Well I have no problem paying for my music or movies. Mostly I buy indie stuff now days and used CDs as I suspect many people do. Could be that's why their sales are down. If they were more interested in producing a quality product at a reasonable price perhaps their profits would increase. Welcome to capitalism. You don't provide me with the product I want at the price I want to pay, and I don't buy your product. I do take issue with my tax dollars being used to protect corporations over our citizens. You do see the distinction do you not? Piracy sucks, but is stamping out piracy more important than finding kids that have been abducted? Think about it. Not only that, the idea that we're ever going to be rid of piracy is a fantasy. In high schools all over the US you've got teenaged kids that buy an album and burn a copy for 100 of their closest friends. Those friends can subsequently make copies for their friends, and so on. No IP address. No public evidence. How are you going to stop that? You might as well go piss in the wind. Sure the Internet makes it easy, but people have been making illegal copies of music since the 60s, and probably even longer than that. The feds have better things to do than protecting the media industry.

I disagree. The guy is 19. There could be a whole host of reasons why he would say that including, but not limited to he actually did it. He could have been trying to impress a girl on the board, maybe he wanted everyone to think he was cool, maybe he wanted to one up someone else on the board, etc. The point is if the police didn't see him do it they shouldn't be charging him. Pulling his license can be a serious consequence if he has to get to work, and doesn't work near a bus stop.

Agreed, but how do you know he wasn't just spouting off? Saying you did something and actually doing it are two different things. If the police didn't catch him in the act I don't see how they can arrest him for it.

No, entitlement is expecting something you haven't earned or paid for. In the case of customer service, I don't think it's unreasonable to expect a company to treat their loyal customers at least as well as new customers. A product is only worth what people are willing to pay for it. If it's only worth the discounted price then the customer leaves when they jack up the rates. Or at least they should. If I'm the customer I get to decide what I'm going to tolerate, and what I'm not.

At least it's not as bad as Windows Genuine Advantage. The only thing genuine about it is it's a genuine pain in the rear, and the only advantage belongs to MS. I wouldn't mind Ubuntu counting my installs. As long as all they are doing is sending a ping everyday I think that's fine. According to the article this is only something for OEMs so it's not even something most people have to worry about. If they really wanted to get a good picture of how many people are using their system they should track unique connections pulling down updates. Less invasive and far more accurate I would think.

Yeah, you're a troll, but it's still funny.

I'm not sure you have a valid argument there. Most motivated by profit put out work designed to make them a profit. Those who put out work for the love of the art create things that money could never buy. Look at 99% of the music released by the majors and you'll see what I mean. It's all crap.

So when your HD fails what do you do? Go buy a retail copy of Windows?

So now when the network dies tomorrow it really will be solar flares. So much for my running joke.

Careful... if you say anything bad about the anointed one you are likely to get marked as a troll. Oops. Too late. No bias on this site. Not at all.

I guess they better tell all of the false scientists who deny it. Have some perspective... http://www.geocraft.com/WVFossils/ice_ages.html

How do you know it's already happening? If you look at actual historical data (google is your friend) you will see that there have been many periods of time in the history of the world where it has gotten warmer, and then subsequently cooler. gw totally ignores that data, and instead relies on computer generated models that use cherry picked data in the 1950s as a starting point to come to their own predetermined conclusion. That my friend is not science. 60 years of data based off actual historical data isn't even enough to establish a baseline.

Ok, I'll suppose global warming is real even though instead of using actual climate data that's available they use data that's been computer generated, and even though they shout down and blackball any scientist that disagrees with their flimsy (and logically flawed IMO) conclusions. Yes I'll set all of that aside and consider your statement. Even if it is real, what are you going to do about it? Stop driving? Turn off your electricity and get rid of anything that requires it? What are you doing on Slashdot? Stop talking (if we could get the politicians to do that it might help)? How could you hope to impact it if you don't even definitively know the cause? Do we just keep trying stuff until we find something that works? If it's mankind that is causing it then the obvious solution is to get rid of mankind. You go first off the cliff I'll follow a little later.

I don't think we are at a point where we can say it's undeniable. I don't care how many people you get together to say the same thing if one of them or all of them are full of crap it's still crap. If it were such an undeniable issue then why the need to manipulate data, why the need to blackball dissenting scientists, why the need to garner credibility? Those things alone tell me that this is far from open and shut.

Oh come on... everyone knows dirty hackers only use open source software.

I don't know if that should be classified as flamebait. It is plausible based on past experience. As much as I hate Obama's policies I'll point out that he wasn't the first one to think bail outs were a good idea.