More importantly, would he be put into a female prison because of this? If so, the man is a genius.

Considering that the vastest majority of users have very basic needs--to quote someone I knew "I need to be able to use Facebook and the Internet"--modern Linux distributions and probably OSX are actually a better solution for them than Windows due to the simple fact that they are currently significantly less likely to get malware and thus break them.

If it's intended for print, couldn't they make due with a .tex?

Perhaps they would not accept a .tex file, but surely they wouldn't mind if you sent them a .pdf. Word is a nice program, especially Word 2003 which doesn't have that new highly-improved interface, but I think you might be exaggerating a little there.

All the network connectivity and lack of encryption aside, Dropbox is just about the worst company you could trust to handle this sort of thing. Not only have they repeatedly built in exploits that any security-aware company would see a mile away, but they have also been terrible at communicating these to the point where they were blaming users for their mistakes. Thanks, but no thanks, Dropbox.

I'm afraid the world isn't limited to the US. It's rather difficult to get hold of firearm in some countries. For instance, I remember hearing a criminology report several years ago stating that more Yakuza die to liver failure, because of excessive tattoos, than to gunfire. Even more died to knife wounds. The ability to easily print firearms would be somewhat problematic in this case. Of course, there's always the possibility to outlaw ammunition sales, thus fixing the issue entirely for quite some time.

I think if you applied that saying consistently your apartment/house would be filled with all sorts of useless junk by now, to say nothing of the fact that it works just as well for this whole fingerprint scanner thing.

Do you have armed thugs breaking down your doors that often? Let's face it, most people own firearms for the same reason most sword owners, like myself, own swords: collecting, recreational purposes, a false sense of security or because they were given to them as a gift. The whole "only I can defend my own health" argument is really just tacked on as a justification. Sure, I could cut down any attacker when I come back home from practice, given a chance to draw it (which statistically speaking I'm guaranteed not to have), but that's hardly the reason why I have it with me to begin with. I know some other guys who say that it gives them a sense of security, but, again, that's not why they own them. I wouldn't have any problems owning a weapon that had this system, provided that it works to some degree, although I do imagine it would be a little hard to implement on a traditional sword.

In terms of counterintelligence, a smart move on China's part. Although Canonical is UK based, it's significantly easier to migrate from Ubuntu to any other distro than from Windows or OSX, should the need arise. I'm actually quite surprised that Iran isn't doing the same thing. You don't even need to have backdoors in computers of the individuals you're interested in; those of their families are already a big step ahead.