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Are there any American citizens (who understand what FISA is) that actually support it? I would think that even the right should be against it. If conservatives want to restore traditional American values, then surely preventing the government from using new technology to conduct widespread domestic spying is conducive to that goal.

With both congress and the president's approval rating hovering at below 20%, it is clear that the will of the people is not being represented. The only plausible explanation for FISA is that it is intended an means for the executive branch to seize an even greater imbalance of power, and/or to cover up widespread criminal activity that took place in the last eight years.

The Vista-needs-uber-comp jokes are getting extremely old. Get some new material.

>> And save the environment a little bit?
>
>That is one of the sanest postings I've come across on slashdot. So why is it marked as a troll?

Hippies are the worst kinds of trolls.

I'm sure Googlegemeinschaftelektronischepostsystem will be just as catchy.

Well, it's hardly surprising. According to government records, the only names not yet trademarked are "Popplers" and "Zittzers". I remember the internal confusion at Google back in the day when there were plans to set up a worldwide network of Google hot spots, or Gspots, only to find out that it is nearly impossible to find a name that is both pleasant to the ear, even remotely meaningful and not already taken. Enyone remembers the scandal three years ago? This is another example. And what about our beloved Firefox browser? It had to change its name not once, not twice, but trice to finally get rid of the trademark problems and still any literate person will point out to the Craig Thomas' novel, not to mention the Firefox bicycle company, or the Malaguti Firefox scooter, all of which being much older than any web browser on Earth. But does it mean that people can't use Google to check for any prior art of the name they have chosen for their projects? No. It just means that all of that trademark hysteria of the last one and a half decades, this "get outta my intellectual property!" attitude, it all hurts progress. Because, at the end of the day, isn't progress what it is all about? Shouldn't we just shut up, roll up our sleeves and start making our global village a better place instead of worrying about not hurting someones feelings or not breaking some law? I am really sick of every good initiative being sabotaged by someone who "owns" some "intellectual property". Google is probably one of ten, maybe twenty companies that are more concerned about morals and ethics than profits, yet some Germans have a problem with one of its most popular names and when do they sue? When the name is already known worldwide! This is just too much. Please let me quote a great thinker, George Bernard Shaw: "If you have an apple and I have an apple and we exchange these apples then you and I will still each have one apple. But if you have an idea and I have an idea and we exchange these ideas, then each of us will have two ideas."

The problem is that to the local populace all the United States and allies did was replace "Oppressive Bad Guy 1" with "Oppressive so called democatic puppet regime of Democracy 1"
The local populace are still oppressed, they are still murdered and humiliated by various local and nonlocal groups including Al Qaeda and US armed forces.
So for whom is this so called freedom worth the price?
The difference between the current situation and the WW's are that in the WW's the US helped to liberate conquered nations where the populace was against their conquerors, in the current situation they are seen as the conquerors.

We need some sort of government to protect peope from each other.

Otherwise I couldn't agree more, it just sems to be a bunch of rich, cantankerous old killjoys at the top of each country, making up reasons to kill people that are under the influence of another bunch of rich old bastards.

Also, don't forget that McCain inexplicably supports telecom immunity..

I'm sure a reasonably careful analysis of his bank records would render this a good deal more explicable.

Net neutrality:
McCain - let the markets handle it
Obama - legislate it

Broadband Availability:
McCain - increased access via competition
Obama - re-define 'broadband', move toward universal service, increase availability at schools & libraries

H1B visas:
McCain - increase the number of them
Obama - full immigration overhaul, produce more American-born tech workers, make workers less dependent on their employers

Intellectual Property Protection:
McCain - gov't handles blatant abuses, works against protectionism
Obama - increase cooperation on international standards

Privacy:
McCain - immunity for companies that cooperated with warrentless wiretapping
Obama - expand the FTC to cooperate with international agencies to track cyber-criminals

Wow.... This remind me of that comic with the ambiguous superhero... 'I think my common sense is tingling!'. Then below it... Common sense... so rare it's a fucking super power.

Seriously, patents are fucking stupid. So is IP(intellectual property). Get rid of these, and world peace would happen over night.

The UK is the country furthest along the road to 1984.

in order to control the masses.

Fear is a common tactic used since the begging of civilization to manipulate people.

- Zeus will destroy you all!
- The devil will come for you and burn you for all eternity!
- Terrorists! omg! seek shelter at once!

I'll take "with Lawyers" for $200 Alex.

eldavojohn writes "The watch-dog group Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD) has set its sights on the rating of GTA IV, primarily because a player can drive drunk in the game. MADD released a statement saying that 'Drunk driving is not a game, and it is not a joke. Drunk driving is a choice, a violent crime and it is also 100 percent preventable.' MADD also is asking Rockstar Games to consider removing GTA IV from distribution 'out of respect for the millions of victims/survivors of drunk driving.' Rockstar replied to MADD by saying 'we have a great deal of respect for MADD's mission, but we believe the mature audience for "Grand Theft Auto IV" is more than sophisticated enough to understand the game's content.' As expected, Jack Thompson is making his usual attention-whoring remarks by comparing GTA IV to the polio virus."

Steve Kerrison writes "With the power of CPUs ever-increasing and the number of cores in a system increasing too, having a supercomputer sit under your desk is no longer a pipe dream. But generally speaking, the extreme high end of modern computing consists of a big ugly box housing that generates a lot of noise. A UK system integrator has developed a concept PC that blows that all away. The eXtreme Concept PC (XCP) has quite a romantic design story, with inspiration coming from concept cars and the sarcophagus-like Cray T90. The end result is a system that resembles a Cylon — computing power never looked so ominous. Although just a concept, the company behind the design reckons there could be a (small) market for the systems, with varying levels of compute power accompanied by appropriate (say, LN2) cooling."