Fortunately, this will only lend more power to Assange's cause. Polls show that 70% of Americans approve of the leaks, and he is very widely considered to be a hero by many people. Imagine what would happen if that insurance file of his happens to be huge news, like evidence of 9/11 being an inside job or something. Just sayin'.

I was arrested 3 years ago because my roommate had drugs in the dorm room. Three years after being found not guilty, the police contacted me via Facebook to inform me that they wanted to return the evidence they seized from me, including nearly $500 in cash. After calling the officer who contacted me, I was mailed a check for the amount. Pretty interesting stuff, although if someone had made a fake Facebook profile under my name, they might be the one with the money...

It is rather frustrating. I can't be under any sort of fluorecent lighting either, even the compact fluorescent bulbs which supposedly flicker too fast to cause any problems. This basically keeps me from going out most places.

Neurologist is unsure at the moment, but his initial guesses, based on symptoms, are photosensitive temporal lobe epilepsy or basilar type migraine. MRI and EEG both showed nothing, but that's true for a relatively large percentage of people who have problems. Neurology has come a long way, but still has a long way to go.

Would this be flicker-free? The article talks about refresh rates, but I'm not quite sure what this means in this context.

I have neurological problems and will lose consciousness if I look at any sort of flickering display, including CRTs. For some reason, plasma screen TVs also affect me (despite not "flickering" per se), and currently the only type of display I seem to be able to safely look at are regular LCD TVs/flatscreen monitors, with LED-lit screens giving me the least amount of trouble.

Even for people without serious, disabling problems like mine, displays that have (even imperceptible amounts of) flickering can cause various headaches, eyestrain, etc during prolong use.

My job involves web development and I'm a bit worried that some day the only display technologies available will be ones I can't safely look at.

> But what will it really take to beat or match the iPhone

An apple logo. seriously, that's it.

Being an iPhone owner myself, I must admit -- it's a pretty great device. . .if you jailbreak it. Unfortunately, however, most people who own the iPhone don't really use it as much more than a status symbol. Sure they'll put a few apps on there, but they're not using it for much beyond what most of the other smartphones could do.

As soon as I gained employment at my current job (which is a design job), I fit right in instantly because I had an iPhone and so did everyone else at work. Things went amiss quickly however, as the new Macbook Pro came out and everyone that had an iPhone got one of those. . .except for me. I chose a Lenovo Thinkpad because personally I'm not a huge fan of Apple Inc. and the Thinkpad I customized was more powerful for a better price. Soon people at work began to snicker, and I was in the out group again.

Yes, the iPhone is nice, but even if something nicer comes out. . .there's a very large number of people who won't buy it because it's not made by Apple. Possibly enough to prevent anything from "killing" the iPhone.

I play a lot on emulators, using my PC. Does that count as PC?

1) Drive down to house with unsecured wifi, somewhere away from where you live
2) Spoof mac address
3) Use tor
4) DBAN hard drives
And see my previous comment for how identity thieves online can and do transfer that amount of money around. A quick google search will pull up all kinds of information on this kind of activity. If there were no way for it to securely be done, it wouldn't be happening every day.

More than likely he will have them send the money via Western Union over the course of a bunch of transfers and pick it up with a fake ID or several, from a (the stupid, less secure way) from many random and differing locations, OR use WMZ or another digital currency, bounce it around via several accounts, have it cashed out in a random east european/asian county, convert it to a different currency, and then deposit it into an offshore bank account of some sort.

There are plenty of secure and anonymous ways to transfer money. I'm sure he's not stupid enough to do a direct bank transfer using a legit bank or have them give him probably marked paper money.

Replace current Captchas with P = NP problems. That'll keep 'em busy!

Since piracy is not the only way to get the game for free (eg. I could share a friend's legit copy when he's not playing it -- because it's not like there are so significantly few sales that you can't find someone who has it), I would still say it holds true that piracy isn't hurting sales.

Even if there were a magic bullet to end piracy, there are ways to easily avoid paying, and therefore I highly doubt that 90% of revenue is lost due to piracy.

Depends on how you define necessity. Quality of life is important too, and you don't have that with just the basics. Profiteering isn't just a bar to life, but quality of life.

Now about your second paragraph. What you're describing about selling for as much as they can is exactly what I'm talking about. Those people will attempt to become very rich at the expense of others who will become very poor. Once again, for every Bill Gates, there are thousands who are starving because the wealth is concentrated into his hands and not theirs.

Not everyone has food and shelter. Even people over here are starving in many places, but because capitalism has become a global phenomenon a lot of that starvation and suffering has moved to third world countries. Just because you do not see it, does not mean it is not there, and it is largely a problem of resource allocation (which would be solved in a more fair economic system). Capitalism may "work" in the US (although I disagree), but ask sweatshop laborers if it works.

Even granted these basic needs, you seem to be missing the fact that not everybody can get education and so forth to move up in our society. This is what I like to call the "anyone can become president" fallacy. There is only so much demand for doctors, presidents, etc and likewise there is so much for custodians, factory workers, etc. At some point, someone who would make a brilliant doctor has to be a custodian, because there is nothing else for him. My point here is, to tell someone "if you're poor, it's your fault for not trying harder" isn't true, because social stratification creates a situation where N number people can be upper class, M number middle class, O number upper class. Not everyone can be upper class, because if everyone was a millionaire, the value of money would be very low. There isn't always "figuring out how to get ahead," because even if everyone is competitive to their physical limit, capitalism still forces an economic hierarchy that will create some very rich and some very poor people. Those very rich are stealing, via profit and hoarding, from the very poor and thus creating this situation. Abolishing hierarchy is the solution many see to this problem.

So why are the jeans people pay $70 for at the store only $3.50 for the businesses reselling them in the US? Even if you explain that by bulk volume purchases, that's quite the mark-up. Not to mention monopolistic and anti-competitive practices, which run rampant here. Pharmaceuticals, oil, high speed internet, etc are good examples, as are Microsoft's practices which never quite seem to be fixed by antitrust suits. The presence of competition does not always drive prices down the way they should be. Your post seems to imply that competition is the solution to rampant profiteering that causes poverty, but doesn't explain the presence of multi billionaires, nor the fact that said billionaires continue to exploit workers as hard as they can for even more profit.

Not telling anyone what they're "allowed" to charge, as I'm an anarchist and it would be none of my business in such a system. I'm merely proposing that ripping people off via profit creates social stratification that leads to poverty and starvation, and suggesting a possible alternative. Nobody has all the answers or knows 100% how the perfect system would work, myself included. I do know, however, that the current hierarchical system *does not* work. Maybe it works for you, a cozy middle or upper class citizen, but ask people who are starving and have no way of changing that if it works for them. Then realize that they outnumber you.

"Bullshit. You fail." How very educated and informative of you ;-) Thanks for the explanation. Your tone implies anger. Are you getting defensive?