http://a3.sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-ash1/27020_313252767271_313252547271_3234436_1731521_n.jpg

Considering the circumstances, I highly doubt Microsoft will have to pay the publishers a dime. Especially considering that it is promotional credit. I know Facebook doesn't pay for promotional credit, and would not be the least bit surprised if Microsoft had a similar clause. Really depends on the fine print the publisher agreed to which I am way too lazy to find so I will just concede. As far as rationalization is concerned, I was not trying to rationalize anything. Piracy is wrong. The argument I replied to was just very similar to what you see coming from companies upset over piracy and I don't agree with it.

NONSENSE! Stolen bits != lost sale. Obviously if a persons wallet is not tied to their spending they will spend a lot more. Do you work for the RIAA? Though I am against piracy now, back when napster/limewire were cool, I may have downloaded some music/games. If the limewire option wasn't available to me, I promise I would not have had any interest in buying them. Honestly, it created interest in me for some music and I ended up buying some CDs because I like owning an original CD with a cover not made with a Sharpie.

Nor would it help anyone fix his or her grammatical mistakes!

Doesn't Microsoft force computer manufacturers to sell windows only? Why is this allowed? Or am I mistaken?

But will analytics still work since referrers are turned off?

Violation of the separation of church and state? The separation of church and state has been completely warped to fit what today's "activist judges" want. The separation of church and state was about liberation, not about confining worship to private areas. Every Christmas there are lawsuits over nativity scenes. Read the original letter to Thomas Jefferson. The Danbury Baptists were not asking to have prayer banned in schools or any other issue it has been used as ammo for. "Our sentiments are uniformly on the side of religious liberty--that religion is at all times and places a matter between God and individuals--that no man ought to suffer in name, person, or effects on account of his religious Opinions" http://candst.tripod.com/tnppage/baptist.htm

Lol! Only on slashdot.

If there was only a Richard Stallman for every Steve Jobs and Steve Ballmer.... On second thought, a global epidemic of athletes foot may not be the best scenario either.

Actually it is a bit more complex than that. A Hash is just an link to an anchor on the current page. I am not sure how gmail works exactly, but I use extjs at work and it manages the history with an iframe as well. It needs a way to keep track of all the history tokens so it uses an iframe. Check out its source code if you are interested. http://www.extjs.com/deploy/dev/docs/source/History.html

Theres was a debate?

Just because you, and most other people on Slashdot, do not like Microsoft, doesn't mean they have no valuable knowledge to bring to the table. Code Complete is a book that is essentially a must-read for programmers and was published by Microsoft Press.

Sacre Bleu! Cordon Bleu! ArrrhHH!

What? I don't know that! Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

2006? That's almost 4 years ago. In 2006 Face recognition software was rated 10 times better than 2002 and 100 times better than 1995. So if that trend continued it should be 10 times better than when that article was written. PA and other states have successfully used it in catching identity thieves apply for licenses. I would write more or backup my claims, but I have a plane to catch.