They didn't steal anything, they only made a copy! Original owner still has his copy too!

Well that's a stupid line too. You really don't want a true democracy, as then this black box would be implement just if more people are for it than against it. Every minor group would be abused as well, and less popular opinions probably would get you thrown into jail or killed.

Yep, and stuff like "BACK DOWN NOW OR WE WILL BRING YOU DOWN" and making treats doesn't help at all. If anything, inane emails like that just hurt the cause.

It's hilarious that you rant about trading bots while at the same time Bitcoin is promoted as a non-controlled currency and free from real world restrictions. Freedom goes both ways, you know.

They don't have a trouble if someone documents polices wrongful actions. They have a trouble with site that collects and lists police officers private home addresses, which lead them to receive threats via mail. The site also tried to show if police officers personal political opinion is right or left.

The site wasn't really for the purpose the summary and article make it sound like. It mainly collected personal information, addresses and even social networking accounts of police officers. Europe takes privacy of private persons much more seriously than US, and the information was even used for making threats.

I'm all for making police actions more transparent, but single police officers should have some privacy regarding their personal life too.

So what can you comment if saying anything about a product makes you a shill? If you say good things about it, you're obviously a shill. Nobody would say something is good. If you say bad things about it, you're obviously a shill for their competitor, depending on which one the reader likes more.

It's the same kind of ignorant bullshit. If it isn't Linux, it obviously can't be good. Anyone that points out flaws is obviously a shill.

Yes, there are actual real life organizations (huge ones!) and there's lots of funding going to Washington to enable that astroturfing on Slashdot. It's all a big conspiracy, just to post a comment on slashdot!

No, they aren't. I have said Visual Studio is the best IDE because frankly that is my (and many others) opinion. And jeez, someone has the balls to have consistent opinions!

IIS and Exchange are actually widely used - Microsoft owns almost 50% of that space, the rest going to Linux and BSD. A lot of companies internal servers are also IIS and/or Exchange, and that's why they don't always show up in market share charts.

You do know that things change and advance? To be honest, the expensive phones 5 year ago really weren't that good. They were clunky, slow and offered features that would be common place in cheap phones now. There's a reason why Apple didn't make iPhone before they did - they had to wait until that time it was actually feasible.

Yeah, it's obvious Ballmer doesn't know how to make a successful company. He has only been the main guy handling the worlds largest computer technology company's finances since the beginning. On top of that he also seems to make lots of long-term plans (Xbox, Bing, even while they were hurting first), unlike competitors who just go for quick money grab. Such a bad business man.

Windows Phone 7 UI is really well done. It might come as a suprise, especially after Windows Mobiles, but it really is. It might even be better than iPhone's UI. Android is a copy of iPhone, but not that well done. On top of that it seems to change a lot between different manufacturers and versions. There's no unified look.

If you have looked at any of the Android tablets, they aren't really that well done either. iPad is a lot better and more polished product. And, Windows 8 tablets will have the advantage of being able to run standard Windows programs if they want to (.NET apps should work even without recompiling).

Like Ballmer says, they aren't even targeting the geek group. They are targeting both casual people and business people. They don't want to mess around with the system. iPhone is just for casual people, the artsy type and geeks who just want a good platform. However, to be fair, I find Windows Phone 7 to be a solid platform and Nokia should be able to make great hardware for it. On top of that it supports .NET and Visual Studio, which quite honestly is the best developing environment on the planet. So if you're an existing Windows developer, moving to Windows Phone 7 is piece of cake.

He does have good points, and others have said the same before. Even Steve Jobs said the same. Instead of hating Ballmer for stating the truth, maybe we should work on Android to make it better. But as years go by, I find that GPL and Linux geeks fall under that a lot - they completely ignore what people actually want, and the answer is usually something along the lines "do it yourself". Sure, that's fine for a hobbyist project, but you shouldn't be surprised if people choose other products instead or point out why they do so.

What comes to searching, I've noticed Facebook can do a good job with this, for certain areas anyway. While traveling I've noticed that many restaurants, guesthouses and even hotels tend to have a Facebook page even while they don't have a website and can't find them from Google. That's also probably why Google is scared of Facebook - even if we techies generally don't search there, lots of people do. It makes creation your page easy, and the interface is look is still unified so it's not like MySpace. On top of that it's also easy way to discover things when you don't know about them, especially via friends or the people they know. It's especially handy when backpacking or moving to new city. You find interesting stuff you wouldn't have known to look for.

Microsoft already owns Apple stocks. It owns lots of Facebook stock too, and that has grown even more than Apple within the recent years and become one of the most visited sites on the internet.