loading all this crap was tolerated by Microsoft because it was the main impetus for people buying new PCs.

Now that Android is taking over the personal OS landscape, and PC sales are dropping, MS doesn't gain as much as they used to, and now actually feels the pain from allowing this to happen, they decide to remove them.

...cold calling is when every customer they call demands to be removed from their user base.

Goodbye PayPal.

You forgot about the recent elections where Greece elected a government who ran on an anti-austerity (pro-communist) platform, just at the time when austerity was starting to actually work for their economy. The Greek people's propensity to turn to communism whenever they have a financial problem is a bit worrisome, since it shows how clearly deluded they are with respect to how well communistic economies have (and still do) behave.

...who's first thought was:

Great ! Yet another noisy machine that ass-hates can use to destroy the serenity of a lake.

Perhaps, but it originally referred to the extermination of the Jews about 25 years after Armenia.

Yep, you're right, $1.3 billion divided by 650,000 is almost $2500 per student.

I guess you are a journalist, or is there another reason you would inflate $2000 per student to "almost $2500 per student"

Oh, I see, it's you who are a racist.

It never occurred to me that you were making a correlation between Obama being black (which is not only not really true, but also totally irrelevant) and people refusing to enter the armed forces. See, the difference between me and you ( aside from me not being an ass-hat) is that I am essentially color blind. I almost never even consider a persons race as a trait worth mentioning. The whole concept of race - as it is commonly understood by ignoramuses like you - is unscientific, it is only a tool used by weak minds to justify their improper behavior..

You've lost me with that very obscure argument

Ignoring the fact that there hasn't been a draft since the end of the Vietnam war, how does entering the armed forces infer lack of racism - my experience in the service was that most demographics were fairly well represented (as one would expect), so the population of racists in the forces was - and probably still is - roughly equivalent to the population in civie land.

OK, dumbshit. Perhaps you didn't realize that all federally funded jobs include provisions for special consideration for veterans. It has been that way for your entire life, not just since Obama was elected.

But, please feel free to display your ignorance.

The issue is, under what circumstances is it worthwhile to spend time writing a virus/trojan/whatever.

Clearly financial gain is THE prime motivator, although notoriety is a close second - mostly because it leads to money.

The war, though, is certainly winnable. The idea of certified manifests is getting close to the solution - there is certainly more work and thought to be applied to that though.

End user expectation management is in order too. The days of downloading software are coming to a close. I really don't see the need for most devices to have this functionality. Downloading from a known trusted source is one thing. Downloading from user configurable sources is mostly stupid - since the vast majority of users are simply too stupid to make good decisions.

Surely you mean concrete.

Cement is only one ingredient in concrete.

moral - I'm not sure that word means what you think it does.

My statistic - that at least 50% of the Indians that I have worked with are incompetent - is not made up. It is an estimate, true, but trust me, the estimate erred on the side of conservatism in that the number is more like 65%.

... are bogus as far as I can tell.

I've worked with plenty of Indian engineers (mechanical, electronic, and software) over the past 30+ years, and my general impression is that at least 50% have no knowledge of the subject matter at all. As far as I could tell they simply purchased a document claiming they had a degree. So, this appears to be just another example.

The moon is nearly microscopically small when used as a shield for the earth.