My best guess? I'd say you need a liberal democracy that manages to avoid becoming a complete nanny state, as that undermines the human drive and dignity of self reliance, not to mention it's generally economically unfeasible. At the same time, it needs to be strong and vigilant enough to avoid letting corporations run roughshod over the population. Liberal democracies, while not perfect by any means, seem to be better at protecting individual liberty than any other form of government.

I believe capitalism should be viewed as an amoral economic engine of unmatched vitality, sort of like a nuclear power plant. It's got some nasty downsides, but it's really unmatched when it comes to economic production, and that's important for a society to thrive as well.

I think *all* governments tend toward oppression. Some types of government pretty much guarantee it, while some just inch their way there over years and generations. If the progress is slow, then at least citizens have the opportunity to fight against that inevitable progression, or even reverse it on occasion.

It's much more cathartic to gripe about the problem than to listen to a practical solution that fixes the issue at hand. What are you, some sort of... man?

Actually, I didn't notice this on any of my last trips. It wouldn't have been rocket science to figure out on my last trip either, as I use Google Calendar to leave notes for myself about times and dates of my trips, and the trip arrangements were made via my gmail account.

I actually had to explicitly search for that sort of stuff myself when I was away from home, and it wasn't hard to do. I literally just asked my phone: "Where is the nearest Italian restaurant?", and it responded with a list of them within five miles. Then I clicked on one that looked good, and then asked for directions. I'd never actually tried that before, and it worked beautifully. That's Google services done right. If I ask a question and need information, figure out how to provide me with a good answer. But I don't need an assistant who's constantly making "helpful" suggestions about that sort of thing.

Here's another example. I recently went to Verizon's website to look at replacing a lost charging cable and outlet adapter (from my recent trip as well), but didn't buy anything. Several hours later, Verizon e-mailed me with a helpful "we can help you find the phone accessory you need! Just ask us!". Not impressive technically, but honestly, sort of creepy, and makes me feel like not going back to their site. Essentially, it was just a reminder that said "when you're signed in and looking around on our site, remember that we're tracking every move you make!". Ok, not a big deal, but it didn't make a good impression on me.

And all those little taxes, from city, state, and country, all add up to between 40% and 60% of most US citizens' income. How much is enough? No one (well, maybe some nutjobs) wants to go back to laissez-faire, but I think it's not unreasonable to look at the amounts of graft and waste that occurs and demand better accountability before simply bending over for each new tax like a good, compliant citizen.

I have to wonder if the Chicago politicians even know what the hell they're really taxing when they attempted to tax all "cloud computing and streaming". It feels a lot more like a desperation move that they're hoping no one calls them on. Adding new taxes like this also increases the regulatory burden for its citizens and the city itself, which indirectly reduces the taxes effectiveness by increasing the overhead of compliance. It would be far better to simply adjust the property tax rate to match the expected revenue increase. Of course, that's a lot more visible, and the taxes there are already apparently pretty terrible, which is why they probably balked at that idea.

So, "get over it?" I wonder how many people will "get over it" by getting the hell out of Chicago - or at least the city itself? Having visited the area recently, I can assure you that there are lots of very expansive and attractive outlying towns and suburbs suitable for both homes and businesses.

Fascism uses the power of the state to oppress its citizens.

Capitalism uses the power of the state to ensure its corporations can oppress its citizens.

Communism uses the power of the state to oppress its citizens and ensure its economy remains in shambles.

Socialism grants significant power to the state with the expectation that it will use that power for good, and then its citizens are shocked and outraged when the government uses that power to oppress its citizens.

Wow... so this guy wants Google to know absolutely every private detail of your life so it can "connect the dots"? Financial transactions? Medical records? Google knows what food you and your friends like best so can recommend restaurants? Is this sort of hand-holding really something people want? Do you really need a computer algorithm to tell you to look up a friend in New York if you're traveling there? Can you not just ask your friend to find you a great local place to eat (hinting at a few of the types of places or foods you like)?

There's a lot that Google can do that would be really hard to do on your own. If you're in a strange city, the ability to ask "Where is the nearest Italian Restaurant?" is awesome, and it can guide you there in your rental car step by step (this was exactly what happened to me a month ago). Google doesn't need to know my food preferences. I can decide for myself that I'm in the mood for some deep dish pizza, thank you. And financial transactions or medical records? No, Google, you're not getting them from me, at least if I have anything to say about it.

I don't consider myself privacy nut. I use G-mail, and don't mind the targeted ads I see. I don't really care all that much about Google tracking my search results - fairly boring stuff to anyone but myself. I can always switch to DuckDuckGo if I need privacy there. But the extent to which some people are willing to give *everything* to Google sometimes surprises me.

Technically true, but that's not a helpful description to call everything "human error". We all understand there's human error involved, but the language used gives us more information. If the machine had a faulty circuit, we still call it a "problem with the robot" in order to affix blame not on the robot, but which humans involved - the ones who were working with the robot or the ones who built the robot. I'm pretty sure everyone understands humans built the robot, and are thus involved in the process and potential blame for when things go wrong.

In ham radio command and control over remote digital ground stations all have clear text passwords because it's against the law to encrypt on ham radio bands. So every password is a single use.

Today, if I connect to the digipeater that is near me I will use the password S4tA12fDg
and it will work once and only for a certain window for that single login to happen.

Any company worth anything would do the same. Here is your link, here is your one time use password, you had better get the file in the next 20 minutes or that password will not work.

Perfectly secure for simple crap that really has zero value like a school transcript.

And everyone is even less impressed with your accomplishments.

If it's Ubuntu, it's a new problem, or only affects certain makes and models. I ran kubuntu on an Acer notebook for quite a while, and its wifi was far better than Windows.

I suspect it's an issue with drivers; Linux has had driver issues in the past, especially with newer equipment.

The irony is that it could be seen as "karma" that Jobs basically committed "suicide by woo", refusing to treat his cancer with any recognized scientific technique for most of a year and instead trying pretty much every technique in the book popular among the sort of person who typically believes in karma.

So perhaps all of the woo stuff actually works, but it plays in with the laws of karma ;)

Sorry but these are going to be USB 3.0 monitors, so they will not be 1920X1080 or higher and not impressive. They need to be displayport to leverage 2 displays at full high resolution. THEN be a high quality enough panel to not have defects.

I'll stick with the ASUS usb panel I carry with my laptop for when I actually need an extra screen. It's very low res (1366X768) but it's useful for having a PDF up or other very low framerate app up while I am at a customers site.

I read that in the sense of, "Let's say that I'm in the position of being a general manager", as a hypothetical rather than something to be taken literally.

That's the fault of the black community with allowing their peers telling black kids to stop "being white" when they study and try to get good grades so they can go to college and become computer scientists.

Exactly, I looked at photos of greek citizens standing at ATM machines today and thought, "wow they have horrible taste in clothing and are all fat like we are in America.

If it was not for the greek lettering on buildings, I would have guessed the photo was from florida.