Uhm, that's a quote from the Wizard of Oz. What prompted this tirade?

Don't mind the man behind the curtain....

I can provide an ISO for Vista Business EN. You need to have the license sticker, though. If it's not "Business", I can't help. A Home variant will not work with Business.

Worker protection and Luxembourg? You do realize you can be pretty much fired at will in my country of residence, don't you? Luxembourg has pretty liberal employment laws. Also. Unemployed? Got one year to find a job... Then you're on your own. Just you know.

Luxembourg is a nice country, but you're highly mistaken about worker rights. Go read the Code du Travail if you've got some time. You can find it on legilux.lu.

Suppose we'd have the chance to upload ourselves into an AI. Let's say, a reasonably powered computer capable of emulating a large and well structured human brain, including backups, spare hardware, etc. Would you do it? Replace your human body and brain for an AI construct?

I'm not quite sure I would. I think it's best asked the other way: If you were an AI in a mechanical body with an external computer for a brain, would you trade in all that for the experience of being human? Breathing, living, being excited, ultimate fear of death, ultimate joy of love, etc.

I imagine it could sound intriguing to an AI.
Maybe we aren't to bad of as humans as we are after all.

Game of Thrones pirated; HBO doesn't mind.

Also, those media companies are run by Techno-Luddites who couldn't manage their way out of a wet paper sack with a flashlight and a jackhammer, so no wonder they don't understand how to watch shows on teh intertubes without a cable subscription.

People pirate because it is easier than being legit. If it was easier to pay, many would.

Great, now apple will sue every brewery for their innovative design of the beer can. Guess beer will have to come in milk cartoons soon.

"The individual, via insurance premiums." No, the pool pays. Therefor your 'liberty' costs me money. You have no right to my money. Wear your helmet or out of the pool. No pool, no driving, no appeal, just contracts. Ain't no government grand? Now put on your helmet, water wings, padded vest, safety glasses, steel-toed boots, leather gloves, and get that roll cage mounted on that bike. Oh, and get the extra two wheels welded on as required. You have no right to my money. No pool, no driving, no appeal, just contracts. Ain't no government grand?

Exactly. If WalMart isn't the new Company Store for its own employees, it is darn close.

Your one-sided revisionist history is astounding.

"Note that racism and other forms of discrimination was institutionalized by the very same government that you seem so willing to put in place as the sole arbiter of fairness."

Gee, where did those northern free states come from then? Oh thats right, they came as a result of government. And before you get your dander up, do remember slavery wasn't ever that strong in the north to begin with.

"It was the moral and religious institutions in the United States that fought for the end to slavery and championed civil rights for all races, and they were opposed at every step by the federal government and the Democratic party."

The first part is utter bullshit. There were many religious institutions pushing for slavery, there are passages in the Bible that were used extensively to justify it. The second part, yeah, the Fed opposed it so much they let states decide for themselves. And your dig at the Democratic party is pathetic; you are historically correct, but you are obviously trying to drag this into the modern era.

"Governments do not have morals, and when they enforce the morals that the most vocal and powerful participants in the political process it's not always a good thing."

And corporations are required by law to be psychotic in the pursuit of money. Can you honestly sit there and say you are more comfortable with groups in charge who are, by definition psychotic rather than the ambiguously moral?

" I happen to think that even were it legal, no business in the US could survive today openly discriminating against people because of race or sexual orientation."

Haven't been in the south of late have you? Hell there are still places with segregated high school proms. Come with me some time, I will take you to places I know that will give you an extra serving of spit on your burger if I tell the waitress you are gay and biracial. And how long would it take to backslide into open discrimination again? Here is a thought experiment, go look up the prison population by race, or crack vs powder cocaine sentencing, or why Sheriff Joe keeps getting re-elected. Do you thing those are do to this benevolent 'It cant happen again' age we are living in?

"They can force businesses to do things you like today, just as they forced liberty-minded people in the 19th century to return slaves to their owners."

As opposed to all the people that did it without a coercive hand? No slave ever ran to the nearest neighbor for a reason and there was a hell of a lot more of that then the Feds OR States returning slaves.

... oh and I just *explained* you the default behaviour; It's broken.

Yeah, try doing that with anything a "little larger". Ever worked with dataminers? These people do insane things....

Try using CSV in a localized setting. For example, in a country where the decimal separator is the comma and the list separator is the ;. Now, you get a CSV from a co-worker in the US. Now, you think this would work... the C stands for comma, right, right? Well, Excel makes the import locale dependent. so your co-workers CSV will fail to import. Inversely, the one you generate with commas between the numbers and semicolons as a separator, will fail to import for your co-worker.

Now, I haven't read the standard. Excel might as well implement it correctly, and even the Free alternatives might do this (I don't know, I rarely use CSV in a setting where I have only Libre/OpenOffice), but that is very damn confusing for the end-user.

Steam also allows for one other interesting use. I have many many games in my steam library, but I have only ever purchased one game from Steam. I buy games where ever and register thier codes on Steam. Thus I get all of the Steam goodness and if they ever shut down their servers, I have all my games still. Let see suXBOX do that.

The Freedom-hating Scumbags on the SCOTUS continue to chip away at Miranda.

Give 'em enough time, they'll do away with it entirely.