every once in a blue moon you need Windows.

I thought that was what VMs were for.

"ID for voters" is common-sense, you want to ensure voters are eligible. OTOH attaching the ID to a particular vote destroys the secret part in what is supposed to be a secret ballot.

I don't believe that is what the OP was talking about. The ID is to be able to get the ballot. The ID# is not attached to the ballot at that point.The ballot itself is still secret, but we've validated that the person casting it is eligible to do so.

The inked finger (as used in Iraq) is another good way to ensure people don't vote more than once, but stained fingers do nothing to confirm their eligibility to vote.

Personally, I'm all for that as well.

Except it does nothing about that. Physical access still == owned unless you lock the bios/uefi and physically lock the machine. Otherwise the attacker can either take out the HDD or boot up a Linux live CD or other HDD by adding a new key. That's no different from the current state of affairs where we change the boot order, lock down the bios and lock the machine. That means the purpose for Secure Boot has to be something else... and easy money is on market dominance (even just joe-user home market dominance).

It's also going to put an end to people being able to use Linux "Live" CDs as emergency recovery tools. I know of several instances where the only way to get data of a crapped out windows install was to boot off a live disk, then copy stuff to USB. Looks like going forward, if your windows install craps out, as it is wont to do more so than any other system I've seen, you're SOL unless you have backups.

That would be a good thing, but people are generally too stupid to have current backups.

Our Sharepoint project was begat due to the fact that it was "free".

Sharepoint is where perfectly good information goes to die.

Your comments about Baen Publishing were very similar to what I was going to say, however I'd also like to point out that Baen also includes CD-ROM disks in some of their novels as well. For instance, I bought one of the 1632 novels in hardback. (The Baltic War I think), and it contained a CD that had the entire series on it. Printed right there on the label it said that you are free to copy and distribute the disk as long as you don't charge for it. Baen rocks, and really gets it. I've picked up several of these disks when I've purchased the hardbacks and have actually made a disk of my own that I keep as an archive of all their stuff. I can't tell you how many people I've introduced to a couple of their series' because all I have to do is point to their website and folks can download the first couple of books of a series and see if they like it.

I know for a fact that because they do not treat their customers as potential thieves, they have made sales they would not otherwise made.

I'm sorry, but the algorithm you described above is patented. You'll have to cease using it until proper royalties are paid.

Actually, you were doing just fine until that last step. Humans are notoriously bad at picking random numbers.

If copyright ever was an "agreement", it has been violated, over and over again, by the other side. Not just with the laws above, but by interminable copyright extension and the re-copyrighting of out-of-copyright works. In fact, however, it's not an agreement at all; it's just an exercise of power. There's no dishonor in violating it.

Worth repeating.

Big Media has bought enough congresscritters to make sure that copyright terms will eventually be the heat-death of the universe minus one day, so as to fall under the concept of "limited time" as specified in the constitution. I long ago lost all respect for copyright and the organizations that push it well beyond its intended terms. There is no logical reason why the entire beatles catalog should not currently exist in the public domain, which is its rightful place.

The only good news I see on the horizon is that a lot of youger folk have a similar lack of faith in copyright or the legislooters who seem to think perpetual copyright is beneficial to society.

The supreme Court of the U.S. recently made (IMO) a pretty bad ruling regarding the extension of copyright to works previously in the public domain. Slashdotters might be interested in reading the Opinion. I think the dissent is much better argued.

"In Windows Server 8, users can transition between Server Core and Server Graphical Shell at any time, with a single command and a single reboot."

You're supposed to be thankful that it doesn't take 3 or 4 reboots just to start the Gui.

Don't they EVER learn? It took them literally years to be able to do application and driver installs without required endless reboots. Not poor windows admins need to reboot just to start the GUI?? Why on earth can't MS come up with the equivalent of "xinit" to kick off the GUI?? This is 1980s level functionality FFS!

Indeed. It's just another example of how poorly designed MS-windows is from the ground up.

Enterprise Solution - Solvent used for dissolving piles of cash in corporate vaults.

LOL. That is absolutely true at least for the company I work for.

One thing I've noticed though, is that where the 'enterprise solution' comes from entirely depends upon the decision by corporate to buy it to dissolve excess cash on hand. For some reason they don't seem to bat an eye at spending millions of dollars for any solution that carries the Microsoft brand, even though it inevitably is less interoperable than alternatives, but they balk at paying licences for Redhat or Suse products, regardless of the actual cost. Maybe Redhat, Suse and other vendors need to add some kind of strawberry flavoring to their enterprise solution.