All corporations who have the opportunity will be salivating at the chance to do this.

They're all ran by the same kind of greedy bastard, and all the signals Microsoft is sending absolutely scream "you're either going to get ads, or you're going to pay to not get ads, or you're going to pay for what you used to have for free, or we're going to force you to use our online services ... where you're going to get ads, or pay not to get ads, and we'll sift through all your stuff".

Every damned corporation wants to monetize your experience and your data, have access to all of your stuff, and claim ownership to do anything they want to with it.

Microsoft has thus far failed to come up with a compelling way to do this because they keep putting out flops which don't catch on.

With Windows 10, between now expecting money for Solitaire without ads, or sharing your wifi password with people (including whatever government demands it), and pretty much everything else they're doing, Microsoft is trying to set the stage where they have access to all of your data, have everything in their cloud, and an EULA which says they can do anything they choose.

Everything about Windows 10 is screaming this will be terrible for the consumer. And it also tells me I want no part of it.

Microsoft is basically saying they will do anything with your computer, any time they want to, and you don't get a vote. Which means I expect Microsoft to be fucking up a lot of computers and leaving that to be someone else's problem.

Yes, they do. A person may be a good creator of characters, of settings, of situations, and of dialogues, and having the four abilities, produce a full original novel. Another person might be good at three, two or one of the four, and therefore unable to exercise his creativity except by means of appropriating respectively one, two or three of those from another artist.

Case in point: fanfic. I read a lot of fanfic, some of which better than the original. And why is it better? Because while the original author was good at, say, two of the above four, he wasn't very good at the other two, while the fanfic author complements this weakness, the end result being a fully realized work of art that wouldn't exist otherwise.

Under your scenario however, the fanfic author is in the wrong "just because", no matter how much this harms other artists, and the cultural development of a society as a whole.

Your workaround to the question of glyphs show you yourself wouldn't accept the full implications of your conceptual framework. This here is another example, because you actually require this very thing from, among others, house painters. Do you pay monthly royalties to the artist who painted your living room? No? Why? Just because he did a minimalist, one-color private installation? Why is this relevant?

And how about the engineer who projected the road over which that person you photographed the other day stood? Did you get a license to make copies of his artistic project which you unconsciously appropriated in your own artistic endeavors?

The silliness you think you're seeing in the above examples is the exact same silliness those who oppose copyright see in the arguments of copyright defenders. And the arguments you use against these examples are also the arguments copyright opposers use. And any difference you'd pretend to find between these positions, thinking your own reasonable, and that of copyright opposers unreasonable, is an arbitrary line drawn in the sand with blurry edges, no more and no less.

Or, more likely, so they can fucking monetize your usage like the greedy self entitled assholes they are.

And I don't just mean Microsoft.

Walt Disney isn't creating any new art since he died.

By the way, how much are you willing to pay the descendants of the inventors of the 200 or so glyphs of the extended Latin alphabet? You aren't an evil and greed consumer of texts who wants to avoid paying your due for every single usage of A, a, B, b, C, c... {, [, !, @... 7, 8 and 9, or are you?

Honestly ... do you really thing do not track means a damned thing? Are you that naive?

Do not track says "gee Mr Website, will you be nice and not attempt to monetize my traffic". It doesn't mean a damned thing.

You should pretty much assume that everyone on the internet will track everything about you they can at every chance they can get. You should assume some greedy asshole with an MBA and a tendency to be a sociopath doesn't give a fuck about your desire not to be tracked is making the decision to obey no not track.

Do not track was an industry attempt to distract people from regulations which would have tried to stop them.

Do not track is a complete fucking lie.

Don't be all surprised now to find out it doesn't actually do anything or hold any weight. Which is why you should be actively blocking as many of these things as you can, instead of relying on the kindness of some greedy sociopath asshole who doesn't give a crap that your browser has pathetically announced it doesn't wish to be tracked.

Hell, do not track, when ignored like we know it is, just gives them another point of data. I don't even set it, because I know damned well it's not going to do anything.

When a company publicly says they won't respect do not track, you can pretty much assume every other company is already ignoring it anyway. There is not do not track.

Everything about you they can get, all day long, as long as the app is running.

They'll figure out what they can make money off later. Like, do people buy more gas in the winter or summer.

This is just greedy assholes maximizing both greedy and asshole. And this why I look at apps as basically ads and analytics in disguise, and why I don't feel compelled to have a smart phone with a data plan.

You can always not play the damned game.

Me, I want Android to return the ability to selectively turn off stuff that apps can do. If your app keels over because I won't let it access my contacts, I don't want your fucking app.

I view most apps as about the same as if a retail store demanded the ability to rifle through my wallet before I came in the store, only in the case of apps it's pretty much all the time.

No thanks.

I'm sure all those happy Baidu Browser users agree. Their free choice of Chinese governmnet backed spyware should be respected.

Myself, I'll simply change the setting when installing Win10, or set Firefox back as the default afterwards.

Actually, yes, 8.x is better. It's noticeably faster than 7, and it allows one to use those few actually useful Metro apps (yes, there are a few ones). Fixing the annoyance of the lack of a Start menu is a matter of installing a small application, of which there are several choices available. In return, you get an OS that does everything else much better than 7 did.

I wouldn't go back to 7's slowness even if someone paid me to do it. Rather, I much prefer to pay $5 for Start8 (which I like more than Classic Shell) and get all of 8's benefits. Similarly, once I upgrade to Windows 10, if I don't like its new Start menu, I'll be upgrading to Start10 too. There's absolutely no benefit in sticking with 7 other that that one rare application you absolutely depend on that doesn't work in 8+. If you have one of those, well, keep 7. Otherwise, move up. There's no downside.

When you download Chrome, it has a check box (yes, in the download page), checked by default, by means of which you select whether you want your Chrome download to become your default browser when installed. Guess what? You didn't uncheck it when you downloaded Chrome. Whenever I download Chrome I uncheck it. And my Chrome never makes itself the default browser by merely updating itself. My default is and continues being Firefox.

Now, there's probably an option somewhere to disable the behavior you describe. If this bothers you, maybe googling it would be a good idea?

Wasn't the ability for other browsers to set themselves as the default browser part of the DoJ settlement? So now Microsoft is deciding that doesn't apply?

Sorry, but Microsoft has gone well into the "we can do anything we want to your computer, any time we want, and unless you have an enterprise license you can't stop us".

That is complete bullshit. If they're going to assert ownership of my computer, they can help me pay for it. Until they do, it's my computer.

So basically they're doing the same thing with Windows 10 as they did originally with IE? Making it part of the OS and claiming it can't be removed?

Sorry, Microsoft ... but everything I hear about Windows 10 is making me say "fuck you, I'll stick with my Windows 8.1".

When will Microsoft realize we own the computers, we are ultimately the ones who make decisions about the computers, and they simply can't dictate to us what software is on our computers and how we use it.

And, like every other Microsoft product, I'm sure this new hotness is riddled with security holes an defects for their users to have to deal with.

But don't worry, because they'll update the OS as they see fit, and if they break it, that's your problem ... says it right there in the EULA.

Keep alienating your customers, see how that works out for you. You might even find the DoJ knocking at your door if they ever grow a pair and stop doing whatever industry demands of them.

So you agree that you should be able to be charged under Thai laws for criticizing their king? Or Saudi laws for blasphemy?

Or do you understand there are such things as jurisdiction, and Google is saying "we reject your assertion of extra-territorial jurisdiction"?

Unless you think your posts on the internet should be under the jurisdiction of every piss-pot dictator on the planet, what the hell do you expect from Google?

Google is doing the right thing here. French courts have the right to make decisions on what happens in France. They sure as fuck don't have the right to tell Google what to do in every other country. The world doesn't work that way.

If that was true, we'd all be under Sharia law or whatever country mostly loudly decided its laws applied globally.

You enjoy the same protections as Google ... if in your home country France sends you a letter telling you that you must comply with French law ... you too can tell them to fuck off. Unless of course you live in France.

Do you really think that France has the right to dictate the behavior of the entire internet? If so, you're a fool.

So, precisely how again do they suggest sites verify ages?

How do they verify anything? Do you really think people are going to provide a porn website with their actual names and dates of birth? Would you?

Why the hell would anybody trust a porn site with that? I wouldn't trust most any website with that information ... both because it's none of their damned business, and because I assume they're grossly incompetent at security.

These idiot politicians want a world which is wrapped in bubble wrap, and must be softened to accommodate children. And I'm sorry, but that's simply not possible.

But expecting every web site in the world to implement age verification to keep David Cameron happy is asinine. However, most news stories see about Cameron make him sound like a bit of an ass, so that's fitting.

What he want simply won't work, but he wants to appear to be doing something. Like every other damned politician who thinks they can legislate the solution to the problems of when society meets technology.

A pro-Linux bias on Slashdot is

A complete myth. At least these days.

Slashdot has several bags of crazy, all competing with one another at various times.

There's Windows fanbois, Linux fanbois, and Apple fanbois. Over the years the ratio of those has swung back and forth, these days I'd say on balance you'd be hard pressed to say there's a strong bias one way or another.

At various times it's been chic to tend more to one or another, now it seems like Slashdot has grown enough that there's at least 30 different kinds of batshit crazy at any given time, all struggling to get out.

But let's face it, the actions of the Linux people in their unwavering belief in the perfection of Linux is no less sketchy than the people whose unwavering defense of Microsoft defies logic.

I'd like to say Slashdot has a bias towards rational thought. I'd like to, but if anything I'd say Slashdot has an increasing bias towards fixed positions and screeching monkeys flinging poo.

There's always been poo flinging, but now there's less rational discourse.

Sure it was good behavior.

But it was borne entirely out of the Linux people saying "OMG, teh Samsung is teh sux0r".

I do give them a lot of credit. More than the people who apparently insisted it was the fault of Samsung in the first place.