Although the languages are considered mutually intelligible, understanding Estonian is to a Finnish native quite a task. You can usually decipher the context pretty easily, but the exact message is much more of a problem. Especially you have to be really careful about some common, or common-sounding words that have a different meaning. :)

A small linguistic correction: Estonians speak a version - or rather a descendant - of (something like) the proto-Finno-Ugric language. This is most definitely not version of Finnish, since Finnish itself is also a version of such proto-Finno-Ugric language. Both of these current languages belong to the same group of Baltic-Finnic, or Finnic languages, which are a subset of the larger group of Finno-Ugric languages. Now something like Kven language would indeed be a version - or a dialect - of Finnish, but not Estonian.

But yes, the same language root. Hungarian is also in the Finno-Ugric group, so it's also a version of the proto-Finno-Ugric language.

My point that facebook might not be available in the future was only to illustrate it is a bigger issue than current social media. It was misguided, I admit. However, my argument wasn't based on that.

Sure he would - but that's today. The original argument was that we are in the middle of a generational shift, and what we share now would affect the future politican in the future. My arguemet was that if young people today and in the future share their life, we will reach a critical mass of people sharing their life, after which so-called dirt will stop mattering all that much.

So while Obama would indeed be in a crisis today, people living in a open, shared society of the future would not care. It's also worthy to note that even today the resulting political ciris would be much smaller than it would have been a hunderd years ago, even though people assumedly did just as much bad stuff back then.

I should also repeat that I'm not sure I agree with this theory, but I do think it's plausible enough not to be outright denied.

The browser isn't saying your site is unsafe. It's saying you site claims to be safe, but doesn't really own up to it's claim. From that angle, it is worse than not even claiming to be safe.

But you are right that instead of throwing a security fit about it, it would be nice if the browser would then just interpret the site as "normal" unsafe site until a security exception is added manually.

Ahem, in 30 years, there might not even be a facebook. I think the poster (girlintraining) was referring to a larger phenomenon, where people are sharing their life - all the fabulous along with all the dirt - with the global community. This would not refer to only facebook, but to blogs, myspace, etc, etc. So your point about everybody not using facebook isn't valid, since the poster wrote about a larger shift in treating information, a shift she apparently percieves that we're in the middle of.

Now I might not agree with her, but if she's arguing about the future (privacy un-corcern in facebook being only an anecdotal evidence of the generational shift), I can't agrue against her by stating something current.

The point is, that they will, since everybody has those photos. "Ooo, look, he was drunk as a teenager" loses a lot of it's strength, when there are pictures of everybody being drunk as a teenager.

And yeah, not everyone will have those pictures. Some will stay walled within their privacy. But the point is not all have to go along - it's quite possible to argue that there's a certain critical mass you have to overcome. After that, nobody cares if you're a posterboy in digital archives, because many, many other respectable people won't be. You may get a slight advantage, but not certainly a significant one. Might even end up being a disadvantage - people like that won't look like they've lived or experienced anything interesting.

As I said, I might not agree with that view, but I think it's a valid argument, that certainly doesn't deserve and absolute "NO!" as a reply. I fear only time will tell who's right, and I just hope the open and pretenseless society is really the future - not the over-controlled image-centric one where everyone does stuff but has to hide it from everyone else (who are also doing similar stuff they are hiding) that we have today.

Your own major flaw in reasoning is that you think software has to be built by the model companies like Adobe use.

Now wait a second, making software user friendly IS fun! So I certainly do agree it shouldn't be outlawed - now why on earth does Stallman suggest that? Oh, wait, he doesn't...

Sure - just like "freedom" equals "not paying". For years I've tried to fix the Wikipedia article for it, but the ignorant fools keep reverting my corrections!

The problem with living in Sweden is that they probably have to pay SEK, not USD...

True, but then again calling it "theft" tries to claim wether it's right or wrong, but on wrong grounds, since the two actions can't be equated. I'd rather see people talk about the issue itself, and it's really, really hard to do so when you have mixed metaphors about stealing stuff. That's why I hate this theft propaganda - it makes it impossible to actually discuss the issue. Which, of course, is what it's probably intended to do as well.

The thing is, semantics do matter.

Making people lose potential profit still isn't theft. Key word is "potential", we don't really know how much profit is affected, and so on.

Making people lose profit can be a bad thing, even crime in some cases, but it sure isn't theft. Look at it this way, If I establish a coffee house near your existing one, you lose potential profit. I think people would get a quite wrong idea if you them claimed I stole your money...