First,you post an inflammatory statement that is absurd on its face regarding West Viriginia's water. Second, even if you do believe that the water there is substandard, you might want to look at something called 'Coal Mining' as a much more likely source for groundwater contamination. Does that mean that there aren't areas where the water can be screwed up? Of course not, but you can't just declare the latest cause du jour to be the culprit just because it is the latest potential polluter.

Living in West Virginia, I can answer this... In the southern coalfields where they are doing mountaintop removal (surface mining to use the exact phrasing) there are way higher levels of selenium and other cancer causing agents in the local water:

http://blogs.wvgazette.com/coaltattoo/category/selenium/

http://blogs.wvgazette.com/coaltattoo/category/water-pollution/

They're making moves you or someone else find's questionable. But I do not believe a businessperson would find their latest moves questionable; in fact, I think a businessperson might find their latest moves to be brilliant.

And we all know what is good for businessmen != what is good for the consumer. In fact, I argue just the opposite. It would be excellent for the businessmen if they could get your money without offering anything in return. Doesn't make that option good for the consumer.

The only question will be, if the community tolerates their latest moves. Will you still recommend Ubuntu?

For now yes since this can be uninstalled. The moment they make it that it can't, then no I will not recommend it since it constitutes spyware in my mind.

What exactly are your objections to their latest moves, and are they really 'valid' objections; or are they just fears, that Canonical is losing sight of Linux community principals?

As I said above, I see it as spyware. They are indexing searches and transmitting that to Amazon. That is the very definition of spyware behavior.

Certainly, there is nothing wrong with offering an open source product, that allows users to buy things from you.

As long as the technology and connection standards on client and communication protocols are open source, and i'm free to take the code, and can easily make changes, so my app store is what things will be bought from instead of Canonicals, on my special build of Ubuntu..

And as long as I can remove it I am fine with whatever marketing BS they throw in. The question is why should people have to disable / uninstall crapware that venders throw on? This is getting almost as bad as the Windows world where new machines are loaded with crap nobody wants or uses.

Automated system is not a person, so the notification is invalid. Problem solved.

Ummm... No... See these words:

electronic signature

Electronic signatures can be attached to electronic (automated) take-down requests just as automatically.

It should be less than for deliberate perjury, but lesser the same way running over someone accidentally is less of a penalty than deliberately.

Why? They deliberately submitted to Google an unverified list claiming it was infringing under "penalty of perjury". They can do this simply because they know they won't be charged with perjury. Quick, name just one case where a major studio was so charged... Won't happen because the system is and always has been rigged in their favor.

Just so you know, to make a cellphone you have to license a lot of patents from Ericsson, RIM, ex-Nortel (now Apple), Google/Motorola, Samsung, and the list goes on and on and on and on...

That is because of the standards being reliant on patent technology. FRAND be damned. That whole concept needs to go away in standards. It isn't a standard if the barrier to entry is that minefield.

There are two reasons I ran the test. First, as I said, for shits and giggles. To see what it would break if I was forced to update like the poor sods stuck on XP for whatever reason. Second, because we are already seeing things for Windows 7 beginning to die. An example is the gadgets. Going to: http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows/downloads/personalize/gadgets reveals what we will see more and more.

Who said I skipped 7? That is what I am running. 64 bit to be exact. The thing came with Vista and I upgraded to 7 for stability issues. Besides, 7 handles multi-gesture better than Vista.

I wonder if win8 will ever pass the xp market share

Microsoft's biggest competitor has always been itself. This is an effect of having the software pre-installed and aiming for the unwashed masses who don't go beyond what they got with the machines.

As a side note, for shits and giggles I just ran the Windows 8 upgrade assistant and it informs me I will have to dump almost a quarter of the applications I use daily and that my screen resolution was too low for snap (whatever that is). It also informs me the touchscreen I have (HP Tx2Z) isn't compatible and that gestures won't work right. Now the question is why I should update and lose perfectly good software I purchased and is working right now as well as system functionality that is working right now just to have the "latest" version of an OS? Why should I go through the pain of the update when I don't need to? That will always be the Microsoft fight and why XP is hanging in there for so long.

Google is a private company with no obligation to list anything. It would serve these people right if they were totally black holed on Google after a ruling like this. Both the things they want listed as well as the things they don't. A search of this individual returning zero results would be just great and would fit the ruling to the max.

So are you now making the claim that medical science has never been wrong? How about http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antibiotic_misuse or how about http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thalidomide ? Just because a drug is effective doesn't make its application or use for a particular purpose correct. And yes, vaccines are drugs. And like all drugs big pharma has an interest in seeing as much use (=sales) of those drugs as it possibly can. In the case of Thalidomide it took years for the effects to be revealed then many more to be corrected. Meanwhile I don't see you calling the doctors who applied it as directed or the pharma company pushing it "killers with blood on their hands" like is being said here about those that choose to disbelieve a particular claim.

Skepticism of scientific claims is a good thing. It forces those making those claims to look deeper into them. Not too long ago it was scientifically accepted that the Earth was the center of the universe. It took skeptics and a large amount of time to disprove that claim.

So by your logic putting everyone in prison solves the issue of where people are. And people shouldn't complain because it is for their safety right?

A legal attack on what grounds? That "we're not getting the profits we have a God-given right to"?

It wouldn't be the first time a spammer thought they were entitled to have their garbage in your face. I remember this case in 2003 against Spamhaus. IIRC the spammers lost that case resoundingly in the end.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2003/04/23/florida_spammers_sue_antispam_groups/

One man's "terrorist" is another man's "freedom fighter". You will never have peace there until both sides can objectively see the other sides issues. Hamas has a definite beef with Israel and Israel has a definite beef with Hamas. Neither side is willing to admit that doing an eye for an eye, a tit for tat is the wrong way to achieve their goals. All the finger pointing and blame assigning isn't going to stop the religious war going on there. Meanwhile, people who have nothing to do with either beef are on the receiving end of missiles. All this does is create more animosity and another reason to lob rockets at each other.

Which is why you can get a stand-alone usenet provider relatively cheap. Luckily my provider does still provide NNTP.

I could probably loot, pillage and burn London with a 1000 pre-Christian Vikings trained and equipped with 19th century technology.

Just remember, the horns go on the OUTSIDE of the helmet.