As they say, statistics can show anything.

Yes, Microsofts percentage share has dropped considertably, but only because the market has grown so much in the last several years. (a market that would not exist without iPhone or Android).

The point is that Windows Mobile is still selling about what it did, and is improved a bit... They did not capture much of the emerging touch market, but they didn't lose what they had.

I would suggest that YOU actually read the fucking license. I have. Many times.

You do not need to agree to anything in the GPL in order to install or use the software. In fact, the license itself says you don't have to agree to it.

But a ton of GPL'd software requires you to click the "I Agree" to install.

Anyone who's argument against BSDL involves "giving back to the community" doesn't understand the GPL.

There is nothing in the GPL that requires anyone to "give back to the community". You are under the requirement to give source code ONLY to those you give the binary to. You don't have to give it "back to the community".

It's true that the people you sell the software to (with source code) could turn around it and release it publicly, but that's unlikely to be the case very often. After all, they paid for it, why would they want to give it away to everyone else?

The fact is, if you predicate your support of the GPL because of a belief in a tit-for-tat, then you are sorely mistaken. What you really want is something like MPL.

but a community does not hold double tandards, only individuals may do so

But a community is made up of individuals. For instance, the KKK is a "community", and they certainly hold double standards. A political party is a "community" and I don't know of any organized political party that doesn't have double standards.

Communities have beliefs shared by most of the community.

If it's for information, why must you click the "I Agree" button to continue?

I don't think so. Most users don't even know how to change their TV inputs... My wife can't figure out how to enable the DVD player from the DVR. One device is really where people want things.

Regarding the Steve Ballmer comment.. to be honest, the iPhone never was a threat to Microsoft. Microsoft had a very small niche market for phones, and to this day still has that market. The iPhone has done little to change that. In fact, Windows Phone 7.x has slightly improved their market share.

Yes, but until today I thought that it would follow a bell curve, at least roughly.

Given these numbers, though, 46% of Americans have an IQ of at most 50, which leaves only 4% for the range between 50 and 100, and that gives quite a strange distribution.

That's called selection bias. A good study considers it, which is why it's done on a representative sample.

If I had kids, there would be a lot of stuff I'd be more worried about than porn. There is violence and other graphic images on the Internet that I find a lot more disgusting than all but the most extreme porn. And that will almost certainly have a much worse effect on children than watching someone naked doing strange stuff they don't understand.

But then again, that's America for you, a culture where half the population believes in creationism and shooting someone's brains out on afternoon TV is fine while a quarter-second glance at half of a breast nipple is a national scandal.

There's worse than porn on the Internet, and if you want to play the "for the chiiiiildren" card, then I'd like to see some evidence that porn actual does any damage to children first. You assumptions and gut feelings, see creationism, are not reliable and not evidence.

Googles thinks Microsoft is sending proxies to do its legal work, or at the least is trying to convince someone of that fantasy?

Microsoft hasn't shown any problems going after Android makers openly and directly. Sure it doesn't always make the front page but that's because Microsoft wants to licence the technology, not use the patents to block companies from the market entirely like Apple. This has always been Microsoft's business stategy from all the back in the days when it was Bill writing BASIC interpreters - find a place in the middle of the supply or technology chain so that no matter what company or product consumers are wild about this day of the week, Microsoft is getting paid somehow. A 'horizontal' instead of vertical market integration. That Android phone in your hand? Microsoft got paid a cut of it. I believe the slashdotter term is 'the Microsoft tax'.

Either Google is on a conspiracy bent to try and explain why so many companies have dirt on them without considering that maybe it's because they copied from all of them to assemble Android, or they're just cooking up so they can get Microsoft beat up by the EU bigwigs the way Opera did.