Both regimes killed how many scores of people doing it? Also, both ended up being more oligarchies than communist utopias.

Trend Micro Hosted Email Security and Microsoft Forefront Online Protection for Exchange

- you know, I can write a 100 page essay just on this topic and give probably 100 points that would prove how stupid that quote is, give at least a 1000 examples proving my points. Would it change your understanding of this issue? I doubt it.

Here is a small subset:

1. Gov't is not honest, never was, never will be. Patriot Act isn't patriotic, home land security does not make anybody more secure, 'affordable housing' helped to destroyed any housing, etc.

2. Gov't doesn't give a shit about anybody being honest unless it's the kind of honesty that hurts the gov't. SEC never gave a shit about Enron, Madoff or the National Inflation Association, which has been running pump and dump schemes for at least 2 years now and SEC was and is notified on all of these, and so what?

3. I never claimed that people will be more honest, if you think so, you are completely misguided. The dishonest people always exist, all systems, all circumstances, forever. However in free market the dishonest people can only damage a small subset of all people, but when dishonest people are somehow connected to government, that's when their dishonesty becomes truly damaging to everybody in a major way.

So I gave you 3 simple points right here, even some examples why those points are correct. Will you be honest and admit you don't know shit and are just spouting nonsense in your comment?

And Google says privacy is dead so not really seeing a difference there. One wants to make sure you use their product and the other...wants to make sure you use their product. the only difference i see is one is obvious (MSFT software and OSes) and the other is not (data mining) but both want you using their stuff. The ONLY reason Google is multiplatform is because the platform isn't the product YOU are and they don't care what you run as long as they have YOU. Its like those that scream "Google isn't an ad company" when you look at their SEC filings and over 95% of their profits are from...ads.

And funny you talk about lock in when MSFT can't even kill shit when it wants to, I mean did you know VB is either the third or fourth most popular business language? HOW many years have they been trying to kill it? How about IE 6? They've been trying to kill that devil spawn for ages and haven't had any luck.

So if all that matters to you is multiplatform and you don't mind Google knowing what you do on the web? Use Google. if you don't mind using only a couple of platforms controlled by MSFT? Then use them. Don't mind a walled garden and higher prices for slicker devices? Use Apple. But it just amazes me how some will treat these giant supercorps like they are ballclubs to root for. Watching their actions the past couple of years I'd say that all three of the big players, Apple, Google, and MSFT have their pluses and minuses and NONE of them have truly clean hands. Just to be clear though Apple isn't a bunch of hippies sitting around in tie dye, Google DOES do evil and MSFT...hell do they even have a slogan? if they do its so lame I don't even know what it is, but it probably sucks as bad as a shit brown Zune.

Excuse me, but HOW can it be done on a Linux PC? We'll ignore the legal mess and contracts and just look at the technical, which I'd say makes it impossible. Like it or not for the most part the security by obscurity model works on OSX and Windows because one can't simply recompile their own kernel to bypass the DRM or feed the decrypted output to a file but that kind of stuff CAN be done in Linux and of course then you are dealing with the "smart cow" problem where all it takes is one guy to cook up the bypass and then others can simply copy what he did. Again you just can't do that on Windows and OSX easily because you don't have the source to the files you'd need to alter but this is available on Linux. After all it all comes down to the kernel and if you can alter that anything above that can be manipulated by the kernel which is why IIRC Netflix HD is only available on devices that have locked boot loaders on ARM while with Windows and OSX they can use protected path.

So I honestly don't think this is any kind of "conspiracy" to make people use OSX or Windows, it is simply that Linux and the GPL aren't designed to allow what you would need to deploy DRM in a general use OS. Again this is ignoring the legal issues which I bet it'd be pretty damned hard to implement a functional DRM schema on general purpose X86 Linux without running afoul of the GPL and getting sued. In this case one could argue the GPL is doing exactly what it is supposed to do, which is keep things open and DRM out but you have to take the bad with the good and that means less content for Linux users.

Question: Why would you try to force your GF to use Linux when obviously the software she requires doesn't work and in fact you had to cook up a VM just BECAUSE it won't do what she needs natively?

I can totally understand using Linux on your laptop if you have a use case for it, such as i know several server admin where it makes more sense to run Linux on their laptop so they can easily interact with their servers, but why try to force it on someone who requires software it doesn't have? all that is doing is making one more person that will bad mouth Linux and causing bad feelings for no good reason.

So just give her a laptop with Windows 7, that is obviously what she needs. that way she can run what she wants, you can run what you want on yours, and everyone is happy. Hell its not like you have to run Win 7 as admin like you did XP, in fact with IE or Chromium based using low rights mode for browsing its never been safer, so I just don't get it. Do you not like your GF or something?

As for TFA when is this guy gonna learn? the forums were practically breaking out the pitchforks over Mono, did he think they'd treat Moonlight any differently? Whether he likes it or not no MSFT produced anything will be welcomed into the Linux fold period, the end. The only real selling point for Silverlight is DRM streaming, which doesn't work in Linux (and frankly I don't see how anyone could make a functional DRM in Linux without locking the whole OS which will never fly) so what would be the point? At least .NET is used a lot in enterprise settings so I can se a reason for Mono, but Silverlight just doesn't make much sense on Linux.

OK. From http://www.dar-us-salam.com/TheNobleQuran/index.html:

Sura 9:5. Then when the Sacred Months (the Ist, 7th, 11th, and 12th months of the Islamic calendar) have passed, then kill the Mushrikun (see V.2:105) wherever you find them, and capture them and besiege them, and prepare for them each and every ambush. But if they repent and perform As-Salat (Iqamat-as-Salat), and give Zakat, then leave their way free. Verily, Allah is Oft-Forgiving, Most Merciful.

(I do not think you can argue with the word "kill" here.)

Sura 9:29. Fight against those who (1) believe not in Allah, (2) nor in the Last Day, (3) nor forbid that which has been forbidden by Allah and His Messenger (4) and those who acknowledge not the religion of truth (i.e. Islam) among the people of the Scripture (Jews and Christians), until they pay the Jizyah with willing submission, and feel themselves subdued.

(A case may possibly be made that "fight" here should be considered as "struggle", implying nonviolence. Given the apparent propensity of Islam for violent means, I tend to doubt that much credence could be given to such a case. And of course see Sura 9:5, supra.)

There are also explicit commands against poisoning wells, and against killing noncombatants. Women and children are defined in the Koran as noncombatants, and off limits. However, these attacks are aimed directly at female children.

Uhhh...How EXACTLY would one implement DRM on Linux that couldn't be trivially bypassed? IIRC one can't hand out locked down kernels without source, and one can't put a bunch of kernel level hooks without running afoul of the GPL, so how EXACTLY are they supposed to have DRM on Linux? On Windows and Mac one can run kernel hooks with no problem which is how much of the DRM on those platforms work but short of locking the bootloader i don't see how one could actually create DRM that would work on Linux. After all one of the points of Linux is you can hack pretty much anything on it since the source is available, you can claim its "security through obscurity" but its pretty damned hard to make your own NT kernel but you can compile a custom Linux kernel quite easily.

So this is one case where you simply can't have your cake and eat it too, Linux was designed to be the ANTI-DRM OS and in that respect it works, but the flipside of that is there is tons of content one will have to pirate if you want to run it on Linux as no DRM, no content. that's just the way it is folks and I don't see how they are supposed to magically make DRM on an OS where everything can be compiled and altered any time by anybody.

And that is why I have said HTML V5 sucks and isn't the way to go, as so far there isn't any DRM specs that work in HTML V5 so the only way to have things like Netflix is lock down the whole OS. That is fine and dandy for Apple and MSFT, and I doubt Google will have much of a problem with it either, not so fine and dandy for the rest of us. No matter how much you may hate flash and silverlight at least one could avoid it without having to jailbreak your entire OS. I have a feeling all the jumping on HTML V5 is so that corps can just lock everything down and force everyone to go with the appstore model, where only approved apps get run. Fuck that!

I'm waiting for analog FAXes to die. But the concept of FAXing with a dumb machine at the console is a good one. What I'd like to see an a method of IP FAXing where you fax using domain names. fax1.domain.com, fax2.domain.com, etc. So simple that even a ditsy bimbo blond of a receptionist can use it.