Another thing we do as much as possible is use self-signed certs as much as possible (obviously not always possible with client facing communications). Even I thought that was paranoid until recently, but if you think about it all the NSA has to do is intercept communication to/from CAs and brute force or have some back-door into that. Brute forcing just that small subset of internet communication can give you the certs to freely read the rest of the 99.9999% of SSL/TLS communication over the web.
To reliably do this, they must move themselves and have a self-hosted solution. If you host your data with anyone else you need to believe they value your data more than the money to be made from it or you are worth the head-ache of annoyingly trying to protect it from government agencies.
Over the last 10 years from time to time people within my company (which highly depends on privacy) have suggested hosting our servers/services with external hosting providers/cloud solutions. Every time I refuse. Their arguments are valid. It could be cheaper. It removes the hosting burden. These large providers are experts and could have better security. Even all of that being true the overriding truth as I see it is even though they may be better, cheaper, etc I can promise you we care about our data more than they will. FBI raids a data center for someone elses server and grabs our with it? Sorry, it was the FBIs fault! Any business reality makes handing over our data a legal requirement or just more convenient legally? Sorry we had to!
The last few months revelations just confirm what I've always known. If security and privacy are your business and you take it seriously, you had better be hosting it yourself. Google may have better technical experts than you, but I promise the people who actually make decisions internally care more about your data and will fight for it more when you host internally.
But according to the summary this extra memory means it isn't a tablet any more. It is now a serious device like an ultra book geared towards professionals. I'm going to go home and shove one of my 256 GB SSD in my toaster. Then that will be even more like an ultra book too than the iPad!
I think it is a sad sign of the times that basic science IS in fact a partisan political issue for some. Making a joke about that fact in a post, isn't the issue in my opinion.
Are you sure you want to try and prove a negative? AFAIC Kickstarter is the proof positive that you are wrong on this. Many companies would love to be able to access the public for initial funding but they cannot.
But with Kickstarter, the owner doesn't have to give up any equity or give contributors any voice in decisions. A VERY big difference. With Kickstarter, they basically get free money to try something if people think it is a good idea.
I think though that if Kickstarter (or a competitor) comes up with the business model that allows a small investor actually to own part of the business they are investing in, there will be government intervention
Absolutely. That would already be illegal with current regulations unless done in a way to basically copy existing VC structures and thus not be public. If you want to market you company publicly you are free to do so, but that is an IPO. If you don't yet want to go public, then you do private deals. You can do a private deal with any one you choose (even private investors), just there isn't much of a market to privately approach a ton of small investors who only bring a bit of cash to the deal for hopefully obvious reasons.
As others have said, Kickstarter has no relation to an IPO as it isn't even an investment. More confusing is reference to small investors blocked for IPOs. IPOs are by definition public to all investors. Do you mean pre-IPO? If you do mean pre-IPO what government regulation do you think stops you from investing pre-IPO? You are in fact more than free to find any private company you like and invest in it (assuming they are interested in your investment). Those are obviously risky investments, but has you say can have a lot of upside. No government restrictions however on any individual investing in any private company I'm aware of. On restriction I'm aware of is a private company cannot generally publicly market pre-IPO offerings (at that point you go IPO).
The real restriction to small investors for pre-IPO investments is the market. No company wants to take on thousands of small investors who really bring nothing to the table when they can find one (or a small number) of large investors who besides their cash also bring industry/government connections and experience in building a pre-IPO company toward IPO.
Top of the head reasons to keep windows at home and work
At home:
- Visual Studio/.NET (do work from home)
- SQL Server (do work from home)
- Windows Media Center integration with XBox 360
At work:
- Visual Studio/.NET
- SQL Server
- Exchange
- Active Directory/Group Policy/etc
- System Center
Happiness is twin floppies.