That's what I was trying to express to him. I love America, don't want to live anywhere else, and want to try to improve my country.

The person I was replying to apparently didn't think that way. If he's tired of the complaining, then he can either (A) work to improve the way things are or (B) leave or (C) bitch about other people bitching. It's not a command, it's the way things are.

BTW, call me a redneck again and I'll drop a 400 lb Bubba on your house! LOL

Personally I can't stand rednecks. I live in a state full of them and I'll be glad when I get out. They've adopted a plan of statewide sterilization by teaching "abstinence only" sex ed. Works for me. The less of them there are, the better.

Typical American attitude: gather together and complain without fear of reprisals.

This is one of the principles America was founded on. If you don't like it, get out. I, for one, am tired of your whining.

If we all adopted *your* attitude, nothing would be done, and it would be as bad as in Mexico.

That's pretty well the case. The official M$ stance is "if it's OEM, it must be installed on that machine that it was bundled with -- period."

If it's retail, only one version of that OS can be installed on one computer.

That said, upgrading your computer and installing an OEM version means you can run into problems.

Whatever happened to "If you paid for it, it's yours, do what you like."

The only way Windows will ever truly be customizable is to have the Windows installer ask what functions the user will need, then install the necessary services. You can have a basic, intermediate, and advanced version of the installer, keyed to each user's computer literacy.

That way, if all you want to do is browse the internet, and check email and do some word processing, you have a lean, mean machine. If you need to do more, there are additional services for that you can install. Of course these services should be able to be installed/uninstalled after initial installation as well.

I know you can type "services.msc" and disable from there as well, but I shouldn't even have to have them on the system. :(

You got me there. I never understood why IE was the browser of choice in the Enterprise and Firefox was off limits. It was explained to me as "security reasons," and I told my IT guy that Firefox was widely known as a more secure browser. Then he told me that my company probably wants to blame Microsoft if anything goes wrong, and there's a ready-made cash cow if anything goes seriously south.

Let's see: an unlikely pay-out and damaged credibility if there's a serious data breach, vs. taking real steps to make your network more secure. Hmm...which to choose...

I've never seen a pop-up for NetFlix. Oh, right, I forgot...

I use Firefox. :P

That's right. Kinda what I was thinking all along. Firefox started as Mozilla, with a lot of people writing user.js files and coding in javascript to make it work they way they wanted.

Now, with Firefox, you have a number of people writing extensions to make Firefox work...well...the way you want. It would make sense to have a Linux core, and then have a number of programs to download if you wanted to "flavor" your Linux experience. It would be easier for me, personally...Linux has a zillion distros, and I'm not sure which one I should even pick.

Mod the parent up!

I always thought they should do more. I'm not particularly scared of it, but I always thought that since there's a massive amount of information available on you anyway, why not implement this in a useful way?

Go to a job interview, they could have a resume, letters of recommendation, supervisor comments, phone numbers, etc already on file. No more wasted paper or wasted time filling out the same info on different forms.

Go to a hospital, they could already have the meds you're on, anything you're allergic to, and any afflictions you currently suffer from along with symptoms, last blood pressure reading, x-rays, etc -- even if you've never been there.

Enlist in the military, they'd need things for that, including competencies, education, etc.

Insurance companies, well, unfortunately would have limited medical access.

The uses for a big pool of info, with limited access, would be massive. The best thing is that it wouldn't be available online -- it would be available on a data crystal or some other media capable of storing massive amounts of information. You could even have a retina scan or a galvanic skin sensor to make sure the right person has the medium, rather than a crook who ran off with your wallet or an identity thief. RFID doesn't scare me. I think it could be a step in the right direction. As a man who's tired of answering questions and filling out forms, I think this could be a boon, not a bane.