Apparently there's an issue with their Android phones too... here

I often wondered whether as with food where there is a legal requirement to list the ingredients there should be a similar requirement for PC vendors to list all the bloat/crap/ad-ware they include on their products. Of course people may still not know what they're in for but at least there's a chance you can stop yourself getting affected by a keylogger if you bothered to check it was there. Also if this was a legal requirement then a failure to disclose its presence would lead to a relatively strightforward penalty. I know most of the readers here would probably install the system themselves and likely not even Windows but for the bulk of the consumers it might be useful to at least know what's coming and be able to make a choice *before* the purchase is made.
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I'd like to see Samsung get into big trouble over this because it is inherently wrong, at least that's my position, but I am less sure if they have broken any actual laws. Maybe some digital eavesdropping provisions that are only allowed to be done by governments have been breached but I can see Samsung weaselling out of that one. There's probably a disclaimer in 5point font 100 pages into the agreement that the buyer agrees to by opening the box.... of course that's wrong too. Oh where to start...

What places might those be? And what's the excuse for buying a cassette when you already own an LP?

If you wanted to play music in your car (and didn't want that to be from the radio) you might need to buy a cassette, at least I'm not aware of any cars came with builtin turntables. The Walkman also made it possible to take music with you on the go, but again if you had the LP you'd need to "buy the White Album again" on cassette.

It is my understanding that in many of the "loser pays" jurisdictions it applies only if the party bringing the suit loses. So in your example you'd be fine... well not fine, more like screwed, but at least safe from having to front up the money for the vampiric hordes used to convict you of some heinous act like downloading a copy of Santa Clause 2.

It's still not a perfect system, but better than you describe.

I run a number of faculty specific labs (specialised software & hardware) and have a lot of contact with central IT and other faculty specific lab administrators.

I echo a lot of the sentiments already expressed but wanted to address the specific issue of speaking to the users of the facility. Mine is, as far as I know, the only place at my University that has the support staff located in the computer lab area. Everywhere else the students have to log a job with the helpdesk... which ends up being rare because it's more effort than just moving to another machine. Then the admins come around some time later (or perform tasks remotely) and do not, in any way, interact with the end users. In my case they just come and ask, which has its drawbacks too, but I get to know a lot more about them and how they use the labs.

Even those who have their own machines use the labs primarily because of the software. They can't afford to buy copies of CS4 and Solidworks and Final Cut Pro and so on... some pirate, but many wouldn't know how, the rest don't want to. The other reasons are communication with other students, printing and the speed of the machines we have as opposed to what they can get on their laptops.

Knowing how the students work and communicating with them regularly has helped me make the facilities better and while the labs are open until 3am and I go home some 9 hours earlier they're not shy in letting me know what happened the night before about any specific issues.

You learn only so much by looking, you learn more by talking as well.

To give an example - Fedex and UPS spent hundreds of millions of dollars to place orders for A380s in 2006

... and then withdrew them in 2007

How many US citizens know what the capital of Florida is?

Also really.. just national capitals would be nice, capitals of states is a much longer bow to draw since the corollary question would be to ask what the capitals of places like Hunan, Alsace, Free State and Tasmania would be.

I think most people would probably assume the answer is Miami because it's the most known of Floridian cities, I knew it wasn't but had to look up the answer. I'm not from the US and do not live there.

I think in broader terms you're right about ignorance not being uniquely a US trait and that entertainment TV shows are a poor educational tool (because they're not meant to be) but if you're trying to change the preconceptions of people then I would say your post isn't doing it.

2. It's still streets ahead of OS X, and OS X's licensing doesn't seem to have slowed it down too much.

Whether or not Windows 7 is streets ahead of OS X is debatable but I'm more interested in the second half of that point. OS X, at least the client version which is what I assume we're talking about, has no licensing scheme to speak of. You can install OS X on as many machines as you want from one disc and never have to make a phone call for an activation code or connect to Apple's servers for permission. I guess Apple is effectively selling a licence of OS X with every box sold you could argue their licensing is a giant dongle which doubles as a computer.

At any rate I think the reason OS X's licensing doesn't seem to have hampered it is because it barely has any when compared to the alternative from Microsoft.

Depends on how you frame your purpose. It's a bit like giving a man trout as opposed to teaching him to fish. Also why can't they feed the poor *and* do space exploration.

Personally I think space exploration is very important. Eventually we're going to have to get off this rock to survive. Whether by resource depletion, disease, catastrophic event (something big crashes into Earth, supervolcanoes go apeshit or sun going supernova) something's going to make our time here limited and the sooner we find viable ways of travelling, finding other hospitable planets (or moons) sustaining ourselves and all the other things we haven't figured out yet the better. Yes some of what we do could probably be done better, or more efficiently, but we've got to keep trying. I'm also not a fan of just letting the USA and Russia play this game. I think India the ESA and China all have a valid reason to play the game too. I'm not sure which 3rd world country was being referred to but all the involved nations so far have poor hungry people they could be helping out.

Just because they have a space program doesn't mean they can't do that too.