Yeah, it's the American use of "liberal" which has shifted away from classic liberalism (libertarianism).

Our "socialist" parties are usually called Social-Democrats, at least in Northern Europe.

Your Danish friend is a little confused by your use of "liberal". In the United States, the meaning of liberalism has parted significantly from classical liberalism, it has been renamed libertarianism.

When a Danish person talks about liberals it's safer to assume he means his "economically conservative" and "socially liberal" political parties.

- The biggest party in Denmark is the pro-free market Liberal Party.
- The Liberal Alliance Party of Denmark is even more Libertarian.

I find it interesting that Skype was mentioned next to Netscape and Salesforce.com. Skype is a European company, which was founded in Estonia by a Dane, a Swede and several Estonians. Did it really receive funding at any of these events - let alone Demo Europe?

Skype was founded in 2003 by Janus Friis from Denmark and Niklas Zennström from Sweden. The Skype software was developed by the Estonians Ahti Heinla, Priit Kasesalu, and Jaan Tallinn, who together with Friis and Zennström were also behind the peer-to-peer file sharing software Kazaa..

It wasn't just Safari either. I found it even more interesting that applications in general would be paused if "App Nap" determined they were not active/seen/playing.

The newly merged company will have the two main co-creators of the original MySQL, Monty Widenius head of Monty Program AB, and David Axmark of SkySQL.

Ulf Michael "Monty" Widenius, is the main author of the original version of the open-source MySQL database and a founding member of the MySQL AB company.

While Israel is a sovereign nation, it is also a signatory to a number of human rights conventions... They've voluntarily given themselves restrictions on what laws they can make and how they apply them.

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights' Article 12 says:

"No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to attacks upon his honour and reputation. Everyone has the right to the protection of the law against such interference or attacks."

http://www.hri.org/docs/UDHR48.html

This guy isn't just anybody, he's a former Belgian ambassador.

Brendan Nelson, Australian Ambassador to Belgium, Luxembourg, NATO and the EU.

I don't know how it's in the US or Australia but in my Western country the executive(s) are specifically liable for the company's actions.

Especially their own illegal or irresponsible actions - but not limited to their own either. Owners of corporations may in fact also be liable [here], depending on circumstances and ownership. It's far too complicated to go into detail here, I work with the law for a living in my European country.

Yes, ignorance of the law is no excuse. German law requires you to respond to queries from consumers, thinking you do not have to is failure to abide. Citizens and commercial entities have a duty to actively look up, understand and abide by local laws [in most countries that I know of].

We have already established that German law does not require there to be a payment involved to become a consumer of said services. Google provides a [free] service, consumers therefore have rights.

Lest you forget Google is incorporated in almost every European country you can name.

Google Germany GmbH
ABC-Str. 19
20354 Hamburg
Deutschland

Telefon: +49 40-80-81-79-000
Fax: +49 40-4921-9194

Google München
Google Germany GmbH
Dienerstraße 12
80331 München
Deutschland

I'm afraid you're at least somewhat wrong. Gov't bonds are solid investments that have a low, but reliable return.

If you're worried about preserving your wealth, but still need a return to fund your pension payouts, gov't bonds are a "safe" bet in many countries around the world. That's the type of debt Social Security, state and local gov't, pension funds own. The debt is real, the interest payments are real and they have to issue new bonds every year.

A government bond is a bond issued by a national government, generally promising to pay a certain amount (the face value) on a certain date, as well as periodic interest payments. Bonds are debt investments whereby an investor loans a certain amount of money, for a certain amount of time, with a certain interest rate, to a company or country.

Have you seen the actual numbers? Who owns the US national debt?

- China 8%

US gov't and pension funds 46,1%:

- The Federal reserve 11,3%
- Social Security fund 19%
- US households 6,6%
- State & local gov't 3,5%
- State, local pensions funds 2,2%
- Private pension funds 3,5%

http://www.businessinsider.com/who-owns-us-debt-2011-7?op=1

Yes, I see your point, I suppose it's been possible for some time, but now almost anyone can do it [with other technology than the Raspberry].

Is it possibly easier to add custom hardware to the Raspberrry Pi? I mean they're both Linux boxes, but one of them is designed to be extended.

You could add an FM transceiver for remote operations without communicating over LAN/WAN?

when a country tries to extort money from a company that company should threaten to cease operations within that country so call their bluff.

There's always someone with this silly logic on Slashdot! The world doesn't revolve around the company in question, it's the other way around!

Each time Microsoft or Google have been involved in some sort of legal issue in Europe - some guy like you pops up to tell them to "just" leave Europe. The problem is that Europe represents more than 50% of the profits for companies like Microsoft! Who loses then? That would be Skype, because there will always be the competition.

I imagine Skype does even better in Europe than in the US, due to the fact that there are more people in general (700 million) - and because people call across national borders and not state lines. Never mind the millions of immigrants from Africa to Asia.