You don't shut down Windows 8. It shuts you down once your usefulness falls below a specific threshold.

More importantly, how does any of this compare to the owner of a lonely heart?!

Under what now? What's this "parental protection/supervision" thing? I've never heard of it.

I for one welcome our new Trojan Earth Overlords!

Great idea, so when the cops shoot you dead, you'll at least die with the satisfaction of having stood up for your beliefs.

I think you're still missing the point. The point is that they made a statement which leaves room for interpretation. Your mindset leads you to make certain inferences that you feel are common sense. There's nothing wrong with your interpretation of the statement; what's wrong is that they made the statement in such a way as to require you to reach your conclusions.

A better statement could have been, "a technician mistakenly entered commands that resulted in the system failure," if that is what happened. Then there's no room for you or me to reach any conclusions, because they told us what really happened.

I believe OP's point is the way VMWare described the occurrence. By dumbing-down the official explanation, they imply several statements I would not want to hear from a professional service provider:

• - Our users are too stupid to understand the real cause
• - We're too stupid to understand the real cause
• - Our employees can't be trusted to truthfully recount the events of an incident to their management
• - Our systems are so fragile that an actual errant touch brings down the whole operation
• - We've discovered an issue so severe that we're afraid to tell our users / the world what it is, lest it be exploited

That's the problem with vague, imprecise explanations. They leave room for interpretation.

What's a GNAA troll?

You really don't know? You posted AC so I can't see your user number.. I presume it has a great many digits.

Kids these days...

...except "fail" is not a noun.

"Epic failure" would be an accurate exclamation free of any like-a-dick-sounding.

Only trouble is, the solution is NOT so simple. If I don't use facebook, that doesn't stop any of my facebook-using acquaintances from tagging me in their photos. Sure, it won't be a tag linked to a facebook profile, but it could be my name in text, possibly locatable by some search engine or other.

In some cases, the phone isn't really completely yours. If you purchased your phone at a discount as part of a service carrier's promotion, that carrier paid for part of the phone (and thereby, in some sense, has part ownership of the device), until they recoup the cost through your monthly service fees.

Of course, if you bought an iPhone (for example) directly from Apple at full retail price, then yes, it's yours.

Interesting. You respond by promising illegal acts (dissemination of copyrighted works). (As an aside, for the sake of this argument, who fscking cares about the sense behind the law, it is law.)

I respond by not wanting to buy another Sony product, ever. I bought an Xbox 360 for the Indie development opportunity. I figured the next current console I'd buy would be a Wii simply because it's less expensive. This behavior of Sony cinches it. I will never(*) own a PS3.

(*) Never say never...

Umm.. probably because it's not really necessary on Linux. I'm not suggesting that there is NO Linux malware out there, but it's certainly significantly less proliferate than Windows malware (in large part because of market share...a great Linux virus simply won't damage as many computers).

Also, though it's not uncommon to configure iptables (the default firewall in most modern Linux systems (?) ) to mindlessly allow outbound traffic, it's certainly possible to configure it to disallow locally-originated outbound connections.

It's also possible to configure it to log all sorts of useful information about packets, such as what process originated them and where they're headed. Then any of a myriad of open-source tools can be used to analyze said logs for unscrupulous behavior.

And iptables will never try to get you to upgrade to a for-pay version with stupid hand-waving scare tactics like these.

FTFS: "Note that the 3D interpretation uses lots of artistic license, so it is not intended to be scientifically accurate."

Right there in the summary. Nobody said it was real / true 3D.

Next shocking revelation from commodore64_love: The moon is NOT the size of a quarter!

No, EVERYONE is an asshole. Everyone wants something for nothing.

Please note that the following statements are somewhat stream-of-consciousness, but I feel they are all related to the main point. Also please note the intentional use of hyperbole. Of course there are exceptions.

Consumers want your product without paying for it.

Producers want your money without giving you a product.

Members of the EFF want all their computer tools and information without paying for it.

People at Microsoft and TimeWarner want everyone's money without giving them computer tools and information.

Everyone is motivated by greed in some form or another (and not necessarily egregiously...or their own greed). Otherwise money would not work.

Would you do your job for free?

Would you do your job for free if you could have all your needs met for free?

Or would you just sit on your free recliner watching your free TV eating your free food having your health maintained by your free doctor?

What would happen if the person who made the free recliner, free TV, free food, and the free doctor all decided to do the same as you?