Having used to provide technology solutions to the printing supply and production lines i've seen first hand how fragile the system is. Paper mills are currently making a hefty loss, Printing presses are barely scraping a profit.

The entire industry is currently balanced on matchsticks and if one company has to fold the entire industry will come tumbeling down. I for one are pro that and i think these Gov.'s should be too what with trying to reduce waste production and C02. These are 2 things that are not a common intrest of de-foresting, newspaper printing and paper milling (have you ever seen the sludge these things create!).

The fact is that if the entire system is on the verge of being un-economical then its going to shut down by its own choice. So why create a tax to prolong this and essentially waste the publics money.

Dont you think your over-reacting a little bit? RF is very heavily policed because of the shere dependancy we have on it. Take this story for example http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/article78725.ece apparently this sort of thing is not uncommon but it raises the question why was it not operating on one of the FFA bands like it should have been.
It may seem a little heavy handed but when this happens it must be resolved in a very tight time frame and i know for certain that i wouldn't deny entry to an officer who believed some rf interference was coming from my property. I'm sure i'm like most people that don't want a mid-air collision over my house.

I'll concur IIS 6/7 is somewhat solid and acceptably secure that is only if the administrator knows what he is doing. Unfortunatly some if not most IIS setups are incredibly complex thus negating the security features provided.

You raise a valid and well put point. At the end of the day you license all Microsoft software and these addons make the whole process a lot easier. Its not apt-get but it's a start.

My counter-argument though is why should you have to store this data that is integrated in to your OS weather you have paid to use it or not. And if its not integrated with the OS what makes it different from any other third-party app that can accomplish the same thing? I could roll of a list of free and non-free alternatives to iis for example. What's the added value from purchasing from MS.

Parent says to child: "no honey thats not a tatoo its an identifying barcode, it keeps you safe from undesireables."

Im supprised that something that controls nuclear warheads is connected to the public internet regardless of the operating system.

In the same breath not only do you say
"You can't escape the Widows lock-in without paying a lot of money and abandoning some of your core applications."

But you finish you rant with
"...Microsoft needs to be broken up, this is it. Its insane."

I half agree with you but your solution to the problem is frankly wrong.