Does anyone here remember the "Internet Suites" sold by Delrina and others?

These would include more or less integrated clients for Archie, Veronica and Gopher for search. IRC, Usenet for chat and messaging. Telnet for BBS services. FTP for file transfers, a picture viewer and editor , a first generation web browser etc., etc.

I still have the five thick paperback manuals that shipped with the Delrina suite, the purpose of which was to translate geek-speak into Engllish. The AOL client stripped away all that complexity and replaced it with a colorful GUI, e-mail, IM, flat rate monthly billing, toll free dialup access, automatic updates ----

and Neverwinter Nights.

If you needed more than the AOL client, you could painlessly install things like Internet Explorer, mIRC chat, and add-free pure text based search engines like Web Ferret It surprised me to discover that after all these years the Ferret is still very much alive.

The geek ought to have learned by now that not everyone shares his love of complexity --- or his need for or access to broadband services.

Plenty of Internet users cling to slow dial-up connections [May 12, 2012]

This is like saying: Some companies have prevented their drivers from parking their cars in the bad part of town (i.e. the cloud). These guys all drive Fords, but I drive a Chevy. So why not leave my Chevy in the bad part of town instead!

Oh wait...

I'm pretty sure DropBox runs its servers on Linux, but that's completely beside the point. Guess what's more secure? A fileserver that you own and physcially control that happens to be running Windows that's properly configured with strong ACLs and sits behind a VPN gateway... or a Linux powered PHP CMS setup that is leased from one of your competitors and is accessible to anyone who can guess a username/passwor combo?

Guess what: that example doesn't mean that "Linux is not secure" or that "only Windows is secure" either. Frankly, BOTH can be insecure and BOTH can be secure based on the usage and competency of the people who set them up.

The Gross Domestic Product of the U.S. is 15 trillion dollars and the Population of the U.S. is 312 million.

Only the EU as a whole produces wealth on anything like this scale.

The geek may fret and fume and claim otherwise.

But, realistically, your people and operations based in the states will be quite safe from mob violence, religious persecution, political and economic upheavels of every sort.

The search provider is, of course, only a half step away from becoming a content provider, with its own IP and revenue streams to protect.

...recent Western culture has shown that a higher percentage of men have become fathers in the past few generations than before that.

As more and more males become adjusted to the instant high of popular culture, we'll just return to the times when a tinier percentage of men were having all the babies.

Marriage is already on a decline, in some races good husbands are hard to find so women have more biracial babies, and the powerful men won't stop spreading their seed.

Does it matter to me if the weak male class doesn't have kids? Hell no -- and they make good employees, too. Maybe better ones.

So, how have the big traditional space contractors like the Rockwell, Boeing, Lockheed, etc., of old, and now United Space Alliance and United Launch Alliance not delivered on their contracts? Saying that it might cost too much by some measure is one thing, but in terms of space launch to LEO you don't get a better record than ULA. Note, too, that SpaceX is using a significant amount of government infrastructure and personnel to launch and manage its space systems — not to diminish what they're doing one bit.

Nation of North Korea - 0
Company in America - 1

North Korea, I think you need to shift your focus back on things like feeding your starving masse and leave the heavens for those that are exporting food aide, not importing it.

It is very disappointing to see that political correctness has been allowed to 'tie' with science. How is this any different than things like government quotas for hiring police officers and fire fighters that set different standards for passing the tests based on your race? Science should be blind to things like this, if the best site was in Australia, it should have gone there, if the best site was in South Africa it should have gone there.

AP IMPACT: New light on drone war's death toll

AP IMPACT: New light on drone war's death toll