So, will Science become some kind of secret, underground guild in the US?

How then they plan to maintain their position of global bully and thus their standard of living?

Because with a lot of manufacturing (and more recently also some R&D) being moved out of US, what else can they use to maintain their status?

To protect "ideas", they (US) still need physical power.

And if they do have physical power to enforce their "ideas" world-wide, they can lower the costs and improve earnings by simply dropping the "creative business" altogether. Replacing it by simple "protection service": you pay us and we do not beat you up.

So ... I guess the future of US is to become a protection racket (if it is not already).

Is there any relation between Novel's problems and Novel's "friendship" with Microsoft?

Something like ... maybe ... "Novel is loosing customers because they are friendly towards Microsoft"?

patent pending, copyright, TM, ... :)

IIRC in some book from Peter F. Hamilton, set in Commonwealth Universe, there is a composer from alien world visiting an artificial human habitat controlled by powerful A.I.

Essentially same question has been raised in this post has been asked in the book by the composer character when talking with the A.I., something like:

- it took me few month to compose this, can you compose something like that too?
- yes
- can you do it quicker?
- yes
- then why you wanted me to do it if you can do it as good as I and much quicker?

Well, I recommend finding that book and read it - much better than me trying to remember and reproduce the argument.

If I understand and remember correctly, regulation is the culprit of your current local monopolies. So you want more regulation to solve that?

If you want "customers" to be able to "go somewhere else", you need to create some competition. I think you can get that if you allow anybody to put fiber in the ground with only regulation being "do not destroy our property" and "the net gain for us - customers - have to be positive too".

I assume those people got better deal from you so I guess it was not bad for them that your competitor shared his contact list. :)

Well, people who do not understand the issue might not be involved intellectually, but they are involved physically.

Certainly true for global climate which is affecting everyone not taking into account how much any of us understand the issue.

They should have set-up their own web server and post the content there. And set the authentication, limits, controls, ... as they see fit. And give or take accounts to/from people as they see fit.

At least that was the original idea of The Web and that's why the Mosaic browser contained also a web page editor included by default.

But then ... "commercial Internet" choose to "outsource" and people are hosting their stuff on machines belonging to "strangers", in foreign countries, ...

Well, they've got what they paid for. :)

I have a theory. I have to warn you in advance, they it might get labelled as "conspiracy theory". But just because you are paranoid does not mean they are not after you. So such label will be given ONLY by people who would like to hide the truth from us. The truth, that this theory of mine is actually true.

So, here we go:

This 22-year-young man, lets call him Mark, is in reality a secret agent of Russian federation, gathering secret "intel" for them from US officials. But he works "two ways" - he's also supplying both US and Russian secrets to Kuba, because he is a real communist. And Mark is also ecological activist, human right fighter (yes, just one, I can't tell you which one), he's supporting legalization of dangerous drugs and 3D RPS games, he's pro choice, he's gay and some other stuff. Almost like some twisted superhero.

And the FBI, well, they are trying to protect us from such twisted figures. Hero or not, he's twisted so they have to somehow take him off-line. It is hard to take down a super-hero. So they have to use some super-powers of theirs: "prove" him a paedophile - nobody will then touch him and they can do to him anything they want. Like, put him in jail, etc.

But please, keep that only between us. You know, secret super-weapons tend to loose their power when just anybody knows about them.

:)

I've got apps blocked yet I do receive various announcements from them "camouflaged" as messages from my friends, like "George just conquered last free country in The World Domination Silly Game" etc. I have to then individually click "hide" to "kill off" all further announcements from that particular app. But next week, there is some new cools app making rounds ...

Or we can learn to regulate our population, as the Chinese are trying to do.

Well, Europe is not even trying, yet it is succeeding in this area (look for example here).

Similar case in Slovakia:

We have some elections here right now and some people in capital city received "letters" (more like marketing materials) with "printed signature" of our prime minister. Those letters are from a prime minister's party and is about how the prime minister, the party and also some other figures (most notably some mayors of towns and villages) DO support some candidate.

Later on some of those mayors mentioned in the letter said "I do not know about this letter and I do not agree with the letter: I did not, do not and wont support that one candidate" etc.

So, people questioned the prime minister and his party. And the answer? Something like:

It's initiative of a party, it's essentially marketing material and only a "rubber stamp of signature of the prime minister used for marketing purposes" has been used in that letter, prime minister did not wrote nor signed it.

So yes, his party, his people did the letter, his name is used in it, picture of his signature is used in it. It is a lie. Yet it is not a problem and responsibility of a prime minister.

Thankfully there is one thing which can haunt him on that one: he likes to sue journalists if they defame him. So I guess now his own party defamed him by putting his name on letter full of lies. So he should sue them. But he is a populist so I guess he wont.

... because they can't figure out how to point and click.

Neither should you - as Linux user, you should be using CLI, no?

Of course I'm joking, but they do not know that. :)