Seeing the pictures here I believe there is a reasonably case for prior art, no? If anything the Vatican should pay George Lucas, as he has 25 years on them ;)

That being said imho the emperor from the Empire strikes back looked much more formidable, the pope should have gone with that look instead...

They want to play back intentionally malformed phrases? I guess they'll need to prepare to the Campbell monkeys' equivalent of "What did you just call my mother?" ;)

You're not thinking BIG enough. Their stated goal is to monopolise any and all information available and put it in easily indexed electronic form. This includes, obviously, YOUR data, i.e. where you live/work (through IP tracking, gEarth), what you're interested in (Search, Youtube), what you consume (Marketplace, affiliates), aka your net worth, and any means you use to communicate and access data, be it through your PC (gDesktop, Chrome OS), mobile (Android+apps) or any other conceivable device/network.

A very nice open source app, available through the Ubuntu/Debian repositories. The author's page even got a windows version.

It supports multi-core CPUs, i.e. if you really want to tax each of your CPU's core to the limit, just use the app to browse through the mandelbrot set. It also supports a 3D extrapolation of the 2D set (OpenGL and software).

Strangely enough it doesn't seem all that popular, as the forum doesn't seem all that populated..

First of all, I really like Opera, I use it all the time for browsing and email alongside Firefox and Iron, and will continue using it as a web browser.

So I was thrilled to read about this new feature in 10 beta version, downloaded it and installed it on a test system. Turns out if you want to use the new feature you'll have to register with their "network". Sorry, but my privacy is worth a little more than the convenience that this new feature provides over the current apps used for the functions it's supposed to cover.

I guess we'll need to wait for Google Wave to come around (brought to you by the creators of google maps) - just saw this video and was very impressed. It lets you upload pics, messages etc. as if you had a webserver, but is far more interactive. If you run your own server node (and encrypt your data) there shouldn't be any security or privacy concerns either, because you can decide what data gets out to third parties (incl. Google). Best of all it's open source using open standards - anyone can write extensions or fork.

Not really. It says they made it to the "Paleocene", i.e. the epoch adjacent to the Cretaceous. To have meet any cavemen they'd have had to survive through the Eocene, Oligocene, Miocene all the way to the Pleistocene era. That would still be around 60 million years.

I also highly doubt cavemen (or cavewomen for that matter) had the skill or technology to time travel back to the Paleocene. Afaik only genetically enhanced laboratory mice can do that.

I was so enthusiastic when I read about android, being open source, free as is speech etc.. But then, the more I read and saw about the actual products the more I was whipped back into line, the coup de grace obviously being the very non-free-as-in-speech decision to sell it only through T-Mobile (and whatever that entails), just like previously the iPhone, (which Android phones where supposed to show how we do things in the "free" world).

So after all this I decided for Nokia's 5800XM (cheaper now), which seems to do it just right. I am not bound to a specific carrier and added to that there was the recent announcement that they'll make the Symbian OS open source. I've installed Python on it (which has a very alive developer community) and now have easy direct access to the Bluetooth functions, phonebook, camera, music player, GPS etc.

Add to that an easily replaceable 1320 mAh battery (very useful especially when excessively using the internal GPS :p), Wifi and a slot for 16GB microSDs... - open source/Python and kick-ass hardware, what more could one want from a phone?

I've posted it before and I'll post it again (seems most people still don't know about it): there is a fork from the Chromium project that not only does away with all the "phoning home features" including the annoying background-lurking installer, it also allows for an ad-blocker (looking at the forums, several different ones are available apparently, though I'm using the hosts file myself): Get it here

They also got a "portable" version that requires no installation and stores all settings in the Iron folder (which I'm using).

The source code is also available.

Ok I wasn't clear. From Wikipedia: "The Bundeswehr has 200,500 professional soldiers, 55,000 18-25 year-old conscripts who serve for at least nine months under current rules [4], and 2,500 active reservists at any given time." So 20% of the soldiers are still obtained from the "normal" population (and some of them will stay to become professional soldiers).

Grandparent was as ignorant as a Nazi.. ;)

Jokes aside though, one of the things the Germans learned from WWII was not to have an army only consisting of professional soldiers, who live in their own bubble and are shielded from contact with the 'normal' people (e.g. simply by just living in army bases). That way it is much easier to control them and give them orders normal people would not follow so blindly.

The current Bundeswehr consists of people being drafted from the normal population.

It's not so hard to protect yourself from thermo-nuclear war: Duck and cover!

Even if they (and by that I mean any corporation or institution) are not evil, what makes you think they will not turn evil some time in the future (after you have given them all your data)?

Power structures need supervision in order so not turn evil. Power monopolies tend to get rid of any checks that were initially imposed on them and over the long run there is not much there to keep them from putting their goals before the goals of others. As long as these goals don't diverge too much there's no apparent problem, but in time that will change and then have a guess who can exert more power to attain their goals.