Funny that, your point 2 is in direct contradiction to point 1a. You are effectively stating that your needs as the vendor are more important than the needs of the customer organisation.

Apparently you're a good example of "there's money to be made prolonging the problem".

Welcome to the new Versailles.

Of course, the good news is that we know how that ended.

Neither am I a zealot. In fact, the way you double down and try to invent a new definition of 'closed source' out of whole cloth does make you the zealous one.

No, England is closer to the rest of the Anglophone world. There is a reason SNP supporters are making noises about a second independence referendum for Scotland should Brexit become a real possibility.

To be fair, Nicola Sturgeon is keeping mum on the subject, but I don't think (from across the North Sea) she's against the notion.

Strange definition of 'closed source'. I remember Amiga manuals detailing those chips to the register level.

This is a level of tin-foil hattery I am not going to touch with even a ten-foot pole.

He's allowed to say anything he wants. That does not mean other people can't just point out that self-declaration is not proof of anything.

I suggest you do some self-examination on why you so vehemently protest the bloody obvious.

First of all, Aaron Clarey himself says he's not an MRA

Yes, and East Germany was a democracy.

Of course, the first article talks about the first time the Mauna Loa location hit 400ppm, while the article, as specifically pointed out in the Slashdot summary is about the global average hitting 400ppm.

Why don't you go fuck off and shut up until you've learned to read?

Iran's actions with regards Yemen are purely regional politics, nothing to do with any threats they may pose towards the West. Funny as it may seem, people and nations sometimes have multiple motivations to act.

In case of Yemen, it is a matter of Saudi-Arabia, Iran's most prominent opponent in the region, flexing its muscles against mostly Shia militias in Yemen. Iran seeing itself as the voice of the Shia minority in the ME, it is no surprise it should intervene.

You mean that part of the world that exclusively programs in C-derivatives?

As a service provider, I am not sure how to handle this because, technically, it's "their server".

On the other hand 'their' server has to share a network with other servers. If they refuse to use best current security practices, their server will start interfering with other servers.

So the answer is: don't sell them unsecured VMs. If they can't take the above argument and insist, at least charge them more based on the fact that you will have to clean up the mess eventually. And if you have many such customers, invest in some monitoring solution that can detect hacked boxen.

The other possibility is of course that Microsoft was very much in bed with the Blair government, so in the good old UK tradition of "do the exact opposite of the other guys" the Cameron government is deciding to put the thumbscrews to 'em.

I do not see a citation anywhere in that post. Sorry, try again.

Trust the basement-dwelling "whaaaah gubmint baaaad!" conspiracy nuts on Slashdot to bring up 'evidence' completely unrelated to the point they are struggling to make.

'Fruit of the poisonous tree' deals with how the evidence is obtained. If, after obtaining the evidence in a legal way, an officer commits a crime by then stealing out of the evidence gathered, that still makes the evidence admissible in court. Absent any cases cited to the contrary, of course.