Sure, Microsoft can threaten to cut off their own nose ... but they would never actually do so and the EU knows this.

Like I said, corruption has a specific legal meaning and it is illegal. You may want other things included in the coverage of corruption but as long as it isn't, then it is not corruption.

You might want to look up the word "corruption" in a dictionary. It is not just a legal term. Maybe you think lawyers own the English language - they don't.

...The entire system runs on money ...

What is so bad about that?

What's so bad about it? It's corrupt, that's what. Supposedly the USA is a democracy, but the power of money has corrupted (i.e. degraded) that democracy (government by the people) into a plutocracy (government by the rich). You obviously think that's fine, perhaps your standards aren't all that high.

Political corruption is illegal in the US. If it is something that is legal, then by definition, it is not corruption no matter how much you don't like it. You may subjectively find it unacceptable but it isn't corruption.

The US political system is incredibly and famously corrupt.

The United States is the most wealthy country in the world, and it's often said that it has "the best democracy money can buy". The entire system runs on money ... hundreds of millions of dollars are spent on major elections. This is why the US political system is so responsive to the needs of the rich and so poor at reflecting the views of ordinary Americans. The government can give the banks billions of dollars because the banks have paid handsomely to own the politicians. The DMCA and the ridiculously long copyright terms were demanded by "IP" owners so they can extract more and more $$$ from ordinary people. "Single Payer" healthcare is supported by a solid majority of US citizens (according to polls) but their opinion is outweighted by the influence of $$$. I could go on all day, but instead I will go and do some work ;-)

In short: corruption is there and you can't pretend it isn't real because it's legal; that's just sophistry.

Karl Marx would have called for government to come in and heavily regulate software. Designate a central authority to manage the development of software, public schools train a specific number of necessary software developers, outlaw the possession, development, or use of "rogue" compilers to help protect people from poor quality software that wasn't approved by the state, and possibly imprison people for unauthorized forking of projects arguing that such action "steals" the necessary resources of the state and impedes progress.

This is pure fantasy. Seriously, you have never read a word Marx wrote, have you?
Marx has been dead well over a century, but he still gets the blame / credit for everything every self-declared "Marxist" has ever done.

What they are describing is entirely free-market anarchism

I think it's a mistake to characterise it as "free-market". It misses the point and obscures the thing which is actually the most interesting about "dot-communism".

A market is a place where you go to exchange goods and services for other things of equal value (="commodity exchange"). What makes it "free" is that you are free to exchange or not. No-one forces you to buy or sell.

But a market is only one possible exchange mechanism. For instance, my girlfriend brought me coffee in bed this morning. On the weekend I'll make breakfast while she sleeps in. This is an exchange of valued goods and services, but it is not a market. I did not pay for that coffee. When you cook dinner for your family, you don't typically expect them to pay you for it. Sometimes kids do get paid for doing chores around the house, and to that extent they are working in a market (though not a free market!). But usually domestic production is carried on outside of market mechanisms, using a form of "gift exchange". Note that gift exchange predates the market, historically. Our distant ancestors did not have money, but they have always had exchange.

Similarly, market transactions are unlike the transactions that take place in a "dot-communist" system. e.g. if I download a piece of free software, and I contribute a patch to that same software, I have clearly made an exchange, but this is not a market transaction. I don't buy the software and sell my patch. I don't swap the software for my patch. I freely (as in gratuitously) obtain the software and am under no obligation to submit my patch, which I submit entirely voluntarily. I could just as easily (more easily) not submit a patch at all. It is this non-market nature which is the unusual thing about "dot-communism".

What's new here (and politically significant), is that non-market exchange is hitting the big-time, outside of the domestic sphere, as part of large-scale, socialised, economic production (e.g. Linux).

Join the online game, with a few other concerned friends, track him down and KILL HIM. Repeatedly, if necessary.

Or hang out on his pirate ship saying "come out to the park!" "it's your turn to cook dinner!" "mow the lawn!" "get a job!" etc.

Best thing you did was kick him out of the flat. Should've done it sooner. His parents should've done something too ... get him some professional therapy or kick him out.

Einstein was not a religious believer by the way. He liked to use metaphorical language, that's all. Lots of people have the idea that he was a believer for that reason, and the myth gets repeated again and again until it becomes received wisdom.

Very true. But you, when all you have is a hammer, everyone else looks like a nail.

The US is so hypermilitarised that militarism is a natural first response to anything. This is how we get such absurdities as "humanitarian bombing campaigns" and "destroying the village in order to save it".

It's true, the Funnel Web spider is considered very dangerous (i.e. has often killed), and the Redback is also dangerous (can kill), but please don't forget the dangerous Mouse spider!

You get on a train in the suburbs (I'm guessing your wife drops you off, or you drive to train depot and park.

I catch a bus to my local railway station (bus stop is 2 min walk from my house), or if feel like it, I walk there (less than 20 min).

Once you get to the 'city', how do you get to/from your work site? I'm quite sure the train doesn't drop you off anywhere near the front door of your office for most people, so, how do you get to and from work?

I catch a tram. Trams to my work leave about every 30s from the railway station where I get off in town. The tram drops me outside my office. Or I can walk (about 20min).

If you try to walk..what happens when weather is bad? To me, especially living in the climate I do, that is the greatest impediment to any type of mass transit to go to work daily. It would take me much longer to catch and switch busses all over town, to get to my work...not to mention that there is not a bus stop very near either my home or office. So, if I were to do this during the summer...I'd be a sweat soaked heap by the time I got there

Where I live, in Melbourne, Australia, it gets very very hot in summer (47 degrees one day this summer! that's about 116F for you Americans). On really hot days, I do indeed elect not to walk, and actually there was some disruption to the public transport network, but we struggled through it ;-)

....and the travel time would be hours instead of the 10 min or so it takes me to get there on motorcycle or car (I drive quite fast), and on the route, a bicycle wouldn't cut it. What if you need to go to the gym or shop after work on the way home?? How do you live like that without a car...I just have a hard time seeing how you do that and have any resemblance to a normal life and life schedule.

It's true that a bunch of inter-city high-speed trains are not the complete answer; you also need fleets of taxis, buses, trams, etc, etc. You need your public authorities to invest in large-scale efficient transport infrastructure. It will be hard work getting there, but it's worth it!
It is possible to live without a car and still go out to the movies, grocery shopping etc. It's well past the time to wean ourselves off cars.

We (Western nations) should just bite the bullet and install fibre. The theoretical limit of data transfer over fibre is far in excess of what we can reach now, so a good fibre network would serve the country for decades.

Correct. This is what the Australian federal government has recently announced.

Good on them, the damn socialists!

They were named as part of the Axis of Evil in 2001, but the US govt believed they had 10 bombs worth of plutonium in 1994. The US threatened and blustered then but it was too late.

No - actually the DPRK has acquired nukes because they really do need them to exclude the possibility of an attack by US/NATO.

They are following the same "nuclear deterrence" strategy already used by other countries, and with considerable success! The nuclear strategy is the real reason that, uniquely among official designated enemy countries of the US (the "axis of evil"), they have not been blockaded, attacked or even threatened with attack, and have even cut some deals with the US through purely diplomatic channels. They didn't get this treatment by being less "evil" than the rest of the "axis of evil", but by having nukes.

Iraq, on the other hand, was attacked precisely because they did not have weapons of mass destruction; ironically, given the official black propaganda put out by the US government. But if Saddam had had nukes, would he have been attacked? Not a fucking chance.

Some people here say "Kim is mad" etc, but this is frankly bollocks. You believe what Fox "News" tells you? I've no doubt they think Kim eats babies for breakfast. He is certainly an intellectual challenge for Americans with a "bourgeois liberal" mindset to understand (of course), but he should not be dismissed as a nutter, nor should the military strategists of the DPRK be considered fools. They are well capable of seeing the military challenge that faces them, and they know that nukes will give them a guarantee of US non-aggression. With strategic nukes they will be able to reduce their conventional army and concentrate their productive forces once again on improving living standards, without any military risk.