This sounds plausible, except Microsoft will not fail so much as change, though perhaps with far less profit. Somewhat like Apple, Windows 8 looks like the largest desktop O/S is moving toward the computer as appliance. This suggests two things:

1) A trend to very slowly reduce the popularity of general purpose computers, shifting people to limited-task devices.
2) Year of the Linux desktop jokes aside, we really could be headed toward Linux/BSD as the main traditional desktop O/S. Not because of advertising or popularity, but because it's the only one.

The money and corporate power will be in the appliances. Independent power will be enhanced by individuals with traditional computers. There is no need for this generation to stock up on motherboards, but long-term thinking makes one wonder if that time will come.

Exactly. Typically, XP Service Pack 2 (SP2) was the last usable update for 1 gigabyte machines. SP3 is as reliable as it is bulky, and uses the hard drive as memory a lot unless you have 1.5 gigs or more.

Yes it's a good option to have, but parsing it is difficult. If I don't want ad tracking, I must turn it off, but "on" turns ad tracking off, right? How confusing! While programmers are used to thinking in negatives, mixed with yes/no and true/false, that is not the norm. Compare:

[yes] [no] Allow ad tracking
[off] [on] Limit ad tracking

Both are logical and equivalent, but the first is far easier to comprehend and mark according to your preference. Apple, and other corporate software, likely does this intentionally. Of the small percentage of people who will find this setting, even fewer will mark it correctly. Result? Far more monitoring while getting kudos for providing the option. And that is how marketing experts earn their money.

Curious how opting out is so difficult when opting in is effortless. This seems to me as bordering on self help; and would be done better by sending out a form that required users to choose to give up their rights to a fair trial.

You're close, but the generalizing hides some important internal distinctions. The Internet was used in the early years by US universities for research (basic science and technology, some of it military related), governed by an attitude of sharing that is fundamental to science. However, that has since shifted to include significant usage and governing by politics and business. Politicians and businesses do not operate on the free sharing that science does. Thus "US control" means different things to different people, depending on their interests and knowledge of history.

Perhaps better would be an Internet governed by evidence-based international scientists, knowing how argumentative that would be. Still, it beats (copyright, patent, profit, and security state influences of) the US government; and would likely even be better than UN oversight.

Richard Feynman was asked about the morality of the atomic bomb he helped create. He replied "I just didn't THINK about it," giving the impression of a scientist absorbed with science in the moment, and oblivious to morality and consequences. Until later. Here we info tech folk are thinking about the morality beforehand, and still doing it. Looks like it takes more than thinking, it takes doing; and frequently, not doing.

Not being one for cussing and memes, I just watched the shit out of a fucking well made movie! I tried to be criticial of the CGI, but as a casual movie watcher I found the effects more than good enough to easily get caught up in the story. If the goal was to make software capable of tightly integrated special effects, I say well done. And people are already working to make it better? Get outta here you vector render wizards, I already have enough trouble telling fake photos from their pixels.

This is a bad description of the "beef," and thus a straw man. Monsanto is not some wimp in an apartment somewhere, unable to have press conferences and buy advertising time and lobbyists. The reporters were being required to go through an unprecedented high number of revisions by their employer, attempts to remove substantive facts about Monsanto's actions and change the tone of the report. To change the report into something other than fact-based. In science this is called politicizing research, in news it's whitewashing or spin. The case went to court, which found the FCC's "law, rule, or regulation" doesn't include falsifying news (i.e. lying). Lawfully this doesn't make lying a right, but then it doesn't mean lying is against the law either.

What's the line in the constitution, about all rights not listed are reserved to the state and individuals? So I find in that context the court's decision did make lying a right; one reserved to people, states, and news corporations. Either way, fact-based reporting was not enhanced by this decision, though spin certainly was.

TV news hasn't been the dictionary definition of news for decades. When news stations aren't various flavors of the same propaganda popsicle, they are car chases, sports, and celebrity updates. The circus part of bread and circuses.

Irrational? Let's peer into the self-proclaimed mind of a high level advertiser, and see who's irrational. We'll ignore the pandering comment about how 2 million or so Slashdot members are "educated," since demonstrating otherwise would be a chore for no one.

By "paranoid" let's presume you mean careful and cautious, which is not the psychological definition but is more or less the way the term is used around here.

Here you venture into categorizing individuals and belittling the layperson. The world is filled with specialties, and there are forums where topics come up that are discussed by amateurs and experts alike. This is one of those places. Richard Feynman used to read all the letters amateur physicists would send him, just in case someone noticed something he didn't. You might suggest Feynman was the only one "truly qualified" to comment, but he thought otherwise.

Since advertising agencies, as a policy, do not make public all the data they collect from all sources, who all that data is sold to, and what all is done with that data, then a typical person is forced to make conjectures. Assessments based on knowledge of data that could be collected, how databases can be used, a few facts in various articles (e.g. ChoicePoint now LexisNexis), books (e.g. Edward Bernays), what friends and colleagues say, personal experience, and extrapolation.

Cool, nearly everyone probably agrees with this.

Wait, you said earlier that if we knew more we wouldn't be disgusted, but now as an insider you're saying that the "vast majority" is "shitty advertising." This is contradictory, unless you think shitty advertising isn't disgusting. Then you go on to say the majority of "shitty" advertisers give the rest a "negative reputation." Yes, this is in fact how the whole "majority" notion works. Much like the joke where 99.9% of politicians give the others a bad name, get it? The technical term for these self-contradictions is cognitive dissonance; and if people say you're full of shit, this is part of the reason why.

Bottom line, the rest of your post is filled with similar drivel, which deserves to be further critiqued but perhaps this is already enough to evaluate properly.

Ummm in 2007 Google bought Doubleclick for $3 billion. Which still more or less supports your thesis, that advertising agencies and networks are becoming commerce sites, and vice versa. Though I would argue with the inarguable, and say the purposes and effectiveness of public relations and propaganda industries are not a "good thing."

Well, to be fair, the foreign buyer exclusion is a fairly recent change (late 2011, early 2012) in Argentina's policy. A policy which, according to your own link and 5 minutes research, grandfathers in (over a million hectares of) land already owned by foreigners. Foreigners, according to this document (PDF) including several different fashion designers, a food manufacturer, and others. So to say that the land has not been bought by US and other international business people is demonstrably false. Thus Kupfernigk is quite well informed, far better than you, dear AC; and more importantly, Argentinians are losing much of their land to foreign owners, which only contributes to the country's domestic problems. Problems which are also the result of IMF and World Bank dealings.

Unions are not perfect organizations, there's all manner of small and large corruption in some of them. Given that, unions have also gained huge benefits for people (e.g. 40 hr work week, health insurance, retirement), particularly when union members are involved in union negotiations. That means workers are on the negotiating team. If what you say is true, though it sounds false to me, were you involved in contract negotiations, helping your negotiators choose issues, or just letting things happen to you?

If a law or use of technology is wrong (according to community or other public agreement), the time to act is before it's put in place. If the public waits until afterward, the task is more difficult.