chha

He had a diplomatic passport, meaning that he should be sent straight through with no questions asked (more or less).

Especially when they happen to be priests and former PM for the christian democratic party!

I see their point, but this is exactly what I'm trying every day to prevent at work (at least to a certain degree). Way too many people use complex spreadsheets for business critical tasks where other tools are better suited.

If the concept of shareable libraries of function sheets become a reality, we're likely to end up in a scenario where corporate IT maintains one software suite, while the end-users supposed to use that suite ends up using a bunch of spreadsheets instead, but with no quality control and a backup/VCS resembling <filename>.backup.xlsx, <filename>.working.xlsx, <filename> (copy).xlsx, etc....

"Facebook's business is data collection in order to sell more effectively targeted advertisements. While massive data collection is not new or unique to Facebook—search engines such as Google and Microsoft's Bing have the same feature—Facebook is unusual in that it actively strives to make that information personally identifiable. Facebook accounts tend to use our legal names, and Facebook relationships tend to reflect our real-life associations, giving the company's data a depth and breadth that Google or Microsoft can only dream about.

Among the pieces of personal information that the site asks users for is religion. As with most pieces of information that Facebook requests, this is of course optional. But it's an option that many people fill in to ensure that our profiles better reflect who we are."

I actually hadn't considered this angle before now. And this is bad. Imagine if someone decided to do bad stuff; hiding a religion on your profile isn't necessarily enough (especially if Facebook tracks changes), but analysis of messages sent to contacts abroad could also help reveal you.

I don't live in the US, so I don't have a lot of insight as to how US laws work in this regard. How difficult would it be for him to do something like this?

Wouldn't replacing the power plants be cheaper (and better) in the run rather than running jet engines to get rid of the pollution? Why isn't that an option in this case?

"But theoretically an Afghan citizen could move to Svalbard freely."

This is the principle, but the local laws require visitors to be able to support themselves and not be burden to the society; if you are unable to do this you will be sent back to the mainland.

Jobs are very difficult to come by, and as 90% of the housing in Longyearbyen is corporately owned, finding a place to live without a job can be difficult. [1]

[1] - http://www.nord24.no/her-skal-ingen-fodes-eller-do-men-etter... (in Norwegian)

Same here. The Norwegian site Finn.no has the closest thing I've found, adding released public aerial photos to their map service every now and then. For an example, go to http://kart.finn.no/, find a city and look at the menu node called "Historiske".

Although an interesting read, I can't help to think that this is just another person who sees new tech and it's direct impact.

He seems to ignore the fact that computers and be used for other stuff than gaming, and that gaming or DIY/tinkering may result in people starting with that other stuff.

This is quite an improvement from the olden days when a certain Microsoft executive described the GPL as a cancer, and open source in general as a thing to avoid

There's also a quite good and extensive book on the issue by Ben Macintyre.

This!

If I could upvote it more than once, I would do it in a heartbeat!

...or it could simply be a short form of "binary".

This just can't end up being a positive thing for Europe...

Primarily because not _every_ worker will be moved when a company moves. A lot of the workforce will be local, hence the language requirements.