His criticisms of Microsoft's deliberate lack of interoperability, ever-changing file-format, and attempts to establish market dominance by force aren't new, but of course it's always good to hear them publicized and repeated. About ten years ago I wrote a similar article, Please Don't Send Me Microsoft Word Documents, which includes links to even earlier essays by others.

Unfortunately the article doesn't indicate whether these robots can help elderly jewel thieves carry out big heists. Inquiring minds want to know!

Google never dropped the ability to force inclusion of specific search terms; they just changed the syntax without telling anyone. Before you had to prepend a + to any term you wanted to include in the results. Now you instead need to surround the term with quotation marks.

Quadruple ROT-13.

This is precisely why I don't use PGP, TrueCrypt, ssh, or any of those other "cool" encryption tools used by millions of sheeple. All my data privacy and security needs are taken care of by my own custom-written, unbreakable encryption algorithm.

Not necessarily. There are lots of conceivable purposes of a paper ballot. For example, when you have a large number of voters, it's much easier to count ballots if everyone votes on paper and sends them to a counter than to get all the voters into a room and have them raise their hands. Paper records also make recounts easier, regardless of the size of the electorate. Paper ballots may also be used to enforce limited secrecy (for example, secrecy at the time of voting only, but not at the time of counting—this is important if you need the voters to be accountable to their decisions after the fact, but don't want them to make their decisions based on knowledge of what their colleagues are deciding). I have participated and voted in such semi-secret or non-secret ballots as a voting member or officer in various organizations; it's not at all unusual.

Whether or not paper ballots are meant to enforce total secrecy in this particular jurisdiction depends entirely on the applicable legislation. I'm inclined to believe that the judge, as someone familiar with the law and after a dutiful review of the relevant state and federal legislation, has made an informed decision that nothing in that legislation supports the view that ballots are required to be secret. Of course, it's possible he missed or misinterpreted something, in which case a higher court can overrule him; however I wouldn't be so quick to assume that his ruling is the result of malice or gross incompetence. And if the ruling is upheld and people are outraged by oversight on the part of past legislators, then the easy fix is to enshrine ballot secrecy in electoral law.

I think including an ND variant is important for works which are polemic rather than purely informational. For example, if some person or group writes a political manifesto, they may want it distributed as widely as possible, and thus allow redistribution and commercial use. They will probably also want their name associated with that manifesto. What they do not want is someone else to take that manifesto, change the text slightly so that it advocates distasteful or diametrically opposed ideas, and then redistribute the modified version while preserving the original authors' names in the credits. This makes it seem as though the original authors are promoting the ideas contained in the modified manifesto, particularly if the modifier has (deliberately or otherwise) credited them conspicuously. The modifier need not even have bad intentions in doing so; perhaps his intent was not to embarrass the original authors but simply to reuse what he thought was very good prose and very good arguments.

Of course, this is a potential problem even with non-polemic texts; I could find some CC-licensed software manual or Wikipedia article written by some famous figure, incorporate parts of it into a distasteful manifesto, and then release it with the innocent authors' names attached to it. But I think such scenarios are less likely to occur simply because it's more difficult to attach opinions and calls to action to a purely informational text than to one which is already polemic.

The translations look terribly inconsistent and even completely erroneous. The German one, for example, strangely mixes verb forms: "throw" is "wirf" (informal imperative) but "catch" is "fangen" (infinitive). "char" is translated as "aeichen", which isn't even a word in German. Are the "translators" just people with no knowledge of the target language who are simply looking up words in a dictionary? If so I don't see how this project is possibly going to be of use to anyone.

When the government doesn't respect your right to peaceably assemble, how else are you supposed to protest?

With your vote, of course. Last I checked the American government still generally respected your right to do that. If you don't agree with the laws on peaceful assembly, or with the enforcement of same, you can always vote in new representatives who pledge to amend, repeal, and/or better enforce those laws.

Publishers and other IP holders would flee the US in droves. Hollywood and Silicon Valley would cease to exist as world centres of filmmaking and software development, respectively. Without the obscenely long protection period afforded by current copyright and other IP laws, major publishers would no longer consider it profitable to arrange for their works to be produced in the US. They would instead move their operations to countries with IP laws favourable to their monopolies. Perhaps a better thought experiment would be if most or all countries cut their copyright and other IP terms simultaneously. If just one of them does it all that will do is hurt their competitiveness in the international IP market.

Can we please have a modern command prompt in the year 2012? A modern cmd prompt is: any true type font, any size also full size, completition of commands with tab key, searchable history of cmds, different background, different text color, etc. For an example of a modern cmd prompt, see Konsole (KDE).

You're right about everything except for the tab completion and command history. These features are provided (if at all) by the shell, not Konsole.

I'm not so sure you can definitively say that it's been abandoned. Even before Microsoft bought Skype it would often be months or years between releases.

Or better yet, a bathroom mirror.

This reminds me of a recent Diamond Geezer post lampooning the new legal restrictions on the use of the words "London" and "2012":

We demand that you change your behaviour and amend your speech. Watch, and learn:

• Instead of "Today is January 3rd 2012" say "Today is three days after 2011."
• Instead of signing legal documents "03/01/2012" write "03/01/12"
• Instead of "My baby is due in June 2012" say "I'm having a baby in a special year, I am very blessed."
• Instead of "Do you have any 2012 tickets?" say "Do you have any Inspirational National Event tickets?"
• Instead of "2012 is turning out to be a shit year already" say "I think I'll just pop down to John Lewis and buy a cuddly Mandeville."

In July, it will also become illegal to mention the word "London" in public. We will issue further instructions at this time.

He's only half-joking—the British Parliament really did pass a law, the London Olympic Games and Paralympic Games Act 2006, which effectively prohibits the use of these words in certain combinations, except by the Olympics organizing committee and its official sponsors.* According to LOCOG's own guidelines, the prohibited expressions are

– any two of the words: Games, Two Thousand and Twelve, 2012, Twenty-Twelve
OR
– any word in the list above with one or more of the words: London, medals, sponsors, summer, gold, silver, bronze

*Technically, the only real crime is creating a false association between a business and the Olympics, regardless of what language is used, but the Act singles out a number of particular words and expressions for special consideration by the courts.