Cite please?

Did Unisys ever persue Mozilla (or a downstream recipient) for patent infringement?

You'll only have to experience the media plugin hell if you insist on using Firefox. Everyone else will have h.264 video that just works.

Ogg theora is no longer the same as VP 3. It has had many years of improvements!

Are there any decent comparisons of the two?

You are expecting logical arguments to work... :)

Your statement about the use of medial resources comes across as both glib and selfish.

If the tax paid by smokers went into a fund that could only be used to treat smokers, and the only source of publicly funded medical care for smokers was that fund, then you would have a point.

Does smoking near the device damage it in the same way that heat or humidity do?

Good luck getting Outlook to open \\pipe\whatever :)

Hm, can you seek on a file descriptor opened from a pipe?

That's a reason to make each respective piece of software _workable_. But there is no incentive to make it actually work as well on the foreign platform as it does on the native one...

Why would Microsoft bother to ensure that the Mac port of Office is as good as the Windows version?

Why would Apple bother to ensure that the Windows port of iTunes is as good as the Mac version?

Hm. Is there _really_ any Vista-comaptible software that does not work on Windows 7? 7 is, after all, merely a rebadged Vista with the nextstep dock thrown in... if one is feeling cynical. ;)

Has anyone asked them?

This is exactly my point. The irresponsibility of epic proportions is on the side of the users who didn't realise that the design of the system invites them to be fucked over by a data loss incident. They have no one to blame but themselves.

HOW THE HELL DO THE CUSTOMERS NOT TAKE BACKUPS THEMSELVES

If the data is important, then the only way to make sure it doesn't get lost is to take some responsibility for your actions and do back-ups yourself. If your service provider does not let you then don't use the service, it's that simple.