No, not really. Claiming they've been fighting implies a level of equality in the battles. There was no such thing. They lost control of every city in less than a month - they got completely steamrolled by the US military. Utterly dominated. Now they have managed to *HIDE* for 12 years, yes. They've taken random potshots here and there with IEDs and the like, sure, but they haven't had any chance at regaining power or driving the US out.

Similarly the war in Pakistan, despite still "ongoing", was really finished quite quickly. And the Taliban lost 27,000 people in that war to the US's 98.

Recent history completely disagrees with you. A bunch of guys with rifles and IEDs don't have a snowball's chance in hell against the world's most advanced military when it comes to taking control or defending a point of interest (such as a city). A bunch of guys with rifles can definitely hide and being annoying for the world's most advanced military, but being annoying and being a threat are not even remotely close.

"probably cause" is the grounds needed to make an arrest, conduct a personal or property search, or obtain a warrant.

There is *nothing* about needing probable cause to start an investigation. And that would be completely idiotic anyway. How can you get probably cause without investigating? Investigation *results in* probable cause which *results in* more investigation.

Ignoring your random anti-government corruption rant, you're correct that the FTC & IRS very much do investigate large companies randomly. Why? Because that's their fucking job. Although the IRS randomly audits everyone, not just large companies. And the only way for the FTC to enforce the laws is to randomly investigate whether or not people are following them. Once you get big enough, the FTC *will* investigate to make sure you got big by playing fair and that you aren't abusing your bigness.

Not for AMD. Phoronix has plenty of benchmarks, the open source drivers have 80% the performance of the proprietary ones.

The Linux market is full of masochists that continue to purchase and recommend the company that hates them (Nvidia) and shun the one that's actually doing what the community is asking for (AMD). AMD *has* delivered on the open source drivers. They *have* delivered on the specs. Everything the community has asked for, AMD has done. And yet, the community continues to buy Nvidia while complaining that Nvidia doesn't do what they want. No shit, why would they when you give them your money anyway?

What on earth are you talking about? AMD is very competitive still.

7870 vs 660 Ti: similar price, similar performance.
7970 GHz Edition vs. 680: Similar price, similar performance.

The two companies are battling it out at every segment with neither having a clear lead anywhere. The exception being the GTX Titan and the 780 - both of which are brand new cards and AMD just hasn't yet released their new batch of cards. If AMD takes months to come out with something, then the will no longer be competitive. But right now to claim that AMD is not competitive is laughably ignorant.

Only by people that don't understand that you can have a G+ account without filling out a profile or using the social stream stuff. There's no privacy concerns with having a G+ account - if you don't want to give Google your information, then don't. But you can still have a G+ account to use all the latest toys. And you can share G+ photo albums with people that aren't on G+, the old Picasa "unlisted" albums still exist and still work with G+ albums. You can still create them, and you can still share them. Only it's even easier to do so now, as you just hit "Share" on a G+ photo album and type in an email address.

No, the only thing weasel-worded and misleading is the claim that Google dropped/is dropping CalDAV. They never said that, and all they did was switch from "everyone has access by default" to "you have to register with us first". That's only unreasonable if they are restrictive about who can sign up for CalDAV, but I haven't seen anyone complaining about not being able to register. Of course they want people to use their own API, but that's *very* different from dropping support for standards.

No, actually, there isn't a difference. You can pretend that somehow the IETF magically turns RFCs into "standards", but a standard is merely something publicly defined that people can follow.

WLM uses MSNP2, not XMPP.

None of those do video chat, either. And just because they use it doesn't mean it's a good decision or not outdated. XMPP is not mobile-friendly

Because the simple fact is that people want the extra features way, waaaay more than they want XMPP. The standard is outdated, it isn't competitive. It doesn't matter if you run on top of a standard if nobody wants to use the product.

Dropping XMPP doesn't automatically mean lock in, either. Google could come out with a new standard. Doubtful, perhaps, but with Google you never know.

No, they are not trying to redefine anything. YouTube functions the exact same way broadcast TV does, and the radio before that. It's a business model that has existed for 90 years now.

And guess what? YouTube *does* take "payment" before letting the content go out the door. The ad comes first, THEN the content.

Your incredibly selfish position is self-defeating. Fortunately everyone doesn't behave like you do, or the internet would actually regress all the way back to the BBS days of old. Then again, I suspect many people here actually WANT that, but fortunately that population is far too small to matter.

I suppose that'd be a stupid analogy that doesn't match what we are discussing.

But yes, you'd still be violating society's rules (and laws). You do not have a right to what that store is offering, so if you don't like its rules too fucking bad, don't go there.

Although if that actually happened all you'd do is get the owner arrested for attempted homicide. Like, seriously, because your analogy is bad.

What the fuck are you babbling about? If you don't watch youtube videos, why do you care if youtube shows ads? And why are you wanting to block something you don't see anyway? And how in the fucking hell is a 30 second pre-roll video "malware and trojans"?

That's ridiculously stupid. Stores don't lock their doors, does that mean that people are free to steal from them? Of course not. Simply being on the web doesn't magically make everything free, nor should it. The mental gymnastics you're doing to justify the crime is absurd.

lol wut? No it isn't.

"Microsoft licenses the patents for Exchange ActiveSync please contact us for more information."
http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/legal/intellectualproperty/IPLicensing/Programs/exchangeactivesyncprotocol.aspx

"Earlier today Google announced Google Sync, which is made possible by a patent license they obtained from Microsoft covering Google’s implementation of the Microsoft Exchange ActiveSync protocol on Google servers."
http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/news/press/2009/feb09/02-09statement.aspx

Did you even bother to search before you posted that? Or did you just feel like making up crap for giggles?

This argument is fucking idiotic. If you take your own bag to the store and pack it full of stuff, do you bitch when security stops you from walking out? "But it's MY BAG!". Or how about if a cop gives you a ticket for speeding? "but it's MY CAR". If your boss decides not to pay you, I'm fairly sure he will be unable to convince you not to sue his ass by claiming "but it's my office!"

Yes, it is your computer. But it's not your content. Content you are using said computer to pirate. Ignoring the legal aspects, that makes you an asshole, plain and simple. Maybe you're fine being an asshole, I don't know. But grow up and own the fact that you're an asshole instead of this whiny bullshit about "my computer!"