I hadn't heard about the CoD incident, but ... [goes off, looks it up] holy shit, that's douchery of a high order. Tho I'm not sure the cops had much less douchery... I mean, 60 officers, WTF? I guess he can count himself fortunate they didn't overhear game gunfire and react by opening fire themselves.

If I had to wipe and reinstall Windows with any regularity, yeah, I'd be looking for a different OS. I don't spend all that time and effort getting it all just how I want it, only to have to replace it and start over. Reinstalling is against my religion. I use the damn machine, I don't just play with it. My OS setup is not disposable.

WinME was actually very good about drivers -- the install routine was smart enough to look for one that works even if it wasn't a WinME driver. I'd not seen that before and was suitably impressed. And while WinME sucked donkey balls out of the box, it could be made 100% stable -- turn off System Restore, apply 98Lite in default mode, and it goes from unable to even crash properly, to never crashes again. (Didn't help the sucky resource management, tho.)

But when we stoop to comparing FOSS to WinME... yeah, that shows just how ...unrealistic... their expectations and performance really are. The driver structure is insane. You do NOT build ephemeral software (ie. liable to be updated, possibly often) into the kernel, and not expect to have the whole house of cards fall down too often for comfort.

Agreed. I never used a case with my iPhone, and a protruding lens would've been annoying and probably gotten caught on things on my pockets.

... but I do admit that I'm the only person I know of my friends who doesn't have a case on his phone.

FAA oversight of drones is truly helping that technology. No for-profit use allowed, no guarantee when they might get around to allowing it. Now let's oversee some robotics!

We need less federal government, not more.

Then paintball some government cameras.

No shit. Do you think the majority of the population supports this? Especially after all the known incidents of domestic spying, illegal wiretaps, secret no fly lists, free speech zones for demonstrators, etc. There's very little freedom left in our free country. I'm not against surveillance, but tracking each person individually is a slippery slope. Attend a protest the administration doesn't like, they pull the video footage, next thing you know.. everyone there is on a watch list and is about to be audited by the IRS. You might even end up on a secret list for health care, kind of like the secret waiting lists at the VA. Ooo, I'm sorry, we have no openings for you.

By the way, your summary of our system of government is wrong. We elect people, but they don't represent us. Any talk of that ends the moment they win the election.

The six has a flat back, Mr. Always Corrected.

By MILF, I assume you are referring to the Media Input Lense Feature.

We are still talking about Apple, right?

Anything done with our tax money should be done with the consent of the governed.

I do not consent.

This is a classic example of "Paralysis by Analysis"

Also, the programmer was an idiot. Either use a priority queue or at the very least a timer to force a decision.

while( 1 ) {
    if( people_in_danger ) {
        queryWhoToSave( people_in_danger );
        if( time_to_make_choice++ > CANT_DECIDE_WHO_TO_SAVE )
            savePerson( rand() );
    }
    else
        people_in_danger = ScanEnvironment();
}

No, there's been an open source implementation of OpenStep (the real name of Cocoa) for decades. Some of the platform stuff is Apple specific, but that is true of Linux and OpenBSD as well. You can handle it the same way you handle any other platform incompatibility: encapsulate the incompatibility into as small a piece as possible.

Believe it or not, you can actually compile Objective-C code for Android and run it. Of course, you will have to recompile it, but that's not an issue when you have the source code.

So, any serious multinational can have the stock distributed enough to get past your first law....

As to your second, at least in the USA, you're going to be blocked by the First Amendment to some extent. After all, "lobbying" is done by people no matter where the money comes from. As is "political activity".

IN other words, you need to think the problem through a little more carefully...

By the by, are you aware that if Google (for example) were paying ZERO taxes in the USA now, and the laws were changed so that they were taxed at 50% on worldwide revenues, their tax obligation would pay to run the Federal government for a bit less than 16 hours.

Do note that Google is paying some taxes in the USA, and corporate tax rates are rather under 50%. Which means the actual benefit from taxing Google's worldwide income would not be nearly so significant as you might think....

This is exactly right. The US government could close this loophole, "crack down" on corporate tax avoidance, without any global cooperation. All they need to do is pass the law, and Obama can sign it.

The OECD has no power to change anything here, so instead they did something they have power to accomplish: they wrote a report. Bravo.

So instead of a crusty old veteran "maverick" and a cheerleader of debatable intelligence, we got a miserly career politician with impossibly white teeth (polished by repeatedly putting his foot in his mouth, no doubt) and a community organizer who demanded 10 years of tax returns from his opponent but deemed producing his own birth certificate a challenge.

Sounds like a WIN