Versions of IE before IE4 were actually called "The Internet" on the desktop and had an icon of a globe and a magnifying glass.

No other major browser has the word "Internet" in its name, and if it did Microsoft could probably sue for trademark violation. No doubt calling their browser "Internet Explorer" instead of "Web Explorer" to take advantage of the then-more-well-known term "Internet" over "Web" worked out well for them. They may have actually propagated continued confusion of the two terms by doing so.

IE6 has stuck around because Firefox and Chrome (and possibly Safari as well, although I haven't heard anything about its upgrade process) silently push major and minor updates by default, and this is not even noticed by broadband users until they close and restart the browser. IE7 lagged behind for months because Microsoft wanted WGA authentication first, which made IE7 difficult to push through Automatic Updates.

Also, installing a new version of IE is nothing like installing a new version of Firefox. Upgrading IE also upgrades the IE core of Windows, which takes a long time. After download, Firefox takes all of 30 seconds to upgrade, even major releases. Faced with little time and even less incentive to care what browser version they are running, so long as what they have is working, it isn't surprising that a lot of Windows users don't even bother to upgrade IE.

What makes you think that the government is only targeting these cases and completely ignoring the others you mentioned?

At best there wouldn't be anyone left in office. At worst, you will have multitudes of politicians declaring "This is different! Things will be different this time!" because inevitably the opposition will invoke this clause every chance they can, regardless of justification.

So cayenne8 is a failure because he or she is joining a growing segment of the population who is not interested in having kids?

I'm sorry. I didn't realize that we as individuals were all obligated to reproduce, even if it may be against our will.

And the right of first sale. If I buy a CD, and decide I hate it, I can sell it secondhand. Likewise for anything sold to me on a physical medium. If I shell out money for something sent digitally, even if the cost is minimal, it is forever a sunk cost, never to be recouped.

Yes, but only if the copyright holder deems it profitable enough to distribute in the first place. The costs may be lower than physical distribution, and the statistics of demand more immediate, but you are still at the mercy of the copyright holder, no matter how old the thing in question is. There's also the complicated situation of how to deal with everyone else who worked on what you're after (contract obligations and such) and well as licensing issues overseas (Hulu only being offered in the US).

While cost certainly plays a factor for some people, not everyone supports copyright reform because they are cheap.

If the sequels are truly crappy, then those who wrote them will be unable to cash in.

On the other hand, any potentially truly awesome sequels may never see the light of day thanks to the current system.

Don't confuse DRM with security. DRM exists for stuff that is supposed to be generally available for everyone, but has locks and restrictions on its use, even after the transaction or exchange of money. Security is for confidential stuff that is not designed to be accessed by everyone, even if they can pay. Those who use DRM may still want the public to use their stuff, but only on their terms. This is a case where those who wrote the document did not intend for it to become public at all.

No, but some of us have machines dated from that era or older, and would rather see some use out of them then chucking them in the garbage.

Some of us have also noticed that computers, from the perspective of those who's most resource-intensive computing task is playing videos, have crossed the line from improvements to planned obsolescence around that same time. I for one am sick of the unnecessary bloat.

That's because the Xubuntu team (on Jaunty at least) decided to destroy all that is good and wonderful about Xfce to the point that Ubuntu actually uses less recourses than Xubuntu. I'd wait for Lubuntu to come out or do as another poster suggested and install LXDE from another Ubuntu flavor.

Plugins are add-ons in the Mozilla universe. The term "add-on" is used by Mozilla to mean extensions, themes, and plugins. Saying "plugin" instead is merely being more specific as to what type of add-on is being discussed.

Let me explain my situation at the current moment.

I almost never run Windows anymore, so up until now I didn't even know about this stunt by Microsoft in the first place. However, Firefox is still my primary browser, so while Microsoft's move is upsetting (and I want to take the time right here to say that at no point did I disagree with anything in your last paragraph), at the current moment I am far more concerned that I may have lost my control over my browser if Mozilla is able to arbitrarily disable any add-on that they want to, regardless of reason, without offering an opt-out mechanism. Firefox's update system, by contrast, is fully automatic and enabled by default yet I can still choose to disable parts or all of the update system should I want to do so. Apparently the only way to disable this is by some obscure about:config entry, which was not mentioned anywhere on the linked Mozilla page on blocked sites and that I only found out about by reading another Slashdot comment. Whether this particular add-on is supposed to be on the machine at all is, in my opinion, another concern entirely, and separate arguments can be made against it. My personal concern at the moment is Mozilla's mandatory kill switch.

At no point does any of this excuse Microsoft's silent installation of something that will harm the Web in the long run, but neither do their actions excuse the fact that Mozilla can now kill any add-on they want.

I see that you did there, and it was a lovely attempt at a straw man. The fact that the plug-in had no right to be on the system at all is irreverent. What is relevant is that Mozilla tried to disable it without offering an option to leave it on there or the ability to undo what Mozilla thinks is best, giving the user final say on the action. What if it wasn't Microsoft's add-on, but something you knowingly installed? Would you feel different then?

How about providing an option to re-enable the plugin or add-on, regardless of what Mozilla says and regardless of whether it is the vulnerable version or not? Hide it in the preferences if you must, but make it possible and not excessively difficult to find (i.e.: don't bury it in about:config or something). I am the sole administrator of my computer, and I should always have the final say on what gets installed, uninstalled, updated, upgraded, or changed on my computer, and that should never be usurped by anyone, be it Microsoft, Apple, Cannonical, or Mozilla, without my explicit concent.