The "there could have been anything on those CDs" is a really lame excuse and it's one that's M$ propagated. You can say the same thing about books and speech. Want to ban those in school too? Imagine, "He was handing out notes to his clasmates. I immediately assumed they contained drugs and porn and steped in to uphold the law. My suspicions were only increased when I learned this Constitution was written by adults." I ran into the same objections when I tried to hold a Free Software demonstration in my school. It's a war on sharing, they want you to trust them more than your neighbors.

Fear and ignorance are used to keep you helpless and divided. Its a lie, trust your neighbors.

Despite a lot of slippery astroturf, Zune never caught on and sales are still in the toilet. There are few bigger failures out there.

This bout of marketing hype matters less than matters of real substance. Obama, Gates talks are real cause for concern. Obama's platform had nice words about openness, let's hope the dog was wagging the tail in those talks. The conversation should have gone something like, "Gates, you are on notice." Others, worry about even larger platform shifts. It is too early to tell how things will really go.

Contracts can't violate laws, so you can't sign away your rights. They can't, for example, appropriate code you've written before and other people's code you happen to use.

That being said, Look Out! Don't sign anything you don't agree with if you can avoid it. What you have not signed can't be held against you. Talk to a real lawyer, not the mickey mouse guy representing the University against you.

Troll Zoo