Its easy to say that when you're outside of the system looking in.

Fact of the matter is that a console, or the odd perk for that matter doesn't make them free men. And in return for such access to perks, we can demand and expect good behaviour or other such tokens in return.

A prison exists to :
protect the people outside from the people inside
create a deterrent to crime by creating a visible punishment
rehabilitate the criminals so they will be less likely/willing to commit future acts of crime.

If access to an entertainment device helps better rehabilitate the inmates, then its worth looking into. Creating a prison that's so badarse that only the strongest survive, isn't going to provide any useful social skills or conditioning... Unless you're trying to create sardaukar troops.

I've liked, and still like Google, because they have a high sense of business ethic.

Did Microsoft or yahoo pull out of china when it was getting hacked?
Did Microsoft or yahoo contest china's censorship programs?
Does Microsoft, Yahoo, or Apple make exporting data/contacts you create on their platforms exportable should you wish to migrate away?
Does Microsoft, Yahoo, or Apple offer free api's, allowing 3rd parties to access and interface with their services and user's data?
Does Apple operate a store which is free to publish on?
Does Apple have a phone that is unlocked, easy to perform maintenance and connect to, and doesn't attempt to brick jailbroken phones each time a firmware update arrives?
How about how Google tries to protect the freedom of the internet, adding its weight to net neutrality, patent reform, and other legal issues that plague the future of IT.

"What happened to the Google that just had a cool search engine? Why is it taking advantage of search monopoly profits to either buy out or crush every competitor in every non-core market? Why do they talk about openness when their core business is based on a search and advertising engine that is not open source?"

Google grew, advertising is its key business and like all businesses it does what it can to protect its review stream. But its doing it in the most honest way a business can, buying out or just beating via prices.
Its not sending lawsuits with patent infringement shakedowns like every other big company out there.

As for openness, there is no reason, legal, ethical, or moral, that google should reveal their search engine source code. In fact the only thing that would do is improve search functionality of their competitors, and help link farms be more effective.

In summary.
Google is a saint compared to every other mainstream IT company out there.
It’s not perfect, but they actively try to be good AND profitable. It’s not an easy line to walk.
They wouldn’t be around long if they were as perfect as Op wants (supporting the competition, never buying in small companies, opening all software/engines to the public/competitors)... In that case they'd be the good and forgotten.

$6.5 Billion isn't small change.
And what would google gain by purchasing sun?

Open Office?
They have google docs

The Sun OS?
They have chrome

A dying mainframe business?

They'd gained Sun's Java i suppose, but then again, they already had a working java engine. Why break their existing java engine when it isn't broke.

I suspect that Sun's purchase was way overpriced, and purchased mostly as a way of aggressively killing and smothering (or in Google’s case extorting) competition.

5-10 years from now, once oracle has finished sucking the blood out, it'll be sold for a few hundred million.

And his reason for providing it free is because he considers it unethical to charge for power he collected "free".

I'll also add, doesn't surprise me that its a student spouting such idealism. I expect someone else is footing the bill for parts (the student's university springs to mind).

Its a lot harder to provide the service free when it personally costs you $1500+USD with no return other then a feel good vibe.

For it to read an uncompressed file, it simply needs to seek it on disk and read.
For it to read a compressed file, it needs to seek the compressed file, open the libaries needed to deal with the compression logarithm if not cashed, read to the index of the archive, read headers to find the desired file, seek to that location, read, decompress.

For any small document, the number of seek operations on a standard HD is goign to be the limiting factor far more then the bandwidth of a hard-drive. And compression has probably doubled that limiting factor.

Most Hard-drives can match SSD in bandwidth, its just that the biggest advantage of a SSD is that there really isn't a seek time, so finding then accessing the file is near instant in comparasion.

About the only way compression improves performance is when the actual bandwidth is botlenecked, but thats really not the case with documents, its just the seek delay accessing the file.

A few things to consider

1. The price of meat is more expensive in Japan then most countries. So saying they'll get the costs down that of japanese meat isn't really a draw card for most other western/american nations.

2. Compleating the food cycle? I thought we got mad-cow disease because we did this very thing with cows. We reduced the food chain and had cows eating cows, Rather then having intermedate agents inbetween.

Now we want to mimic that efficency with humans eating human shit...

I don't know if thats a troll, but i guess someone needs to correct it.

Its free as in free speach.

You can still sell gpl software, with a gpl licence. So no, its not always free as in beer.

It's normally free however, because theres nothing stopping someone buying 1 copy, and then undercutting or giving it away for free. So selling it for money under the gpl isn't a practical business plan.

The owners of the software can do with it what they like, how they like. That's free as in speach.

So explain to me how a goverment bank, lending money to a goverment entitiy, is saving money.

Sure the goverment overall might make large savings in low interest repayments. But at the same time, the goverment bank with its billion dollars is getting a terrible rate of return on its investment.

So lower expenses with lower income, or normal expenses with normal income.
Out the left pocket and into the right, it makes little differance.

Or is there something i'm missing, like the bank can print its own money?

"Once you emit any electromagnetic radiation outside the bounds of your property, you have no expectation of privacy whatsoever."

What a load of shite.
I believe the US Supreme court decided in a 4-3 decision that there are expectations of privacy, and just because you can observe/listen in a public place doesn't give you a right to do so. (I can't find the case, i believe it was over cops using powerful heat cameras to find and raid weed growing operation houses).

And damned right!.
As it is there are technologies that allow a laser be pointed at a window and you can hear the audio with clarity on the other side.
There are cameras that have limited vision through solid walls. And even your own body leaves behind elements in public places that can be anazlised for private infomation. And that was from what i remember from nearly a decade ago.

Just wait for the portable back scatter machines to be developed, then people will be able to take nude snaps of you if you leave your house...

Privacy isn't a way of life, its a human and legal right. Its even in the Constitution of America, the 4th on the list.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth_Amendment_to_the_United_States_Constitution#Definition_of_.22search.22

Now although this might be a breach of privacy, the fault is on the "victims" because they were transmitting infomation, there was no attempt to keep it private, (the hardware goign out of its way to make it public) so i don't believe google are at fault.

I guess one could say that this case had

*puts on shades*
a Boring outcome

YEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEH