"however, you must acquire and dedicate a license for each separate COMPUTER on or from which the SOFTWARE PRODUCT is installed, used, accessed, displayed or run."
Pretty crafty, those MS lawyers. I hope the EULA gets its ass kicked in the CA lawsuit.
What about cartoons? I can't think of anything in any game that is more explicitly violent than the action in a Bugs Bunny/Roadrunner cartoon and yet the generations of people who grew up with daily doses of this extreme violence don't seem especially more fscked-up than the generations that have grown up with violent video games.
Actually, when I think about it, there isn't much television at all that I would consider appropriate for children under 12 (except maybe Bill Nye the Science Guy!). So, if we exclude video games and television from the lives of children, what sources of violence are we leaving them exposed to? Movies, music, books, magazines, and newspapers?
And since when did Fantasy get classified the same as Science Fiction? The two are very definitely NOT the same! It's fine to read one, the other, or both; but don't lump them into the same literary category.
...is because all of the discrete components need cooling, not just the ones that have heat sinks. It might be as much as a year before he smells the delicate aroma of cooked dielectric when a capacitor overheats and explodes.
Never design computer cases when you're high on crack.
While I will concede that some of the design elements are novel, this thing is just ugly. It looks like somebody wedged an aluminum briefcase into a radiator.
Real Business
on
Real DRM
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
As a content producer, I cannot understand why anyone would choose to use a Real codec to distribute work. The quality is so poor that studio-produced material ends up looking like the work of half a dozen chimpanzees after a ten-day heroin binge. Thank you, no.
Just as important: if I'm producing content for distribution, my client has to be able to view it, which means they need a player, right? Burying the free version of the Real player in some obscure corner of a badly-designed web page has to be the most astonishingly suicidal move I've ever seen a company make. Whether Real chooses to believe it or not, Real Player is competing for the same market segment as Windows Media Player, and WMP is both effectively free and transparently available as far as Windows users are concerned.
Encasing poorly-encoded media in a DRM wrapper is just one more significant barrier between users and their ability to view content.
Higher precision in the processing piepline means that the end product will have higher accuracy. Have you ever found yourself manipulating numbers through long strings of calculations? Did you notice how errors could accumulate? The longer the pipeline is, the larger the amount of error in the final rendered image.
For example, say you're going to launch an interplanetary spacecraft to travel from Earth to Saturn. Saturn is a nice, big target, right? Easy to find. And, just for the hell of it, let's assume that we have unlimited energy for launch, so we can fly what is essentially a straight-line orbit to Saturn--no mucking about with those silly, time-consuming Hohmann transfer orbits.
An error of 1 degree of arc, the angular equivalent of a 0.28 percent error, will result in our spacecraft missing Saturn by over twenty million kilometers.
It's not how big the error is, it's how much it gets magnified over time.
Hmmm.... I agree with you on principle, especially regarding the ethical responsibility of a scientist or medical practioner. Though, if we were to extend the same argument to normal human reproduction, it would then be just as morally repugnant to enable a person with a known, malign genetic defect to reproduce, would it not?.
Back to cloning, though. Presuming that the science of cloning will undergo significant refinement (as any other science), it seems reasonable to extrapolate that the incidence of genetic deformation will be reduced to levels that are acceptibly near those of normal human reproduction, thus eliminating the objection to human clonling from a Hippocratic standpoint.
Yes, the sanctity of human life is a central tenet of virtually every human society (war, murder, and execution notwithstanding), and for sufficient reason: If human life was not held in high regard, how long would the human species survive?
The issue seems more deeply rooted than that, however. I suspect that most people feel a strong aversion to human cloning. It is this aversion that I am trying to understand.
Honestly, I'm not trolling, nor am I being intentionally obtuse. But I'm having a difficult time understanding what is morally 'wrong' about clonging.
Personally, I find the notion of human cloning distasteful but I suspect that is only because I haven't fully considered the potential benefits.
As far as moral objections to human cloning, I've heard relatively little. The religious fundamentalists are generally outraged, of course: they seem to believe that only god (specifially, their god) can create a human life--despite the fact that human reproduction has been functioning remarkably well for ~100,000 years and that no divine intervention appears to be required (otherwise, how could atheists have babies?). Identical twins/triplets/x-lets have identical DNA; how is this morally different from human cloning?
I have heard concerns regarding cloning an adult human whose DNA have 'aged', but how is this different from a woman giving birth at age 40? A woman does not genereate new eggs throughout her life; the eggs she's born with are all the eggs she'll ever have. Thus, the DNA in those eggs should be just as subject to 'aging' as the DNA in any other cells in her body. Even so, that's not a moral objection, that's a technical issue.
From the standpoint of genetic diversity, cloning is certainly undesirable. Clones of individuals, especially individuals who carry a genetic defect (such as an inability to reproduce) do nothing to enhance the survivability of that particular genetic line. Additionally, diseases or conditions that afflict an individual will certainly afflict the individual's clones in the same way, thus further reducing the survivability of that genetic line. But that, while unfortunate, hardly rises to the level of moral argument.
No, what I'm hearing from political and religious leaders is that human cloning is 'just wrong'. No explanation is offered, no justification of why it should be considered wrong, only that it is.
Now, the way in which clones are used can easily rise to a level of morality, just as the application of most any scientific knowledge can raise moral issues. But cloning itself does not seem to me to be any more wrong than, say, breeding race horses. Yet, almost universally, human cloning is regarded as abhorrent.
I would like very much to hear well-reasoned arguments why human cloning should be considered morally objectionable. Those of you with strong religious views are welcome to participate in the discussion, but please limit your remarks to rational, not reactionary, arguments. i.e. if you insist on positing that humans were specially created by god--a view that I cannot share, your argument is of no value to me.
Keep in mind, I am not arguing that human cloning is 'right', I am only seeking opinions about why it should be considered 'wrong'.
It was still a religious choice. Your religion--specifically, the belief structure you use to explain the unknown and the creation of the world--is apparantly "Science."
Science is most definitely not a religion. Religion is specifically personal; no one else can fully understand or feel exactly what you feel when you have a religious experience. Science, on the other hand, is the same for everybody. Different sized rocks fall at the same rate all over the world. Anyone can measure the temperature of ice and, subject to errors of calibration, achieve the same results.
If, as you seem to be claiming, the will of god is a valid explanation for the workings of the universe, then a person of sufficiently strong faith should be able to post on slashdot without the use of a computer.
Right, but virtually everything that religion (pick any religion) says about the origin of life is falsifiable with readily available evidence.
"The historical nature of macroevolutionary study involves inference from fossils and DNA rather than direct observation. Yet in the historical sciences (which include astronomy, geology and archaeology, as well as evolutionary biology), hypotheses can still be tested by checking whether they accord with physical evidence and whether they lead to verifiable predictions about future discoveries. For instance, evolution implies that between the earliest-known ancestors of humans (roughly five million years old) and the appearance of anatomically modern humans (about 100,000 years ago), one should find a succession of hominid creatures with features progressively less apelike and more modern, which is indeed what the fossil record shows. But one should not--and does not--find modern human fossils embedded in strata from the Jurassic period (144 million years ago). Evolutionary biology routinely makes predictions far more refined and precise than this, and researchers test them constantly. "
- from "Fifteen Answers to Creationist Nonsense" Scientific American
He might be a god of limited power, or an uncaring or apathetic god, for example. Lots of other possibilities too.
Well, then he's not much of a god, is he?
So, it looks like we have three possibilities:
1. God is not omnipotent.
2. God is not omnibenevolent.
3. There is no god.
If god is not omnipotent (and recall that the christian bible claims repeatedly that he is), then he cannot be infallible, in which case, he has no business meddling in the lives of humans. Such meddling by a fallible deity must eventually cause harm and a deity that would knowingly cause harm must be evil.
If god is not omnibenevolent (and recall that the new testamtent claims repeatedly that he is), then christian exhortations to love and forgive are in contradiction to the beliefs of an apathetic god, and thus meaningless.
If god is a god of limited power, yet still exists, then there is every reason to believe that god was created by a meta-god, in which case, why waste our time with the under-god? But then we're left with the original, unanswerable question: why do bad things happen?
Atheism may not be much comfort, but it beats believeing in a loving god who can't do anything or in an all-powerful god who doesn't care enough to do anything.
Wow, man. Take a science class, will you? A scientific theory (like evolution, relativity, plate tectonics, etc.) is a highly and quantifiably accurate description of how the universe really works, not a hypothesis. Scientific theory is backed up by experimental results.
I will never understand how a body of people can assert that what they believe is the "truth" when that "truth" flies in the face of objective fact.
And spare me your pathetic attempts to explain away the very real and obious evidence supporting evolution; it's tiresome and pointless.If there were a god, it stands to reasons that he/she/it would be mightily PISSED that his/her/its followers refuse to see or acknowledge easily discernible truth.
I think there are a number of different things going on here.
First of all, we're talking about an administration that is breathtakingly clueless about technology. Because they don't understand how a thing works means that the thing will be used to wreak havoc, right? That sounds chillingly similar to our cold war "capability equals intent" policy.
I also think it's a pretty solid bet that the infotainment industry is fueling those fears to protect their investment in broadband and their ability to sell it.
I also tend to think that people like Dick Cheney and George Bush view technology (espcially technology that provides or enhances intellectual freedom) of any kind as an inherent threat to his vision of what America should be. After all, "There ought to be limits to freedom."
Ooh. So if an abridged dictionary has some of its terms defined using words that aren't in the same collection (and thus, in someone else's dictionary), is the publisher then in violation of the copyright held by the other dictionary's publisher?
Maybe so, C. Though the meager evidence available suggests that there is no direct correlation between file-swapping and reduced CD sales.
So far, the RIAA has not demonstrated any ability to conduct a statistically meaningful study. Raw numbers with no analysis and a complete failure to acknowledge statistically-biasing factors such as a weak economy, increased CD prices, or the abysmal quality of music available do not a compelling argument make.
Swapping MP3's is just the 21st-century version of recording radio onto cassette tape. The quality is inferior to the original and--I would aruge--in the long run, it generates more sales.
If I ever get to the point where a few hundred million people are listening to my music, I'll let you know just how much sleep I'm losing.
But Adobe wrote and has patented the technology that encrypts the contents of the eBook. The DMCA specifically prohibits the circumvention of such security devices and Adobe, who uses this particular device, feels that they may face a substantial loss of revenue if their technology is cracked.
Analogously, if a lock manufacturer has their technology circumvented (i.e. someone creates a universal key) is it the responsibility of the users of the locks (whose stuff might get stolen) to pursue the keymaker, or is it the responsibility of the lock manufacturer? Arguably, in a case such as this, both the responsibility and the financial incentive reside with the lock manufacturer to pursue the keymaker.
OTOH, Skylarov's tool essentially restores fair-use rights that Adobe has stolen from eBook consumers.
I create copyrighted material. I prefer that my material is protected from plagiarizing. But if some kid likes my music well enough to download MP3's of it (not that that's an even remotely plausible scenario), I'm not going to lose any sleep thinking that I've lost that $0.03 royalty. Far better IMO to view it as free advertising. And if the kid's parents hear it enough, maybe they'll buy him the CD and then I'll get the whole $0.38.
As far as I'm concerned, the DMCA is bad law. I hope it gets struck down resoundingly and that Michael Eisner gets so angry about its defeat that his ulcer explodes and drowns him in gastric acid (or the non-violent equivalent, if you prefer--whatever that is).
It's not as though they're selling guns or missile guidance systems, fer chrissakes!
They're selling technology, and not particularly dangerous technology, at that!
If Amnesty International wants to make a fuss, there are immeasurably many more significant targets to choose from.
Yes, I laud their mission, but let's see about getting those priorities straight, okay?
Go after the meaningful targets first! Then waste time on the trivial stuff.
Well, the fine print isn't all that fine and Intel's SpeedStep/Clock-throttling technology has been thriving in the wild for some time now.
Sure, it's a little cheesy that they're sticking a desktop processor into a laptop; power conservation and thermal dissipation both suffer. But they do give you the advertised clock speed when you're plugged in.
The only thing I find particularly offensive is that the feature cannot be disabled from the BIOS. Maybe I'm just a reactionary, but I really resent someone else deciding what's 'best' for me.
Slashdot Mirror
Read it again:
"however, you must acquire and dedicate a license for each separate COMPUTER on or from which the SOFTWARE PRODUCT is installed, used, accessed, displayed or run."
Pretty crafty, those MS lawyers. I hope the EULA gets its ass kicked in the CA lawsuit.
What about cartoons? I can't think of anything in any game that is more explicitly violent than the action in a Bugs Bunny/Roadrunner cartoon and yet the generations of people who grew up with daily doses of this extreme violence don't seem especially more fscked-up than the generations that have grown up with violent video games.
Actually, when I think about it, there isn't much television at all that I would consider appropriate for children under 12 (except maybe Bill Nye the Science Guy!). So, if we exclude video games and television from the lives of children, what sources of violence are we leaving them exposed to? Movies, music, books, magazines, and newspapers?
Congress had better get busy!
And since when did Fantasy get classified the same as Science Fiction? The two are very definitely NOT the same! It's fine to read one, the other, or both; but don't lump them into the same literary category.
...is because all of the discrete components need cooling, not just the ones that have heat sinks. It might be as much as a year before he smells the delicate aroma of cooked dielectric when a capacitor overheats and explodes.
Never design computer cases when you're high on crack.
While I will concede that some of the design elements are novel, this thing is just ugly. It looks like somebody wedged an aluminum briefcase into a radiator.
As a content producer, I cannot understand why anyone would choose to use a Real codec to distribute work. The quality is so poor that studio-produced material ends up looking like the work of half a dozen chimpanzees after a ten-day heroin binge. Thank you, no.
Just as important: if I'm producing content for distribution, my client has to be able to view it, which means they need a player, right? Burying the free version of the Real player in some obscure corner of a badly-designed web page has to be the most astonishingly suicidal move I've ever seen a company make. Whether Real chooses to believe it or not, Real Player is competing for the same market segment as Windows Media Player, and WMP is both effectively free and transparently available as far as Windows users are concerned.
Encasing poorly-encoded media in a DRM wrapper is just one more significant barrier between users and their ability to view content.
That just doesn't make much business sense to me.
Er... Seems to me that the dumb ones are the first to get caught, yeah?
Higher precision in the processing piepline means that the end product will have higher accuracy. Have you ever found yourself manipulating numbers through long strings of calculations? Did you notice how errors could accumulate? The longer the pipeline is, the larger the amount of error in the final rendered image.
For example, say you're going to launch an interplanetary spacecraft to travel from Earth to Saturn. Saturn is a nice, big target, right? Easy to find. And, just for the hell of it, let's assume that we have unlimited energy for launch, so we can fly what is essentially a straight-line orbit to Saturn--no mucking about with those silly, time-consuming Hohmann transfer orbits.
An error of 1 degree of arc, the angular equivalent of a 0.28 percent error, will result in our spacecraft missing Saturn by over twenty million kilometers.
It's not how big the error is, it's how much it gets magnified over time.
I think they'll get better than 90% accuracy if they just set the default user mood to 'pissed.'
Hmmm.... I agree with you on principle, especially regarding the ethical responsibility of a scientist or medical practioner. Though, if we were to extend the same argument to normal human reproduction, it would then be just as morally repugnant to enable a person with a known, malign genetic defect to reproduce, would it not?.
Back to cloning, though. Presuming that the science of cloning will undergo significant refinement (as any other science), it seems reasonable to extrapolate that the incidence of genetic deformation will be reduced to levels that are acceptibly near those of normal human reproduction, thus eliminating the objection to human clonling from a Hippocratic standpoint.
Yes, the sanctity of human life is a central tenet of virtually every human society (war, murder, and execution notwithstanding), and for sufficient reason: If human life was not held in high regard, how long would the human species survive?
The issue seems more deeply rooted than that, however. I suspect that most people feel a strong aversion to human cloning. It is this aversion that I am trying to understand.
Honestly, I'm not trolling, nor am I being intentionally obtuse. But I'm having a difficult time understanding what is morally 'wrong' about clonging.
Personally, I find the notion of human cloning distasteful but I suspect that is only because I haven't fully considered the potential benefits.
As far as moral objections to human cloning, I've heard relatively little. The religious fundamentalists are generally outraged, of course: they seem to believe that only god (specifially, their god) can create a human life--despite the fact that human reproduction has been functioning remarkably well for ~100,000 years and that no divine intervention appears to be required (otherwise, how could atheists have babies?). Identical twins/triplets/x-lets have identical DNA; how is this morally different from human cloning?
I have heard concerns regarding cloning an adult human whose DNA have 'aged', but how is this different from a woman giving birth at age 40? A woman does not genereate new eggs throughout her life; the eggs she's born with are all the eggs she'll ever have. Thus, the DNA in those eggs should be just as subject to 'aging' as the DNA in any other cells in her body. Even so, that's not a moral objection, that's a technical issue.
From the standpoint of genetic diversity, cloning is certainly undesirable. Clones of individuals, especially individuals who carry a genetic defect (such as an inability to reproduce) do nothing to enhance the survivability of that particular genetic line. Additionally, diseases or conditions that afflict an individual will certainly afflict the individual's clones in the same way, thus further reducing the survivability of that genetic line. But that, while unfortunate, hardly rises to the level of moral argument.
No, what I'm hearing from political and religious leaders is that human cloning is 'just wrong'. No explanation is offered, no justification of why it should be considered wrong, only that it is.
Now, the way in which clones are used can easily rise to a level of morality, just as the application of most any scientific knowledge can raise moral issues. But cloning itself does not seem to me to be any more wrong than, say, breeding race horses. Yet, almost universally, human cloning is regarded as abhorrent.
I would like very much to hear well-reasoned arguments why human cloning should be considered morally objectionable. Those of you with strong religious views are welcome to participate in the discussion, but please limit your remarks to rational, not reactionary, arguments. i.e. if you insist on positing that humans were specially created by god--a view that I cannot share, your argument is of no value to me.
Keep in mind, I am not arguing that human cloning is 'right', I am only seeking opinions about why it should be considered 'wrong'.
It was still a religious choice. Your religion--specifically, the belief structure you use to explain the unknown and the creation of the world--is apparantly "Science."
Science is most definitely not a religion. Religion is specifically personal; no one else can fully understand or feel exactly what you feel when you have a religious experience. Science, on the other hand, is the same for everybody. Different sized rocks fall at the same rate all over the world. Anyone can measure the temperature of ice and, subject to errors of calibration, achieve the same results.
If, as you seem to be claiming, the will of god is a valid explanation for the workings of the universe, then a person of sufficiently strong faith should be able to post on slashdot without the use of a computer.
Right, but virtually everything that religion (pick any religion) says about the origin of life is falsifiable with readily available evidence.
"The historical nature of macroevolutionary study involves inference from fossils and DNA rather than direct observation. Yet in the historical sciences (which include astronomy, geology and archaeology, as well as evolutionary biology), hypotheses can still be tested by checking whether they accord with physical evidence and whether they lead to verifiable predictions about future discoveries. For instance, evolution implies that between the earliest-known ancestors of humans (roughly five million years old) and the appearance of anatomically modern humans (about 100,000 years ago), one should find a succession of hominid creatures with features progressively less apelike and more modern, which is indeed what the fossil record shows. But one should not--and does not--find modern human fossils embedded in strata from the Jurassic period (144 million years ago). Evolutionary biology routinely makes predictions far more refined and precise than this, and researchers test them constantly. "
- from "Fifteen Answers to Creationist Nonsense" Scientific American
He might be a god of limited power, or an uncaring or apathetic god, for example. Lots of other possibilities too.
Well, then he's not much of a god, is he?
So, it looks like we have three possibilities:
1. God is not omnipotent.
2. God is not omnibenevolent.
3. There is no god.
If god is not omnipotent (and recall that the christian bible claims repeatedly that he is), then he cannot be infallible, in which case, he has no business meddling in the lives of humans. Such meddling by a fallible deity must eventually cause harm and a deity that would knowingly cause harm must be evil.
If god is not omnibenevolent (and recall that the new testamtent claims repeatedly that he is), then christian exhortations to love and forgive are in contradiction to the beliefs of an apathetic god, and thus meaningless.
If god is a god of limited power, yet still exists, then there is every reason to believe that god was created by a meta-god, in which case, why waste our time with the under-god? But then we're left with the original, unanswerable question: why do bad things happen?
Atheism may not be much comfort, but it beats believeing in a loving god who can't do anything or in an all-powerful god who doesn't care enough to do anything.
Evolution is a theory
Wow, man. Take a science class, will you? A scientific theory (like evolution, relativity, plate tectonics, etc.) is a highly and quantifiably accurate description of how the universe really works, not a hypothesis. Scientific theory is backed up by experimental results.
I will never understand how a body of people can assert that what they believe is the "truth" when that "truth" flies in the face of objective fact.
And spare me your pathetic attempts to explain away the very real and obious evidence supporting evolution; it's tiresome and pointless.If there were a god, it stands to reasons that he/she/it would be mightily PISSED that his/her/its followers refuse to see or acknowledge easily discernible truth.
Sorry, someone else may have already provided this information for you, but I get tired of sifting through flamewars to get to meaningful information.
I was once looking for unbiased gun violence statistics, myself, and I came across unbiased statistical information from the following sources:
United States Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics
This site page presents firearms and crime statistics.
United States Center for Disease Control and Prevention
This page links to several data sets that present mortality and morbidity statistics, including deaths and injuries from firearms
United States 2000 Census
This site contains information about gun ownership and gun-owner demographics.
I hope you find this to be more useful than all of the squabbling.
I think there are a number of different things going on here.
First of all, we're talking about an administration that is breathtakingly clueless about technology. Because they don't understand how a thing works means that the thing will be used to wreak havoc, right? That sounds chillingly similar to our cold war "capability equals intent" policy.
I also think it's a pretty solid bet that the infotainment industry is fueling those fears to protect their investment in broadband and their ability to sell it.
I also tend to think that people like Dick Cheney and George Bush view technology (espcially technology that provides or enhances intellectual freedom) of any kind as an inherent threat to his vision of what America should be. After all, "There ought to be limits to freedom."
Ooh. So if an abridged dictionary has some of its terms defined using words that aren't in the same collection (and thus, in someone else's dictionary), is the publisher then in violation of the copyright held by the other dictionary's publisher?
I am so confused...
Maybe so, C. Though the meager evidence available suggests that there is no direct correlation between file-swapping and reduced CD sales.
So far, the RIAA has not demonstrated any ability to conduct a statistically meaningful study. Raw numbers with no analysis and a complete failure to acknowledge statistically-biasing factors such as a weak economy, increased CD prices, or the abysmal quality of music available do not a compelling argument make.
Swapping MP3's is just the 21st-century version of recording radio onto cassette tape. The quality is inferior to the original and--I would aruge--in the long run, it generates more sales.
If I ever get to the point where a few hundred million people are listening to my music, I'll let you know just how much sleep I'm losing.
But Adobe wrote and has patented the technology that encrypts the contents of the eBook. The DMCA specifically prohibits the circumvention of such security devices and Adobe, who uses this particular device, feels that they may face a substantial loss of revenue if their technology is cracked.
Analogously, if a lock manufacturer has their technology circumvented (i.e. someone creates a universal key) is it the responsibility of the users of the locks (whose stuff might get stolen) to pursue the keymaker, or is it the responsibility of the lock manufacturer? Arguably, in a case such as this, both the responsibility and the financial incentive reside with the lock manufacturer to pursue the keymaker.
OTOH, Skylarov's tool essentially restores fair-use rights that Adobe has stolen from eBook consumers.
I create copyrighted material. I prefer that my material is protected from plagiarizing. But if some kid likes my music well enough to download MP3's of it (not that that's an even remotely plausible scenario), I'm not going to lose any sleep thinking that I've lost that $0.03 royalty. Far better IMO to view it as free advertising. And if the kid's parents hear it enough, maybe they'll buy him the CD and then I'll get the whole $0.38.
As far as I'm concerned, the DMCA is bad law. I hope it gets struck down resoundingly and that Michael Eisner gets so angry about its defeat that his ulcer explodes and drowns him in gastric acid (or the non-violent equivalent, if you prefer--whatever that is).
It's not as though they're selling guns or missile guidance systems, fer chrissakes! They're selling technology, and not particularly dangerous technology, at that!
If Amnesty International wants to make a fuss, there are immeasurably many more significant targets to choose from.
Yes, I laud their mission, but let's see about getting those priorities straight, okay?
Go after the meaningful targets first! Then waste time on the trivial stuff.
Well, the fine print isn't all that fine and Intel's SpeedStep/Clock-throttling technology has been thriving in the wild for some time now.
Sure, it's a little cheesy that they're sticking a desktop processor into a laptop; power conservation and thermal dissipation both suffer. But they do give you the advertised clock speed when you're plugged in.
The only thing I find particularly offensive is that the feature cannot be disabled from the BIOS. Maybe I'm just a reactionary, but I really resent someone else deciding what's 'best' for me.
Okay, which one of y'all is surprised that Microsoft would rip off someone else's idea?
It's not as though they boosted someone else's UI, or built a knock-off application, or stole a competitor's idea...
Personally, I think back to when they launched Windows 95 and they filched (with permission, of course) the Rolling Stones' song Start Me Up.
I always wondered why they thought that a song containing the line, "you'd make a dead man come," was appropriate for an all-ages OS...
Yeah, you sound open-minded to me:
"sad winbloze users"
"M$"
"emphasis on shoot"
Not that I disagree with your points, you just don't really successfully portray yourself as neutral.
Okay, +1 point for a lucid argument, minus 4.7 x 10^24 for off-topic, yeah?