The problem is that at some of these places, no one actually knows how these systems work. They've become the mystery blackbox that no one touches for fear that it might stop working. If documentation exists it's in dozens of binders that someone put together in the 80s but hasn't been updated since the 90s, if documentation doesn't exist anyone who was involved in developing the application has moved on, retired, or died. They contain cute little coding trick there were nice when resources were expensive but are time consuming to follow and painful to workaround when a bug fix is required. These examples are real world I'm talking about and involve applications that would make you want to keep your money under a mattress.

There are banks, hospitals, utilities and other institutions that don't take kindly to change. These institutions have ancient (as in I ran across a piece of code that was written when I was in diapers) legacy systems running key functionality that many people's everyday lives depend on. If you ever had to take a look at any of the code for these legacy systems it would frighten you, but what is more frightening is that most of these institutions have an "if it's not broken don't fix it" mentality so don't expect modern security issues to be addressed in a lot of these legacy systems anytime soon.

I've worked at two companies where we created libraries for monitoring cursor movement, what the business folks used it for I'm not certain but this has been done over and over. What is so new and innovative about their implementation that it is patentable?

Actually yes http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/06/16/AR2010061605541.html?hpid=sec-business Lawmakers on Wednesday reached a compromise to allow expanded audits of the Federal Reserve, part of an effort to shine light on the central bank's emergency lending during the financial crisis while safeguarding its independence in setting monetary policy.

Sounds like Kumar and his friend Harold have been spending too much time baking weed brownies and not silicon wafers.

Where have you been? Sony was locking down really good hardware with ridiculous restrictions before Apple had even thought of it. See minidisc.

There is an easy solution to this, and it is easier said than done. Stop working for multi-national corporations. Start your own business, work for smaller local businesses or universities, and only do business with other like-minded individuals. Companies like IBM are able to do this only because the best and the brightest in the US allow them too. This is especially true in the world of IT where the startup costs are so low that if every developer, syadmin, dba, etc decided they were going to start their own companies and do business with each other exclusively we could. If IT ends up like manufacturing in 20 years we have no one to blame but ourselves we have way more power and formal education than factory workers ever had.

Don't worry, Carlos Slim is a generous man, he'll give Bill Gates some side work till he gets back on his feet.

On a more serious note, we now have more millionaires and billionaires than at any other time in the history of the world! The wealth is trickling down baby!

Actually there are lots of natural resources in China, what the Chinese are doing and have been doing for years is letting the The United States waste time and money in various regions around the world, then swooping in and securing deals for resources. They are doing that right now in Afghanistan; we have spent billions on relief for Africa, the Chinese instead spend billions securing the rights to natural resources in Africa.

Thanks for finally fucking noticing. I've called to complain to ATT numerous times over the years and every single time i was given the following bullshit excuses:
- You need a new sim card
- Your phone might be damaged
- We don't see any problems in the area

So when is ATT going to give me my money back for diminished service?

I will get modded to hell for this but as someone who is of Haitian decent and has family there right now the true cause of the corruption is bribery from states, corporations and even the IMF. The rice riots are a perfect example When the IMF loaned much needed money to Haiti it came with requirements that they open the country to "Free Trade" (Many Haitian politicians got their palms greased in this deal then left the country) when that happened American corporations flooded the market with cheap food which sounds great at first but when you consider the fact that the majority of the population made its living as farmers it doesn't sound so great. Farmers either lost their businesses or were forced into what amounted to virtual slavery for corporations who conveniently had money to lend them in their hour of need as long as they grew the crops (which were largely inedible) that the corporations wanted. Now you say "It all worked out great the farmers now have jobs, everything worked out for all parties!"

WRONG, the corporations paid the farmers pathetic prices for their crops because they were desperate and with agriculture being the only means of earning a living everyone in the country turned to farming, they tore down every tree in site in order to use every bit of land so they could earn enough just to survive. The worst part about this happened much later, with large areas of land in Haiti virtually treeless due to over-farming, Haiti got pounded by hurricanes three years in a row. With no trees to hold the ground into place when there was flooding large areas of land simply washed away killing thousands.

If the world really wants to help Haiti we need to do three things....

1.) Forgive much of Haiti's debt
2.) Lift all of the ridiculous restrictions that came with the debt
3.) Restrict foreign corporations and states from meddling in the country's politics

No one ever mentions Tesla

How did the parent get modded flamebait? Does someone have a fundamental misunderstanding of the term flamebait?

Yes, because Obama has REALLY fucked the country over in his 1 Month in office. In case you haven't figured it out I'll paraphrase Obama, "He Won". If you feel like you are being fucked I hope you have a lot of vaseline cause you are going to need it.

On opensuse firefox has crash reporting removed I will install a firefox version with crash reporting and respond back in this thread.

Thanks.