... that all of our electronics are made in china. At first I was worried about what this would mean for electronics, then I remembered that nothing is actually made in Japan, just designed there, sometimes.

Rackspace is not a carrier though. It is a hosting service.

In real world terms, lets say the road is the internet. Some municipality owns this road, you have to pay a toll to drive on it. But no one is going to stop you from having a car full of for instance, swastika pins.

On the other hand, say you rent a store front at the mall and decide to sell these pins. When you sign the lease, there is a clause that says "....You agree not to distribute hate material or propaganda, or anything else deemed offensive...". If you don't agree with this clause, don't sign the contract. Buy your own land and open a store.

You have no right or entitlement to be able to rent that store, and if you break contract, they can shut your store down. In this same way, Rackspace should NOT be forced to allow you to keep your site hosted. If you want to do something that isn't allowed by contract, run your own host.

So all someone has to do to access ALL of your accounts is steal your phone? But that would never happen, who's ever heard of a phone get stolen?

For those 4000 years, those keys have been easily stolen or copied, allowing me access to your house, car, PO box, etc.

Every day i see people leave their keys laying around. How is this system any better?

Could you cite these studies? I have heard this repeated time and time again, and while I agree with your argument as a whole, I'd like to actually read over one of these studies that people keep referring to.

There are PLENTY of other tools other than visual studio that can be used to develop for windows. Free. In many different languages too!

A bit off topic, but Microsoft actually offers Visual Studio and many other tools for free to students via DreamSpark. Not old and outdated either, newest versions and such. I have always been anti-MS but this actually seems like a sensible move to encourage develpment.

If the economy car decided where you could and couldn't drive it, and cost more than the truck, this analogy would be valid.

My netbook:

Yes

SSD, so yes.

Why would I want smudges all over my screen when I could type on a physical keyboard with tactile feedback and control it without tiring my arm?

No, its more like comparing a roller coaster to an airplane. You are in the air, and it's kinda cool but entirely useless, and in the end you cant choose where you're going and end up back where you started.

Im Guessing those other 15% have flash?

Many. But most linux infections I've seen were specifically targeted at that system. A clueless user on linux is still a clueless user that will install and run things as root with moderate SE

AFAIK dell hasnt been shipping a disc since at least 2005. I was actually quite surprised when my lenovo laptop came with a disc last year and also had a recovery partition. Paid no extra, didn't ask for it, and it probably cost an extra $0.05 to lenovo to press the disc. I have no problem paying the premium for them to press the disc if it is included in the product price.

To each his own I guess, but I find it far more comfortable to place my netbook on my lap and angle the screen perpendicular to my eyes.

I find adjusting the screen to stay at an angle of my choosing to be more ergonomic than holding a slate for hours or contorting my neck.

and a netbook fits in where? AFAIK, other than a touchscreen, an Ipad is a crippled netbook.

I did not say that anything was right or wrong, other than it being wrong to compare personal use with profit when personal use can be compared with personal use and profit with profit. Not once did I say downloading a song or any form of piracy was ok.

I dont think that the 'pro-piracy' comments refer to people who steal music/movies/games and sell them. Downloading say, a song, without paying for it and listening to it, is more analogous to printing this picture and putting up on my wall to look at it. On the other hand, downloading a song and selling it is analogous to what happened in this case with the picture. So before you get all high and mighty, please compare the like scenarios instead of skewing things to fit your needs.