There are other options these days.

I thought "Snow Crash" was fiction ?

You are not a Harry Potter fan. He is kidding.

The proof is in the pudding. Who gets hacked more ? Who suffers from worms and viruses constantly ? Who has to run anti-virus and anti-malware software ?

The point has never been to "educate" the public. The point has been to THREATEN the public.

Yeah, China has done very well. For instance, just contrast China with Taiwan and Hong Kong. Oh wait.....

GNU vs Windows/Random Proprietary stuff is exactly the same as the difference between the free market and the old Soviet Command Economy. With GNU, individuals take the risk to create something they THINK other people will want. The market place kills off the ideas that don't work out as those distro creators thought they would. Vs large corporate CTO/CIO head geek type deciding what "cool" "hip" new features his army of business suit coders should work on. It's exactly why there are a million cool compiz effects for dozens of different Linux distros. Microsoft can never even begin to match what that small army of pizza/mountain dew fueled Mom's basement dwelling "code because I love it" geeks can do. (Yes, I'm aware the stereotype isn't accurate but it is damn funny.)

Anyway, it took forever for the old Soviets and their awful command economy to die, even though they slowly when broke over 70 years. It might take Microsoft and their type another 70 years, but go broke they will. They can't compete with the better idea's coded for free for GNU.

It'll just take a while.

How are we going to pay the debt ? As a last resort, we print the money. If the other countries push us too hard, we COULD print enough to pay them off, and the next month, introduce the new and improved AMERICAN PESO !!. We won't though, because we don't need to. Slow steady inflation will take care of most of that debt.

Now, do we deliver ourselves into our enemies hands ? Not really. There is an old saying, borrow a little, and you have a debtor. Borrow a lot, and you have a partner.

They won't be able to screw us over without hurting themselves too badly. Also, if they really really try to screw us, we DO print the money. Hell, we could just jack up inflation for a decade and really screw them over, we wouldn't even need to abandon the dollar.

Saw quite a bit of inaccurate "facts" here..... thought I'd throw in my 2 cents.....

Earlier a poster blamed the housing prices and defaults on the CRA act. The high prices were because Wall Street found a way to invest in Mortgages. This is a bad thing, because it dramatically increased the pool of money available to borrow to buy a home, but it did not dramatically increase the pool of available homes to purchase.

Sure, new home building increased, but not enough, so basically a huge pool of new money was used to bid on the same homes, resulting in a predictably huge increase in home prices.

Ordinary people bought homes anyway, despite having to pay way too much for them. It's a classic bubble, with the entirely predictable outcome, that a great many people are trying to pay for homes they not only not afford, but that aren't worth as much as they paid, and that they can't sell without taking a huge loss. The only unpredictable part of the equation was WHEN reality would strike back. Now we know.

Don't get confused. This didn't happen because the Government tried to force banks to make bad loans. This happened because rich blokes on Wall Street wanted a chance to charge a working stiff 3X the standard rate for lending him money for a house.

When the shit hit the fan, the poor working stiff lost his house, money, and his credit score.

The Wall Street types had throw them 800 BILLION and gave themselves a bonus too.

It's not supposed to work this way. If you choose to risk your money foolishly, you are supposed to lose it. Congress is yet again rewarding poor choices, but only those of the rich.

They are doing exactly the same thing with the car companies.

When a company is run that badly, it's supposed to go out of business. When they make such bad deals with Unions that combined with other poor decisions run the company under, the investors who chose those clowns, (same clowns running the Detroit Lions), are supposed to lose their money.

They, like the bankers, are being protected from the consequences of their own actions. The ordinary guy is not.

A slashdot story that cries out for a car analogy.

This is exactly like a woman jaywalking on the way to the police station to report her own rape. When she gets there, the police not only refuse to arrest or even investigate her rapist, because the rapist is the chief of police, but they do make strenuous efforts to investigate her jaywalking while running to the station to report the rape. Those at the Justice Department (no irony in the name huh ?) who are abusing their authority to harass a genuine Patriot should be sacked, disbarred, and charged themselves. Perhaps our new Chief Executive can do something about this, I don't think he will though. The more things change, the more they stay the same. Like his vote on telcom immunity.