Not only that, but I would like to add that I do not think personally that the few books I have read from project Gutenberg are suitable for educational use... I don't want to slap the project Gutenberg, I like what they do, but the few books I got from their website (mostly French literature) were shock full of spelling mistakes, probably caused by faults in OCR recognition. Maybe schools could run classes where students would have to fix a few chapters during their semester and give back the output of their work to the project (after revision by the teacher, of course).

Patent litigation.

I am not presuming that people are idiots, please read my post again if you think so. I am just pointing out that
- not everybody is interested in computers all that much (and there is nothing wrong with that, there's lots of things I'm not interested in either), so giving the ability to create virtual machines or encryption is not very helpful for most people
- the features which the OP suggests should be part of the basic Windows installation are not, in their current form, all that useful to increase security. The virtual machine makes it so that the end-user now has to remember to update not only his computer, but also the virtual machines that it runs. Running the browser in a VM will do someone little good if the VM is compromised and he types his credit card number in the browser window which is inside of it. As for encryption, chances are higher that the end-user will suffer some data loss because of it than to avoid getting his computer compromised.

TLDR: Your post is mostly orthogonal to what I wrote. I said that VMs and encryption (in their current form, shipped with Windows) are not useful as security features for most people, and none of what you said answers that, sorry. And I didn't say people are idiots.

I can agree with that, although I have to say that I don't know of any other OS which does this either. But then, Windows appears to be the only OS which really needs this...

Either you're trolling or you are vastly overestimating the general public computer abilities. Do you really expect Joe six-pack to setup a virtual machine to run his browser in? Even if he has a knowledgeable friend who sets this up for him, now try to explain to him why he can't apply a wallpaper he downloads or install a game without copying it from the virtual machine to is computer (which, by the way, defeats to large extent the usefulness of the virtual machine in the first place)? As for encryption, I'm not really sure of how it protects a computer from viruses and random malware, but I do know that it makes it much more difficult to recover data in case of hardware failure, sometimes impossible if the encryption depended on some certificate which had to be backed up (which wasn't done, because the user didn't know about it). You can argue that Microsoft should offer a simpler line of products, but I don't think those features are particularly useful in regards to security for the general public.

Yes, I agree that it looks interesting. I just hate it when someone repeats the same thing again and again in a discussion, when it's not in every discussion he goes. I'm fine with discussing the merits of LLVM, this looks like the appropriate place for it. I just don't want to read the same discussion four or five times because one person ignores what has been said on the topic and just repeats his original message.

Are you an Apple shill in your spare time?

I'm trying to read this thread, and I have to put up with your repetitive posts about how great clang is. Why don't you read some of the replies to your crap? They do a good job of debunking your claims. I have mod points, but I just hate moderating people down, even if they waste my time repeating unfounded assertions (also known as bullshit).

Yeah right, I'm sure he didn't mind spending nearly 50 thousand dollars to defend himself from something which most people would not consider to be a crime! As for the defense bit, you will have to elaborate, because it is meaningless. Are you saying Canada gives a public defender more easily? Last I heard, you need to be dirt poor to get one, just like in the US, notwithstanding the fact that the accused is not even a citizen of Canada.

You're saying your company switched to Google Docs because of the new ribbon interface in MS Office? I have no particular like for the new interface, but I mean, Word and Excel contain nearly all the functionality of Google Docs in the first tab of their respective application... I can't access Google Docs right now, so I can't test this, but last I remember, copying and pasting data from a Google spreadsheet to another document was painful. Finally, the interface is sometimes slow enough to be annoying, especially for things like sorts. I do not mean to call you dishonest, but I just don't see how it would be possible to be more productive with the Google Docs interface unless you mean to argue that the lack of options and limited power of the tools available makes someone more productive. There sure are valid options for choosing Google Docs over MS Office, such as versioning out of the box, easy sharing and collaboration features, no need for backups, etc, but increased productivity because of a superior user interface? Not so much (or as least it seems to me).

This is not the same thing at all... The passwords made by the Google password generator are meant to be truly random, so no access to one website is related to another. On the other hand, all the password this application makes are generated from the exact same password plus domain name (which is obviously known), so if someone knows you use this service and guesses your master password, he has access to all the sites you go to. It is somewhat more secure than using the same password everywhere as long as the attacker doesn't know you use this service, so it can be useful against random brute force attacks on a website you use.

This doesn't look like a bad idea... But the thing is, Google wants to get rid of on-the-fly verification of revocation certificates, and you suggest on-the-fly reception of short lived certificates, so it might run into similar issues as the current system. Remember, a revocation list is permanent, so you can just download the latest updates to it, which should not be too bandwidth intensive if you do it every time you start your browser. A list of active certificates could not be kept, and would have to be downloaded anew every time (or rather received on the fly, because it would probably be way too big).

Atlas Shrugged is a book written by Ayn Rand. The main plot idea is that human civilization is destroyed because the small working elite which humanity depends on to feed decides to go in hiding an let all the lazy people (basically everyone else than maybe a thousand people or so, all of them Americans) die. Go read the wikipedia articles on Ayn Rand and Atlas Shrugged for more details.

They call it a KDE ripoff because it does look a look like KDE, because they borrowed a lot from them in terms of artwork. To be honest, looking at the screenshots, I know I could be fooled into thinking these are KDE screenshots. The only difference is in the lower left part of the taskbar, as far as I can see.

Wow, looking at the screenshots from that browser, it seems the developers of that browser think that "normal people" like to have some of their valuable screen estate wasted with Facebook buttons and small pictures of their friends... No thank you, I'd rather keep that crap in its own tab. Bring you lame astroturfing elsewhere.

You can't shoot a company in the head... They'll just hire the mob or raise a private army, or put a bomb under your car. The idea that you could defend your family against a corporation seems to me ludicrous.

You should go read the Wikipedia article about the Chinese milk scandal. Sure, at least some of the companies involved went bankrupt and two persons were executed, but I can't imagine a parent whose kid may suffer lifelong health problems and/or a reduced life expectancy pointing this as some sort of proof that regulations are cumbersome and unnecessary.