Blowing mod points.... there is a common economic model that describes where each candidate would have to reside in order to obtain the most votes from their particular brand of lunatic fringe. Look up the Hotelling model. This explains why the candidates in a two party system are just the top and bottom of a shit sandwich.

Interesting perspective, but Microsoft obviously did something bad enough to compel them to pay Caldera at least 155 million (http://www.windowsitpro.com/article/news2/microsoft-settles-dr-dos-antitrust-lawsuit) . Something tells me if this was just a blip in a beta, they'd take it to court.

IANAL, but I recall that Microsoft got in a bit of trouble because early versions of Windows were designed NOT to run on top of Digital Research DOS. Not going out of your way to support something is one thing, being exclusionary and abusing a monopoly position is another

As a software developer, I've had job interviews that have required drug tests and criminal background checks. Are you telling me, we shouldn't have a full picture of who we're hiring to run this country?

Tell that to Brian May! (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brian_May)

Losing my mods to reply. Like everything to do with media, the reason was not because it was technically impossible, but legally impossible. Do you recall the Diamond Rio? Mp3.com? Few folks do. They were the first commercial mp3 player and most popular site for mp3 music and they were pretty incredible at the time. Diamond had to fend off lawsuits after releasing the device. Mp3.com was sued into oblivion and now there's Google Music, Amazon Cloud, and Apple's copycat offering. Apple had considerable capital and in a post-Napster world there were more execs interested in a legitimate model for downloading music. THAT's why the RIAA is killing innovation. Jeez, it's not like this is ancient history....

But look at the UI!!!!!!!elventyone!!! Microsoft has given us the "Safe Mode" option. Except it's not an option. And I doubt it's safe.

Look at it, they were an underdog hemorrhaging money. Jobs comes back from close contact with Disney with a penchant for pillaging stuff that's freely available and repackaging it in the most closed way possible. Disney also pillages the Public Domain, stealing from myth and fable and then adding a tiny circled 'C', making it their own. If you don't believe you, they've got a million lawyers with pillow-cases full of legal briefs to beat you down with. It's clear that disembodied spirit of Walt Disney is running Apple.

This is why we can't have nice things. I would LOVE to support democracy locally and internationally by running a Tor node, but I would never run one as long as the risk existed that I'd be questioned about kiddie porn. I know I'm innocent, I could be PROVEN innocent, but anyone who ever heard would always think I was guilty. It's just not worth it to me. It's Kryptonite to free speech.

I was analyzing some issues for a client that was using Microsoft Site Server circa 1999. We took a look at the server and it had been caching every single credit card transaction because a debug setting was on. This wasn't custom code or a hack, this was Microsoft's out of the box configuration. I can COMPLETELY believe that Microsoft would store sensitive information on the local machine especially if they think that they've sandboxed it from the end user.

I was doing it with my Palm Pre several years ago and it had the added benefit of merging my personal (google) calendar with my work (Exchange) calendar.

You don't NEED a CA-issued certificate to distribute Android Software. You can simply use the keytool supplied in the Android SDK (http://developer.android.com/guide/publishing/app-signing.html). When you create a market account with google, you need to provide a credit card and a cell phone number, both of which can easily be fraudulent/disposable.

I had to come up with a T-shirt logo for our cub scout pack. I'm not a graphic designer by trade and not enough of a hobbyist to justify purchasing an overpriced piece of software from Adobe. InkScape and GIMP are more than enough for my needs and probably meet the needs of the majority of folks out there.

Just like Microsoft Word hasn't added any must-have features in years, I'm sure that the additional functionality present in the Adobe products caters to the niche markets that are willing to pay a premium. Since I'm not overly concerned with CMYK or whatever the equal-tier feature is in Illustrator, a book like this might just be what I need to get more use out of what I have available.

....then everyone gets all of your private information...and your friends' private information....and their friends' private information