Did you even read your comment?

You pirate old versions of Windows, if you're going to pirate Windows at all! Maybe you get an old PC without the install disks because you don't need a powerhouse machine. There's no way to get Win98 through Microsoft. You've got to get it second hand or pirated.

And how does that equate to "No?" What you described is the behavior MS engaged in and have been condemned for.

For one, if you're geeky enough to use the word in casual speech, you might well find people who freak out at such vocabulary to be tiresome, so using the term works as a kind of social self selection.

Apparently, for him, it has worked too well. Thus this /. topic.

If it was inevitable that I would die if I drove a car, I would chose not to drive. I would find another way to get where I needed to be and/or change my life in such a way that I didn't need to be there. That would increase my safety as well as the safety of the devil-may-cares who insist on driving. As the risks of driving go down, I would be more inclined to actually drive and assume additional risks while driving.

I agree that complacency would start to slip in over time. It would be held in check, however, by the relative frequency of drivers paying for their lack of care by suffering impalement. In other words, there is a risk/reward payoff we all calculate at some level and I think with less safe cars, people will, on average, decide to be somewhat safer in their driving habits. They may not sustain that initial level of vigilance all the time, but they will maintain a higher level of vigilance than they would in a non-spear-equiped car.

You laugh, but this same point was made in the excellent book, The Armchair Economist by Steven Landsburg. In the first chapter, The Power of Incentives: How Seat Belts Kill, he questions whether the additional safety equipment really translates into an overall improvement in safety and demonstrates part of his argument by having us imagine driving a car w/o seat belts and with a sharp metal spike protruding from the steering wheel aimed at your chest. It's hard to deny you would drive very, very carefully in that situation. Safety equipment gives the driver increased confidence to take higher risks. I have a friend who says he considers seatbelts a performance option. I suspect a lot of drivers think the same (subconsciously).