I thought the attorney made a good point ...

"Regimes in the past have always started with the schools, where they develop a compliant citizenry," Whitehead continued. "These 'Student Locator' programs are ultimately aimed at getting students used to living in a total surveillance state where there will be no privacy, and wherever you go and whatever you text or email will be watched by the government."

Poor girl. She just wants to live in freedom. I wonder where she got that idea?

True. So if you became entirely pickled and besotted or as Ben Franklin like to put it, "seen a flock of moons", you may not arrive at the correct destination, but you will arrive there safely.

I hope those who comment on Scott Adam’s article take note of his caveat, “written for a rational audience that likes to have fun wrestling with unique or controversial points of view”. It’s a thinking-out-loud piece, which coming from Scott Adams, I enjoy.

I think he is wrong on two important points. One, I believe the Constitution does protect privacy, and I do not think Hitler analogies are self-refuting arguments. Hitler analogies are overused and too easy to make, which makes them fall on deaf ears, but not inherently self-refuting.

However, I do think Adams makes one good point. For those of you who are waging the war against the loss of privacy – news flash – you lost that war decades ago. Apparently you didn’t get the memo. It may be worth fighting to get privacy back, but it isn’t something we are in danger of losing. You cannot lose what you already lost. In this respect, I believe Adams makes a compelling case. Whatever privacy you think you enjoy is an illusion. It is a part of your life the government doesn’t care about at the present moment.

I know there is a habit here at Slashdot to only read and comment on the summary. Trust me, this article (though long) is worth the read. Very insightful. I did not know about the stack ranking system at Microsoft. What an amazingly stupid and suicidal system. Again, if you only read the summary, go read the article. It's worth your time.

Ooooh fun. Another LInux vs UNIX vs OSX vs Windows vs Darwin vs BSD vs some other *nix war. Does anyone remember which side I am on?

Democracy is one kind of freedom; Open Source is another kind of freedom.

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but I think most would agree that the brownish theme was more than a bad idea. It's always the first thing to go when I install a new Ubuntu distro. The new theme is a big improvement, but I think they could have done better. But it will make a better first impression. However, the great thing about the Linux user interface is, you can change it to look any way you want. If you are one of the few who liked the old brown theme, it should take you less than a minute to get it back. And if purple and orange isn't your cup of tea, go for Clearlooks or whatever you like. You can download all kinds of custom themes. Again, what you have in Ubuntu (and other Linux distros) is total control over the visual appearance of your UI. Mark Shuttleworth isn't deciding what theme you must use, but what theme you first see. It's a suggestion, not a mandate. After that, it's all up to you. That's the freedom of Linux.

"Climate is what you expect, weather is what you get." — Robert A. Heinlein

Just my opinion for what it's worth. What gets me is the either/or evaluation of cloud computing. It's either good or bad, dumb or smart, the future or a dead end. What I see is the diversification of the technology landscape, not a monolithic movement in any direction. For some people, cloud computing is the ticket. It's all they need and they are going to love it. For others (like me), I like my island PC, enjoy tinkering with it, but will selectively use elements of cloud computing, such as Gmail. Others will have nothing to do with the 'cloud' for either ideological or need-based reasons. The technology is allowing us to do more things, not fewer things. What we will see is people doing more things differently as it suits them. I think the Chrome OS has a future, as does the Linux desktop, Windows and the Mac. The Xbox, the Wii and the Playstation are not the end of the gaming PC, but just an increase in the many ways technology will be used for people to amuse themselves. At some point in the future (in some Darwinian fashion) a selective pressure may simplify the technology landscape. There will be winners and losers. But at this point we are in a Cambrian explosion of diversification and multiplicity of options, and this is going to continue for some time.

Not perfect, but a good start.

Always worked for me.

This is someone spoofing Microsoft with a fake Ad, right? I mean, Microsoft couldn't be that stupid, could they? A corporation with that much money and access to the best marketing talent money could buy, wouldn't put out something out that lame would they? Someone explain this to me. Or do flying chairs cause cerebral damage?

I can't speak to the main issue of this story, but XP is anything but off the market. I bought a new copy of XP from New Egg last week for $90 and installed it on my daughter's computer. She has an older computer that cannot run Vista, and she lost her original XP CD. When her hard drive crashed, I replaced it and put the newly purchased copy of XP on it.