Excuse me while I play devil's advocate.

1a.) In what way does advertisement encourage over-consumption beyond what would be caused by non-paid information from, for instance, a review website? And what proof do you have that people are more inclined to purchase anything (not more inclined to purchase one product over another, but inclined to buy something at all) because they've seen an advertisement? Keep in mind that these ads will be targeted based on search information the user enters. If I'm searching for "best espresso machines" I'm probably in the market, so I'm already going to buy something.

1b.) The term "over-consumption" is heavily loaded. How much consumption is "too much", and who decides what that figure is? In a market economy, consumption is what drives growth; if you have a problem with consumption, it's probably (and this isn't meant as a dig or insult) because you have a problem with markets. Talking about something called "over-consumption" is a tell that you're probably coming from a Marxist/socialist background, and so you're gonna have a problem with anything to do with markets, private commerce, or consumption.

2.) Ads don't increase prices, nor does consumption. Ads don't influence price, they influence demand. Vendors or producers determine price. The impetus is for price to be set in such a way that it's worth it to produce product X, and people are willing to buy all the product X that gets produced at price X. So, as demand increases, the price increases only if production doesn't also increase. Given that it makes sense to produce more in order to sell more, most rational producers will try to produce more if possible.

3.) Ads don't create privacy issues unless the information that you submit is linked to personally-identifiable information. Granted, at that point, you're trusting the search provider to do the right thing, which doesn't always happen. But, again, the issue here isn't that ads threaten privacy, it's that the technology used to deliver tailored results can potentially be a threat to privacy. Any time that search results are tailored, or, more broadly, user experiences are tailored based on personal information, users have to decide whether the benefits outweigh the risks. That's a decision that users have to make regardless of advertisements.

4.) Charging a price for Ubuntu is, IMO, a more serious violation of FOSS than ads are regarding privacy.

I'm not saying that I love advertisements. I turn them off or block them. But, I'm just saying that ads aren't the bogeyman that you're portraying.

In a word: bullhockey.

Government regulation is fully capable of creating monopoly and oligarchy, and that, in fact, is what history shows us. Case in point: any socialist nation. Shit, as much as I like Doctor Who, the BBC. And, as much as the idea of big scary companies frightens you, at least you have the option to not use that companies service or product in a free market. You can choose a competing company, or a competing product. If the government controls that service or product, and forbids competition, then you've got no option. And I'm talking about the United States, too. Because any major corporation that holds a monopoly or even dominant market share of any service or product that you care to name I can point to a subsidy, tax loophole, and/or special legal category that the government has allowed which lets that company hold a monopoly.

Don't look at the US and say that free markets don't work, because we don't have a free market.

I know, we're such assholes for not responding to government subsidized monopolies by saying, "Well, what can you do? That's how the pseudo-free market works!" It's just like how the Iraqi elections under Hussein resulted in his winning 99% of the popular vote, thus proving that democracy is impossible and hopelessly broken.

Did they overlook the $1 mil for a cab medallion? Because, speaking from the DMV (DC, Maryland, Virginia, for non-natives), that was the first thing we picked up on. Apparently, NYC has so much money that only rich people can own cabs. Because you can get a smartphone for way less than an NYC cab medallion. I don't know what it's like up there, but, everywhere else, smartphones aren't limited to "rich people".

Whenever articles like this come out, I laugh. It reminds me of the "House of the Future!" stuff from the 50s, the sort of bizarre futurism that the Fallout series lampoons so well. The idea that people will start eating mealworms because hamburgers go up to $20 a pop in five years is just silly. You'll just see what we're seeing now, which is a combination of subtle changes in diet caused by everything from socioeconomics to health concerns.

Look at the trends today: buying local, aquaculture, sustainable agriculture, "alternative" meats such as goat, eating more varied proteins (swapping meat out for legumes). Collectively, these factors are pretty significant, and help avoid the alarmist dystopia the BBC is predicting.

I think population, particularly settlement patterns, is a more significant problem.

PC gamers use PCs because they can upgrade hardware components easily. Macs have always been "black boxes" for the most part, have focused on proprietary hardware, and have generally approached gaming as a secondary priority, if a priority at all. Linux, however, will run on a PC, and supports a wider range of gaming-oriented hardware than Apple OSs ever have.

People don't buy Macs for gaming; they own Macs and then want to play a particular game. To make the switch, they have to spend more money (to get a copy of Bootcamp and Windows, for example). People who own PCs run either Windows or Linux; to switch from Windows to Linux is free. If you only run Windows to play games, you can dump Windows and run Steam in Linux without incurring any additional cost. Not so with Mac. So, comparing the Mac market to a potential Linux market is apples and oranges, really.

I second that. Rage on its own merits was a mediocre AAA FPS with a buggy launch and consolitis. As a monument to Johm Carmack's overinflated view of his own relevance to gaming in general, it was and continues to be extremely telling. Linux isn't commercially viable for game designers because the market isn't there, and the market isn't there because developers don't make games for it. Valve stepping up and bringing Steam to Linux has the potential to cut that particular Gordian knot. Frankly, Valve is big and relevant enough to do it; Carmack doesn't have the juice to do it if he wanted to anymore.

So does that make you a supporter? How about a promoter?

I don't know, but if I see I guy coming in through the Exit door in body armor, and I'm an off-duty or plain clothes cop, and he hucks a canister, I'm gonna say something. And, yeah, if there's a guy shooting in a theater in a cloud of smoke, I'll shoot at the muzzle flare. It's better than the alternative, obviously.

Do you live in the DC area? I do. I remember exactly what happened with Occupy. They camped out in a park for months, pissing off people who actually live here and being a general nuisance. Most of them had no idea what they were demonstrating for. Some did, but they were radicals who didn't exactly represent most of the DC area, much less the United States at large. They were left alone for months, until the stink got so bad (and they'd assaulted enough locals) that the police finally ran them off. They're still in DC, mind you, just not in the same parks. They were not totally peaceful, nor were they totally unarmed. They'd left their homes months prior, and many of them are what you'd call professional protesters. We don't want them here, but they won't leave.

I have my own opinions about guns, which I suspect differ from yours, but that's what I know about Occupy.

I've recently been put in a position where I've had to do development and administration using solely FOSS software. It's awful. It can be done, and done well, but there are cost systems that make the process much easier and more efficient. From a practical standpoint, I would prefer not to have to use FOSS. I'm being intentionally vague, but suffice it to say that I'm mostly using command line stuff, running CentOS. Most of my time is spent figuring out how to use the environment. Some of that time is spent trying to get a version of Wine running that will let me install Office 2010 so that I can rewrite a manual. Yes, I'm aware of OOo, and I've used it, and it's not capable of doing what I need it to do, frankly.

I'm painting with a broad brush here, and I know it, but my issue with FOSS has and continues to be that there isn't enough attention paid to the UI. It's unnecessarily difficult to do very basic things that users need to do. Installing necessary software (and yes, I'm aware of security considerations), copying and pasting, and basic productivity. I can do all of these things from the command line, and do, but it's faster in a GUI. I'm aware that I'm going to be crucified for this, but Windows does this so much better it's not even funny.

Prior to needing to do all my development on a Linux box, I'd been ambivalent about FOSS; now, I'm sold on paid software, frankly. While the capabilities may be there (and that's arguable), it's still a hobby environment. I can't afford to spend two hours figuring out how to do twenty minutes of development when I also have other responsibilities. I say that to say this: if Steam can bring paid software to Linux, God bless them. Maybe it'll get the Linux communities to start thinking about moving past the dedicated audience and the hobby crowd.

...like Contra, Rush N' Attack, Combat, and Ikari Warriors. Sad that today's games are so obsessed with violence and the military.

but if this was being purchased for scurrilous reasons, couldn't Iranian intelligence go to, say, anywhere else to buy an iPad? I know that the employee is bound by Apple rules, but still. How much of this is Iranian vs. Iranian beef? Or, I'm sorry, Persian vs. Iranian beef?

That's as coherent as it gets. Capitalism is an economic system wherein private interests own all capital, i.e. means of production. Means of production are things like tools, factories, etc., basically any durable good that is used to manufacture something else for profit. The definition doesn't get much simpler without losing some accuracy, so if you're having a hard time with it you might read a bit of basic economics.

Centrally-controlled socialist economies can also be based on the "selfish desire to make money." After all, they use the power of law and their ability to enforce laws with violence to remain the dominant (or only) economic actor. I always think it's funny that people see corporations as big, evil, monolithic robber-barons, but have no problem with an entire government controlling your access to resources with tanks and assault rifles. I mean, do you think your one vote has more impact on your happy smileville socialist government than my spending or not spending money on something has on a company?

There's also the issue of sovereignty and enforcement. A state can't remain a state and abdicate sovereignty at the same time, and a key element of sovereignty is the sole legitimate right to the use of force. In order for an entire state to be subject to a law made by another entity, it would by default had to have relinquished its own sovereignty to the entity in question. That's why the UN doesn't actually make "laws"; a law implies enforcement, and the UN lacks the authority to enforce anything.

That's different than states using violence or other forms of compulsion to force other states to comply with agreements or treaties. A sovereign has a positive right to use force to compel a subject entity to follow laws it has established, and the subject has an obligation to adhere to laws passed by the sovereign. Other obligations may at times outweigh the citizenship duty, but it's way up there. On the other hand, the highest responsibility a state has is to 1. maintain sovereignty, and 2. protect its citizens. International agreements always fall below that in terms of ethical force.

So, yeah, in addition to the UDHR (which is a little bit of a misnomer, because not everyone on Earth, let alone the Universe, signed) not being ratified by Congress, the strength of the binds that hold any country to a treaty or agreement are tenuous at best.