It detracts from the civility of the conversation and raises defensiveness, but it doesn't negate the validity of the argument

It's only morally bankrupt if the one doing the picking and choosing is thus. Using the Bible to create a personal mythos can be a fundamentally rational process, guided by a set of moral presuppositions, that leads to something beyond the rational. I have never met nor never read anyone who was able to create their system of values wholesale out of purely rational cloth (Certainly many tried, thinking of Kant). That's not a human failure, or a failure of reason itself, it's just reality. Myth and story are important to everyone. Fundamentalists of all stripes simply want to be reductionistic regarding their chosen "story". I have been greatly moved by elements from all the world's great religions and many of those considered to be less important. Likewise, I've been inspired by scientists who have been able to take the leaps of faith necessary to construct a fleshed out ethic, informed by both science and human values. Beyond all that, I believe that it is possible to bring values under the umbrella of science, but that won't happen when we are at war with each other and insist on embracing the variety of fundamentalism embraced on our chosen side of the battlefield. When it does, it will be because we will recognize that all of our so called knowledge is provisional, waiting to be informed by the journey we are taking into the future.

In the world of Android, the term is "root", rather than "jailbreak".

You were modded up as insightful, but for many straight quarters, Apple has been performing very well. Their stock price reflects real world, historical performance. If you happen to know that they are headed for an earnings drop, please tell us how you know.

Bikes in rain? Not so good. Can't hold umbrella and drive/ride. Can't brake so well. Wheels want to go parallel instead of serial. Everyone know serial is all the rage now.

Thanks for the common sense post. So many here think they should just get a free ride. Give me a dumb, fast pipe, don't play games with blocking ports and services and charge reasonably for bandwidth and traffic and I'm a happy customer. I'm tired of being treated as a LCD (lowest common denominator) customer and not being given sensible choices. I'm tired of being lied to when the ISP's network has issues (i.e. told to reboot endlessly when I can clearly tell where the problem is). Sell me a bona fide business connection without expecting to charge me for integration services or unneeded bells and whistles.

This is bunk. As a long term investor, I pay attention to the ethics of the companies I invest in. Poor business ethics are a large part of the reason for the mess we're in. Eventually, ethical slip ups like this come home to roost. People wise up and learn not to trust frequent offenders.

I checked the second link as well. You can go ahead and download the software, but it does NOT include a license! I've spent some years in the Microsoft System Builder program and have some familiarity with the program requirements and what is required to stay legal. There are some gray areas, and some really strange licensing requirements that put SMBs in a bit of a difficult spot. MS Office Home and Student is available from Newegg for about the price shown in your link and it can be installed on 3 computers! It says right in the license that commercial use is a violation of the terms. No doubt, a small business that has no disgruntled employees can go cheap and stay under the radar. As a business grows, this is more difficult and the licensing requirements and associated costs must be considered. It is obvious that you are not taking them fully into account, or perhaps are unfamiliar with the terms/requirements. I do advise folks to consider standardizing on OO unless their requirements suggest this will not do. Have any of the folks you've advised been through a BSA audit? We did a trial audit using a form/checklist that guided us through the process. It was a real eye-opener that didn't make us rush out and buy the site licenses. We simply moved to Open Office for all the users/computers that did not require MS Office.

Look in the Windows folder of a computer running XP. Me thinks you will see a folder "/prefetch" and that it is used just as the name suggests.

You do realize that your first link was to an academic version. This is not legal to use for commercial purposes. You might as well pirate it as pay $109 and use it in a SMB. You're NOT legal either way!

I've seen that your posts repeatedly fail to see the most important feature of free software, that being its "free as in speach" nature, more so than its being "free as in beer". Google these for more discussion.

Being able to examine and alter code is what attracts the volunteer developers AND the large companies who see the value of drawing from the well, pooling their efforts with other companies and often adding back to same well.

The founding fathers were certainly interested in free speach, and THAT is what the FSF and the free software movement are fundamentally about, even though many in this forum are apparently ignorant about that fact. For this reason, I miss the early Slashdot period.

Regarding the low rate of Linux adoption, I don't get what you mean. It is used everywhere, and the world would literally grind to a halt if a small percentage of devices running GNU/Linux were shut down.

Largemouth Bass will eat ducklings. http://www.dnr.state.mn.us/snapshots/fish/largemouthbass.html

There are plenty of senior citizens living on fixed incomes in rural areas who cannot afford satellite or cable (if it were available). They are using free TV. They've been watching free TV for 50 years. Your attitude sucks.

When the informatin is "loosed", where does it run off to? Should we have some mechanism in place to catch it before it gets in the wrong hands?