Why would anybody go through the trouble and expense to create quality movies, tv, music, books, software etc if it's legal to just take the end product without paying? Sure, some people will pay out of principle, but if it's perfectly legal most people will just take it. Without funding, I'm sure there will still be hobby projects, but nothing on the scale we currently enjoy.

To effectively prevent piracy the penalty has to be such that PenaltyAmount * ProbabilityOfGettingCaught > SavingsByPirating. Right now the chance of getting caught is quite low, so the fine has to be quite high. Perhaps the problem is actually that the *IAA isn't suing enough people. If ProbabilityOfGettingCaught was close to 1, the PenaltyAmount could be quite close to the actual value of the item pirated

The second derivative of the chart you linked is negative which implies jobs are being added. The dems came to power in early 2009* and the rate of job loss began to slow a couple months after that. Unemployment peaked in fall 2009 and has declined since then. Things are actually getting better, your cherry picked numbers do lie.

* Fun fact: While elections were in nov 2008, inauguration day wasn't until late jan 2009

And just what product did they do a "Crap job" of copying? There's nothing out there with the same focus as the Kin. The failure had more to do with Verizon's ridiculous network charges then anything on the phone really.

They will continue to get access to everything they have already and get a crap ton of credits for future stuff. A friend of mine has a lifetime subscription and doesn't seem to feel slighted by the changes.

If Chevy was actively advertising how many illegal DVDs you can fit in the car and DVD bootlegging in Impalas ran rampant maybe. Otherwise, they are probably safe. It seems to come down to if a product is used mainly for illegal activity and the manufacturer encourages that illegal activity. Google's and Chevy's products serve mostly legal purposes. Limewire and co have some legal uses, but mostly are used for illegal file sharing. It's a somewhat nebulous issue since it's hard to say what "mainly used for" and "encouraging" actually mean. The courts seem to be busily establishing case law for that though.

Why is the "classic" menu so much superior for you? For most tasks, the ribbon is able to accomplish the same tasks in the same or less number of clicks. It doesn't really take up much more screen real estate then a couple traditional bars. I don't understand whats to "really really hate".

I was able to license 716 songs for $40. I didn't have to waste space storing them on my computer and I could listen to them anywhere. If I downloaded the songs I would have gotten 676 less and it would be a real pain to listen to them anywhere I wanted. Sometimes renting is a better deal. Knowing what I know now, I'd still buy the web songs. I'm just pissed I have to download and keep a measly 40 songs with my refund like you suggest I should have done in the first place.

I requested a refund check in the mail instead of a iTunes credit for the 20 cents left in my wallet... If only I could get a refund for my hundreds of web songs :(

I see McDonalds taking a lot of flak from people here. Just thought I'd point out that the food there isn't necessarily bad for you. My favorite meal is a McChicken, Fruit & Walnut Salad, Yougurt, and Diet Dr. Pepper. Lets compare that to equivalent menu items (kids turkey sandwhich, fuit cup, yogurt, and diet drink) from Panera Bread Co

McDonalds: 700 Calories (240 from fat. No trans fat), 960mg sodium, 48g sugar. $4.70
Panera: 650 calories (190 from fat. No trans fat), 1270 sodium, 45g sugar. $12 (estimated)

really about the same. I eat there quite a bit and am fit as a fiddle because I choose sensible options when I'm there, don't eat there every day, and exercise regularly.

Admittedly, if you decide to pound down a large big mac combo (sandwhich, drink, and fries) and treat yourself to a McFlurry, you're going to have 1910 calories (630 from fat, 2.5g trans fat), 1660mg sodium, and 167g sugar which is pretty much 100% of your daily allotment of all of those. But I don't see McDonald's being at fault if you want to over eat.

That isn't an exactly fair comparison since Oracle is a much larger company than Red Hat. Look at it this way: Red Hat pulls in about 28k net income per employee while Oracle pulls in 79k per employee*. So yes, Red Hat has managed to make some money off OSS, but really not very much compared to what other software shops make. For further comparison: Microsoft makes 156k per employee, Google 213k, and Apple 240k. Maybe Oracle should take some notes from them instead.

*This new comparison is somewhat generous to Red Hats software business model since RHT makes a much larger amount of it's income from financial activities (as opposed to software) then pretty much any other tech company.

I was talking to my 23 year old sister about this phone. Here's an interesting snippet

Not only did she not care about the lack of app store, she saw it as a bonus. It looks like MSFT was definitely listening to a consumer segment when they designed the phone. It will be interesting to see just how many people like my sister there are out there.

You do realize that once you have a sufficient number of apps, the iPhone app panel works just like the Kin one right?

I've read quite a few articles on this thing. Interestingly, the Kin 1 (egg shaped one), is getting all the good press and the Kin 2 (candy bar) is being derided as just another blah blah smart phone form factor. While I too am more attracted to the Kin 2 form factor, I think MS really did their homework and the Kin 1 will prove to be more popular among the devices target audience. Somebody here doesn't get it, but it isn't MS.

Theres two reasons with that:

Foremost, because MS has more then one type of customers. Kin is aimed at the younger social network junkies who want a lot of social network and multimedia stuff build in and don't really care about having an open development platform; these users likely don't have or want andriod/iphones and the Kin isn't meant to compete with those platforms. Conversely, Windows Phone 7 will be the full on development platform for power users that goes head to head with iphone/android.

Secondarily, winmo 7 was having some time-line issues last year, so the Kin ended up using some of the older, tried and true, technologies to reduce the risk of depending on winmo7 and to be able to get to market faster. I suspect in future iterations the kin will more closely resemble other Windows Phones in the backend.