Hey, thanks for this. This is exactly the kind of background info I was hoping to get. Now to engage in some unethical behavior of my own, as I read these instead of doing any actual work tonight...

I don't expect this to matter much, but saying it's astroturfing or trolling to ask a real question kind of pisses me off. I can't convince anyone that I don't have a dog in this fight, but when I 1st posted my original comment there weren't any others in the thread that amounted to more than "Microsoft sucks" without any examples. As someone who's on the sidelines and legitimately wants some more info, that's useless circle-jerking; I'm really glad for the more informative responses I've gotten back. It certainly seems like there are a lot of documented examples of unethical behavior that I wasn't aware of, which is exactly what I was hoping to get out of this. Not to single your reply out, but it sucks to sometimes feel like you can't look for a two-sided discussion without people assuming you're a pro-MS shill. On the gripping hand, this is the most active response a comment of mine ever got. I feel so pretty, like the belle of the ball.

Honestly not meant as a troll, I guess my eyes just glaze over most of the time the topic comes up so I haven't paid much attention. I see a couple other responses with some actual examples, which certainly do seem unethical at a glance (and at the very least should make for some interesting wiki browsing for me tonight at work) that I'm looking forward to reading more about. But assuming your question was legit too: it does seem to me (again, just randomly sampling the wiki) like there are more than a few areas where they've made some positive efforts. Good environmental policies, good stance on LGBT rights, producing some notable philanthropists (not strictly speaking a commentary on company ethics, I suppose, but speaks towards a decent corporate culture in my experience).

Not surprisingly there are a lot of negative comments here, but to play devil's advocate: what practices of Microsoft's are really unethical? I mean that as an honest question. Maybe there's a huge list that I'm forgetting but I can't think of a lot offhand that really make me think of them as really evil. I don't always like their approach, but most of the time it seems like legitimate competitive behavior. When I think 'unethical', I think bribery, hidden agendas, employee abuse, poor environmental practices, etc, none of which springs to mind when I think of Microsoft. They're obviously a capitalist company looking to make as much profit as they can, and I suppose that can be considered unethical in it's own right, but in that case a list of 'ethical companies' seems moot anyways. And I never hear about child labor pumping out (legitimate) Windows DVDs or Bill Gates throwing parties with strippers for the employees.

Dammit, I hate you. 6+ month streak wasted.

+5 Insightful. Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.

Is this trolling? I can't tell anymore.

So...this being a game where the object is presumably to play well, you don't consider switching to the hand you don't use 'as good' to be a problem?

This is just ass backwards. Big movements are the easy ones; the small, little ones are exactly the ones that require dexterity. I'm sure a right-handed surgeon could punch someone in the face with the his left hand, but switching the scalpel to the other hand could present a problem.

There's no direct test, but it's linked to gigantism of the wang so shows up on most ultrasounds. But frequently the wangular enormity is mistaken for the doctor photobombing the baby by sticking his whole arm in front of the detector.

Oh how I've waited for the day that this article and these comments showed up. Watched and waited, twirling my mustache and sharpening my band saw with my left hand, ready to give you right-handed monsters (Yes, monsters. Right-biased, racist, Nazi-loving monsters) a quick chop to see how you adapt to my left-hand world. I remember the day I bought my 1st guitar: "You know," said the salesman, "since you're left-handed you should actually play a right-handed guitar instead for better fret control." And with my left-hand I stabbed him in the face, shouting "then why the fuck don't you play left-handed you goddamn idiot?!". To this day I love nothing better than to walk into Guitar Center with a huge wad of bills, casting my eyes across 500 right-handed guitars searching for the rare lefty. And when I find it? Same. Fucking. Guitar. I. Already. Own. Didn't we learn anything from the Holocaust? If this discrimination is still so rampant, it's as if 3 million of my people died for nothing.

In conclusion: I hate you all, and if I could find a left-handed book of matches I would burn you all alive.

If you go with the honor system, hire my mom as a TA; nobody can resist the guilt from that disappointed look. But I'm not sure whether that translates to test taking or only works if she catches them masturbating.

Fly the entire class to Austin and hold the tests in my house, where wireless signals mysteriously die at the front door. Bonus: I have cake.

I oppose publicly funded elections myself, mostly because I can't see a workable way to balance between proper funding levels of long-shot candidates and wasted-funding of non-viable candidates (who decides what constitutes a candidate worthy of funding?) Plus I don't really like the idea of public funds ending up in the hands of private broadcasters. But I'm curious about your rationale for opposing term-limits? I don't want to put words in your mouth, but it sounds like maybe you're concerned that term limits set a barrier to entry for lower-income or working-class citizens, in that the risk to their non-political, paying careers is too high if there's no potential for a long-term political career. Or am I misreading you? I guess I don't understand what you mean by:

Came here to post this same link. I just went with the same setup and I love it. The Revo is nice and quiet, and small enough to mount behind a wall-mounted LCD.

Any suggestions for wireless keyboard/trackpad combos? I plan to use the XBMC remote app for Android as the basic playback remote, but I'd like some kind of Bluetooth keyboard/mouse combo for more full-featured control when I need it. This looks kind of swanky, but might fall into that unusable middle-range between small remote size and large keyboard functionality. Maybe something like this?

I have a little routine that I love:
Save all the seeds, then randomly throw them into the air at inappropriate locations (churches, the grounds of government buildings, into people's flower beds, random roadside ditches, etc). The odds of anything growing are tiny, but I make up for it with volume. I'm sure anything that did grow would be garbage, but it makes me smile every time I think of someone finding a plant at the state capitol building.

See comment 32870540. This is just too easy in articles about caving. Where's the challenge?