Just FYI for the purposes of considering how useful Waze is:

If you're a dedicated Waze user, don't worry: Google said it will leave the Waze team in Israel, where they will operate independently "for now." (That caveat implies Waze will be brought to America at some point.)

Maps App Will Remain Independent -- For Now

Are you wanting to compare voluntary spending or involuntary spending?

Some miniscule amount of tax money goes to defending sport franchises' rights, where a very significant percentage of the taxes people pay goes toward education.

Now comparing voluntary spending on education to sports related spending would be a very interesting number indeed. People pay for college and private school but only some of them and generally only for a limited period of their life. The spending on sports is much more prevalent and is generally spread over a lifetime.

Spending on health is another issue entirely, but voluntary verses involuntary numbers would indeed be interesting.

I'd very much like to see MSN or CNN or even Fox offer a $2000 bounty and protection from identification as a source to anyone who shows that they've successfully accessed mass information on healthcare.gov. I've never been there, but I'm a little concerned that some of my records might be accessed through the site and I don't think the people working on it are placing a high enough priority on security. I'd rather it was done by someone to provide to a news agency that gets publicly reported than someone who does it for personal profit, even though both are illegal.

Publishing the results of a successful hack of healthcare.gov, or more likely a dozen successful hacks of it, would serve the public good by providing information to the public about the failures of our government, which is pretty much what freedom of the press is for.

I hope Gawker wins for the same reason I am glad that Larry Flint won: Protecting the rights of scum ensures that my rights are safe as well.

Mod parent up.

Not saying I haven't wanted to bypass the legal system myself from time to time, but given the choice, don't you want to live in a world with laws?

Sure, I'd like to live in a world that doesn't need laws, but since ours does need them, then having people forced to follow them is the best we can hope for.

do we have to go thru a court to get a registrar to do something? that isn't reallllly that good of news.

Registrars can voluntarily do something when asked, so no, you don't have to get a court order to get a registrar to do something. They are absolutely supposed to let people move their domains when people want to also, but some of them weren't following the rules. Having them follow the rules is a good thing.

If, however, you want to force a registrar to do something which isn't part of the rules, then yes, you should have to get a court order.

Did you like the scenario where companies don't have to follow the rules you both agreed to? Most of us don't.

"Simple. I got very bored and depressed, so I went and plugged myself in to its external computer feed. I talked to the computer at great length and explained my view of the Universe to it," said Marvin. "And what happened?" pressed Ford. "It committed suicide," said Marvin and stalked off back to the Heart of Gold.

The advantage of RHEL is being able to call somebody when you have a problem that you can't resolve by reading or need to resolve faster than you can on your own. RHEL generally has patches and improvements quicker than CentOS does which is important if you're running a heavily used server exposed to the internet.

I've been quite happy with CentOS and use it in the majority of systems that I set up. However, if I need somebody to call when it crashes and the boss is standing in my doorway demanding to know what I'm doing about a problem, I want to be able to make that all important call to the experts. I have made that call once or twice and I was quite happy in feeling like my company's money was being well spent when I did.

There's a little more to it than that. The announcement doesn't cover the history CentOS has had with RHEL, but when CentOS people found bugs or made improvements, they would pass the info back to RHEL. It makes sense for CentOS because when they make improvements, they can hope that in the next release, they can just reuse RHEL work rather than having to apply the patches each time. It made sense for RHEL because they were getting a better product to offer their customers than they would have without the CentOS contributions, and by integrating the work of their biggest potential competitor, they decrease the incentive to move to somebody who has patches and improvements they don't.

It's rare to read about "synergy" between companies that actually makes sense, but RHEL and CentOS have benefitted from each others' work. The more RHEL helped CentOS, the better RHEL software was. The more CentOS helped RHEL, the better CentOS software was. This move to actually formalize their relationship makes sense for both of them.

Good thought. I should know more about the history of Tor. I checked Wikipedia and got "Originally sponsored by the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory, which had been instrumental in the early development of onion routing under the aegis of DARPA, Tor was financially supported by the Electronic Frontier Foundation from 2004 to 2005."

I was thinking of the more recent NSA activity

How would this work exactly? I'm used to having my browser and OS start with trusted roots, but I can imagine taking them out and replacing them with my own, then having to add in cert by cert, individually and specifically trusting each one. It sounds like a real hassle, but one that would grow easier as time goes on. I use NoScript to do very much the same thing, but it's no defense against MITM. Is there some system where there is a web of trust being built to do the same thing? I would *really* like to learn about that.

You know, that was my thought too. I think bittorrent is an excellent way to manage file distribution but 99% of the 1% of people who have heard of it think it is just for getting something illegal. I think Tor is an excellent system that should be directly sponsored by freedom loving countries all around the world as a way to battle oppressive and tyrannical governments, but instead it's seen as a terrorist and druggie tool.

If a tool can be used to give the people power to bypass an oppressive government, then some people will use it to bypass the laws of whatever government they are in. No matter how noble an idea for a tool is, not every tool user will use it nobly.

He does mean John Wilkes Booth. Some people believe that Lincoln acted as a tyrant and counter to the goals that the United States was founded on. Slavery is a tangential issue just like porn is to the censorship debate. People who object to the censorship are conveniently labeled as supporters of porn and people who object to the suppression of states rights are conveniently labeled as supporters of slavery. However, supporting states rights doesn't make you a supporter of slavery just like decrying censorship doesn't make you a supporter of pornography.

Many people who object to the censorship are supporters of porn and many who object to the suppression of states rights are racists. Having people you dislike agree with you is an uncomfortable position but it doesn't make the position you're in wrong.

As for me? I generally don't censor or filter my family's access to the internet, (though I did when my children were younger,) but I do log things and when appropriate discuss with them my opinions of their choices. I'm perfectly comfortable with believing that I should do that but my government and my ISP should not.

I am glad to hear somebody else say that. There are lots of potential ways to provide coverage through our income taxes which weren't a part of the discussion when we got Obamacare.

I've personally advocated a "last choice insurance by government" plan where a national insurance plan would cover everyone, regardless of income or situation but where the full price of whatever cost was incurred was put into a balance with the IRS which would perpetually collect 10% of gross income as an additional income tax until the balance was repaid. Typical health insurance is about getting a reduced cost by paying for what you don't need just in case, where "last choice insurance by government" would be paying full cost for what you need, just deferred over the lifetime of the recipient. In return, we'd all pay some extra in income tax to cover the costs that weren't recovered from the recipients who needed the coverage.