what i meant was "kids" as in this generation of leaders. the founding fathers would be pretty saddened by the mess their children have made of their inheritance.

yeah.... i hear thats what all the kids are saying these days... unprotected whatnot.... but listen, the Document says:

Congress shall make no law... prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech... seems to me the way they wrote it didnt make that distinction.

the idea that was America, failed a long time ago. We're just here to witness the aftermath.

wall thats just all kinds of retarded and heres why... on second thought... thats actually not a bad idea and it feels very... Google-esque.

i think its still an "if". as you said they are a for profit company and just because they're for profit doesnt make them necessarily stupid. i doubt they'd shoot them selves in the foot like that. its symbolic. they recognize that they are the unparalleled champions of search and that drives the hits which drives the ad revenue. if their all encompassing page-rank system were to be subverted by The Google itself it would draw into question Googles credibility for search (regardless of their credibility as a company, their credibility for search is undeniable). it could seriously damage the brand. thats why Google was in that fiasco with China, they were afraid of damaging the brand by diluting searches. Fortunately for them the Chinese voice little concern over being censored.

theres backlash with that too though. If Google excluded them from search they'd be defeating them selves by providing inferior service. Customers would soon notice. If they did something like that i'd start buying shares in MSFT, Bing would hit a whole new level of acceptability.

its even more important than any perceived financial losses. he suppressed free speech... sorry, but thats sacred ground in the US and you dont fuck with it.

what many are failing to realize is that, more important than network pwnage, or even monetary loss, the man abridged other peoples right to free speech, maliciously. the right to free speech was the very first thing the founders of the US felt needed to be added to their constitution, its something held sacred in America. if you want to know if the punishment is fair, look at other 1st amendment cases with criminal proceedings. i'll bet you anything this is either average or light sentencing. in this instance a DDoS suppressed other peoples right to communicate. i mean... thats a pretty big deal. the whole net neutrality thing is wrapped up in ISPs imposing limits on free speech over the internet.

rather than balking at the sentence, look at the most important issue here, not DDoS, not politics, not his record.

right but the whole point of making open source drivers (or more accurately in this case open source firmware) is to bypass the need for the software license and therefore gain the ability to operate it with other electronics, to do this the product is reverse engineered and thats a perfectly legal process.

FUD. the whole letter is FUD. they use terms like "tamper-protection" because its the strongest thing they can say, they know they cant do anything about it... tis all posturing.

the EULA only applys to software, not hardware.

welcome to software. you do not *buy* software from Microsoft (or from most other vendors for that matter) you license it. Thats why the EULA stands for End User *License* Agreement. These are the sets of rules you agree to abide by if you wish to retain license of their product.

OTOH, hardware cannot be licensed, only sold or leased, and no such terms can be placed on something that is sold.

listen, i'm all for bashing MS when its merited, but calling Bill Gates 'sterile and clueless' is just all kinds of inaccurate, hes got kids and pretty remarkable business sense.

oblig

snarky pedantic comment about the meaning of irony, you're doing it wrong, etc even though irony is an incredibly flexible word.

sounds like a solid case for IT depts. to keep Exchange. i'm all about smooth operation but i'm also about still having a job.

its more like requiring that it run on Gasoline (Windows) rather than Diesel (UNIX)