Apple is pretty hostile towards GPLv3. They won't distribute any code licensed under it. That's almost certainly why they stuck with an older version of Samba in OS X until they could replace it with their own implementation. Pretty much, once something goes GPLv3, they're going to fork & maintain, or rewrite from scratch.

Does anyone think that a serious candidate who would threaten the surveillance agencies' plans would ever get to the presidency, or even to a major party nomination? Any dirt on candidates or their families would appear from "anonymous sources" well before that happens.

I seriously doubt the the NSA - even if ordered by a court or by whoever the current administration is at the time - would actually stop collecting the data or to delete the data in question

Weirdly - they're shipping really nice cameras. The Alpha A77 and A65, as well as the compact system NEX-7, are really good by any measure, and fantastic for the money. Of course, the A77 and A65 have a Minolta lineage, and some parts of the NEX-7 do as well. But the new OLED electronic viewfinder in those cameras is industry-leading, and the new sensor is terrific. And their top-end lenses are as good as anyone's. Sony's actually putting more thought into their digital imaging products than a lot of other camera makers at this point.

Does anyone think any candidate unacceptable to the intelligence/national security apparatus in this country would even get past the primary, if even the smallest bit of dirt could be found on them and passed to the media? Because I sure have my doubts.

Older shows were sometimes altered for DVD release - music removed or changed, etc. - due to royalty issues.

And I can think of good movies that you can't really get on DVD today. Like the Stephen Frears film "Sammy and Rosie Get Laid".

It's worse than that - they're actually pushing costs off onto wifi providers. Any crowded place with unmetered wifi - Coffee shops, college networks, hotels, etc. are getting hammered by crap like this, and in some cases aren't budgeted for it. And it's not "just get another access point" - it's the amount of traffic - 802.11 and otherwise - in that spectrum. There's a point where there's just too much traffic, and adding additional equipment won't fix the problem. We can't turn every room into a Faraday Cage. Even crowded apartment buildings are starting to see problems with interference between apartments.

And, yes, I am making a value judgement on the feature. If you've got working fingers, you can type and not bother the rest of us with your voice. This is on par with Nextel users who used to use the "push to talk" feature back in the day, would hold the phone a foot away from their face, and yell into it while the phone blasted the other party out on a speaker. This using this thing around other people is the aural equivalent of someone going out of their way to fart in a crowded room.

It's not just Oracle. Android-based vendors are lining up to pay Microsoft as much as $10 a unit as well.

And, by the way, since Amazon isn't paying Google, it's possible Oracle will go after Amazon as well.

Oracle uses anti-competitive licensing for RDBMS to promote their OS and hardware. They allow you to pay for per-vCPU licensing (assuming CPU-based licensing) if you're using their version of Xen under their "Unbreakable" Linux, but if you're using a different platform - RedHat/Xen, RedHat/KVM, VMware, SuSE/Xen, etc, you have to pay for each CPU core in the host, regardless of how many vcpus you've assigned to the VM. And they've made moves to try to force RedHat users to switch to "Unbreakable" - look at the mess around ASMlib support.

And it looks like they're moving to a model where users of IBM and HP's higher-end systems will pay more per CPU for Oracle than those running SOracle hardware (they're discounting 25% on SPARC).

As of last spring, Oracle's hardware shipments were down by a whopping 40% vs. the pre-sale Sun numbers. So they're attempting to use their dominant position - and let's not fool ourselves about how big a player they are - in the RDBMS market to "encourage" customers to use other Oracle products.

They're going to be owned by the Russians in no time.

Small-government in the US these days means privatizing the profit, but socializing the cost and risk.

We won't invest in teachers' training and pay, because educational material and educational technology companies lobby hard to get contracts. We won't invest in training TSA agents training and pay, because contractors would rather sell the government security technology that doesn't work. Investing in the people - which DOES work, isn't on the table. And privatization? The pre-9/11 privatized security worked SO well. And, hey, doesn't Edison Schools have a great terrific record?

Their cronies and paid politicians will prevent these companies from being held to account. After all, we wouldn't want to interfere with taxpayer-funded free enterprise.

And even the non-content producing cable-operating ISPs (Cablevision, Verizon, etc) have to worry about the networks and studios and what sort of terms are negotiated and fees are paid as contracts come up for renewal. And there's the looking threat of Congress passing additional regulations that could be more expensive to implement.

In case anyone can't see why, check out the headline from News International's British tabloid, The Sun, on Saturday.

http://fleetstreetblues.blogspot.com/2011/07/sun-blames-al-qaeda-for-norway.html

Yes, that's right, they actually use the phrase 'AL-QAEDA' MASSACRE above the headline NORWAY'S 9/11. Now that it's a right-wing extremist, he'll just be a lunatic instead of it being a plot.

Research-based methods don't lead to big profits for educational reform advocates (paid consulting gigs, speaking engagements), those who run private schools and publishers or scantily-researched educational materials. We've now got the educational equivalent of defense contractors selling weapons to the military that they don't want and that don't work.

Good luck in a lot of places finding a public library that's open when you'd need it to be. Public libraries are closing or cutting hours and services at an alarming rate.

One of the problems with educational reformers is that things that work on a small scale - only put in the best teachers, get parents involved, etc. can't always be replicated on a large scale. And they need to realize that. You can't have 100% excellent teachers. What's the current number - not even a third of the US population gets a 4-year college degree? Exactly how can we pay to have millions of brilliant teachers? Especially when teachers are under attack, there's pressure to drive pay down, etc. And a huge part of public school problems are actually societal problems. We've got drugs, crime, malnutrition, poverty, uninvolved/absent parents, lead poisoning, lousy school facilities and so forth. And the public schools can't cherry pick.

And at a time when standardized tests are being used to evaluate teachers and schools, the kids have no stake in the tests. And there's a ton of pressure (some of it based on the raft of IEPs given to students for all sorts of reasons - some legit, some ridiculous) to grade kids based on effort and not outcome. You want to make adjustments for kids with issues? Provide both absolute and adjusted grades.

And the cost to support students with learning or behavioral problems is high. It's not unheard of now to have a classroom with three or four kids with individual aides, plus there's an assistant teacher to deal with kids who have less-stringent IEPs, plus the lead teacher. Unless, of course, you teach art, music, industrial arts, etc. Then, the aides get that as a break period. So you've got 25 kids in the room - a bunch of whom get aides in other classes and some for behavioral reasons - with no help. And you received no training in how to deal with those students as part of your education.