How is this any different from a grocery store jacking up prices on several items, then a week or two later putting those same items "on sale"?

I just don't want to have to buy the White Album again!

I am a PhD student of Neurobiology and I consider abortion murder.

The first part of your statement means nothing. No one cares if you're a student or a janitor. The second part is a moral belief of yours. Not all share _your_ morals beliefs. End of story.

Not just netbooks...

...four years for a very real leak of sensitive military information is quite mild...

Yes. It's a good thing he didn't have a bag of weed or flash a boobie on the TV or he'd _really_ be screwed.

If Symantec's "security" security programs were worth a damn, the "free" products wouldn't stand a chance. So far, that hasn't been the case eh?

It's a good thing they didn't mention the taxes in upstate NY. If I didn't have family here, I'd be out of here in a heartbeat. This place sucks. 13215.

Suddenly, everyone uses a lame straw-man argument!

I can't think of the word for this, but...

I believe the word you're looking for is "bullshit".

Yep, and the Microsoft PR army has always listed a ton of "new features" for every one of their OS's... that is... until they actually shipped.

In the olden days, it was because someone walked on the punch cards in golf shoes

The liver is evil. It must be punished.

...In reality the BSA doesnt care about some small company thats using its photoshop license two or three times or that it has two windows 2003 servers it didnt pay for....

Ernie Ball would beg to differ.

This is assuming NICs represent a major driver problem in Vista/7. They don't. Virtually all NICs (I'm willing to say 99%) will WORK (that is FUNCTION) "out of the box" with Windows 7. There are a number of generic fallback drivers. There might be some issues, like jumbo frame support on gigabit cards, and some settings you can't tweak, but they will almost always work. This has been the case since Windows 98.

Find another straw man.

I take it you've never had a machine with an onboard nvidia NIC. No, they do not work out of the box.

...Can you imagine NASA spending 1/5th of it's annual budget on a deep space probe at this point in history?...

WTF else are they spending it on? Management salaries? Swimsuit models? PR?
Seriously.
I'd actually be pleased to see them spend 1/5 of their budget on ACTUAL SPACE TRAVEL.