Come on, this line of reasoning/argument is BS. What you're saying is that a monopoly is able to attract people easier than having to compete for them. In the same way Linux weakens Hurd's ability to attract contributors, Git weakens Mercurial, Dragonfly BSD weakens Net/Open/Free BSD, and any project all all reduces the available population of anything is competes with.

There is more than just licensing going on, also at issue in this specific case is software modularity. Say I want to write cool tools for source code analysis or a new editor with syntax highlighting. Rather than reinvent a C++ parser and/or abstract syntax tree, I'd really rather just use one the compiler ALREADY HAS IMPLEMENTED. Doing such a thing is easier with LLVM/Clang than GCC, purely because GCC doesn't expose its internals very well (at all, from what I understand). In turn, that's done for purely ideological reasons, but here it actively prevents other kinds of beneficial work.

Good to hear! I take it you are also satisfied with your Zune, PlayForSure music bought in their online store, Kin smartphone, or perhaps Windows Phone 7?

Sorry, you may prefer their stuff, but the reason(s) you list are ridiculous and just factually contradictory to their own behavior. Within the last decade they've thrown several of their own products and customers under the bus.

This is a brilliant way to respond to the Princeton study - the correct way - rather than issue a press release denouncing it, or whine about it some other way.

Instead, use the study's own methodology against them to show other ridiculous conclusions. What are the academics at Princeton going to do, say "oh wait the original methods are bullshit". Anything they say against just weakens their original paper/study.

"paying to fight wars" is what you do if you have a mercenary force, not a military. A voluntary military *should* just be there for defense of its nation. Granted in recent times there has been a ton of bullshit adventurism and mission scope creep, blurring the lines in a bad way, but that's due to incompetent leaders making shitty decisions.

This is also a system ripe for corruption on a massive, world-unprecedented scale. So much so that such a market would need to be regulated so heavily, to ensure FULLY INFORMED NON-COERCED participation that it would barely be recognizable as "a market". An actual organ donation "free-market" (as in what surely this economist desires) would likely be the all time worst thing in the history of humanity.

I do that to, but this is one area Windows is seriously lacking.

Remapping CapsLock to something else (Control) on OSX is as easy as a System Setting change, usable by normal accounts.
On Linux (at least the ones I've tried) it is as easy as a config setting available in the UI. I'm sure hardcore users can edit config files too.
On Windows, you need to be Administrator to install a driver/dll combo (e.g. tool from SysInterals) or edit the registry. WTF?! It's just terrible.

Thanks for the info - very interesting!
That is a lot more, I suppose the specifics depend on how much money they forgo versus how many customers they distribute over.
I have a gut feeling that most people aren't interested enough in privacy to be willing to pay a lot for it.

These banks probably just did the thing all corporations do when they want results but offload all risk in getting those results: contract the work out.

Now they can just feign ignorance, disclaim liability, and move on because they have a contract when another entity that says everything is fine! It's like magic.

Depends on who you ask. The Ayn-Randian-objectivist-anarcho-liberterian-conservative-capitalists, who have complete faith in the correctness of the free market even in the absence of government regulations, believe that the free market itself will solve this: eventually, corporations that don't monetize everything about you, will emerge and compete for the business of people who care about stuff like how their data is used. They will charge slightly higher prices to offset the profit they lose by not selling your data.

Otherwise, those of us that don't live in a theoretical or academic fantasy land, will instead seek laws/regulations to limit this behavior.

Maybe he's leaving BT to work for NSA!

I think you need to examine this process from the viewpoint of the intended user.

For the iPad, you set up sycing with iPhoto and iTunes, and let it work. Plug in camera, grab photos, plug in iPad, sync photos. Minimal interaction outside unusual situations. (I just hit one recently where I had to rebuild my iPhoto Library to rescue orphaned albums. It fixed things up jut fine).

For some other tablet, "plug in and copy files". RIGHT. If that involves navigating the file system and/or selecting what to copy and where to copy it to, by hand, you've just lost the person who is supposed to be using this stuff.

I own a Nexus 7 and iPad Mini. I can sync my files to both. But at no time would I ever recommend to a NOVICE the Android solution from an ease of use perspective. I'd do that if and only if price were the dominant and overriding issue.

Wait, what?

Anonymous currency makes corruption easier. Corporations and the wealthy wouldn't have to bother with lobbyists if they could funnel anonymous money straight to their congressman.

All this sturm and drang over the website is total BS anyway.

If the website isn't working, just fall back to pen, paper, stamps, and envelopes, like it would have been in the ancient past of say... 20 years ago before everybody expected regular consumers to have web access.

Or perhaps the RWNJ noise makers can point out to me where in the Constitution it says laws MUST be accompanied by functioning websites? All those strict interpretation original intent founding fathers conservative boneheads can stuff that in their john birch ayn rand free market asses. Let's not forget it was private contractors that failed to deliver the product.

Because you don't choose your health - a major portion is genetically determined at birth and you don't have any say.

Further, even the part that is in your control (diet, exercise, etc.) - a lousy driver is a threat to others (they may cause an accident or crash into you), where an unhealthy person is not (somebody's diabetes meds or heart condition or just general obesity doesn't pose a threat to your safety) - isn't at risk due to other people's choices.

Lastly, if somebody is so crappy of a driver they can't get insurance, they have other options from walking, biking, public transportation, etc. Yeah, too goddamn bad if those are inconvenient - drive better. If somebody has bad health, they don't necessarily have other options.