I love how they settled on the soft target of "identity theft protection" too. This is just a non-starter.

Let's see if we can boil down what a truthful ad for their spyware would look like.

"Hi! I want to provide you with a service we're going to say protects you from someone pretending to be you. Most likely we'll make sure you can't possibly sue us if someone does steal your identity or we'll just claim someone got your info offline or from a computer not covered by the service.

In return, you let is spy on you and use this to send ads to you. We promise not to look at certain types of info but this won't be transparent to you in any way. And realistically speaking, we can't possibly keep up with every site of the type we're saying we don't look at but we'll lie to you and say we won't look at email or sites with medical information anyway. By the way did we mention our EULA will immunize us from prosecution for doing it anyway?

In summary: We onwzorz your infos and you oggle our ads. We'll also make gratuitous statements about protecting your info but you won't be able to hold us to any of it. Have a good day! Big Brother is watching and he wants you (and your little wallet too)!

Huh. Interesting he should say that. Anyone know if he ever stole change from his mom's purse or something? Maybe we can shut him up. :)

Maybe... It's hard to say. You'd have a bit of a conundrum going on there. You see your "For the Children" groups and your "Security Through Endless Harassment" groups are generally on the same side, appealing to the same people. So who would win? I think it would come down to how often people in that demographic fly on commercial airplane flights.

Not certain what their take on events looks like but recently that seems to be a high priority secondary objective (money is always the primary objective with any corporation). Based on their activities or lack thereof in regards to the open source community surrounding java and OpenOffice they don't seem to think very highly of the standard slashdot crowd. Based on their recent high profile lawsuits, they don't seem to think much of other businesses either. I'm not sure who that leaves but whoever it is better have deep pockets or they're screwed.

If you really want to handle three different OSes then yeah, do so. You really haven't mentioned a single bit of information on how you want them to interoperate however and that's generally the part that's the real pain in the butt. If everyone can be migrated to an OSS office suite then you're good for tossing documents around. Email is an old enough standard that hardly anyone is stupid enough to really break it (even AOL has kind of figured this out). The difficulty there comes in with the scheduling and calendar stuff in Exchange/Outlook. I haven't looked in ages but last I heard there were attempts to replace this with a fully functioning OSS system but it didn't interest me enough to track whether the projects succeeded or not. Samba worked fine with XP, haven't tried it with Windows 7.

Ultimately though you generally do the whole replacement OS thing as a process. You start with the servers. If you're used to in-house mail you might be better off running a Linux or BSD mail server than going the Gmail route. Once you have all the servers done that you're going to do, then start planning out your app deployments and replacements. If you're thinking about swapping out MS Office for OpenOffice, try that before you shuffle OSes. It's free, it works on Windows and it's much easier to back out of if you change your mind (or have it changed for you by your users). Do that with every piece of software you conceivably can, one at a time and see what impact it has. If it all works and no gotchas pop up, you can go on to swap OSes, but I'd probably wait until there was a reason to get rid of Windows 7. When an Antivirus or some other piece of software requires a paid update, switching to Linux or whatever to avoid it will sound like a much better idea. This process will make an eventual OS replacement less painful for you and your users and you won't have to ask Slashdot how well it will work. You'll be seeing it yourself.

Just curious, but did the ruling happen to have any language that would keep you from doing the same sorts of web exposure for this case and all involved as you did to the original corporation? I mean, it pissed them off enough to engage in a stupid lawsuit, maybe it'll annoy the judge and the lawyers too.

Hrm. You know, since they have the right to free speech now (THANK YOU, oh benevolent and wise US Supreme Court, next let's revive indentured servitude just for kicks), maybe you can sue them for slandering the 4G brand as well as false advertising? With new power comes new lawsuits. It's the American way.

When politicians start feeling like they need to kick back to their contributors, this sort of law seems like an easy win. They get told comparisons like the ISP is the get-away driver at a robbery, thrown the usual completely unverified "billions of dollars" figures about how much it "costs" and suddenly it sounds like a no brainer.

What to do to curb this sort of idiocy? Easy. Don't campaign against them passing it. Campaign hard to make sure the language isn't specific to ISPs and the digital world.

Suddenly when someone grabs a purse and runs down the sidewalk, the victim can sue the government.

When a bank is robbed, even before the police have suspects the bank can sue the government because the crooks drove away on a public road.

If you get slugged in a bar, sue! The other fellow must have walked on public sidewalks, drove on public roads or took the public tubes to get his thuggish arse there right?

One month of barking at the moon equals a lifetime of preventive advocacy.

If this is implemented as described I expect it to go over about as well as proposing a Wrist Slitting Barbie doll would. The simple fact is Microsoft has already tried something similar to this with their extortion masked as a security service that nags at the install when software isn't signed. It's not like launching an application from the Dock is terribly difficult now and a lot of apps have their own built-in check for updates anyway. Those two features simply won't matter. If anyone uses the app store it will be to distribute their app not to get features of questionable usefulness. And on top of that, this is just the sort of idiot move that would segment their userbase into people who think they need those features to use apps and those that are technical enough to do without.

Since segmenting their userbase wouldn't get them anything but less people using their new app store and providing new barriers to developers who might want otherwise consider porting their projects to the mac, I don't think they'll go that way. In both the long and short term it would just flat out be a bad move for them.

See, when you say "it can fly", the picture people have in their head is going to be "like a hawk" or at the very least pretty good gliding "like a buzzard." This thing though? I wouldn't be surprised if it flies like a chicken. Possibly of the frozen variety. Only it probably won't be as useful as the chicken, which can always double as catapult ammo if you're really bored.

You're correct, this is unprofessional.

However... professionalism is basically another word for respect. People talk about giving it out for free like it's this magical thing that makes everything better and exists in a vacuum. The reality check here is that respect and professionalism largely amount to the same thing in business dealings and while you can get some on loan, the interest if you default on it is going to be pretty steep. Think "rip off credit card" here not "bank loan".

You can never really force someone to respect you. Even trying to do so basically tells them you don't give a damn about what they may really think or feel about you and so denies them respect in return. And neglecting to respect someone else is the surest way to make certain they won't respect you in turn.

In the real world, corporate professionalism is a lot like a fad diet. It does nothing, goes nowhere, and if it's not full of bullshit to start with, it will be by the end. It's mostly about looking like part of the herd.

I think you're falsely assuming something here. Religious whack-job-ism is always a double edged sword. It's never a safe defense for rational thought because it's proponents will see it as a threat to them (it is) and will attack you while cheerfully ignoring anything you might bring up in your defense. Generally what makes them whack-jobs is their ability to treat anyone who doesn't share their beliefs and practices as inhuman.

You have a couple different types of appeal you can make. They target different areas and you'll have to choose the best appeal for each boss.

1. Vanity - They're the boss. In theory they have access the most important data. They're also your most important customers and it might be a good thing to point out how uncomfortable you are with providing better service to underlings than you're able to give to the boss.

2. Safety - Much like car wrecks, computer security problems don't just happen to people who are careless, they also happen to people who get caught up in the wreck. Basically just a reminder that malware and zero day vulnerabilities can nail them even if they don't do anything wrong.

3. Convenience - When was their last backup? Outline what they can expect if their hard drive bombs.

4. "Platinum Plan" - S/he's the boss. Give them a USB drive and script up a regular backup. Or do it over the network. Kind of related to the Vanity entry.

It sounds like they could filter it if they wanted to. There are a couple key points to consider here. I don't know how important any of them are from a legal point of view but I can see how they would apply.

1. They're not responsible if things look different in Chrome than they do in other browsers. Whatever causes it, you agree not to have a cow. (think acid3 test, etc)
2. If you're using their software to do google searches then it's ok if you get a safe search and not an unfiltered one (although you should be able to change this, it's just a cookie based setting).
3. It seems to cover them having parental controls in the browser. People can turn such things on by accident and not know how to disable them (or legally try to claim that the method for disabling them is deliberately obfuscated).

Realistically I doubt they'd do anything stupid like active network filtering. That just isn't what people expect out of their browsers.