Mark my words: if he ends up having a fair trial in Sweden and gets prosecuted via Swedish law for the crimes leveled against him, then serves whatever sentence he receives and goes on his way, I'll eat my netbook. All those of you considering *any* of the allegations made by these young women to be true, watch. Watch what happens the moment he sets foot in Sweden. Just watch. I *dare* you. The U.S. wants him and this is how they're going about getting him.

Can we stop pretending that his legal charges have anything to do with rape? It was evident from the getgo that the whole situation in Sweden was a farce and a naked attempt to smear his good name sufficiently that he could be whisked to the U.S. and waterboarded. Let's also stop pretending that his Swiss bank account was closed due to addressing issues or that Paypal, Visa and Mastercard all refuse to process donations for him because... well, they never really did supply reasons for their behavior, did they?

Ubuntu's standout feature, IMO, is that it's not incumbent Xoogle, Ycrosoft or Zapple ;)

Did P.J. O'Rourke have a corresponding snappy witticism for an unregulated market?

They're working the obsolescence angle. Nobody remembers how to compromise security on any OSS that old.

Did he just play the terrorism card? Oh no he didn't!

... as being the litigious laughingstock of the rest of the world. The U.S. is lucky it's still rich enough, for now, that it can afford to let armies of bloodsucking lawyers and lobbyists sap innovation from key industries. How long can that be sustained? Free-market capitalist democracy - what a load of tripe.

Gotta love all the "it'll never have market share comparable to current incumbent x, y or z" comments. You obviously haven't been following the last 20 years' worth of developments in the software industry.

Of course nothing happens in a vacuum. Blah blah blah. Let's avoid ALSO slipping into a capitalist vs. communist ideological catfight here. We're talking about processors. First of all, I think it's naive to assume that China will continue to feel that copying is good enough. If supremacy is their agenda, as you seem to be suggesting, surely they'll attempt to take what they learn and run with it in as soon as they are capable. Japan started by imitating US tech, and look what they've done with it (and what the US has done with its own tech in the meantime :/ ). Taking them as an example, I find your argument re: market competition ironic - while U.S. manufacturing giants like GMC ask for bailouts (who's supping from the teat of government funding?) and stagnate in providing any real innovation, Asian products dominate the U.S. market. The assertion that free market capitalism is at the root of U.S. tech innovation is laughable - U.S. corporations are more interested in profit than innovation, and are bleeding incentives away from their home turf because they can pay less for it in the East. The main reason the U.S. is still on top of the high tech market is that it's a young technology, birthed from the military industrial complex (and how much public funding has gone into that over the last 60 years? Fat government funding indeed. Give me a break). Give it another 20-30 years and we'll see whose economic practices allow for innovation in the global tech industry.

Microsoft paid FAR too much for skype for them to stop wasting time, effort and more money on it now. Woe betide ye, FOSS clones... Time to look into this Google videoconferencing stuff.

Yeah, it be like if an alcoholic coke-head ran for president. No one would ever vote for him.

Oh, the irony of this statement!

the NYT is the lapdog of the liberal left, and not likely to leak anything of importance.

That's the richest comment I've read on Slashdot in a long time. Hooh, boy.

A new study shows correlation between a few isolated test parameters and a few isolated end results! Well done, behavioral science, for ignoring the fascinatingly complex interpersonal, existential web that is human life!

Ford and Microsoft teaming up? Now there's a shudder-worthy proposition.

Oh, ok, well that makes it all good, then! Thanks for those helpful tips.