What kind of a jackass sells an OS designed to be unable to share data with other OS's?

Someone who believes, "What's mine is mine, and what yours is mine, too!" In other words, control-freaks like Gates, Ballmer, and Jobs. YMMV.

+1 insightful ... if i had mod points

I still don't get it - why cars need so much software?

To drive up the price and profit margins. Silly goose.

very good. for non-speakers of French, merde means crap.

Use sid. First install sqeeeze, then add the sid (unstable ) repositories, # apt-get update && apt-get dist-upgrade. Have fun. Don't bother whining to sid developers if you break your system. You could also try Sidux, based largely on Sid with such testing as is necessary. Don't use anything but apt-get to install packages or dist-upgrade; Sidux doesn't support any other package management system. Oh and you should be in init 3 to dist-upgrade. Works well. Sis is sid though, and sometimes things break ... just like in *buntu.

Sic semper tyrannis ... and pathological liars. (With apologies to both Cato and Brutus for using their noble words to refer to pond scum. :-/)

Oh do you mean making copyright eternal; destruction of the existing public domain by nullifying it and giving what has been in it to the RIAA, MPAA, and publishing houses? You are probably right. Bye bye Byron, Caesar, Shakespeare, et al.

The authorities "care" for the average citizen is roughly 0.000. Who says the don't allow scams, embezzlement and Ponzi schemes. Isn't all that what blew up the economy a couple of years ago?

Most of our customers don't even know what bricks and doorstops are. Why should they care if we turn their boxes into them?

Fuck e-books; fuck e-book readers, including, but not limited to the Kindle, the iFad, & all the others I've not heard of. May they all go belly up, bankrupt and take the crooked publishers with 'em. Why anyone would want a crippled computer to read crippled books which can be stolen back by the "publisher" on any whim, "Just because we felt like it ... Buzz off, Sucker!" completely escapes me. Preposterous.

Funny that you think that a services-only economy is progress. Really? Suppose China refuses to export anything to the US? The shelves at Wal-Mart are gonna get real bare, real fast.

Only "artistes" and corporations have rights.

Fine. It should be destroyed, and replaced by a concrete block explaining why the memorial is gone and who to blame it on: the sculptor and his lawyer. Maybe Mr. Gaylord and his lawyer should should consider moving his sorry ass to North Korea. Of course they'd never want to live there. But they cheerfully spit on the veterans the memorial was supposed to honor.

Lawyers make obscenities like this possible--commonplace, it seems. If it is his goddamned piece of "art" he needs to fetch the crap up and get it off the public land--or to start paying rent on the public property where his "sacred IP" is being displayed now for free. If he can't come get it or pay the rent, then it should be destroyed at his expense. The greedy bastard should also be forced to disgorge the fee he was paid with interest . Fuck all these wannabe "artistes" who want to be worshiped forever for one third-rate "work." Fuck the laywers, too. Is it time to stop funding law schools?

It is being done as an executive trade agreement of some kind here in the US, or more accurately the CSA [Corporate States of America]. This has been going on since Bush II. Congressional approval not needed. Any attempt to amend it is expected to be greeted with an "It's all or nothing!" claim. Good luck fixing this fascist wet-dream. What the corporate sultans fail to realize is that it can eventually be used against them, but that is another story.