Suggest to your father that the countries you mentioned are largely third-world countries where $3 per day is a good living wage. That should help him understand that those folks are unable to purchase music at the retail price, and the only option they have to listen to tunes is piracy.

Don't forget to ask for unemployment when you get fired.

Troll much? Given Microsoft's track record - don't deny it, it's carefully documented, there's no way I'd consider letting them have any input in an election.

Sure, they may have a great idea - but their history is clear and it's not going to go away. They missed their chance to be the "company that everyone trusts" a long, long time ago.

That's surprisingly insightful. These robots still have a long way to go before they could be useful combat troops - but they're getting too close for comfort.

Here's my prediction: when robotic combat troops are deployed, they'll be deployed against American citizens.

Protip: use Gmail's filters to automatically label and/or move messages into folders as they arrive. This gets you the best of both worlds; no hassles putting labels on things, and you can search the whole works as easily as you'd search a huge inbox.

Microsoft has a long history of promoting all the fancy new features their upcoming version of Windows will have - and then leaving most if not all of them out of the final product.

Don't get excited about their announcements, wait until the shipping version is ready and see what they've really got.

I evaluated those for use by a major transportation company. They were almost completely useless; Windows "tablet edition" had too many gotchas where you needed to use a keyboard to proceed. The battery life was short; 90 minutes if you used it lightly.

And the construction; thin plastic casing with easy-break flaps and port covers. Incredibly fragile - but still heavy and a little too bulky.

They offered much and delivered too little. HP is still trying to play that game and failing at it to this day.

HP's problems are much worse than that. They've been driving customers away for years now - and those customers won't be coming back.

I gave them the benefit of the doubt a few times, but the DV2000 laptop was end of my relationship with HP. It had that bad Nvidia chip; HP knew those chips were bad and they had a warehouse full of laptops with bad chips in them. What did they do about it? Yup, they sold those laptops knowing they'd fail.

What did HP do about it? My experience was that their "customer service" hung up on me twice and the email response to my request for help amounted to little more than "go F yourself".

I guess fraud is OK when a corporation does it. I'll never forget, though - and I will NEVER buy any HP product again. I'll advise my friends and family to avoid them.

It'd be better to keep them out of open source; they'd screw up a wet dream.

Each time you let a corporation or the government have information about what you do or where you go, you're building the fascist society that you so vehemently deny is coming.

You may have no problem today with having someone else know that you parked in spot a-33 at the mall at 4:33, then you bought dinner for two at the Cheesecake Factory (per your debit / credit) card, then left the parking lot at 5.24. You arrived at the No-tell-hotel at 6:12 and checked into room 163 with your friend and spent 1.2 hours there.

Here's the thing that you never consider: the only reason that law enforcement collects information is to further an investigation. If some hooker bought it at the No-tell-hotel at 6:30, you'll be one of the prime suspects. If someone who stayed there on that day is busted for possession, they'll be coming to ask you a few questions.

This stuff doesn't make the law enforcement people smarter, it just makes them lazier. They can look at all of the nifty data and find someone to pin the crime on without ever setting their donut down.

Sure, quote that line about "if you've done nothing wrong then you've got nothing to worry about". And then consider that what you think is wrong and what someone else thinks is wrong (MADD for example) are two very different things. Maybe your parking data will show up in a criminal trial; maybe it'll show up in your divorce proceedings. But rest assured, it'll never show up in any place where it does YOU any good.

Rather than spout your opinion, how about checking the facts before you post again?