A vast majority of tax money, though, goes either to waste or to things that are outright harmful for the taxpayer

Citation needed.

You can use the United States as a prime example. I'm not here to do the job of educating you, we have complimentary public schools for that. Since you couldn't be bothered to participate in your education, then you can just research crime rates in the US.

Also, since you couldn't be bothered to participate in your education, you can research the Roman Empire and its welfare system and the reasoning behind it.

In addition, since you couldn't be bothered to participate in your education, feel free to research communism and the reasoning behind it.

I agree. Plasma Active is looking to be the default Linux for Tablets. You can't shoehorn touch onto WIMP, even Microsoft has conceded that.

I still have many 68k Macs that could be put to some kind of use if they could run a modern OS. The issue is that everything that sits on top of the Linux kernel has unfortunately followed the Windows and Mac OS trend of requiring GPU support. I don't know (yes, I could Bing it) if LXDE requires compositing to run decently...

Social security numbers are public information. How do you think agencies and businesses can use that number to identify you? People think SSN is some secret number, it most certainly isn't.

Credit score is owned by private agencies. Nothing about credit is registered with the government.

Medical information is covered by HIPPA that supersedes the fact that medical records had no embargo of any kind on them.

We have no guarantee of privacy in this country. Nowhere in the constitution is privacy even mentioned.

Educate yourself. At your intelligence level it will be profoundly simple.

An American company really believes they can force Germany to change their laws or allow Facebook to operate outside of the law? Just WOW. What the hell kind of shenanigans are they pulling over here, then?

Yup, quite often in fact. He has been seen with and known to have met with dozens of politicians. That's in addition to the money he has directly and indirectly paid for lobbying.

I am glad there won't be any "guilt by association" witch hunts like people already have engaged in incorrectly by hunting down Ryan Lanza and attacking Blizzard.

(Phil-Ken-Sebben)balance the scales...Ha Haaa!(/Phil-Ken-Sebben)

I've been waiting for you to give sharks opposable thumbs...

I would argue that no one would say their desktop/laptop is easier to use than their phone. The desktop moving to a simplified, streamlined experience is preferable to me. I was without a proper computer for about 4 months and I used my ASUS Transformer TF101 as a laptop replacement quite efficiently. Windows 8 is definitely the right directions where the OS recedes into the background.

When I report a bug to Microsoft they don't tell me to fix it myself. I'm grateful that adding new hardware to Windows is an automated process and Microsoft doesn't tell me I need to recompile the NT kernel if I want my USB camera to work. I'm particularly pleased that my integrated graphics card is supported by the OS and every application I use on it.

That's worth money to me.

How about you send me an email with the correct INI file attached, then I drag and drop it to the appropriate directory? How about I copy the correct INI file statements off a website and paste them into the correct INI file? How about I restore an INI file from the backup I have on a CD?

Of which Linux has no standard repository for INI files. Even Mac OS X has a "Preferences" folder. I can't tell you how many times I tried to hunt down where the fuck Linux applications store all their fiddly bits. It's more than INI files applications shit out, they seem to think the entire file system is designed for them to squirt files into every possible directory they can.

I found iWork to be more usable than Office until version 15 came out, but absolutely NOTHING opens iWork documents. Basically everything on the planet opens Office documents to some extent and half the planet will save to Office to some extent. It really has very little to do with the format and the fact that MS Office has no competitors.

The biggest issue is that MS (so far) has not let any kind of third-party desktop app run on RT. Even if they created an API that was more secure and limited, it would still make RT more udseful. I have a Samsung Series 7 Slate that I have been running Win8 on since RTM and I love it and I almost exclusively use it with keyboard and mouse docked to a TV. As a former Mac user, I find mouse gestures a welcome addition to Windows, since Macs have had them for probably 5 years or more.

I also love the fact that it is a tablet with all that means and then I can plug it into a dock and have a real computer. This is such an attractive idea I can't believe Apple didn't do it first.

I would drop x86 and get a Surface or other RT device if it was just possible to get future versions of desktop apps on ARM.