I have an ENIAC that does exactly what I need it to do - use up all these goddamned vacuum tubes I've got laying around.

At this point, I'd expect nothing less from him. But isn't it silly to complain about the NSA? We have reached the point in our slide into fascism that the government loudly proclaims the "right" to - and in at least several cases that we know of - actually has executed American citizens without trial. (Including a 16 year old kid from Denver whose "crime" was having the wrong father.) To complain that such a regime is also spying on your communications is a bit like complaining that one's torturer has bad breath.

Well, putting a Sally Mann photograph in my non-shared, non-public SkyDrive account was enough to have an FBI guy visit my house at night and ask to look through my laptop for child porn. Not as unpleasant as an actual prosecution, of course. But a nasty enough jolt, I assure you. And if a local DA felt like making my life miserable for some reason?

Now they give it away free. But to get enterprise adoption for the abortion that is Windows 8, they would need *pay businesses to use it*. Even that might not be enough.

... sell them to Lenovo?

I've been watching a lot of old "Law & Order" episodes recently and every time a character says something pious about "constitutional rights" I can only snort with derision at what a period piece the show is now. In our time - what might be conveniently described as "The Cheney Era" - the only rights you have are those that pose no inconvenience to the government or the business interests that rent it. If it suits the government to have you killed, you will be killed - and with no messy court paperwork to bother about. If it suits Comcast to monopolize broadband access, the FCC will roll out the red carpet before them.

Soon you're talking real money.

That assurance should last as long as "We won't track your data across services" did.

To analyze my shit and customize advertising based on my dietary preferences.

The point of a new Windows version is to generate revenue for Microsoft. Hope this helps.

But the setting preference was there already. I apologize to the company for opting out before anyone had a chance to spam me.

So what if they have a better price/performance ratio? The Mac Pro is *round*. Round! You could lay it on it side, push it with your foot, and it wouldn't stop until it hit the far wall. How fucking cool is that? Let's see any of you fanbois try that with a PC. Heh... good luck.

According to the actuarial tables, I'll probably live another 30 years. Windows 7 compatibility mode may only endure 20 years. So I'm still nervous.

This scared me into re-installing Firefox. After 10 minutes of having to re-start the browser after putting in every new extension - plus the butt-ugly interface - I remembered why I switched from Firefox to Chrome in the first place. Fuck it. Even crippled, Chrome will be more pleasant to use than that.