So when someone leans against your door and they happen to find it open then they're free to do whatever they like? Post your address. I'm sure there are some takers.

Instead of blaming the policy makers, let's blame the semi-retarded population. They can't name the vice president, but they can name the tot mom. Fucking worthless.

Dear Mr. Kaspersky, What you've just said is one of the most insanely idiotic things I have ever heard. At no point in your rambling, incoherent response were you even close to anything that could be considered a rational thought. Everyone in this room is now dumber for having listened to it. I award you no points and may God have mercy on your soul.

Word isn't just used to print documents, it's used to create, format and revise them. The author is correct that now instead of printing documents users tend to e-mail them or transfer them to their recipient by some other electronic means, but that doesn't negate the need for a program like Word that allows you to put the document together, format it and revise it later as necessary.

I use Word at the office to put documents together every day. Ultimately they go to clients as protected PDF files so their contents can't be easily modified, but we do use Word to initially create them or to go back and edit them if we need to send a revised PDF to the client.

OpenOffice has progressed to the point where we could probably phase out Microsoft Office internally, but since we send and receive files in other Microsoft Office formats frequently with both clients and vendors and since we're a small technology company with a Microsoft Action Pack subscription the software and licenses costs us next to nothing.

That's complete crap. Mac's aren't for everyone, but I can tell you that every single person that I've convinced to buy one since I made the switch in 2006 raves about them. I'm typing this on the first Mac I purchased, a $400 Mac mini with a G4 processor and 512 MB of RAM. I don't have any anti-virus or anti-spyware software installed and I've never had a single virus or a single piece of malware or spyware. I've never had a single piece of hardware fail, I've never had to reinstall the OS or any program on this system and I've only ever had to do a hard reboot twice in the entire time I've owned it. With the exception of a hardware failure I can not say any of the above about my shiny new Dell PC at work that I got in January of this year.

I've convinced 6 friends and family members to switch to Mac's over the years. I've received a total of 3 calls to help them with things since they got off the ground with a good understanding of how to use the Mac. In the last two weeks I've had to help 3 of my Windows using friends with things (one was hardware related and the other two were malware infections and they both did have name brand anti-virus / anti-malware software installed).

I can't rave about Mac's enough. The extra few hundred dollars you'll spend on a Mac is completely and totally worth it if you value your time at all. I used to be one of the biggest Apple hating flame throwers around. My buddy in high school had one and it was POS. Not anymore. It's worth every penny plus some. Get yourself a 6 month old Mac mini and try it for a while. You'll be happily shelling out over a $1,000 to get a better model within 6 months and 5 years down the road you'll still be using both.

Apple's are for people that are too busy getting actual work done to want to waste time updating AV software, reinstalling the OS, defragging their hard drive, re-installing screwed up software, removing malware, and installing hundred of OS updates.

And thanks to brilliant open source software like NeoOffice (an Aqua port of Open Office) that exists for the Mac, outside of the OS and the apps that came with it, I haven't spent a single additional penny on software. I spend all day at work fixing fubar'ed Windows PC's. The last thing I want to do when I come home is do the same thing.

And should I come up against some situation on the Mac that's too much for me to handle I can make an appoint at the Genuis Bar at the nearest Apple store and get help with it for free from a real live American citizen making a decent wage and not some dude pretending to be named "Phil" who I can barely understand located in a call center in India making $2 bucks a day. Again, worth every penny plus some.

Copyrights and non-software patents aren't a bad thing. In fact as originally intended they are a very good thing because they allow artists and inventors to turn a profit on their ideas. They originally gave a limited windows upon which those who created the work or came up with the idea could turn a profit before it entered the public domain.

I'd love for a party to appear that wanted to bring copyright and patent laws back in line with what they were originally intended to be. Namely a reasonable, limited amount of time in which a work or idea was protected. Reasonable and limited being the operative words.

Comcast is another company whose commercials strike me as pure lies and misinformation based on a grain of truth

As a general rule of thumb never trust claims made in an advertisement. One of the great things about the Internet is that there are a plethora of sites out there that you can turn to get a better idea of how products and services really work. I rarely buy an expensive product or service these days without checking it out first.

Your right. The west blows. So move to North Korea and then post to your hearts content. Oh wait ...

Thank you for reminding me why abortion should remain free, safe and legal.

Who would've thunk it.

Apple's netbook / tablet PC will be out sometime in 2010 and, as usual, it will rewrite the rules and Microsoft will then change these silly specifications in an attempt to try and catch up to Apple. I've seen this movie before.

You're looking at it the wrong way.

User listening data is not really that useful as a tool for filing lawsuits. It is useful as a tool for tracking and potentially identifying leaks. For example: suppose User X listened to a new album ten days before it was actually released, and is friends (on the site) with User Y who listened to it twelve days before the release date, and User Y is friends with User Z whose profile matches up with an intern at the studio. Odds are that User Z -- the intern -- is the source of the leak.

And then users X, Y and Z are all sued in court for copyright infringement.

Apple's netbook / tablet PC will be out sometime in 2010 and, as usual, it will rewrite the rules and Microsoft will then change these silly specifications in an attempt to try and catch up to Apple. I've seen this movie before.

And justifiably so. This entire thing is a joke. This guys lawyers are going to have a field day suing the overzealous assholes involved in this clearly illegal search and seizure and I'd go after the government lawyers that should have known better than to try and defend their actions as well.

More Slashdot hyperbole. Voicemail isn't going away anytime soon. Voicemail will go away about the same time Linux is widely adopted on the desktop. That is to say, not anytime soon.

Well it's about fucking time.