I'm Iranian and I'm very pissed off about the regime abusing the the technology, however, I can't put all the blame on the US government. A lot of the tracking/wiretapping tech (well, virtually any technology) have dual uses. For example, if a family member of mine gets kidnapped I'd like the police to be able to locate him/her easily by tracking a cellphone. Or if a bunch of suspects are doing something against the law and there's justified need to tap their phones and/or internet I'd like the police to be able to obtain a warrant and have access to the technology to do their job. So it's not funding the development of technology or requiring it's inclusion in the products that is the problem.

Now, if the US had the ability to prevent the regime from accessing the tech and they didn't do anything about it, well, that's not really nice.

While I agree with most of your comment, out of curiosity, where did you learn "Shaw"? I mean Shah is the correct word, meaning King in Farsi. It's a short form for "Mohmmad Reza Shah" (while his father, the previous king is known primarily as "Reza Shah"). I see a lot of English speakers referring to him as Shaw which to my knowledge is a last name as in George B. Shaw.

Yes, but a rather different form of "privatization". National assets are sold to Revolutionary Guards' private companies. For instance, one of the most high profile recent "privatizations" was the sale of parts of the national telecom company. There were many large and small bidders who wanted the shares but eventually they were all disqualified for "national security" reasons. Two or three firms founded by Revolutionary Guards bought all the shares and no one even knows whether any money was transferred at all. Basically the same process as elections in Iran where the low profile undesirable candidates are disqualified and the higher profile ones have no way of preventing vote fraud and no way to protest the results. Privatization is just a sham like the elections.

Whether you call it Farsi or Persian, Karrar is neither. It's Arabic and while many Arabic words and phrases are used in everyday Farsi, "Karrar" is definitely not one. As a native Farsi speaker with some knowledge of Arabic, I had to look the meaning up. Generally, the government has some fetish of putting Arabic names on everything, especially anything military related to make them sound more "holy" since Arabic is language of Islam.

I've driven all those cars, and every year that rankings come out, the ones with best quality are the ones with least of local modifications (206 included). Every few years they announce a brand new "National Car" initiative which turns out to be a hybrid of several foreign designs put together usually poorly and then after it fails in the market, it becomes the mandatory car for government organizations. Considering 80% of economy is owned and run by the government, the manufacturing will survive with just one customer. In a few years, rinse, repeat, blah blah. Proof of the massive failure of auto industry in Iran is their constant lack of ability to penetrate even third world markets and even though they sell them to foreign markets at a fraction of the domestic price.

Generally speaking, while the state of industry in some areas is better than Iraq, Afghanistan and few neighbouring countries, it's nothing remotely comparable to west or even Turkey. Along with improving relations with China, the few barely competitive sectors are being bought one by one by the Chinese, then begin importing and labeling Chinese products to sell domestically as Iranian-made. The incompetence of government, powerful grip of Revolutionary Guards over virtually all industries and their profit at any cost MO as well as population's general ignorance are all contributors.

Iran's auto industry was founded almost the same time as South Korea. Saddens me to look at their global empire and our local disaster.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xh_9QhRzJEs

If it was containment of Soviet expansion, why the hell did it start right after Mosaddeq nationalized Iranian Oil?

I agree that this reeks of FUD, however,

Jailbreaking is already legal. What use would it be to take a photo of a jailbroken user?

Voiding the warranty. Today, I can easily jailbreak and restore my phone as many times as I like without Apple noticing. In the new model, as soon as they suspect jailbreaking, they can take a picture and the next time I go to them to bug them about shitty reception, they'd tell me that my warranty is void (with proof) and they can't do anything to help me.

Yeah, right! Because if you don't notice it one month ahead, then insurgents would never notice that Americans have left and will stay home. They are that dumb you know.

I don't know where that number came from, but to me, it seems extremely... inaccurate. Every time there's report of a drone "misfiring" the number of casualties are in dozens and it seems to be a rather common occurrence. Case in point:

U.S. military investigators found that "inaccurate and unprofessional" reporting by U.S. operators of a Predator drone was responsible for a missile strike that killed 23 Afghan civilians in February, according to a report released Saturday... (and on third page of the article) The U.N. says at least 2,412 civilians were killed in 2009 — a 14 percent increase over the previous year. NATO and Afghan government forces were responsible for 25 percent of the deaths, the U.N. said in January report. Of those, about 60 percent were due to airstrikes, the U.N. said.

Source

That is just 2009 and the trend is, at least at the time of article's publication, upward.

I attend political debates, couple of times a month with different audiences and I have yet to meet a single person from the left mistake Onion with real news. I have also very rarely seen people from the right make that mistake. However, people who attend these talks are most likely better educated.

Back on topic, regarding general public this was released three years ago and at the time the left didn't come out and mistake this with real news. From looking at Facebook and Twitter, it seems like a whole lot of people on the right have been duped.

Please explain how you will be typing on an invisible keyboard?! Virtual Laser Keyboard is as good as it gets.

Be glad if you're holding on to an iPhone 3G(s) from last year... you got most of the good features from the new operating system while the new hardware doesn't seem ready for prime time.

Cross out 3g from that. My 3g with the measly 128MB of RAM (compared to 256 and 512 on 3GS and iPhone 4 respectively) runs extremely slow after update to iOS4. When noted this on the Apple forums I was told that technology doesn't wait for my old phone and I should upgrade and pay good money if I expect a nice phone. My 3g is less than two years old. In return for this slowdown, the only useful features that I have got are folders and multiple exchange accounts. Nothing else. Apple didn't just fail at design of the new iPhone, but also abandoned previous generations with the iOS upgrade.

Considering the mindset of the era, this actually is a good indicator of how Jefferson and other founding fathers understood that there was something wrong with the status quo and managed to change it.

Because we have too few researchers and can only focus on one area at a time?!