Difficult to argue with that math, and keep a straight face.

Open Source software programs like Open or Libre Office and Google Docs in particular deal with Microsoft's proprietary data formats better than Microsoft does. Good luck getting your five year old Office installation to read the latest version from MS. Meanwhile Google et al can cope with it fine. Perhaps not perfectly, but fine. The lesson here isn't that using non-MS software gives a less than perfect experience, it's that using MS software encourages a less than perfect experience. 99% of users demand little or nothing more than MS was offering in the 90s, but they're forced to upgrade because otherwise they can't read the files they're getting from that work colleague with the new PC.

Most people won't understand what you mean. Basically once your business is on Microsoft's radar they will assume you are using a complete suite of Microsoft products and if you aren't licensed for what they think you are probably using they'll send you a letter asking to prove what licenses you do hold. This costs money, be it your own time or as usually happens some IT contractors time. In the EU/UK the whole thing is pretty shady, but if you don't comply you risk having it escalated to legal threats. Before you say it, having a day in court is not what most businesses want, particularly small businesses where every hand is essential and where that day in court represents legal fees and lost revenue. You're not going to get that back.

I've avoided using MS products for years. Some stuff I can't avoid. I have no financials/stock control software with local support that runs on anything but MS server software. You can run everything on the server and side-step Windows licenses on the desktop, but pay about the same for the CAL, or whatever they call it now. I hope what Munich is doing catches on. If you're a home user or a mega-corporation you have the choice to by-pass Microsoft and use open source software. Both these markets are served. If you're an SME you're using Microsoft.

If content creators embedded graphics and text in the article I'd be fine with that. I don't expect to tear pages out of a magazine before I read it and those suckers are full of ads. The problem is, as you ably stated, the animated crap. I've had access to ad-skipping on TV for around a decade. I can not watch TV advertisements. I will leave a room and rest my fevered brow against an exterior wall before I'll watch one. Unless I hear about a clever ad then I'll trawl Youtube until I find it. So, in summary, make better ads.

The last thing anyone in the EU wants is a legal system similar to the USA. We'd have to build ten times as many prisons. We have NO money.

The "Prisoner Defence", ie "I am not a number, I am a free man" is a grand idea but it's hard to avoid contributory negligence. So, if you had a car and you let anyone borrow it regardless of whether they had insurance or even a driving license then you'd be committing a crime. If you pay for an internet connection and you are equally lax about how it's used then you should also be held responsible. I don't understand how anyone has a problem with this. Say you have a legally held firearm and just leave it on your lawn. That's okay, is it?

It's possible to spoof IP addresses, but currently EU law requires for a record to be kept of what you're doing with your Internet connection at the ISP level. This is as much a tool to prove innocence as it is a hammer to smite the sinner.

The cited study shows nothing material. All religions are designed to make the common man accept that they should be humble and accept their position in life, so the rich can stay rich. I've no idea if there is a creator spirit or god, and have no interest in worshipping one even if there was. The concept is repugnant to me. But I will tell you this for 100% sure: every religion is a man-made thing designed to benefit one social group above a majority. If you don't believe this to be the case, ask yourself why none of the major deist religions encourage solo worship, instead preferring to herd their flocks together.

I don't understand your point about people dumping on religion. Shouldn't you just humbly accept that's how things are going to be and get on with it? Gods don't like it when you start going around expressing unapproved opinions. Bow your head, son, and whisper a little prayer of thanks. You did say that'd make you a better person, didn't you?

I prefer to keep my head unbowed, so I can look around me and see what's going on. I think that's the best way to be. You may not find that to be a very humble opinion and it isn't. It's my opinion and it's just plain better that yours.

I doubt that keeping a journal "strengthened their overall resilience and (made them) became less vulnerable to everyday stresses and complaints like rashes and headaches" - in fact I doubt there was any physical effect whatsoever. Any positive results will be down to carefully worded questions framed to elicit a desired response. If anything this is testimony to the effectiveness of research, most notably in the softer "sciences", in being able to achieve whatever results you feel biased towards.

Ask these self-same campus community member to keep their on-line journals for three months. Note the results in an unbiased manner. Leave them alone for a year then kill and dissect them in order to conduct a real scientific investigation. I guarantee none of them will have maintained their auras of optimism.

Telling me they were going to audit me under their Software Asset Management scheme.

I use the bare minimum amount of MS software where I work because it has built in redundancy. If you buy Microsoft Office 2010 chances are it won't open files created with the next version. Libre and Open Office don't seem to share that failing in Microsoft's product. That's why I use them - and I pretty much use them interchangeably because my peeps aren't particularly sophisticated users (nor am I).

So, having MS send me a letter basically accusing me of stealing because I don't use Outlook, Exchange, Office or whatever else they peddle, is pretty annoying. Why would I want to let myself get tangled up in that system?

Ironically, we're coming to end of life with our current accounting software (Sage Line 100) and are due an across the board refresh of the entire system. I was THIS close to buying into Outlook and Exchange and a limited deployment of MS Office because it integrates better (at all) with Sage Line 200 but that letter was a kick in the nuts. I am adamantly opposed to giving them money if that's how they treat customers - and I AM a customer. I've spent some proportion of my tech budget on their OS software, including the bare minimum server OS software to host our Sage installation. I must stress if I could go Linux I would but our accounting software, and in fact no accounting software that I can get local support for runs on anything but Microsoft OS's as clients and more importantly on the server side. There ARE web-based alternatives but they're clunky as hell, expensive and obviously vulnerable to downtime if t'internet goes down,

I'm not a tech guy, I'm an interested in tech guy. IT isn't my job, it's just one of the things I do here. Again, I don't have sophisticated users. Incredibly in a company with thirty people under the roof I am, at nearly fifty, the only geek. What can I say. We get our hands dirty, but Microsoft Office? Not THAT dirty.

To summarize the summary: blibble blabble blabble blibble.... fork in the eye!

I don't even see how there could be a conflict. One is an internet company and the other mainly hunts seals and whales for meat.

Nope. It is hundreds. You can be arrested for sending a threatening text and there are, literally, hundreds and probably thousands of cases like that which have to be investigated each year. Is it always warranted? If we were a dispassionate race of aliens who could look at a result and weigh up the statistics that are behind it then sure, you'd say don't waste police time on threatening texts sent at half two on a Saturday night. But if someone gets hurt afterwards there's a witch-hunt so these things have to be investigated or the police are vilified and everyone asks why nothing was done. That's the system. No Chief Inspector is going to say, "Well, 99% of the time nothing comes of it and we can save millions of quid every year by just ignoring it." Mainly because a Chief Inspector would never say "quid".

That would be 2030 and 2040s. I'll need to review these estimates in ten years.

@tsalmark Best comment ever.

And um, to add something, it's probably easier to train fresh engineers who haven't developed bad habits, than to hire expensive production engineers with experience. Undoubtedly the Chinese have a lot of experience in manufacturing, but it's not as if the West has been reduced to grubbing in the dirt with sticks - there's still a LOT of manufacturing going on in the US and elsewhere outside of China. If anything the Chinese are going to have to adapt to a whole bunch of new or different legislation and an entirely different breed of corrupt local official.

What About Bob"

Christmas lights tend to be cheap and nasty, ie inefficient, and don't do much but glow. Unless you're planning on organizing trash bags full of them, a few compact fluorescent lights will be a better bet. I've grown chili peppers and herbs in rooms devoid of sunlight with great results. I prefer to use the "natural light" bulbs but as has been discussed, blue spectrum for growth, red spectrum for flowering - though this is really only important when you have a greenhouse full of pot and you're using sodium lighting I suspect. White light CFLs for out of season chilies and such are fine.