tipped off the FBI, whose job it was to come up with a plausible story as to how they found out.

So you're saying the FBI made shit up? That's... that's... inconceivable!

I still don't understand the bit about "Immersive Accounts Receivable".

I still have a red mark on my forehead from the facepalm.