By RTFA and clicking through, it quotes, "Wiretap authority for these intellectual property crimes, subject to the existing legal protections that apply to wiretaps for other types of crimes, would assist US law enforcement agencies to effectively investigate those offenses, including targeting organized crime and the leaders and organizers of criminal enterprises," says the new whitepaper.

If violation of civil liberties extends to wiretapping for suspected IP violations, I predict that many now docile citizens will rise up and wage revolution, both underground and in high court. In the US at least, the (Constitutional 4th Amendment) guards against unreasonable search and seizure by requiring law enforcement to present "reasonable cause" to a judge in order to obtain a warrant. Wiretapping without a warrant is a clear violation of these 4th Amendment rights. I for one, would happy donate to the legal fight to protect these rights. Furthermore, legions of underground resistance will surely fight back as well. The foundations of democracy can only be threatened so far before the people decide enough is enough.

I run a 2.5 Ghz 64-Bit Core 2 Duo on my primary laptop with a Nvidea graphics card. Ubuntu is the host and WinXP is the guest. I use this for Netflix Instant play mostly in the Win guest. I have also played a few directX games this way as well. As much as I hate Windows, multimedia runs fine in Virtulbox for me. Thus, perhaps the virtualbox bug you mentioned has either been resolved or does not affect all hardware?

My 60ish mother has been using a laptop with Ubuntu on it for nearly two years now completely trouble free. She runs the updates periodically when prompted on her own. Otherwise, the only support I have to give her is once every 6 months I tell her when it is safe to upgrade to the latest version. In contrast, she last ran Win XP for years. Though, inevitably her XP system slowed to a crawl or was infected by something or other at least twice a year. Worse yet, her XP was a money pit in virus scanners, malware programs, and other subscription bases services required to keep it running.

To address the rest of your concerns:
Confusing distros : One word: Ubuntu
Poor documentation : Again, Ubuntu has fantastic documentation and its all free
Software, Software, Software: Not really a problem. My mom uses OpenOffice, Evolution, and loves the Software Channel built right into ubuntu. She browses this herself, finds games and stuff, and best of all, I don't have to worry about some foreign shareware scamper ponwing her computer. Would you dare allow your mother to download software for Windows off the internet on her own? Oh, and for your sewing machine software, can pretty much guarantee you that it is usb or serial interface completely supported in Wine. Little support: Ubuntu forums rock. Great people, great support. I know that to be true as I try to "give back' by answering at least a few requests for help a month. Ways of doing things that are confusing to a Windows user: My computer illiterate mother had no trouble at all switching to Gnome. In fact, she finds the interface less cluttered and easier to navigate than Windows. Yes, there was a short learning curve, but she caught up quickly

In the end, my 60'ish very typical mother who is by no means a computer geek is completely in love with Ubuntu. In fact, she swears she will never own another MS product again. Hope this is food for thought. Maybe it is time to try again.

I really don't think switching to Gnome is really that much of a change for MS users. I switched my 64 year old mother, a complete computer novice, to a laptop with Ubuntu on it nearly 2 years ago. She had no problem at all with the minor location differences. Really, the biggest transition for her was learning a few new applications. Now that she has had time to familiarize, she claims to find Ubuntu much cleaner, easier, and more trouble-free.

One really great use for a theme like this is hiding your "frowned upon" use of non-standard software if you work in a corporate environment with locked-down computers. Thankfully, hacking Window$ permissions locally is easier than quieting a toddler with tranquilizer laced candy. Once through MS$ tissue security, VirtualBox , a lot of ram, and one of these theme packages will allow running the Nix flavor of choice without alerting passers by. Best of all, all the corporate installed default software can stay intact.

Cary Sherman is another corporate spin-master trying to “whoa is me” approach to garner public support for his cause. The reality is that the DCMA already does absolutely extend to content provider such as YouTube and RapidShare. To illustrate, any IP holder may report any video found on YouTube as a violation of IP and submit a simple form to report the copyright violation:

http://www.youtube.com/copyright_complaint_form

Once received, YouTube takes down the content and sends a notification to the poster with details on how to counter the claim if so desired. RapidShare has a similar reporting process, albeit not quite so streamlined.

I know firsthand that this process works as my wife spends 50% of her day “policing” the Internet sites such as YouTube to protect the IP of her employer. My wife's company has never once had to fight with YouTube, a major ISP, or content provider in the US, EU, or Australia to get copyright violations enforced. Thus, I would invite Mr Cary to cite even a single case where YouTube has ignored a DCMA infringement request. With that said, I believe Mr. Sherman's real purpose in this statement is to pave the way for legislation that will impose stricter fines and penalties, either on the infringer, or in a world of unicorn and fairies, on the content host directly.

Can you offer an example of a more recent "successful" Silverlight deployment of a comparable scale? I am certainly not aware of any. However, on the flip side (not that I support Flash either), there are numerous recent examples of Flash deployments that have been very successful..Hulu, Amazon Instant HD, NBC.com, nearly every television station with streaming content, etc...etc... Is it anti-M$ merely citing the historical successes of these two products?

CmdrTaco, I am stunned to see such a biased and ridiculously slanted summary coming from your desk. Come on... “both combine...strong client support”? Are you kidding? Silverlight only runs fully featured enabled on Windows. Mac users suffer sub-par SilverLight performance due to issues with hardware acceleration, Linux users are left in the cold, and even the Windows technology has an awful track record. Let's take two large rollouts of SilverLight for example: Major League Baseball and Netflix Instant Play.

MLB: It does not take long to see that MLB had such an uproar of customer complaints about SilverLight that the MS player was quickly “benched”: http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-10212843-93.html

Netflix: The Netflix subsidized SilverLight player has resulted in an absolute flood of complains and a continual stream of glitches: http://news.cnet.com/8301-13860_3-10199350-56.html http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2009/03/netflix-updates/

Of course, being that this is /., I would think the fact that SilverLight does not play on any open players or Linux distributions would be enough to reject this summary's premise alone. Flash, in spite of all the horrendous attributes inherent in that technology, at least actually plays on most platforms and mobile devices. Thus, I respectfully disagree with your primary assertion that these two technologies are even on the same playing field.