Because the government wants to control all financial transactions down to the penny. They don't like cash either. And no, it's not just about taxes. It's about controlling the populace.

I'd argue that your interest in having the data be removed would be evidence enough that it's relevant. If it were irrelevant, why would you care?

There are plenty of things I've done in my life that I'd like to forget. Sadly, we must all live with our own choices. Penitence sucks.

http://online.wsj.com/article/...

Yay! This is what I've been saying for years! It's great to have someone agree with me. You've laid it out in a much more eloquent way than I ever had.

I'm a musician and an inventor. Everything I create I give away for free. I do the standard: Make a video of how to do it and post it. Thing. When I write a song I upload all the individual tracks so other people can, for example, take out the guitar and jam along if it helps them. etc... The art world would be far richer if more people did the same. Just try to go online and find just the drum track for some song so you can practice along with it... it's very rare.

I find it disgusting when I go to conventions or clubs and some dudes made a cool jig or tool, I ask him how he did it and he tells me its a trade secret but he can sell me one. I think the whole handyman community is thankfully turning that way. Imagine if Galileo had kept the telescope a secret...

This is what I don't like about submitting to slashdot. It reads like I wrote that. Like that's a quote from me. That's not what I submitted at all. They basically cut the last half of my post off, typed something totally different and provided an entirely different link. For once the editors did edit the story before posting it, but instead of improving it they mangled it.

In the paper, if you read it, this isn't really about the 2 materials the editors stuck in. Those are just the result of the real breakthrough. Which is IBM has designed modeling software that can design plastics to order. Previously they would just create a plastic, play with it, and see what it was good for. This is how accidents like Silly Putty and Post-it notes came about. But with this new software you can put in characteristics you want the plastic to have and it will spit out which plastics to make and how to make them. It will be revolutionary to every field in industry. The 2 materials mentioned in the Editors link were what they created with the software as a test. Their properties, while interesting, are incidental to the real discovery which is the software.

You shouldn't have to do ANYTHING to switch phones.

I take it you're one of those "Steve Jobs is Jesus!" people?

Actually this sounds exactly like a typical Apple problem. There was a time that was not that long ago when you couldn't use anything apple with anything else. It was a totally closed ecosystem. That was completely intentional. They changed, a bit, to get back into the market... and have done well because of that. But they're still pretty much the most closed down, locked in ecosystem there is. I've always found it strange how open source people could support Apple at all. They're the most anti-choice software company out there.

Congrats on living in a major metropolitan area. The other 99% of the world still has to pay for texts.

I'll never get over peoples myopic view of the world.

Attention, this is a public service announcement...

The way "The cloud" works.
A Cloud or SASS provider will schedule meetings with your management and give a flashy presentation bragging about their up-time, reliability and how your company will no longer need to maintain software or even have an IT department! They'll even migrate you to their servers FOR FREE! Yay!

You company will sign a 3 year contract and brag about all the savings the project will lead to. It will be fantastic!

You'll begin the migration project and quickly realize that the provider outsourced the conversion project to a random IT team from their "Trusted Partners Network" that consists of 2 people (1 manager, 1 employee) that are clearly located in some other country but refuse to admit which one. Having worked with competent people from other countries before you'll shrug this off as not that big of a deal.

Shortly after that they'll start stalling and delay. You may or may not get finished with the project before your management goes back to the Provider and demands the "Free" migration... only to find out the contract stated something to the effect of "Migration Assistance" and by that, they meant you have to do it with the help of those people on the phone you couldn't understand. Your management will resign itself to just getting it done so they can start saving money and dump it all in your lap.

Liking your job, and knowing that managements on a "Lets save money!" kick you'll do it without complaint. After all, once it's done, its done right?

Unfortunately, once it's done is when the problems will start. Since you did most of the migration work the provider will quickly move to blame the problem entirely on you. You'll start to realize that patching together their garbage product with bubblegum and duct tape might not have been such a good idea. But, you have a good reputation, you logged all the previous issues you'd had, and you eventually win management over and they realize that the product is garbage and you'd better start thinking of long term alternatives. But you're stuck in a 3yr contract so you have time to plan.

Then you get an update from the provider: "In an effort to improve server reliability and security we are deprecating ODBC/SQL connections to the database in 6 months" You'll question this and the provider will come back to you and say "Fear not! We've created our own API! It's great! It even uses our own proprietary version of SQL!!!"

So you'll start reviewing this and find out that their "new" version of SQL differs from the only version in 2 ways: 1. you can't do table joins. 2. you can only retrieve 10,000 rows at a time

You'll take this to management and explain that once this happens, moving your data off their servers will be nearly impossible. Migrating to another product will be very difficult. So your mangement will bring this concern to the provider who will say "If you need help migrating, we have a team that can help you! They only charge $200/hr!" and they'll send you right back to the 2 people that failed in the original migration.

Eventually the products customers will all realize it was a giant scam, and start dumping it. The products parent company will shut down the product, buy a startup that does the exact same thing, re-brand it and start all over again.

Rinse and Repeat.

Ask me how I know this... :-)

That's all great. But you are assuming things I didn't actually say.

In that case, I'm awfully glad I didn't say that.

I think the Rs voted "no" because they still have some sense of political reality, and what the public wants.

In contrast, from where I sit it is looking like Obama and his fellow Democrats have been willing to push their ideas off on the public without regard to whether most Americans think they're actually good ideas.

I stated no such thing. You are reading more into my comment than what I actually wrote. It is quite rude to make such assumptions.

Its friggen terrible. Really... try it out. I like most of Open Office but Base is a buggy joke.

Well, I don't know what you want to use it for.
I'm going to take a wild guess and say you're trying to manage work, tickets, or something to that effect.

I'd try SugarCRM http://www.sugarcrm.com/
It's open source and free (without support)
It's the biggest open source CRM I know of.

Every alternative to Access I've seen is terrible. So I'd stop looking for something that replicates Access and start looking for something that does what you're wanting access to do. You might even settle on several applications if you're using access for multiple things.