Where is this democracy you live in? I suspect not here in the United States where while officially it is a Federal Republic... though has since well moved into the post-constitutional arena, where unelected and largely unaccountable bureaucrats have huge sway, and elected 'leaders' no longer feel themselves restrained by the laws they swore to uphold.

There is also the competition.

Back in the day you had mostly just PCs & Macs, now you have various tablets and smartphones as well.

While I need a desktop to do most of my work & play, both of my parents can get by with a simple iPad or Android based tablet... how does Microsoft sell Windows to people that no longer need it to carry out their work/play? A subscription alone doesn't give the customer anything... there would need to be reoccurring value for it, and I think that's something we'd probably hear a year or so into Windows 10 being available.

That is my impression as well. Hell, they have already been testing this model with Office... you can either go buy a single retail full version for ~$400 and keep using it in perpetuity... or pay $100 a year for Office 365 and get Office across 5 different devices and upgrades to later versions so long as you keep paying.

I know some who are still happy using their several version behind copies of Office... and others who prefer the subscription model. To each their own... and now both are supported.

How about we wait and see to know for sure? Though I guess I can jump into the wild speculations as well:

If I have the hard drive in my laptop fails...

...and I know how to replace it (discrete hard disks in laptops are starting to become uncommon), I probably already have a backup system in place to get me up and running afterwards.

... and I do not know how to fix it myself and it's no longer under warranty, then a new device may be required... but that is often the case today. Hell, the only recovery media I likely had was on the disk that failed.

... and I do not know how to fix it myself and it is under warranty, then a getting sent away for service would be required... and if it comes back with an older version of the OS... one would hope that the Windows 10 setup/upgrade process will accept a PID that was previously used to upgrade... but again, I don't think anyone outside of Redmond knows how this process will work for sure yet.

Among the non-shills of us who actually are capable of independent thought... what you describe is a possibility, but probably not a likely one.

Can a phone do everything that a desktop can? Usually not, so doesn't it make sense to tailor the version of an operating system for a given device?

Microsoft has sold different editions of Windows for years, each with different or overlapping checkboxes on a feature matrix. A device running a 'Ultimate' edition will probably have different capabilities of a 'Home', and an OEM who sells you a tablet, laptop or phone is going to put a given edition on it which will give you those certain features. I'd bet good money that is what they are referring to... an idea that is far more rooted in reality than anything you've said here.

Hell, for quite some time there has been the ability to upgrade from one edition to another for a price (though I've never met someone who has done so). That upgrade is permanent... or can you point to people being automatically downgraded because they failed to pay 365 days later?

Hell, when Windows 8 first came out there was a way to get free keys for Media Center for the first year... guess what? Media Center still works here several years later, I didn't have to re-up for year 2 or 3. Odd that?

Your paranoia does not seem to be founded... or would you be willing to cite some specific examples and not paranoia (or hate) induced hypotheticals?

What's it like to be such a shill?

Above I ended up replying to one of your points accusing someone of being a shill for MS, or even an automated bot... clearly though there is something wrong with you, reading the fine print, trying to find a way that maybe, just maybe someone could screw you... it's as if you are looking for a reason to be angry, rather than take the apparently clear cut statements given today and see how things work out.

Or... maybe, just maybe 8 isn't as bad as some claim.

Shall I go on a rant about how unusable Linux is today for many users and then accuse those who may be a little more used to the system and defend it as being "not that bad" of being shills?

Like it or not, those in power are long used to that term, and as a community we can either denigrate them for it or try to work with them.

Before you answer... remember that they are the ones in power and more guns and lawyers than you.

Bingo!

The assumption that low voter turnout is a bad thing always puzzles me, as it seems to suggest that it is better to have a larger number of uninformed people voting... rather than a smaller # of people who can at least be bothered to get up off their arse and do something.

Because people in the know are smart enough to know that 'faux' rhymes with 'know'... not 'fox'.

You now know about this issue and can do it to your Macs... and that of your family & friends... but what about all of those people who do not have a person like you? How do they get the fix?

Short of a mandatory update that is pushed down even on devices that opt out of automatic updates... how do you propose to push such a change?

So yes... too late. If the device leaves the factory in an insecure state, a significant number of units are basically guarenteed to remain that way until they are decommissioned years from now.

Is FileVault 2 enabled out of the box? If not... it's too late for most users.

Correct... and yes, yes it is: https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

At least on a PC (which lacks Thunderbolt), opening the PC is required to exploit that vector... though there are still others... and many of them work without the need for any driver support.

This was also covered at Defcon 22... and not just for AWS keys: http://youtu.be/nBR7Kru6JX0?t=...

That is actually a very good point... though not a slam dunk. Is a "cyber warrior" carrying their weapons openly and acting in accordance to international law? If not, Geneva may not apply.