Dumping pollution into the environment is often cheaper, at least in the short term, than trying to avoid creating waste, or trying to dump the waste responsibly. Burning coal is cheaper because of this. If you factor in the costs -- acid rain, altering the chemistry of the air, acidification of the oceans -- coal is more expensive.
And, by reducing their fossil fuel imports Portugal has now insulated themselves from the vagaries of the energy market. The next time oil prices spike the US will be force to send crates of money to unfriendly regimes because the US is addicted to their oil. Portugal will thrive while the US stumbles.
Portugal is planning ahead. The US is hoping that it can continue to be profligate forever.
Money isn't necessarily a proxy for emissions. Often it is a proxy for human labor.
Now if you'd wanted to post some alternate suggestions that work on linux then that would have been productive. Merely mentioning that a free Microsoft program doesn't work on linux, when the OP asked about Windows, is just trolling
The two PCs that my other family members use are both locked down -- they don't have the admin account passwords -- and they are totally fine.
Your complaint is outdated. And you haven't provided any examples of these many programs that (inappropriately) required administrative privileges. Put up (so we can evaluate the importance of these 'many' programs that require root) or shut up.
As for proprietary networking, my Windows box uses TCP/IP. What does yours use?
And I didn't really understand #1, #2, or #3. You need to give more details to justify your claims, and preferably to show how they are any different from Linux/OpenSource bugs.
You forgot to post a link to some stats. I'll help you out. How about this one:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shrinkage_(accounting)
It says that "per day" and "per year" are both incorrect. Shrinkage figures are given as a percentage of sales. That makes sense because giving shrinkage numbers as a percentage of inventory wouldn't be meaningful without understanding how quickly the inventory was turned over, and even then it's not very useful because it doesn't directly indicate the economic cost of the shrinkage.
What the Wikipedia link says is that shrinkage is about 1.7% of retail sales in the US in 2001. Not per year. Not per day. Also not 2% to 5%.
He has not acquired a fortune; the fortune has acquired him. -- Bion