The collaboration in the word processor is nice, but even Apple has that to some extent now. Google does this a lot, provides a decent product then ignores it and lets it get stale. I was thinking they were going to kill it off like they do with most of their products. Does the spreadsheet have a real regression line feature yet?

Establishing that knowledge *can* be property is necessary, but not sufficient to establish that any piece of knowledge *is* property.

But at stake here isn't knowledge; it's administration.

That our authority over DNS is legally US government property in any sense the framers would have agreed upon, even stretching that concept of property to include intangible property.

Even if you can argue that DNS is American government property, it's pretty useless property. Since it is largely administered in a decentralized fashion, if the rest of the world wants it can set up its own DNS system and have people in their country point to their preferred root servers.

The Indian government certainly has jurisdiction over communications entering and leaving their country. They can cut them off pretty much completely if they want. Wouldn't be the first country that suspended US access.

Many do, they just think that they "need" all those channels. OTA TV is free, with an initial cost of $20 for an antenna and $10 for coax.

a more eye-candy design with the panel on top (not on the bottom like on a default LXDE setup), new icons, new Applications Menu, and new theme.

Oh, look - the bar is now at the top of the screen and we've shined up the icons and stuff. Mac envy much? Not everyone wants eye candy cluttering up everything they see.

Maybe others won't take them on as customers because they don't need the legal scrutiny?

Any time that an inspector finds the wiring has been interfered with (lots of grow-ops), the power is cut. No advance notice.

In other words, Microsoft CAN, and always has been able to, control what hardware manufacturers package with the OS.

As for Apple, check out the Hackintosh - there's only millions of search results.

They didn't take away my big-box bookstore. On the contrary, another competitor opened up a superstore book store a couple of years ago. Amazon CAN be beaten.

"You can't vote for person C because then person B might get in instead of person A." The amount of social pressure to follow this line of reasoning indicates that the US is pretty fascist. Same with US exceptionalism (we can bug you but you can't bug us, we won't extradite Americans accused of war crimes, etc). Both Clinton and Trump are pushing the "My country right or wrong" mindset. Glad I'm a citizen of another country, but I will only vote for people who give me a reason to vote FOR them, not a reason I shouldn't vote for someone else.

So what you're saying is that you are a failure at your job. Why should we listen to a self-admitted failure who can't do what he sees as his job? As for living as a character in Star Trek, ain't gonna happen.

CloudFlare can't deny they are distributing the copyrighted material - that's the "content" in Content Distribution Network. They certainly know the source, and who's paying the bills. I wonder how many other illegal sites are hiding behind CloudFlare that they're investing so much into an indefensible position.

Reduced oil supply in the future is irrelevant, and even a good thing, so what's the problem? Alternate energy sources are already cost-competitive.

How do you plan on relieving North Korea of their nuclear weapons development plan? More sanctions? Dream on. Pressure from China? Not going to happen because, like Putin, Kim Jong Un knows that when push comes to shove, there are two outcomes - The other side blinks, and you win, or the other side nukes you, and you'll be dead anyway so who gives a sh*t.

As for China heading for a crash, how much US debt does China hold? You better hope they don't have to liquidate it or the US economy will be nuked within hours. The US foreign currency reserves are less than 4% of China's. And unlike China, the US hasn't allowed an audit of the physical gold reserves in decades.

China lets people own things, including land and homes. You're really out of date on that one.

Governments have been given the power by the people to regulate businesses. Businesses cannot regulate themselves, even over the short term (Wells Fargo bank fraud, the financial crisis, etc.) so we have delegated that job as we see fit. If you have a problem with that, go to Somalia. No law there except at the point of a gun - and you'll have no legal recourse.