...it's what you do with it.

While you might be able to store the entire contents of the Internet in a small space, you probably can't manage 6-10% of all of the Internet's traffic in a small space and still do so in millisecond response times.

In addition to handling 70% of every Internet search, Google also serves up a billion YouTube videos every day.

So, until Cuil or archive.org has as many people going to it, I'd venture a guess that size doesn't matter in this case... it's redundancy.

The existence of Internet monitoring equipment by itself is not enough to declare a country oppressive. No more than the existence of freedom to bear arms is enough to declare a country murderous. It's how you use such tools and the scale by which abuses are discovered that determine the morals of a government.

Could the riots in Iran ever happen in the U.S.? Sure. It's possible because we are all human. Could someone end up in the Presidency that the people are certain they didn't actually vote in? Sure. It has happened. Any systems that humans invent are going to be flawed. Putting aside the paranoia which might use these facts to paint the U.S. as being "no better than Iran" dismisses the fact that Iran's democracy is a fallacy, even moreso than the U.S.'s. In Iran, even if the vote by the people had gone the other way, the clerics have the power to completely override the vote. They only need to declare that the people clearly went against God's will.

So, given the difference... there should be a line where certain monitoring software should be allowed and where the same monitoring software should not be allowed. For instance, certain equipment may only be sold by companies to law enforcement and not to citizens. Clearly there are already lines drawn between who should have this equipment and who shouldn't have it. I cannot legally put a light-bar on my car which would appear to impersonate a police car. It's the law and it is a reasonable one. A person needs to pass their background check before being allowed to own a weapon, and this makes sense. A person also needs to pass a driving test before being allowed on the road in a motor vehicle. It makes sense. So, it also makes sense for the government to be OK with selling monitoring software to local police forces but not be OK with selling the same monitoring software to a country where there is proof their police forces are marching through the roads, indiscriminately smashing windshields of parked cars with batons without any mention by the government that these police officers will face justice for these actions. There are documented cases of people being beaten while laying on the ground surrounded by several officers in riot gear, yet you don't see the government at any level calling for the same kind of inquiry as we had with the Rodney King situation. The fact of the matter is, while bad things do happen in the U.S., at least there is some sort of sign that the government attempts to investigate wrong-doings, attempts to right wrongs, and attempts to change laws to adapt to the problems that are found. In Iran, the country is pretty much at the mercy of the clerics who have an all-encompassing override for anything that would be considered democratic.

Also, some argue that because the U.S. government doesn't go after China for the same reasons, that they should either leave Iran alone... or also go after China equally. This is rarely a valid argument when it comes to law. Take, for instance, the situation of speeding on a highway. When you get pulled over for speeding and you tell the officer "I was going the same speed as everyone else. Why did they get away with it? I shouldn't have to be punished for the rule that clearly everyone was breaking." Expect to get a ticket. If you go to court with that same argument, expect to keep the ticket. It simply isn't a valid argument. Being punished due to breaking a rule isn't about what everyone else is or isn't doing, it's about the rule you broke.

In any case, it's not like the government is imposing sanctions. They are simply saying that the U.S. government is choosing not to give money to one set of companies while being OK with giving money to other sets of companies. It's no different than when you decide Walmart is evil and stop shopping there. Nobody should force you to have to shop at a company you aren't happy with, so the government shouldn't be forced either. Sure, someone could point out just how evil every other corporation in the world is, then suggest that if you stop shopping at Walmart, you'd be a hypocrite to shop at, say, Abercrombie & Fitch. But, it's your prerogative where you decide to draw the line about which companies you decide are just "too evil to shop at" and which ones are "just about OK on the evil scale."

So, you're saying that an addicted smoker telling others that they shouldn't start smoking and if they are already addicted to smoking, it would be better for their health to quit... will never be seen as sincere, unless they first quit smoking themselves. Hmmm...

I fail to see what "dictating" is happening with this. They aren't telling these companies who they may or may not sell to. They are only saying we aren't going to buy from you. That's it. Should the government have the freedom to pick and choose who they give money to, or do you suggest there should be some sort of dictating that needs to happen here?

While on some levels this is true, there is a plus side to all of this. While search engines are ultimately working to solve the "artificial intelligence" problem in terms of understanding what someone means when they type, spammers who write CAPTCHA solvers ultimately solve the problem of understanding text or objects as a person sees them.

All of these technologies further progress us towards a future of robots that can think, see, and interact just like us.

On the other hand, they will enslave us all.

In any case, whenever a battle between good and evil rages on, the outcome is advanced technology (or total obliteration). Even the spammers who use human-power to solve CAPTCHAs are ultimately inventing mechanisms which could be used to solve other problems, such as failed OCR attempts by book-scanning projects.

Google's single point of failure is if "[advertising] dries up or declines"? Wow. Couldn't you equally say that Microsoft's single point of failure is if they stop making money, or quite as much of it?

You act like "advertising" is something that, one day, people just won't need anymore. If anything, as the world gets bigger and bigger and bigger, businesses NEED advertising in order to be known and remain competitive.

If Google's source of income DECLINES, they can deal with it... like any other company dealing with a decline. If Google's source of income "dries up", this likely means that nearly every company in the world just vanished, or no longer needed to compete for attention. If that happens, we've got much much larger problems to worry about than whether or not Google alone can stay afloat.

Oh, and a user script which blocks ads and works with Google Chrome can be found here:

http://www.adsweep.org/

I personally don't use it, but it claims to work with Chrome. I am sure there are others. Just look for greasemonkey ad-blocking scripts and try them out. With Chrome, after installing a new user script, just refresh the tab you're interested in and it should take effect immediately. If it doesn't work or you don't like it, either delete the script or move it into another path. I just create a folder under the User Scripts folder called "deactivated" and dump bad scripts in there, in case I feel like tweaking it later to get it to work better.

I apologize. The best way to go about this is the following:

1) Go here and download and run the Google Chrome Channel Changer:
http://dev.chromium.org/getting-involved/dev-channel

2) Change to the DEVELOPER channel. Releases happen more often, a later version can be found here, but the versions can be less stable, depending on whether the developers were having a good week or not. ;)

3) Go to the ABOUT dialog box in Google Chrome and it will now say there is a new version. Install it.

4) Once this is complete, change the shortcut for Google Chrome and add --enable-user-scripts after the chrome.exe path and name.

5) Google Chrome will now support user scripts. These are just greasemonkey scripts for those who are unfamiliar with the term.

6) Place your scripts here:

C:\Documents and Settings\your-windows-user-name\Local Settings\Application Data\Google\Chrome\User Data\Default\User Scripts

"Default" is the default profile... if you use a different profile for Chrome, you'd want to go into that path instead.

7) Most user scripts are supported. The ones which are not supported are the ones which use certain GM_ commands. Simple ones like basic ad blockers, ones which force an HTTPS connection for certain services, once which change URLs for links, etc... all tend to work. I've had to tweak some user scripts to avoid certain issues, but some work right out of the box.

Again, it's not "simple"... it's not "clean"... but for now, it works... and is clear that Google is taking the right direction to supporting this stuff. I imagine that, eventually, Google Chrome supported user scripts will become more abundant, will be easily installed via a basic wizard within Chrome, and will likely be found in a "gallery" hosted by Google some day.

Maybe they should be "the browser is the Operating Environment" instead of "the browser is the Operating System". That would be more accurate.

Essentially what this shift is doing is it is changing the way developers build applications for use by the masses. Instead of coding back-end processes to a certain file-system and the front-end GUI in the form of modular windows for a particular OS, developers are increasingly designing their GUI's to be rendered in a browser and building the back-end on remote servers.

Google (and others) are closing this gap a bit by providing the same functionality remote servers provide, and implementing this functionality on the individual client machines (Gears)... not necessarily as a replacement, but as a fall-back when Internet access is not available or is shaky.

This design philosophy, coupled with the fact that the front-end GUI is also hosted remotely, is basically making the browser the access point to the applications people use on a daily basis... whereas, before, the user's desktop (the visible portions of the operating system and the reason most people upgraded from one operating system to the next) was the access point to the applications people used to use on a daily basis.

The shift is still happening, and it won't happen overnight, but more and more people are turning to their web browser for every task, rather than the Start Menu in Windows, for instance. Rather than running Calc to do a calculation, they might have a Calculator Gadget on their customized Google Home Page (or other equivalent site) or maybe just typing the numbers directly into the Google search box. Rather than running Solitaire on their local machine, they might be visiting a website to run a Flash-based version of Solitaire. Rather than opening Notepad to type some notes, they might be using a hosted document provider. This trend in shifting from the general desktop to the browser is continuing to happen.

While it is true that it isn't necessarily replacing the "OS" from a geek standpoint (after all, the OS is still needed to RUN the web browser), it IS replacing the public's perception of what an OS is. Most people who just USE computers and don't also TINKER with computers generally move from one operating system to the next because of the next wave of applications that this opens up to them... because of the interface changes that make doing every-day things easier... etc... Nowadays, people are staring less at their desktops and are staring at a web browser. So now, people are more interested about the advancements in web browsers than the advancements in operating systems.

Eventually, the operating system will be a moot point. One day, a Windows user will have no problem switching to Linux... because he/she won't have to worry about "will Microsoft Word run on Linux? Will I have to get used to a whole new desktop experience?" and so on... instead, the only question will be "Can I run a web browser in Linux? If so, will all of my web-based applications run in that web browser?" The answer to both of those questions is usually already "yes"... so the majority of the concerns are already taken care of.

The main areas that will not consider this kind of switch are Enterprises (which have legacy applications which will continue to remain in their respective environments) or hard-core gamers (who rely heavily on installed applications and powerful hardware configurations to meet their hard-core gaming needs.) The latter group might be eventually replaced by the console market as the line between "what is a gaming console" and "what is a computer" is continually blurred. It would not surprise me if the next PlayStation comes pre-installed with Linux, with much easier use by laymen... and if the next XBox 360 comes pre-installed with the latest flavor of Windows, complete with tie-ins with Microsoft's cloud-based services. Add a keyboard and a mouse and a hi-def television, and you're set.

As for the Enterprise... it is only a matter of time before legacy applications catch-up to today's technology shifts. A lot of applications which once ran on mainframes are making the shift to the Windows environment... and then will eventually make the shift to the hosted application paradigm. In the meantime, Microsoft and Google are already making headway in the lesser applications like word processing, spreadsheets, etc...

I think it is important to add that Google Chrome already supports add-ons (well, user scripts)... the types that block ads... customize sites... etc... I use these user scripts all the time, and these weren't ones I wrote myself... these are ones written by others.

What Chrome does not yet have is the ability for non-techies to easily find and install these user scripts. That is definitely coming, but everyone just needs to be patient. Also what is coming is the ability for such add-ons to modify and tweak the UI.

I see. Well, I suppose that is true for those who think that way. I never do.

I understand that e-mail isn't hacker-proof, that my home is not burglar-proof, that I will eventually die one day, and that no matter how safe of a driver I am, I will likely end up in an accident some day.

I also understand that in the event that my e-mail (whether it is web-based, or is supposedly a "secure" ISP-based solution) is hacked, my home is broken into, my health fails me, or I end up in an automobile accident... that if there is someone else who is responsible, that they will face consequences.

These consequences aren't meant to make email safer, make my home more secure, make me healthier, or make me more comfortable about getting into my car again... it's meant to equalize the balance of responsibility. That if someone wrongs me, they face consequences... and if I wrong someone else, I shall face consequences... and in the end, fair is fair.

It's not just about safety or privacy... it's about equality and fairness.