That's not a very good argument. "They" (whoever they are) also won't make you buy health insurance if you're never going to...live.

How do you vote with your feet if there is barely any choice in the so-called "marketplace"?

What market are you referring to? There's broad choice in the PC market.

And if you vote with your wallet, will that count against the votes of others whose wallets are rather thicker than yours?

Yes, if there's enough of you.

It doesn't, you fucking idiot.

Of course not. Then the OP would have said something like this: "Richard Stallman, founder and president of the Free Software Foundation, marketing for Apple, Inc." Your freedom to swing your fist stops at my face.

Thoughts?

The hell with them all. There's more freely licensed, widely available music (and film, and television, and literature) now than ever before in our history, and that's just the beginning. Free culture is just beginning. The number of artistic works released under Creative Commons licenses is growing exponentially, and it's just beginning. I don't have to play ball with those greasy fucking peckerwoods in "The Industry" anymore. Enjoy your Rhapsody or your Spotify or whatever. I'm living at the beginning of a renaissance, and it's pretty fucking cool.

Oppressively, restricted licensed works of art and culture are bad. There's more freely offered and widely available music now than ever before. Broaden your horizons.

You're wrong. As I said to someone else above, there's more readily available, freely offered works of art and culture in the commons today than at any other point in history, and it's exploding. Free culture is happening, and it's happening more every day, and it's just getting rolling. One day history will see our generation as living at the beginning of a renaissance.

Please. There's more readily available, freely licensed media now than at any time in the history of man. Literature, film, music, visual art, drama. The rules have changed, our culture and our art are truly in our own hands, now more than ever, and all you can do is bitch about the mean corporations? Fuck that, move on. The choice is yours to make. Quit your bitching and find a better way. We're living at the beginning of a renaissance.

...

Huh?

Endless war! Hooray!

I agree completely, and obviously my hipshot post was grossly oversimplified. My point was that it didn't take ten years of war to kill bin Laden.

How many? And at what cost?

Oh, you mean the government we deposed in two weeks ten years ago? That Taliban? I've heard of them.

The fuck are you on about? We live in a society where you can be arrested for drunk driving while sitting on the hood of your parked car in your driveway with your keys in your pocket, and we "don't really do anything about it?"

"The terrorists" isn't an army, or a country which can be defeated.