Most people I know stopped pirating music once legal, DRM-free downloads came about.

And the RIAA is still pissed about this because the legal method lets you just buy the songs you want instead of forcing you to buy an album with another 9 songs you didn't want. Giving the public what they want has decimated the music business just as much as piracy did.

The real difference is that if you get a loan from a bank to (for instance) buy a house, when you finally pay it off, the bank doesn't still own the house.

Apple is not an OS vendor. They manufacture computers. The hardware contains some of the core code used by the OS. In the past, this was the code that made a Mac so different from everything else and provided the extra security Macs used to be so vehemently touted for. Don't know how much that has changed since OSX came into being and the UNIX code was adopted.

Some of us will pay the extra price, partly because we don't want to have to know how to build a computer from scratch in order to do the work we buy a computer for in the first place (we also do not want to know how to manufacture a car just so we can drive to work). And partly because we read threads like this one that so clearly outline the clusterfuck that owning a Windows machine seems to be.

I almost always like sarcasm. If people don't agree with that, I really don't care whether they like me or not.

Especially if they're an employer.

My initial take from the headline was that Microsoft was not predicting anything, but rather promising. The other thing about having such a large market share is that it leads to aggressively protecting that market share.

"Even though Mac OSX has introduced many mitigation technologies to reduce risk, your protection against security vulnerabilities has a direct correlation with updating installed applications."

As someone who used OS9 for most of my work until late 2010, it seems as if updating to OSX and updating all of my applications has actually reduced protection against security vulnerabilities.

My wife taught 8th grade in a low-income area. She used FB to keep tabs on her students and several times took pro-active steps to intervene (in a helpful manner) on the ones who were getting into gang activity and drugs. Sometimes, it helped. Sometimes, it was a waste of time.

Not all teachers are sexual predators. Some of them actually care about the kids they spend 35-40 hours a week with.

The same ASCAP/BMI goons are just as eager to shut down a venue for having live music if the license fees haven't been paid. The only way to get around it is if the performers are only playing original or public domain music.

I understand that talking out your ass is a favorite /. exercise, but ... really?

The mechanical license fee is for recordings, not live performances. The Harry Fox Agency has nothing whatsoever to do with public performances. That falls under the dominion of ASCAP/BMI and SESAC.

Is this another version of the same issues people complained about when seeing their favorite newscaster (or "other" things) in HD?

Or is it more like the people who rave on about the "warmth" of vinyl audio recordings vs. digital?

I'm a left-wing asshole, and I agree with you completely on this.