Sadly, it needs more than marketing - it needs quality 'help' as well. Unfortunately, the population of those who enjoy writing tech docs and will do it in a FOSS project seems to be much smaller than coders who enjoy writing software in FOSS projects.

LO's online docs/help are a mere shadow of those in MS Office - even when comparing them to MS Office versions from over a decade ago. This makes LO less friendly to new users.

yes, of course i understand what "financially" means. the partner's efforts meant the family didn't have to buy the labor on the open market and buying that labor would have cost money. hence, the partner may well have contributed financially in a fairly direct way. by your definition, the "bread winner" also didn't contribute financially if they worked at a salaried/hourly job -- some business (the "bread winner's" employer) did contribute to the family financially, but all the "bread winner" contributed was effort.

Good point.

If Google doesn't continue to create new public projects with a high subsequent cancellation rate, they probably can overcome the reputation. Speculative stuff is good, but it would be helpful if Google did a better job of "we are playing with this" (appealing to early adopters and geeks) vs. "we stand behind this" (appealing to the mass market) and carefully label projects as such and thoughtfully transition from "playing" to "stand behind". Just declaring everything "beta" forever wasn't terribly helpful.

The SMS search was not anything I ever used, but abandoning iGoogle (with plenty of notice!) disappoints me - it works, it seems like it should be very low overhead to maintain, and it does everything I need. I would think that Google could do a lot with knowing what I click on, what I have on my page, even when I click on stuff and monetize that, but I guess that wasn't in the cards.

she often gets 50% of the community property (to which she contributed nothing financially)

Umm.... maybe she raised the kids and took care of the house so her partner could focus on working and, had she not done that, her partner would have been unable to make as much money for the household? If she just sat around eating bon-bons and watching soap operas in a moo-moo, the partner was either okay with that or not smart enough to divorce her before "50% of community property" amounted to much.

Agreed.

Although, MSFT kept Bob longer than I expected - they should have killed it in utero.

Google's strategy makes sense if they really just want to be a advertising/search firm -- which may be enough to sustain them for many decades. However, every time they cancel a product that people were using and getting value from for years makes it more likely that people won't bother to try their new products and certainly won't let themselves become dependent on them. Although I liked a lot of stuff Google came out with over the years, now I tend not to bother to invest my energy in discovering or using them as I don't expect them to be around in two years.

I do use gmail, but only as a backup. I never was comfortable using it as my primary email address since it was perpetually in beta for so many years. Knowing what I know now, I probably would never have bothered to use gmail. I also use Android as it's fairly clear that when (not if) Google abandons that, there will be other entities that will pick up the slack.

Google is building up a reputation here. Maybe someday they will actually get a marketing department that understands that the latest thing from "Fart Around Fridays" shouldn't always be "released" unless they have good reason to believe that it's sustainably profitable by some metric and they are willing to sustain it even if they are wrong in their projections. Should they choose to do so someday, it will be hard for them to become "adults" given their reputation over many years.

Google's search capabilities are not all that much better than Bing's right now IMHO (both have strengths and weaknesses relative to the other). I think Google is a bit more vulnerable than most people seem to think - as any "one hit wonder" company is (yes, I'm talking about you Apple also -- although they are a 2½ hit company - iPod + iPhone + ½ iPad).

But, esp. w/the case where the server limits by IP address (based, I assume, on some sort of subscription), dynamic IP addresses have the same problems, just that we don't notice them as often as we would with CGN. For the "excessive load from host" case, if the person assigned to your new dynamic IP address this morning was banned from site X, you are suddenly banned when you get that IP address - with CGN the window is smaller and overlapping, but that just points out the flaw in such strategies.

There are plenty of sites (newspapers, the site I get textures from, RapidShare, etc.) who limit their services by IP address. There's nothing quite like seeing messages about how your IP has exceeded the download limit on a website you've never visited before.

My cable ISP (one of the big names) doesn't give static IP addresses with their standard consumer packages and, AFAIK, never has. You can buy higher end packages which do include static IP address(es), but most people don't select these. My IP address doesn't change often, but it does from time-to-time without advance notice. So, some of the things you describe are already a reality by your definition for a lot of consumers in the United States.

Mostly, implementation of CGN might force sloppy providers who do things like prevent downloads based on load by IP address or check licensing based on IP address to get their act together as, in most cases, this hasn't worked well for years for so many reasons in the consumer market. So, adoption of CGN by a major carrier, as long as you don't use that carrier, may have an upside to the community as a whole.

Previously, did BT provide life-long static IP addresses for the tier of customers they are converting to CGN? I doubt it.

Of course, the court could be "packed" as Roosevelt tried (unsuccessfully due, in part, to public outcry) to do in 1937. And, yes, that packed court could ignore the Constitution that they swore to uphold (just as a handful of people in the military could conspire to use nuclear weapons to wipe out major cities in the United States).

However, recall that 2/3 of the state legislatures can call for a Constitutional convention and 3/4 of the state legislatures can then ratify the resulting changes -- the House, the Senate, the Administration, and the Judicial branches can do nothing to stop this (well, of course, without just declaring martial law or something like that -- but, that's one reason we have the Second Amendment!). In these matters, Wyoming (the least populous state with a population of about 564,000) has the same power as California (the most populous state with a population of about 37,000,000 - or 65x the population of Wyoming). Such a convention could do almost anything except eliminate equal suffrage in the Senate (but, they could simply gut the Senate's power and add a house of Congress called NewSenate that looks a lot like the current Senate and takes on all the powers of the existing Senate but where large states have NO say!). In the extreme, states with just 40% of the population can rewrite the Constitution to undo whatever court packing scheme was enacted -- and, in theory, just 50%+1 of the people in each of those states would be needed to make this happen -- i.e., just 20% of the population in the U.S. has to agree to rewrite the Constitution. Of course, this isn't likely to happen, but it's a safety valve that discourages the kind of mischief you're proposing.

Ref:

Article. V.

The Congress, whenever two thirds of both Houses shall deem it necessary, shall propose Amendments to this Constitution, or, on the Application of the Legislatures of two thirds of the several States, shall call a Convention for proposing Amendments, which, in either Case, shall be valid to all Intents and Purposes, as Part of this Constitution, when ratified by the Legislatures of three fourths of the several States, or by Conventions in three fourths thereof, as the one or the other Mode of Ratification may be proposed by the Congress; Provided that no Amendment which may be made prior to the Year One thousand eight hundred and eight shall in any Manner affect the first and fourth Clauses in the Ninth Section of the first Article; and that no State, without its Consent, shall be deprived of its equal Suffrage in the Senate.

Yep I missed that. It's unlikely that restriction would pass Second Amendment muster if tested, but it's never been tested and it would be a case of "first impression". Miller tends to support that any restriction on a fully automatic weapon (just as a shotgun with a barrel < 16") would be a violation of the Second Amendment if the military routinely "keeps" and "bears" such arms (which it does). If the SCOTUS smashes that down, expect unwarranted searches being allowed soon after based on the same precedent!

Yep! It will be interesting if enough of the united States ignores the United States Constitution!

Those who understand that the Tyranny of the Majority (think Hitler) is more important than the United States Constitution will have a tough choice.

Ultimately, unfortunately, it may come down to the conviction of the soldiers in the tanks who are unwilling or willing to kill their parents or their parent's friends and relatives when asked to so by politically appointed commanders (remember how the USSR collapsed?). Personally, I'm betting on a bunch of good people who value their freedom and the United States Constitution more than a couple more (statistical) years of life making the right decisions. I'm sure I'd make the correct decision, and I'm even surer that tens of millions of Americans would make the same decision.

Read the Constitution! EVERY state must consent to the 3/4 requirement if the amendment removes the state's power to assert it's power.

I'd give you a link, but obviously you've not read the United States Constitution and it's better that you do so to understand it and puzzle over it. My comment here is not completely correct (although it's mostly correct) -- if you understand the law, please respond with cites support your position! I look forward to it!

Huh?

Seriously, outlawing drugs (meth, crack, marijuana, et alt) hasn't led to corruption? Maybe you should check your stats on that! None of these, of course, creep across any US borders or are manufactured in the US? Nope, not possible since passing an unjust law results in immediate compliance - after all, they are illegal and therefore must not exist.

How did prohibition work out?

Fortunately, it's fairly rare for the Supreme Court to decrease the scope of a prior seminal decision in order to reduce rights. Even the conservative members tend to enhance rights through judicial activism. Perhaps this will change, but Heller can't be underestimated -- I think it will turn out to be like Brown and Roe or similar in retrospect. The judicial slicing and dicing will be tempered by the realization that the same logic that applies to trying to limit Heller and McDonald can be applied to Miranda, Roe, and Brown (et al) and that will be a limitation on "living document" interpretation.

Agreed -- i was assuming that he was talking about something that most people could purchase legally.

I assume you also believe that those who believe in respecting the other parts of the United States Constitution (for example, disallowing police from searching your home whenever they want for any or no reason without a warrant) are also "rabidly anti-government and completely reality-proof"?

Allowing police to search anyone, anywhere for any or no reason without notice or without a warrant would likely decrease crime significantly. That's certainly an admirable goal and, obviously, only a criminal who had something to hide would object. RIght?

And, after all, since we trust police with guns, we can surely trust them with less lethal tools like the ability to search freely.