The last time I posted how Cisco uses their routers to sell our privacy people responded that they were just complying with laws, which I question deeply because of the EXTENT to which they improve and market their eavesdropping capability, and how they constantly boast having a lead in the market in this area, appearing to go far beyond the law.

Now we have this? Really? Someone care to argue they are just complying with CALEA to avoid being sent to guatanamo bay?

You can argue however you want that it is right or wrong. But, it is not theft. That is, you do not deprive another person of access to their possession.

I've always hated theft. It is one of the 10 commandments. I grew up learning to hate it because people stole from me. When someone steals your bike, your wallet, or other personal possessions, it hurts. You are now deprived of it, while someone else is selling it for $10 of crack. Stealing hurts innocent people. I continue to hate stealing.

But, if I paint my bike blue, and my next door neighbor, seeing that, paints his bike blue, he didn't steal my bike. I can call him a "copy cat". But, I still get to ride my bike. I just won't be the only one on the block with a blue bike.

Yes, we all know the theory of lost sales. But, we all know that copying information does not mean that the person would of purchased that copy of that information if they had not of copied it against the will of someone claiming ownership of that information.

Thus, I lose respect for anyone who tries to insist that copying information is a violation of the 10 commands along with "though shall not kill" and "though shell not commit adultery". Our laws do not support that claim, and we should do more to discredit those who make it.

Don't get me wrong. I do not advocate copyright infringement. I am just tired of hearing people try to confuse people into thinking that copying information is hurting people like stealing real physical property does and is a violation of one of the 10 commandments.

What is a Word Perfect (WP) phone?

After Cisco put back doors in all their equipment, why would anyone who knows this ever consider buying a tablet or any device with plenty of alternatives?

http://www.networkworld.com/community/node/57070

I'd love to believe that like Sun's dramatic turnaround after years of being the enemy of open source, Microsoft was doing the same thing. And, to be sure, Sun did their turnaround, and IBM in the early 90s as well, out of desperation to get back on course when they were clearly headed in the wrong direction and losing out on new things because of it.

But, in Microsoft's case, all I see is case-by-case desperation that lacks the overall cultural change that IBM and Sun went through. Their browser was losing market share, hated by many, and stood a high chance of losing out on new things like HTML 5. So, yes, they have BEGUN to embrace open standards here. Yet, Silverlight appears to have all but died, not because of a change in Microsoft's morale stance on open standards, but simply because it could not gain critical market share with it. They could not overcome Adobe, and HTML 5 puts both Flash and Silverlight at risk.

Then there are moves like this that open source a part of .NET. Have they, like Sun, completely turned around and become a huge friend of the open source community? Or, are they trying to save something that currently has little chance of survival in the Cloud, which is being primarily built on Linux and languages that run on it, notably Java.

So far, all I see is case-by-case moves of desperation rather than the wholehearted change that turns them into true friends of open standards and open source. Statements they have made to support open standards and open source have been by an individual here, or there, and not official representation of the core values or culture of the organization as a whole. Thus, I consider these statements to be even weaker indicators of change than moves like a change to use an Apache license.

At best, I am cautiously optimistic. The fact that they would even consider the Apache license is a miracle when contrasted to their historical vehemence towards open standards licenses. Clearly, they are not AS EVIL as they were. But, are they the new IBM and Sun? I don't think so. Are they headed in that direction? I hope so. But, they still have a long way to go before that happens.

When Best Buy can sell a computer with Linux on it without violating a contract with Microsoft because Microsoft saw the error in their monopolous anti-Linux contracts, then I'll reconsider whether or not they are evil. When Microsoft completely opens up .NET, putting all its parts under an open source license and permitting all stakeholders to play a role in its evolution, permitting it to run equally well on Linux as it does on Windows, I'll reconsider their place in our ecosystem. We'll know when this has happened when I can watch Netflix on Linux, and not because Netflix was able to replace Silverlight.

"with no evidence for"? How would you know, being unwilling to hear the controversy? You're presuming to completely understand the counter-argument without hearing it. I find it interesting that so many people here are presuming it will be a religious discussion, and consider the assertions in the theories of evolution to be unquestionable, with any attempt to scrutinize to be coming from a lower intelligence (which is a purely arrogant assumption.)

There are purely scientific discussions about the weaknesses of the theories of evolution, such as discussion of the unproven assumptions our conclusions are often based on.

I've learned that as a species, our brains are not only prone to believe assumptions, we practically require them to do tasks like drive a car in the night in a blizzard. I suspect the average person makes a minimum of 100-1000 false assumptions per day.

This nature of ours is part of the reason we've have been very wrong about scientific claims in the past. It baffles me how many people claim to be scientific, yet consider the assumptions used to draw scientific conclusions to be unquestionably holy, clearly directing their need to possess faith into what they believe to be scientific conclusions of a higher intelligence (arrogance).

For example, how do you know that radioactive decay rates have been constant throughout time, one of the presumptions built into the dating of fossils? Remember when we were taught that all the oil and gas had to be created by plants because hydrocarbons could only come from living organisms? Is that mathematically possible? Have you measured the quantity of plants required for this assumption to be true? These assumptions have been taught in our schools very recently as unquestionable truths.

http://io9.com/5619954/the-sun-is-changing-the-rate-of-radioactive-decay-and-breaking-the-rules-of-chemistry