I think we can really fuck with them. Chaff, deception traffic...

Let's get started on making more hay for their stacks, people! Hell. You'll run a client for SETI, why not run one to preserve your intelligent life, here on Earth!

It depends on what you need to do, and what you know about it.

If you are not willing to walk away from it, on short notice? Then buying nothing is wise.

The trick about big financing is that you don't own a house - a bank owns you. Your on their plantation.

If you didn't barter or pay cash, you are on Massah's rules, Massah's time.

Yes. Enjoy 15-30 years of BEARABLE slavery. But you OWN something... Just ask the taxman.

You have Stockholm syndrome - and don't recognize it. You should read about Edward Bernays, some time - before lashing out in pseudo-moral rage against a proposition who's arguments you fo not actually comprehend.

We are stardust
We are golden
And we've got to get ourselves
Back to the garden

The tyranny of location! Don't worry. They have a fix for that with TPP and TTIP. ;-)

One law to rule them all, one law to bind them...

Perhaps Lem comes off less morose in jzyk Polski

Lem was critical of Government, of official bureaucracy - whether public or private.

He never singled out the US as a specific target, and could be construed as subtly/subversively anti-authoritarian, in ways that were passable by the Communist governments of Poland and USSR.

The US is now no different than those. We just have Nike Fuel bands, and two cars in front of our debt-bondage. Whoops! I mean home.

Wow. Thanks for maintaining attention span. :-)

Governments and corporations are fictional persons. They have no "moral consciousness" of any kind, outside of rhetorical and ideological fantasy.

So, this will not be a question of moral or immoral use. It will be amoral, in the hands of those who have advanced themselves through manipulation of the aforementioned ideological rhetoric.

You continue to believe that there is hope for this modern, post-industrial society. But there is none. We as people have increased the sophistication of our tools and our reach - just as relentlessly as we have avoided the refinement of our own beings.

In the end you don't get Star Trek. You don't even get Starship Troopers. You get Scanner, Darkly And hope there is Valis.

"I still can't allow you and Cmdr. Poole to jeopardize this mission, Dave."

... because they won't need to support Linux or perform maintenance on it? Or do fairys do that for you with Linux?

The retraining alone will cost far more than licensing costs over the last 10 years, let alone interoperability issues.

Licensing costs are a drop in the bucket compared to an employees salary and time, the fact that you don't realize or consider this just shows how utterly disconnected you are from the realities of running a business.

Are you seriously trying to claim Office 2013 in Windows 8 is radically different? And that its not that much different than Linux and something like LibreOffice on KDE/Gnome?

They'll lose more than 300 in dealing with interoperability with the rest of the world alone trying to exchange documents, let alone the training.

Metro is a branch of applications, not the entire OS.

You are so ridiculously uninformed about Windows you can not possibly comment on what migration would be like based on the silliness of your post.

Pretending they'll save money on the migration is just ignorant. If you want to argue that in 15 years, they'll save money, you MIGHT have an argument, IF you ignore the cost of shitty interoperability, but only if you ignore that. You have to have a pretty narrow view of the world to think they'll actually save money.

Godism. Everything else falls short, and will end, sooner or later.

Thanks for the suggestion. That's funny! I will do my best on all fronts at HP.

LOL, only only Slashdot.

If you can fix that one thing, you will have been a stunning success, for all else that it encompasses. ;-)

Cheers (and good luck!)