No this is far worse. It is training the youth of today, that as adult they will all be forced to wear slave collars, only the trust workers will be allowed to be collar free and that is a privileged that can be readily revoked. The the rich, politicians and the enforcers will of course have the right to be collar free.
Now add cell links to the slave collars and orders can be issued along with taser punishments for failure to obey those orders. Not a brave new world but a sick cowardly one.
Can't lose twitter, other wise we would lose the opportunity of being called twitter sock puppets or twitter with yet another user name. Friends of twitter unite, it is so much fun annoying the micro-softies after all the take it so well.
On a serious side the micro-softies should expect it, after all those years from windows 3, windows 95, windows 98, windows NT etc. where they flooded forums with, windows runs perfect, windows never crashes, you have configured windows wrong, you are an anti-windows zealot, seriously what do they expect but to be taken the piss out of at every opportunity, it is fun, it is humerus, in fact it chair throwing, monkey boy dancing, developers developers developers, hilarious;).
Is anybody surprised that M$ would block a competitor to try to gain a competitive advantage, here's betting they lose more users who wanted to see the youtube videos than they gain going to their video site, next thing you know you will be forced to install and run 'silverfish' in order to view videos on that site;D.
Well, it would be hardly surprising if an all M$ solution was not more integrated, than a solution from multilple suppliers, in fact M$ has a reputation for making sure that solutions from alternate suppliers are in fact 'dis'intergrated when they try to run on windows with each new windows patch update, at least few a few months until the lawyers come calling.
As for windows on cheap PCs, M$ it is just cutting it's own throat, limiting hardware specs, means the price will continually fall, making the windows and office, let's not forget office as M$ seems to be, licence fees harder to bare.
The lost cost PC target price is around $250 above that it becomes a hard throw away buy and the difference between a full featured office suite and the absence of one is palpable. Of course M$ could always recommend OpenOffice.org, to ensure windows remain price competitive ha, ha, HA.
Heres betting that the open note consumable market tells M$ to take a running jump when it comes to defining that market segment, high levels of competition will force all sorts of hardware specs to become available but the 10.5" screen is the natural size for very portable open note beyond that pushes it into the full note book range, so like duh. To make it clear the throw away open note is also the ideal school computer, so huge numbers will be driving the price and for school an office suit is a necessity, good luck to M$ with vista and office 2007 with that at $250 for hardware and software;D.
I think you are way confused about the terms, democracy and socialism. Democracy and socialism are not mutually exclusive. If the majority of people support more 'socially' orientated policies they can do so quite democratically.
Now as has been demonstrated over the past twenty years, capitalism is inherently un-democratic as it will endeavour to stifle the opinion of the social orientated poor majority in order to favour the more capitalistic wealthy minority.
This abuse of the law clearly demonstrates it. It is suck a flangrant corruption of the law making process, it is just so obscenely ludicrous that words to define the seemingly slimy, disingenuous, contemptible individuals that passed it don't really exist.
So democratically, why don't they put that legislation to a public vote to see whether the majority would approve it.
In this case it is noy about banning the internet. It is about forcing a company that targets a product at children in order to generate a profit and it generates that profit targeting peer pressure saturation marketing at an age group who are the most gullible and naive.
Facebook needs to faceup to it's responsibilities and properly monitor and supervise the interactions of minors, especially when it sell access to those minors for marketing purposes.
Facebook, like myspace as well as any other social networks needs to decide whether it is an adult network or a network for minors. Of course we know the reality, it is all about selling sex, drugs and rock and roll and the various shiny bits that goes with that marketed life style and selling it to children to define their future as unthinking mass consumers.
If it is was in any way serious it would set up a completely separate network for minors, properly filtered, monitored and supervised but, yes we know, that wouldn't be very profitable. So it will pay lobbyists, arrange meetings with malleable politicians, all to make it look like it is doing something for as long as it can get away with it.
Oh go away. The wireless software that comes with stale piss is crap. The vendor specific software provides far more information and configuration tools and as a bonus disables the windows wireless crap all together blocking a likely security risk.
On another note, there seems to be a damn lot of vista specific posts on what is a stale piss thread. Now a person might be a bit suspicious about a failed support pack when the billy goat has his future locked into the viability astala vista.
Why is it that the last support pack for any windows (P)OS has always proved to be rather problematic in it's installation and at the same time numerous posts start appearing on forums all over the place about upgrading to latest windows (P)OS.
Now, I remember why I disabled automatic windows updates as one of the very first system configuration settings. It gets really annoying when you want to play an old computer game on the toy (P)OS only to have it fail because of some bug ridden patch to fix some bug ridden software, all when you least expect it. I feel really sorry for all those inexperienced users who leave automatic updates on windows running but, their free beta testing at least saves me losing some play time;).
Your statement is a misdirection. Actively being supportive in corrupt laws does not match the purchasing of product from those countries. Point to the individuals who are censoring freedom and democracy, point to the individuals who are supply technology solutions to track down individuals who express their desire for freedom and democracy on the web, point to the individuals who are complicit in hiding the truth about human rights abuses. Your pointing at the executives and board of google.
Buying some cheap Chinese crap does in no way match actively being involved in those anti democratic activities or being complicit it setting the basis for being a quisling corporation who will actively support autocratic governments. So google is no different from arms dealers that supply weapons to autocratic countries, from technology companies that supply torture and interrogation devices to autocratic countries, after all google is supply the technology so that the individuals can be tracked down so that weapons and torture devices can be applied to individuals who dare to express their desire for freedom.
Yeah, I know buying a cheap shirt from China, is exactly the same a finding and turning in a Chinese citizen so that they be be imprisoned and brutalised, hmm, maybe not. One reflects a poor choice and the other reflects a self serving, greedy, arse hole, especially as it is being done for a profit.
I think you have missed the ultimate frailty of data mining as well. It has much more to do with eliminating false data than jamming ever more of it into the mix. Once you have false data in there it contaminates are worth while intelligence, it creates false connections and obscures the truth.
The most likely sources of false data is not the people they are trying to catch but supposedly legitimate sources pushing their own barrow, intelligent consultants trying to rack up hundreds of thousands of dollars in fees, incompetent local law enforcement on petty ego bloating revenge trips, federal agents to tightly involved in politics creating evidence for electioneering purposes and, of course corporations abusing data in every way imaginable to justify hundreds of millions of dollars in contracts creating giant gigo data dumps, over and over again.
Then of course is the waste of intelligence and law enforcement resources in pursuing a mountain of worthless leads because somewhere in there are valid ones. Hmm, crime prevention, which is the most sensible route, based upon an initial lead you question a possible suspect put them on alert and dissuade them from any further activity or you insert agents who further stir up the mix, who exacerbate a situation that would likely have petered out, who actually create the threat in order to gain an expensive conviction and costly imprisonment for a crime that was never committed, but it looks good for promotions.
So is data mined evidence sufficient to trash some ones house, terrify their family, attend their place of employment and get them fired and, to not only threaten their future but actively destroy it, all of course completely free of any legal responsibility for those clearly immoral actions.
What is most toxic about the whole idea is we will be paying them to pollute our environment and them paying them to clean up a portion of that pollution (leaving the most toxic carcinogens left in the atmosphere).
Sociopath corporate executives types, have got to be rubbing their hands together with glee at the double dipping at profits they'll be able to get away with because you can bet the same companies profit by producing pollution will profit by pretending to clean it up.
You can just imagine, if profits are down, they'll simply increase their pollution output forcing us to pay them more to clean it up.
Now, why would I care whether M$ sends you money or not? As for bashing M$, if you feel that as a customer M$ has failed you, I would not deny your right to critique their low quality products and miserable service. Although you comment does border on extortion, I can only assume you think you are joking, and quite simply no I don't want that.
In fact to be quite clear, there is absolutely nothing I want from M$ neither products, nor services or money. That last time I wanted anything from M$ was a free copy of win2kpro, when they wanted me to attend a how can M$ be not quite so evil private conference, they only offered stale piss pro and office pro, I wasn't interested and mocked them for it on slashdot. What, waste my time talking to windrones, just for a free toy os that I would end up having to pay for as an oem to get the hardware I wanted anyhow but, I did have fun mocking them and that was certainly worth far more to me than what ever M$ can afford.
Yes, nothing should be allowed to interfere with the 'elite' athlete 'heroes' (oh my;P) god given right to win medals and then sell a whole bunch of crap (it's acting no lying) for multi million dollar advertising fees. Profits and other peoples suffering should be kept separate. So what if the athletes are appearing in a massive PR propaganda piece that supports an anti-democratic and anti-freedom government, that should not interfere with the athletes democratic right and freedom to participate in and profit by that appearance.
It does look like some of the healthiest and fittest are prospering upon the backs upon those who have little or no choice in the matter. But then I and sure, it has nothing to do with bloated egos and massive endorsement contracts, it all about team work, good sportsmanship, a fair go for all, 'er' yeah, 'um' right, 'meh' whatever;).
Do you know the absolute best thing about any one of the Linux distribution. As they are all based upon open source, you can download the bits from all over the web and recreate them from scratch yourself if you have the skill.
What a distribution shoot out really does is compare the skills and ideas of the people producing those distributions whether they are the lucky staff paid to tinker or the larger number of volunteers helping to create a better computing environment for an even greater number of end users.
Of course each of the distributions will tend to have strengths in particular areas, following the preferences and objectives of the individuals most involved in creating them and well as the needs their most active customer base.
The shoot out also lets all those companies compare their work, share ideas and work to create a far healthier market share for them all too divide up.
Perhaps the best name for these low cost, durable and higher risk environment (holidays, schools, the beach, picnics and other high drop/kick,spilled drink, risk uses) computer is open notes. Specifically a range of very portable computers based upon running FOSS software for the basic configuration, OS, Browser, Email, Office Suite, Media Player, Photo editors all to keep the base cost as low as reasonable with in the bounds of performance (expect a whole range of shoe horned games and well as many older games ported to the platform) and screen real estate.
So the platform seems to be dividing along the lines of a full fledged desktop/desknote, an open note and a smart phone. Up until the time virtual reality developments allow the creation of altered reality glasses that let you visually overlay your digital interactions onto your local visual environment all controlled by rings on your fingers and thumbs, recombining the separate technologies back into one device once certain performance levels can be achieved.
To be fair. Gates remained as active chairman and was largely responsible for XP. People should remember that he had to go overseas in order for senior staff to be willing to talk or attempt to work with Ballmer in lieu of going around him to Gates.
Of course Ballmer is largely Gates fault and responsibility, without Ballmer's succesful manipulation of Gates, Ballmer would never have made to CEO of M$.
A big reason for Gates leaving M$ was the damage M$ was doing to Gates personal reputation and, strangely enough that damage was being caused by Ballmer abusive and arrogant behaviour as the CEO and his complete mishandling of M$.
M$ staff don't call Ballmer the 'billy' goat without due reason and a certain wry humour.
Now that is what makes the whole issue about the lie so immature and childish. M$ knew they were stuck, everybody knew they were stuck, with HD gone and Bluray remaining they had no choice, everybody knew they had no choice.
M$ ranted on about HD and threw away millions of dollars on a dead end hardware product for their game consoles, threw away even more millions on trying to force HD as the only choice and put their reputation and illusion of technological dominance behind HD.
So like some spoiled brat that has been caught out, they stick with a childish lie that made absolutely no sense to hide their failure, and this for M$ has been a major failure. A real sign that M$ is becoming redundant in tech business.
M$ shares dropped value for two reasons. Firstly they were admitting defeat in that marketing, their inability to operate profitably and even when operating at a loss their inability to gain significant market share. Secondly the value associated with MSN, basically in attempting to but Yahoo, M$ were devaluing MSN or Live to virtually nothing.
The dot bomb crash demonstrated that the executive team managing a web company must have the direct skill to effectively gain and sustain market share, if the executive team is failing they can not buy in market share because they will mismanage the market share they bought and lose it, just as they have already mismanaged their own existing market share.
So ballmer's ineptly handled bid for Yahoo is a major admission of defeat for MSN and for Yahoo it is a major affirmation of success and of a more certain future. Ballmer was trying to cover up the abject failure of the very expensive 'Live' re-branding of MSN search etc. and his failure as the CEO of M$ behind a major purchase. The attempt to buy Yahoo had far more to do with Ballmer's ego and survival as the CEO of M$ or to become Chairman of M$, than about being of any benefit to M$'s sahreholders.
M$ doesn't need to buy anyone, they just need to learn how to run MSN properly.
However, numerous studies have demonstrated that when you empower people and give them a morale escape from normal behavioural standards, some will tend to abuse that escape. In the case of tasers it is currently a safe excuse for taking out their frustrations on the citizenry, an opportunity to demonstrate your power over them, an opportunity to inflict pain, suffering and humiliation for which the police will generally escape all consequences.
Of course for Taser inc. the single motive is greed and as many people as necessary will just have to die to ensure their bottom line, they do not care whether it is ten, a hundred, a thousand or ten thousand etc. as long as they don't have to pay for the damage their greed has caused or the current rank of sociopath corporate executives can walk away with massive bonuses, free from any legal repercussions for their murderous behaviour.
At the very least, consider the harm someone suffers when they are knocked to the ground unconscious, broken limbs, fractured skulls etc. and of course consider the release that the police are forced to sign (so that Taser can escape from all the harm that taser can cause) when they foolishly test the taser upon themselves, oh and PS, when then do those tests they do them while standing upon padding not bare concrete to protect them from a dangerous fall.
Google is an advertising and marketing company. Typical publishers are major users of advertising, not only to sell their content but also buried within their content. Google is coming under pressure because growth is slowing even with overseas expansion. They are becoming very sensitive to the demands of publishers and are basically just starting to roll over at every demand made.
Their feel good marketing campaign which gained them a lot of market acceptance is losing it's tarnish and they are being exposed for just another cynical marketing company. Easy cheap reaction to a DMCA, kill the content, if you do not have lawyers reading them you can employ less lawyers. Now consider the return they get per user is pretty minimal, so you can justify very little cost per user, certainly not the cost of reading a DMCA, investigating the history of the content, contacting and discussing the content with the people who put it up and then contacting and discussing that with the lawyers who submitted the DMCA, however you will spread a bit of B$ to hide the penny counting cynicism that puts profit before 'free' speech.
It is becoming obvious that the DMCA was specifically written so that it could be readily and cheaply abused. A real tangible indication of a governments willingness to subjugate the majority who can't really afford 'free' speech to the demands of a rich and greedy minority.
You also left out the single most important issue because of the importance of international standards in providing standards by which the quality of goods and services can be measured and quantified to ensure reasonable quality and safe use.
The blatant visible corruption of the international standards will only lead to substantially increased costs to validate goods and services across international borders as ISO would have to be abandoned due to the fear that any nonsense standard to be used as B$ marketing would start getting approved.
So it goes far beyond just a computer document standard, it has an impact upon every other industry, every other product and every other service that makes use of international standards, it has cost ramifications across the board. M$ executive team and board of directors willingness to continue with the process after they had already been caught out speaks of their total arrogance and utter disregard for every other business or person on the planet.
The reality seems more like they went from an automated system that archived all emails to a manual system that would archive only the email they wanted to save. A trusted group of officials who would ensure all 'safe' email was saved and 'unsafe' email, well, is unsafe and obviously, 'er', self destructed, it's a security issue, the security of the administration's private bank accounts and their freedom from prosecution and imprisonment.
Whether or not you would pay canonical for support depends firstly on whether you need support and secondly which company provides the most effective and economical support in which region.
Well, you can always look at it in another light. People are developing an expectation that those that are intimately involved with Linux are of a higher moral character, are considered more enlightened than most. In a way it shows the positive light that people hold Linux and well as other FOSS products.
People now expect nothing from the proprietary closed source coders, no expectations of above average character, just secretive, privacy invasive individuals and having no respect for the end users.
So the disappointment just reflects the product perception that is growing of Linux being good and M$ being evil.
Hyper-targeting, targeting the most naive and gullible ie. children. Make no mistake, when it comes to something like myspace, basically a peer pressure marketing forum, they are targeting those who lack the experience and maturity to deal with saturation advertising.
As for hyper-targetting, that is of course just a PR=B$ marketing term to camouflage reality and draw in the sellers.
The subpoenas should not be necessary. If you are the next of kin and heir to the deceased estate, the accounts are now yours, the computer is yours and all information there in is yours. So simply gain permission from the current owners and gain access. However if you are doing it for legal reasons be careful that your actions do not contaminate the evidence. It is most likely best for the family to seek the assistance of the police in further investigating the incident and ensuring any evidence uncovered remains valid.
The lawyer in question is doing far more than just racking up frequent flyer miles, they a racking up huge numbers of extra billable hours, not only at the meeting but also in travel time, to and from the meeting.
Why the hell would lawyers seek the far cheaper method, which means the client pays a whole lot less and the lawyers earns a whole lot less.
Now if you could demonstrate how PGP will allow lawyers to rack up hundreds of extra billable hours they will of course all jump onto the bandwagon.
Slashdot Mirror
Now add cell links to the slave collars and orders can be issued along with taser punishments for failure to obey those orders. Not a brave new world but a sick cowardly one.
On a serious side the micro-softies should expect it, after all those years from windows 3, windows 95, windows 98, windows NT etc. where they flooded forums with, windows runs perfect, windows never crashes, you have configured windows wrong, you are an anti-windows zealot, seriously what do they expect but to be taken the piss out of at every opportunity, it is fun, it is humerus, in fact it chair throwing, monkey boy dancing, developers developers developers, hilarious ;).
Is anybody surprised that M$ would block a competitor to try to gain a competitive advantage, here's betting they lose more users who wanted to see the youtube videos than they gain going to their video site, next thing you know you will be forced to install and run 'silverfish' in order to view videos on that site ;D.
As for windows on cheap PCs, M$ it is just cutting it's own throat, limiting hardware specs, means the price will continually fall, making the windows and office, let's not forget office as M$ seems to be, licence fees harder to bare.
The lost cost PC target price is around $250 above that it becomes a hard throw away buy and the difference between a full featured office suite and the absence of one is palpable. Of course M$ could always recommend OpenOffice.org, to ensure windows remain price competitive ha, ha, HA.
Heres betting that the open note consumable market tells M$ to take a running jump when it comes to defining that market segment, high levels of competition will force all sorts of hardware specs to become available but the 10.5" screen is the natural size for very portable open note beyond that pushes it into the full note book range, so like duh. To make it clear the throw away open note is also the ideal school computer, so huge numbers will be driving the price and for school an office suit is a necessity, good luck to M$ with vista and office 2007 with that at $250 for hardware and software ;D.
Now as has been demonstrated over the past twenty years, capitalism is inherently un-democratic as it will endeavour to stifle the opinion of the social orientated poor majority in order to favour the more capitalistic wealthy minority.
This abuse of the law clearly demonstrates it. It is suck a flangrant corruption of the law making process, it is just so obscenely ludicrous that words to define the seemingly slimy, disingenuous, contemptible individuals that passed it don't really exist.
So democratically, why don't they put that legislation to a public vote to see whether the majority would approve it.
Facebook needs to faceup to it's responsibilities and properly monitor and supervise the interactions of minors, especially when it sell access to those minors for marketing purposes.
Facebook, like myspace as well as any other social networks needs to decide whether it is an adult network or a network for minors. Of course we know the reality, it is all about selling sex, drugs and rock and roll and the various shiny bits that goes with that marketed life style and selling it to children to define their future as unthinking mass consumers.
If it is was in any way serious it would set up a completely separate network for minors, properly filtered, monitored and supervised but, yes we know, that wouldn't be very profitable. So it will pay lobbyists, arrange meetings with malleable politicians, all to make it look like it is doing something for as long as it can get away with it.
On another note, there seems to be a damn lot of vista specific posts on what is a stale piss thread. Now a person might be a bit suspicious about a failed support pack when the billy goat has his future locked into the viability astala vista.
Why is it that the last support pack for any windows (P)OS has always proved to be rather problematic in it's installation and at the same time numerous posts start appearing on forums all over the place about upgrading to latest windows (P)OS.
Now, I remember why I disabled automatic windows updates as one of the very first system configuration settings. It gets really annoying when you want to play an old computer game on the toy (P)OS only to have it fail because of some bug ridden patch to fix some bug ridden software, all when you least expect it. I feel really sorry for all those inexperienced users who leave automatic updates on windows running but, their free beta testing at least saves me losing some play time ;).
Buying some cheap Chinese crap does in no way match actively being involved in those anti democratic activities or being complicit it setting the basis for being a quisling corporation who will actively support autocratic governments. So google is no different from arms dealers that supply weapons to autocratic countries, from technology companies that supply torture and interrogation devices to autocratic countries, after all google is supply the technology so that the individuals can be tracked down so that weapons and torture devices can be applied to individuals who dare to express their desire for freedom.
Yeah, I know buying a cheap shirt from China, is exactly the same a finding and turning in a Chinese citizen so that they be be imprisoned and brutalised, hmm, maybe not. One reflects a poor choice and the other reflects a self serving, greedy, arse hole, especially as it is being done for a profit.
The most likely sources of false data is not the people they are trying to catch but supposedly legitimate sources pushing their own barrow, intelligent consultants trying to rack up hundreds of thousands of dollars in fees, incompetent local law enforcement on petty ego bloating revenge trips, federal agents to tightly involved in politics creating evidence for electioneering purposes and, of course corporations abusing data in every way imaginable to justify hundreds of millions of dollars in contracts creating giant gigo data dumps, over and over again.
Then of course is the waste of intelligence and law enforcement resources in pursuing a mountain of worthless leads because somewhere in there are valid ones. Hmm, crime prevention, which is the most sensible route, based upon an initial lead you question a possible suspect put them on alert and dissuade them from any further activity or you insert agents who further stir up the mix, who exacerbate a situation that would likely have petered out, who actually create the threat in order to gain an expensive conviction and costly imprisonment for a crime that was never committed, but it looks good for promotions.
So is data mined evidence sufficient to trash some ones house, terrify their family, attend their place of employment and get them fired and, to not only threaten their future but actively destroy it, all of course completely free of any legal responsibility for those clearly immoral actions.
Sociopath corporate executives types, have got to be rubbing their hands together with glee at the double dipping at profits they'll be able to get away with because you can bet the same companies profit by producing pollution will profit by pretending to clean it up.
You can just imagine, if profits are down, they'll simply increase their pollution output forcing us to pay them more to clean it up.
In fact to be quite clear, there is absolutely nothing I want from M$ neither products, nor services or money. That last time I wanted anything from M$ was a free copy of win2kpro, when they wanted me to attend a how can M$ be not quite so evil private conference, they only offered stale piss pro and office pro, I wasn't interested and mocked them for it on slashdot. What, waste my time talking to windrones, just for a free toy os that I would end up having to pay for as an oem to get the hardware I wanted anyhow but, I did have fun mocking them and that was certainly worth far more to me than what ever M$ can afford.
It does look like some of the healthiest and fittest are prospering upon the backs upon those who have little or no choice in the matter. But then I and sure, it has nothing to do with bloated egos and massive endorsement contracts, it all about team work, good sportsmanship, a fair go for all, 'er' yeah, 'um' right, 'meh' whatever ;).
What a distribution shoot out really does is compare the skills and ideas of the people producing those distributions whether they are the lucky staff paid to tinker or the larger number of volunteers helping to create a better computing environment for an even greater number of end users.
Of course each of the distributions will tend to have strengths in particular areas, following the preferences and objectives of the individuals most involved in creating them and well as the needs their most active customer base.
The shoot out also lets all those companies compare their work, share ideas and work to create a far healthier market share for them all too divide up.
So the platform seems to be dividing along the lines of a full fledged desktop/desknote, an open note and a smart phone. Up until the time virtual reality developments allow the creation of altered reality glasses that let you visually overlay your digital interactions onto your local visual environment all controlled by rings on your fingers and thumbs, recombining the separate technologies back into one device once certain performance levels can be achieved.
Of course Ballmer is largely Gates fault and responsibility, without Ballmer's succesful manipulation of Gates, Ballmer would never have made to CEO of M$.
A big reason for Gates leaving M$ was the damage M$ was doing to Gates personal reputation and, strangely enough that damage was being caused by Ballmer abusive and arrogant behaviour as the CEO and his complete mishandling of M$.
M$ staff don't call Ballmer the 'billy' goat without due reason and a certain wry humour.
M$ ranted on about HD and threw away millions of dollars on a dead end hardware product for their game consoles, threw away even more millions on trying to force HD as the only choice and put their reputation and illusion of technological dominance behind HD.
So like some spoiled brat that has been caught out, they stick with a childish lie that made absolutely no sense to hide their failure, and this for M$ has been a major failure. A real sign that M$ is becoming redundant in tech business.
The dot bomb crash demonstrated that the executive team managing a web company must have the direct skill to effectively gain and sustain market share, if the executive team is failing they can not buy in market share because they will mismanage the market share they bought and lose it, just as they have already mismanaged their own existing market share.
So ballmer's ineptly handled bid for Yahoo is a major admission of defeat for MSN and for Yahoo it is a major affirmation of success and of a more certain future. Ballmer was trying to cover up the abject failure of the very expensive 'Live' re-branding of MSN search etc. and his failure as the CEO of M$ behind a major purchase. The attempt to buy Yahoo had far more to do with Ballmer's ego and survival as the CEO of M$ or to become Chairman of M$, than about being of any benefit to M$'s sahreholders.
M$ doesn't need to buy anyone, they just need to learn how to run MSN properly.
Of course for Taser inc. the single motive is greed and as many people as necessary will just have to die to ensure their bottom line, they do not care whether it is ten, a hundred, a thousand or ten thousand etc. as long as they don't have to pay for the damage their greed has caused or the current rank of sociopath corporate executives can walk away with massive bonuses, free from any legal repercussions for their murderous behaviour.
At the very least, consider the harm someone suffers when they are knocked to the ground unconscious, broken limbs, fractured skulls etc. and of course consider the release that the police are forced to sign (so that Taser can escape from all the harm that taser can cause) when they foolishly test the taser upon themselves, oh and PS, when then do those tests they do them while standing upon padding not bare concrete to protect them from a dangerous fall.
Their feel good marketing campaign which gained them a lot of market acceptance is losing it's tarnish and they are being exposed for just another cynical marketing company. Easy cheap reaction to a DMCA, kill the content, if you do not have lawyers reading them you can employ less lawyers. Now consider the return they get per user is pretty minimal, so you can justify very little cost per user, certainly not the cost of reading a DMCA, investigating the history of the content, contacting and discussing the content with the people who put it up and then contacting and discussing that with the lawyers who submitted the DMCA, however you will spread a bit of B$ to hide the penny counting cynicism that puts profit before 'free' speech.
It is becoming obvious that the DMCA was specifically written so that it could be readily and cheaply abused. A real tangible indication of a governments willingness to subjugate the majority who can't really afford 'free' speech to the demands of a rich and greedy minority.
The blatant visible corruption of the international standards will only lead to substantially increased costs to validate goods and services across international borders as ISO would have to be abandoned due to the fear that any nonsense standard to be used as B$ marketing would start getting approved.
So it goes far beyond just a computer document standard, it has an impact upon every other industry, every other product and every other service that makes use of international standards, it has cost ramifications across the board. M$ executive team and board of directors willingness to continue with the process after they had already been caught out speaks of their total arrogance and utter disregard for every other business or person on the planet.
The reality seems more like they went from an automated system that archived all emails to a manual system that would archive only the email they wanted to save. A trusted group of officials who would ensure all 'safe' email was saved and 'unsafe' email, well, is unsafe and obviously, 'er', self destructed, it's a security issue, the security of the administration's private bank accounts and their freedom from prosecution and imprisonment.
Whether or not you would pay canonical for support depends firstly on whether you need support and secondly which company provides the most effective and economical support in which region.
People now expect nothing from the proprietary closed source coders, no expectations of above average character, just secretive, privacy invasive individuals and having no respect for the end users.
So the disappointment just reflects the product perception that is growing of Linux being good and M$ being evil.
As for hyper-targetting, that is of course just a PR=B$ marketing term to camouflage reality and draw in the sellers.
The subpoenas should not be necessary. If you are the next of kin and heir to the deceased estate, the accounts are now yours, the computer is yours and all information there in is yours. So simply gain permission from the current owners and gain access. However if you are doing it for legal reasons be careful that your actions do not contaminate the evidence. It is most likely best for the family to seek the assistance of the police in further investigating the incident and ensuring any evidence uncovered remains valid.
Why the hell would lawyers seek the far cheaper method, which means the client pays a whole lot less and the lawyers earns a whole lot less.
Now if you could demonstrate how PGP will allow lawyers to rack up hundreds of extra billable hours they will of course all jump onto the bandwagon.