Well its not a bad idea totally it would allow them to introduce wide unpopular interface changes gradually instead of "here it is". But some companies may encounter rolling comparability problems and weird cases in which Feature A is actually Feature B and then becomes Feature C but is not backwards comparable at all. Currently the model is a little more archaic "we build it to good enough" and make it work better after some time and then industry buys into it. But at that point, why not just switch to Apple who has a vastly more stable operating system and is established already? Or Linux and cut the umbilical cord of cost and keep all the same comparability headaches.

Personally I think Microsoft tries way too hard to make each OS a wildly new user experience, when consistency would be more prudent, they rule the workstation wold almost exclusively. We have workstations that are wildly overburdened with security workarounds because Microsoft just wont do it. But they're busy trying to chase the apple model. Just my 2c.

We could petition our congressmen, who will then ask the Record companies if its OK! it can't hurt to ask right?

We hired two contractors that we're older. The resume was stellar and they both interviewed very well, but after having them both brought on at the same time. The older of the two (50's) needed constant help with even the most basic computer setup tasks, this got so bad that no one wanted to help him because of the rabbit hole effect. On top of that he wouldn't listen and tended to do the "I know a better way so ill just do that", when its all said and done what we have is functional but may be completely un-sustainable. If we were to do it over I'd hire someone younger that would actually do what he was told, instead of branching off into "interesting"

Everything I ever needed to do can be done on a tablet!

I couldn't really care less if a game is open source, I pick it up and put it back down when I'm done if a company wants to protect their software from competitors they should have a right to. DRM is to protect the company against the consumers, so they don't have to try to actually make their product any better to make people want to purchase it. And further you may have difficulty reselling it, if the company goes belly up will you still be able to play your game, can you make a copy so when your kids learn to put CD's in the microwave it doesn't cost you money. No one's product is above the inherent standard of ease of accessibility.

I would say at least in the example of pandora she has no right, you gave that up when you get paid for it. Pandora created the medium, network, interface and built their customer base who subscribe to their product, or at least experience adds from it, if you want the data cough up some money for it! Facebook makes their money the same way, and information is their intellectual capital.

The Scrabble v Apple trial hit a standstill today when lawyers broke down trying to converse about the ability to recall information from ones own mind.

I think you may be asking the wrong questions, instead of saying how do you measure my bandwidth usage, just ask What does the service I'm paying for send in additional overhead to my "good put", how do I get detailed information on that utilization/usage. You don't really care how they measure, you care what they are measuring.

Exactly, but charging you whatever the market will bear, and not telling you what your actually paying for are two completely different things. He's being charged for a service, and he reasonably (SHOULD) have a right to understand how he may be over or under committing his connection to the service level he's selected and being provided. If they're dangling the bait of "you may go over and we'll charge you more money than you ever wanted to spend, or we're going to downgrade your service because we want more money" then it could just be the provider padding the numbers, now I'm assuming he's in the US and is not subject to taking what the grand master has allocated him he should have some kind of recourse.

That being said, TCP/IP overhead accounting for 20-30%? If you utilize your connection regularly I'd be shocked, but it really depends on a lot of factors, there's no numbers on his actual throughput, so was sitting idle all month with just a windows PC checking for updates to Java, flash and windows every 5 minutes and whatever mallware he inevitably has, sure. Maybe he's on an ADSL that has a bunch of ATM overhead that goes on even if he's not transmitting, so there are legitimate reasons, but one would reasonably suspect you have a right to know that your actually being charged for that!

Well I can't speak to Xfinity, but I know my FIOS router has a hardcoded _default_, but having the ability to change that in the UI does not make the wifi password/key itself hard coded. If you can change it through the software interface it is not by definition hard coded, and yes the article cites "unchangeable default logins".

Unfortunately is a little more complicated than that, he holds a high level clearance and issues like that can effect your clearance eligibility, it opens him up to being blackmailed.

Why cant they just take my vote when they called me, 11deemillion times

That's ridiculous nobody lives in Canada!

We can solve this with OUTSOURCING!

They're porting surface to Linux w00t, it'll probably be on Ubuntu first though shux ;-)