I take it that you missed the part where she kept a diary the entire time. Do you think that she might have written in her diary something about the death of a family friend and the odd exchange of her father and the Secretary General of the Soviet Union? You also have no proof that this is the only utterance about this she ever made, for all we know she could be the origin of the quote, nor can you prove she ever heard it outside of him saying it. In any event if you are going to dismiss 50 year old recollections then I am sure I can come up with reams of historical documents that took fifty years to write or talk about that you are going to have to toss out as well, not to mention a wealth of history itself. I also note that you didn't even peep about that in the interview she doesn't get the quote exactly right. Which tells me you didn't even watch it, which makes me wonder if you are more interested in being right or correct.

Face it, she was actually was present at the exchange. The onus is on you to prove that she was mistaken with something other than a variant of 'memory is a tricky thing' for someone who has apparently doesn't have memory issues.

"In an interview with the BBC's Andrew Marr (11.11.2011) Winston Churchill's daughter, Mary Soames, explained that she overheard Stalin say this to her father. Churchill, was upset having received news that a family friend had died. He apologised to Stalin in light of the vast loss of Russian life. And Stalin then gave this reply."

From your wiki link

Oh, and I do believe that first hand accounts still count for quotes do they not?

" When one man dies it is a tragedy, when thousands die it's statistics." - Joseph Stalin

Publishing as we know it will either become extinct or adapt. Publishers will become publicists or agents instead who advertize your ability to perform work.

Ony if your life's desire is to read vampire fanfic or yet another star {wars/trek/blazers/fighter/etc} book. Whether you like it or not, there are publishers out there that do a good job of filtering the crap from ever hitting your eyes. How many authors would have never seen the light of day without a good publisher? And no, they aren't keeping good authors down. When you roll the word publisher around in your mouth stop thinking of college text books and big record labels and hink of Baen, O'Rielly, and Tor instead.

Paid to do work, ... , do more work to get more money. This is the same model that all other labor markets use....

A couple of thoughts for you:

• - That line you draw there, it is the line that seperates Art from craft. The fact that you are asked to pay a tiny proportion of the cost of a piece of Art means you already are getting it essentially for free. Perhaps you feel it is too much to ask $7.00 for a paerback, but how much more than that sum have some of the works you have read affected you, changed you, altered your perception of life and the world?
• - You are also conflating 'work' and 'value'. You can work your entire life and never will you make another Picasso painting.
• - Lastly, a long running experiment has been running testig this sort of thing already, it's called YouTube. Sure some people have made money from videos they have posted, but how many how often? Can you even feed the cat on it? And of the good things that are there how many drown in a sea of "Gangnam Style" and "What does the fox say"?

You see Shangri La in the mist on the horizon and want to tear down the wall that holds it in. I point out that the mist is rising from the ocean of "Ow my Balls!" that the dam you want to destroy is holding back.

Hooray! A return to Patronage for the gilded classes! Also, would you like to take a stab at the number of Paid/Free Software vs. Paid/Non Free Software numbers of developers?

Oh you are so full of shit.

There isn't a single line of Shakespeare in there anywhere!

;)

China was not weak back in the 80s. China was not weak in the 60s. They were an economic powerhouse even then. Douglas MacArther warned Never fight a land war in Asia".

Its a pity you know so little of the PLA military. I could point out the bloody nose they got from thinking they could waltz into Vietnam. I could point out that to this day they have so little navy worth caring about tha they are essentially land locked. from from Wiki:

I could point out that one of the major reasons that they have never posed a real threat to Taiwan has nothing to do with the US and everything to do with their inability to actually move troops across the strait without them becoming the most drowned army in history due to Taiwan weapon systems and ... wait for it ... lack of landing vessels to even put in the water.

Take then the modern PLA and start turning the clock backward and you will see that China has had a second rate military going back ages. Sure to meet them on their own ground is a bad idea, but mostly due to there being no reason to do so. The fact that they themselves didn't learn their own lesson is proof enough that their military has been more about kowtowing to Party bosses that practical military thought. Saying they were strong militarily in the 60's-80's means you have to cherry pick your sources pretty hard. It is like saying the Soviets had a huge impressive military in WWII. Sure they did, if you discount the 8.7 million men it chewed up to grease that machine of war.

The rest of your points are about as bad, but I am not going to go on at length about them, however in short - Air-Sea as a concept before WWII? I guess, but without widespread wireless it is just coordination of meeting times and attacking set pieces, and bad coordination at that, not real Air-Sea - The Soviets collapse being seen before it happened? Yeah, we knew, but there was good reason to believe that it was going to go down in a blaze of glory, and not the quiet self collapse it did, very, very few saw that, this guy did. Precision weapons by your definition date to the creation of organized militaries with pikemen and slingers. No, what he did was to see the need to put the firepower of a 2000lb laser guided bomb in the hand of one man. The only person to even come close the concept might have been Heinlein in Starship Troopers, and well we are trying to duplicate the rest of that book as fast as we can. Add into this his insight into drones prove that he was worth every cent that was spent on him and the loss of his office will make the Pentagon as myopic and short sighted as big US business is about future needs and long term investments.

Beware that, when fighting monsters, you yourself do not become a monster...

And the critics like you are just adorable in that you think this isn't happening in your backyard with your buddies as well. Why pray tell is there a lot of bluster and hot air and no movement on the part of your superior government? Because they don't want the info taps turned off either.

Since when was JavaScript Object Orientated? Out of the box it sure isn't. Yes there are kludges to make it *look* OO, but OO it ain't.

One thing that everyone here who is making some variant of this argument is conveniently forgetting is the opposite end of what can happen. What if instead of bones his shovel had turned up gold lumps? Would the public get a cut if it was standing by with a check because of what might turn up? Is this the one man version of "socialize the cost, privatize the profit"?

"The individual, via insurance premiums." No, the pool pays. Therefor your 'liberty' costs me money. You have no right to my money. Wear your helmet or out of the pool. No pool, no driving, no appeal, just contracts. Ain't no government grand? Now put on your helmet, water wings, padded vest, safety glasses, steel-toed boots, leather gloves, and get that roll cage mounted on that bike. Oh, and get the extra two wheels welded on as required. You have no right to my money. No pool, no driving, no appeal, just contracts. Ain't no government grand?

Exactly. If WalMart isn't the new Company Store for its own employees, it is darn close.

Your one-sided revisionist history is astounding.

"Note that racism and other forms of discrimination was institutionalized by the very same government that you seem so willing to put in place as the sole arbiter of fairness."

Gee, where did those northern free states come from then? Oh thats right, they came as a result of government. And before you get your dander up, do remember slavery wasn't ever that strong in the north to begin with.

"It was the moral and religious institutions in the United States that fought for the end to slavery and championed civil rights for all races, and they were opposed at every step by the federal government and the Democratic party."

The first part is utter bullshit. There were many religious institutions pushing for slavery, there are passages in the Bible that were used extensively to justify it. The second part, yeah, the Fed opposed it so much they let states decide for themselves. And your dig at the Democratic party is pathetic; you are historically correct, but you are obviously trying to drag this into the modern era.

"Governments do not have morals, and when they enforce the morals that the most vocal and powerful participants in the political process it's not always a good thing."

And corporations are required by law to be psychotic in the pursuit of money. Can you honestly sit there and say you are more comfortable with groups in charge who are, by definition psychotic rather than the ambiguously moral?

" I happen to think that even were it legal, no business in the US could survive today openly discriminating against people because of race or sexual orientation."

Haven't been in the south of late have you? Hell there are still places with segregated high school proms. Come with me some time, I will take you to places I know that will give you an extra serving of spit on your burger if I tell the waitress you are gay and biracial. And how long would it take to backslide into open discrimination again? Here is a thought experiment, go look up the prison population by race, or crack vs powder cocaine sentencing, or why Sheriff Joe keeps getting re-elected. Do you thing those are do to this benevolent 'It cant happen again' age we are living in?

"They can force businesses to do things you like today, just as they forced liberty-minded people in the 19th century to return slaves to their owners."

As opposed to all the people that did it without a coercive hand? No slave ever ran to the nearest neighbor for a reason and there was a hell of a lot more of that then the Feds OR States returning slaves.

Steam also allows for one other interesting use. I have many many games in my steam library, but I have only ever purchased one game from Steam. I buy games where ever and register thier codes on Steam. Thus I get all of the Steam goodness and if they ever shut down their servers, I have all my games still. Let see suXBOX do that.