Please take action at the EFF to communicate to your representatives.

I changed the boiler plate text in the email to say the following, which I believe has more of a punch:

_____________________
I am a constituent and I urge you to reject the Internet Blacklist Bills (PROTECT IP Act in the Senate and the Stop Online Piracy Act in the House).

In addition to the danger these bills pose to Internet security, free speech online, and innovation, I am deeply concerned by the risk that these unprecedented assaults on foreign entities will be interpreted as a provocation of war, particularly by leaders who are already hostile towards US policies, such as Putin of Russia. This will be heavily compounded as this inevitably leads to harming sites that many will view as innocent victims of this highly subjective process and clearly biased intent towards increasing corporate profits in Hollywood.

This bill will also re-enforce the image that congress is purchased and own by corporate interests.

Lastly, due to the sweeping level of censorship, this bill will popularize methods of overcoming censorship to the US, technology that is usually reserved for hardship regimes. This will certainly make it difficult for the intelligence community to find real crimes, as their chatter becomes increasingly co-mingled with mainstream on-line anti-censorship technology.

The Internet Blacklist Legislation is dangerous and short-sighted, and I urge you to join Senator Wyden and other members of Congress, such as Representatives Lofgren, Eshoo and Issa, in opposing it.
_________________

The device can use the following improvements:

1> Cover an entire wall (no more repainting or physical wall paper!!!), while supporting touch. 2> Be able to act as a screen to any wireless device. Why can't you "project" your Android to your TV.

Regarding content: all TV needs to be on-demand, except for live events, of course. We're progressing here.

When we accomplish these things, then, perhaps, we can say we're done improving the TV.

Of course, at this point, we might want to consider burning books, perhaps converting our fire departments into book burning units.

Individuals might initially send through secure SMTP. But, from that point on, I don't think the relays will use it. Thus, you can securely drop it off at your ISP or whatever SMTP you're email client is configured to use. But, to transport it to the destinations in the TO/CC/BCC addresses, it has to relay it. At this point, it will likely use port 25.

That is very true. I believe there is an opportunity to anonymize communications via P2P technology. Sometimes, the best way to hide a sound is to create lots of noise. When all of our direct communications become meaningless due to the randomness of P2P, and our intended communications require a random number of P2P hops, and the process is protected with encryption, it becomes very difficult to discern the intended communications graph from the random P2P one.

We've had the ability to encrypt email for years, and we battled for PGP, yet no one uses it. The question is how do you get people to encrypt email by default, particularly when it requires participation by both sides. Add this challenge to IM.

If so, then yes, you'll have lots of developers.

The real criminals are Congress, who created laws and regulations (or ignored the need to create either), that are harming our economy. Let's begin with their refusal to correct the continued IRS persecution of 1099s in the tech labor market for that past 15 years, driving up the costs of US labor by requiring middlemen to take as much as 70% of the share before the skilled resource receives their W-2, causing countless technology jobs to go overseas in markets that are not regulated by the IRS. If congress passes a law stopping the IRS from punishing corporations that bring in independent contractors, then our economy can begin to experience real growth again as companies can hire more US based tech workers for the same amount of money, while US tech workers can earn higher pay.

Then there were years of warnings where Congress was informed annually that there was a huge capital exodus from US markets in all types of securities EXCEPT debt securities since 2001. This capital flight in our stock markets was because our production markets became comparatively uncompetitive, also in part due to a tax regime that continued to encourage companies to move operations overseas.

Yet, does Congress accept blame for their actions leading up to the global economic crisis and continuing today as we have very high unemployment and anemic growth? Do they pass the simple laws needed to fix this, which do not require any spending, but merely correcting the economic unintended consequences of a tax policy that is clearly broken in a new technologically based dynamic global playing field?

No! Instead, they try to point the finger at anyone else they can so that no one notices that they are the cause of our problems. Worse yet, they avoid the very simple change needed to fix things because if they passed these laws, people might ask the question, "why did it take so long to realize these fixes were needed?" Their fear of being identified as the cause is the reason they continue to keep the status quo path that prevents us from enjoying the economic prosperity we built our country on.

I am angry at Congress, because they care more about popularity and being elected than actually doing what is needed to put our country on a solid path of economic growth. They refuse to admit to and repent for their past mistakes, and continue to blame others because they are more about re-election than our childrens' future!

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I multi-boot my bedroom pc, which is my primary pc when i'm home. very very happy with ubunutu. 6 seconds to boot. pc is ready 2 seconds after i log in. wireless connects very quickly and is solid. shuts down in 6 seconds flat every time. updates are non-intrusive. i dread booting into windows where it takes 30 seconds to boot, 60 seconds after login before i can click on anything, updates are a nitemare, pc response is slow, and shutdown is at least 30 seconds if there are no updates to install. the software on ubuntu blows away the options on windows, too. i'm typing this with ubuntu.

When someone asks me to help them get rid of their virus, instead of telling them I can't help them, I now rush over with an Ubuntu install CD. Months later, I ask them how they feel about the difference, they say, "the computer is a lot faster." When I ask them if they lost any abilities, they say, "no". In all honestly, most users can't really tell that much of a difference. Facebook and Youtube are Facebook and Youtube.

Performance is what people want now, even if they only intend to use their web browser. Their computer should boot and shutdown fast, and not put barriers between them and the apps they choose to use, web or desktop. Ubuntu is far superior in this respect. With Windows, you pay $100-200 more for an OS that is worth less than Ubuntu.

So, why do people pay for Windows? Because they don't have a choice. They go to Best Buy, and there is not one computer that offers a lower price if you don't want Windows!!! This is the real problem, protected by Microsoft's unethical behavior of taking advantage of Congress' lack of understanding by insisting that if a consumer doesn't pay for Windows, they plan to steal it. Why on earth would people steal an OS that is far inferior to the free and legal OS?!?

I'd call a lot of Microsoft's ideas foolish, and I'd use their stock chart for the past decade to prove it. Like, for instance, requiring OS upgrades to upgrade IE... foolish. The OS dependency of .NET has hurt, not helped, .NET. The biggest weakness of SQL Server is its dependence on the OS, and part of the reason it can never truly compete with DB2 and Oracle. When the FTC quit trying to break up Microsoft, I told everyone to dump Microsoft stock because its OS division is its own worst enemy. Yes, it sustained its cash flow for years to come because of Windows. But, it did this at the long-term cost of innovation and competitiveness in nearly every other area of its business.

If it Skype becomes Windows only, it will be very foolish. But, that would hardly be a new line of thought for Microsoft.

I keep hearing the word license used more and more to copyrighted works. I remember it beginning with software, which was a word that we distinguished as applying to the executable binaries, not the source code. This distinction remained for a long time, justifying the contractual relationship with using software that does not apply to reading books. Now, we hear licensing all the time to copyrighted works. This is creating an image that the owner of the copyright can unilaterally create a contractual relationship tied to what happens after the works are copied. In the context of music, is it justifiable to refer to these fees as a form of licensing? Should we be pushing back on the use of the term "licensing"?

I can't tell you how happy I've been since I got rid of my $100/mo cable bill, saving me $6600 over 5.5 years! I've invested that money on better TVs/monitors, computers, and wireless keyboards. I've been a Netflix member since 1999, so already realized that nearly all the movies on the movie channels were things I watched on DVD already. Streaming and using the internet as my DVR ironically meant that I now had more content than I could ever watch, the opposite of what you fear.

The only downside has been sports, which have been slow to catch on. I do plan on paying for the NHL ticket next season, though, which will let me stream all games over the Internet.

The NFL wants you to pay for Dish TV before you can use the Internet. They just don't get it.

Erik