I'm not sure I would like Microsoft locking down Windows so that it won't allow me to shoot myself in the foot. Because that's what people do when they install trojan horse malware.

I admit I'm not even close to an expert on the subject, so I'd like to hear what options there are to prevent installation of trojans without seriously limiting the functionality of the OS.

Prison would be silly for something like this. I think a meaningful fine would be much more appropriate.

Other than the simple examples (polio, smallpox, etc.) ... could you elaborate? Say, for example, the Hep. B vaccine given to infants (as in, at birth)?

Are you arguing for vaccination in general or arguing, specifically, for every single vaccination that is recommended?

It's simply not as clear as you want to believe, with reference specific vaccines. And no, I don't actually subscribe to the debunked/fraudulent vaccine-gut-autism link by Wakefield. But I have actually looked for specific data regarding specific vaccines and found them to be incredibly lacking. Or non-existent.

In the case of the Hep B vaccine, it is given to infants, and yet, according to the CDC, the way infants get Hep B:
How does a baby get Hepatitis B?
A baby can get Hepatitis B from an infected mother during childbirth.

But the infant is given the vaccine regardless of whether the mother has it. Huh. Yes, there are risks related to Hep B, but what are those risks to the infant if the mother is actually tested? Suddenly, we are narrowing it down to the risk of getting Hep B and the risks of the illness itself ... narrowing those risks down to the amount of women who are tested for Hep B and are given a false negative...

tl;dr: don't assume that people who refuse individual vaccines (1) think all vaccines are bad and (2) only research quack sites.

Which is all the more reason why the US should have opposed the apartheid government and supported Mandela.

It didn't happen because Maggie Thatcher was making money off her husbands investments in the apartheid regime.

You can be as suspicious as you'd like. Mandela sought help from the West before going to the Soviet Union.

Margaret Thatcher's investments in apartheid South Africa made it a no-go. So, Mandela, unlike Reagan and Thatcher, did what he thought was best for the people of his country, black and white.

Perhaps there is significant revulsion to the way Elon Musk relies on heavy advertising/propaganda to construct a corporate image. The same is true of all big corporations --- but that's no excuse, since there's no fundamental reason why a tech nerd should be blindly accepting of how corporate capitalism works. People might respect the technological / engineering side of Musk's ventures, but feel icky about how this is tied to marketing/PR goons saturating the tech media with gushing propaganda stories aimed at rich investors (instead of plain-spoken, informative, "engineers' talk"). Of course, the appearance of genuine anti-corporate-PR revulsion to Musk's enterprises is magnified by slimy corporate PR shills from competing industries adding their own FUD.

Of course Musk will interpret everything as positively as possible, but as long as he does not actually lie or try to deceive with heavy handed rheorics or in other ways, then I have no problem with it. In the end, the reader (esp. on /.) should be intelligent enough to discern just how far what he says should be believed. I am not familiar with the SpaceX stuff, but when it comes to the Tesla cases I have not seen him say anything I would classify as dishonest yet. For example, you may argue about how exactly Tesla fire occurrences should be compared with ICE vehicle fires and you might end up with somewhat different numbers/results, but he does have a point when he says that fires occur in ICE vehicles as well.

In every piece concerning Tesla on slashdot, there are a few people making negative comments about Elon Musk. However, not once have I seen the complaints backed up with facts, examples, or otherwise, just negativity without any indication as to why.

Could someone please explaint to me why there is this hate on Elon Musk, and what it is about?

(citation needed)
I have heard a similar story before, but haven't been able to find any useful reference, and have presumed it to be an urban legend. (snopes doesn't have this particular one, as far as i can tell)

As a parent, and occasional teacher of other children, though, more evidence on a subject such as this would be useful, if you have any.
thanks-

It's a nonsensical argument, pay it no mind. The fact is that everyone in China pirates all their software, so forcing everyone to upgrade will only result in a spike in piracy numbers, which will make the guys (allegedly) trying to reduce piracy in China look bad. Looking bad (aka "losing face") is a big deal in most Asian cultures. That's really all that's driving this announcement.

In reality, EOLing XP will make no practical difference in China any time soon. The Chinese love XP. I've sent refurbished laptops with clean installs of Win7 to friends in China, and the first call I get after they get it is "how do I install XP?" Anyone who thinks those people are going to give two shits whether MS continues to support XP or not is nuts.

It is just a matter of finding correct monetization strategy.

Just look at the pie charts - Pandora already has the system in place for music discovery, which is the coordination problem that the corporate model provided one solution for. Once bands don't need corporate music middlemen, they can get half of the revenue, or more.

I've heard a bunch of great stuff on Pandora that I'd never heard _of_ before. Apparently there were a bunch of rock bands in the early 70's that achieved very little commercial success but recorded lots of fantastic music. I assume they each got a little piece of each of the thousand times Pandora played me the same blasted ad for an Intel ultrabook (which are overpriced).

Getting new bands into the new system is the challenge. Their odds are low with the A&R man, so going into something like Pandora makes a bunch of sense. Pandora even has the filtering technology in place to detect the turkeys.

Of course a random op-ed on RWW carries more credence than an entire industry, right?

FTFY. Label contracts pass the cost of basically everything on to the artist, so other than providing an advance and access to some slimy contacts, the label isn't really doing much for the artist (and in the end, the label owns the copyright on what the artist paid for... it's like a reverse work for hire).