No, because a lot of the content creators don't care. With the exception of a few high profile "creators" who use royalties alone to bankroll their lavish lifestyles without having to create anything anymore, most would tell you they are happy just knowing someone likes their work. Though there are some creators out there in the public making a stink about it, its mostly the middlemen that are throwing the tantrum.

To use another car analogy, its more like car dealerships fighting tooth and nail to be the only source of purchasing a car. They install DRM that makes sure if you miss your payment, the car won't start. They make laws that make tampering with such devices illegal.

When new technologies are created to make purchasing and maintaining a car quicker and easier, they try to squash them. They fight websites that make it easier for individuals to trade or purchase cars. When a new car manufacturer tries to sell directly to their customers instead of using expensive middlemen, old laws are used to keep them out. When 3D printers are cheap enough and robust enough to print auto grade parts, the dealerships will lobby congress to make patents last indefinitely and sue file sharers as patent violators asking over 200k per violation.

What the content distributors need to do is adapt. Once the content turned into bits that can be copied indefinitely at zero cost, their business model was gone. They should have embraced technology and created itunes before an electronics company, one that was actually barred from entering the music industry because of their name, come in before them and grab the new market. Hell, they are in the packaged goods business, not electronic distribution, so they should embrace that and make the best packaged goods they can. Instead of selling us a digital copy of their artists' creations on a cheap plastic disc in a cheap plastic container for $15 - $20 that are guaranteed to break, sell us something valuable. The Beatles in Mono comes up as a good example, though a bit extreme.

By that definition Windows XP is itself a huge piece of malware that needs to be constantly rid of the numerous bugs and defects. It has been for the past 10 years thus, and still not fully fixed.

That makes MS an untrustworthy source of poor quality software, or intentionally buggy software aka malware.

Ya, I am pretty sure they use this information to weed out unsavories during the enlistment process. When my friend enlisted a couple years ago, he got pretty far into the process before the issue of a bankruptcy came up. He had to talk to someone pretty high up, pretty sure it was the commander of the base they were going to ship him to, and the commander had to sign off on it.

I'm surprised why Ballmer didn't report him and get him arrested; maybe this is the new Satya guy putting his stamp on company affairs?

I don't really agree with you. In 2000 Apple gave the world a powerful commercial UNIX workstation OS that "just worked," along with a fantastic IDE and development tools for free. There were lots of things in there for power users that may not have been advertised or easily discovered, but they were there and documented somewhere if you knew how to look.

Now, the workstation OS started going to shit as you described after they moved to intel, supposedly Mavericks fixes that a bit. I don't know, never owned an intel mac (thats also when they started sunsetting hardware almost as quickly as it was released).

Its iOS thats for the lobotomised retarted proto-lifeforms. And, yes, some of that was getting into OSX proper. But I believe the backlash with Windows 8 showed them that might not be too wise and I've heard they've backed off, again, with Mavericks.

It didn't seem to me that he was critical of Microsoft as much as he was desktop users. I could barely get through the article due to rage, but this is how I parsed it:

"Look at all these redundant features Microsoft felt they had to add to appease stupid desktop users who haven't learned anything from Vista's UI 7 years ago. These users need to go away, they are forcing Microsoft to clutter up my Metro!

Look, a power button! A power button for Ballmer's sake! Who the hell needs that? If you are a laptop user, close your damn lid and let it sleep. If you are a desktop user, push the button on the front of your pee cee. That's been standard since ATX came out in 1995. GET A CLUE PEOPLE!

What? You say you want to reboot? If Windows needs to reboot it will do it for you. You don't need to waste time doing that on your own.

Well, crap. Metro apps have title bars now. Well, I guess that's not too bad. But, you know, you could have just dragged down with your mouse you lazy desktop users. Ugg, now that ugly task bar is covering up the ui in the bottom portion of the screen. I don't remember you desktop users wanting that. Leave my metro alone!

OOOOOH PRETTY! SkyDrive is now called OneDrive, and I can access it in Metro, the OneUI to rule them all.

Well, I don't know who wanted this. Its just redundant crap taking up space on my metro. Desktop users avoid metro anyway, so they obviously don't want it. Stop wasting time on desktop users, Microsoft.

Actually they should ask the sons to get written permission from Steve Jobs before unlocking. All Apple products belong to Jobs and Jobs alone.

In my experience; it is far easier to obtain; install and work with Free Software than with Free Hardware. I asked you about this in person 2 years back; but you brushed it aside saying hardware is not trivial to copy.

Recent events have proved me right; I feel. We simply do not have access to Freedom Hardware at low cost - even the Raspberry Pi has proprietary components in its hardware.

Why can't the FSF pool resources; license technology from ARM Holdings; and build a truly Free Tablet, Free Cellphone and Free PC running Free GNU/Linux instead of the pseudo-free Android? I am sure the community will pay any money to buy truly free Hardware from the FHF.

I think Nokia has learnt from HP and Dell - threaten to release a Linux box; and you get hefty discounts on Windows OEM pricing. Even though a subsidiary of Microsoft; I guess Windows Phone 8 is a big fraction of the price of a Nokia handset - hence this crazy strategy?

but have stylistic design.

You mean like rounded corners?

I call bullshit. OpenOffice or LibreOffice can be configured to store files in .doc and .xls and .ppt formats - problem solved! It annoys me there are still people and govts. buying the rubbish arguments spouted by Microsoft and their ilk...

Because it was designed for netbooks. Though, I think it takes up way too much space on a netbook.

Because it was originally designed for netbooks.

So why does he need any lawyers at this stage?

on your business.... not being rude; just a rhetorical question about the business climate for music.