They are still members of the Entertainment Software Association, and that one is still on the list. So the conclusion that they pulled their support is not true. They simply made cosmetic changes to avoid further bad PR like GoDaddy got it.

If Microsoft had a successful media market so that anyone hacking the OS would also have access to copy & distribute all the digital media on the system, we would have not to wait years to fix serious flaws in the system. No wonder companies see the iPhone as the first candidate for corporate smartphones today. The media content makes it more secure than their own network.

If you set the difficulty right, you will have a difficult game.
I have seen a game (some fps, don't remember which) that had a difficulty setting called "Content Tourist". If you want to use the game as a story and finish it in 6 hours, use that. If you are a person who wants to be challenged, use the hardest mode available. There is enough middle ground for people who like to memorize 543 button combos and people who just want to see nice graphics.

If you want a game that is free from these issues, play Minecraft w/o monsters

Look out of the Window. But maybe if people trash their car it's the best way to teach them that not everything on the internet is true?

You say that they are trying to make it look environmentally worse than it is, but I do not know really how bad you can make 4 Million tons of garbage sound like to give the reader a perspective on this. I think they make it sound better than it is. If you are trying to say that they are making it sound more an island than it actually is, you are right.

What an euphemism!

This is not something that just happened one day because someone made a mistake. It's the result of decades of carelessness and ignorance.
We can be only happy that the stuff accumulates all in one place so we have at least the hint of a chance to fix it.

Try to do that with the space debris!

As we know from hacking DRM and many other things, there is no 100% secure system. There is only a question how much effort someone puts in succeeding to break it.

I guess any successful attempt from keeping idiots from blowing up an airplane is worth the money, specially because those who spend the money want to avoid the embarrassment to have someone to do something, and afterwards all the people who saw this person say "We all saw him. He was very suspicious."

Of course this is not necessarily effective. But it's the same security why we ask people to present a CV. If the guy you hired screws up big time, you can still say "But he had a PhD from Harvard!".

Of course all of this does not help you spot that someone is incapable/evil/criminal , but you have an excuse that you did what you could to prevent whatever bad happened.

Since neither MS nor most of the companies who write software for Windows know how to write a program that can be uninstalled 100% after use, you cannot simply remove IE.

Additionally, a lot of business software is relying on IE to work. It simply does not care if FF would run with it, but it simply only executes IE for in-window browsing etc.

If you upgrade from Vista to 7 and loose IE, you will be stuck with more non-working programs than you want to handle - or better - than MS wants to handle.

If something breaks after an upgrade with a forced removal of IE, the users will scream "The new Windows broke my machine!". The same thing they screamed when Vista came out.

If those WERE 86 IP's then it's definitely North Korea's work. Their IT personnel cannot handle more bots than that. They do not have enough IT folks among their slave laborers. And their "Windows ME Gulag" is still under construction.

...how many people are sitting at their breakfast table, reading this in the newspaper and laughing at the idiots who do not protect their systems properly while their own PC is right now happily writing u's over their downloaded porn.

They do. And not too little. The Chinese one-child policy has led to a behavior that the single child of the many-headed family gets spoiled beyond belief. Since the whole family lives together, a 4 to 8 headed family can cook for the little brat.

Regularly, on Chinese new year, where sweets and food are even more popular than anyhow already in Chinese daily life, thousands of kids are admitted to hospital because of digestion trouble. When the Chinese Zodiac of the "golden pig" had it's turn (last year?), a Hong Kong newspaper had a picture of a hospital in China that was completely overcrowded with fat little kids on it's front page with the headline "The year of the Golden Pig(s)!"

...on cm vs inches?

MMO players are all potential mass murderers and terrorists!
All computer games must be prohibited so people can go back and watch something as peaceful as CNN and live happily ever after.

They are trend scouts.
They follow everyone who does not tweet at all.
They want to be there while you are a twitter-nobody.
And then, when you are famous, they can claim "I followed him before his first tweet already!"

1. All nerds try to compensate their lack of FB friends by buying fake twitter followers. FB is deserted and closes down.
2. uSocial tries to save money & starts to sell all followers to several customers.
3. uSocial has to create 50 million fake followers since Kim Jong Il wants that many, but the North Koreans have only 5 PCs.
4. All the aforementioned outcasts get investigated by the NSA for their connection to Kim Jong Il, and get send to Gitmo as long as it's still open.
5. The US collapses because of the lack of IT personnel and a not properly disinfected telephone.
6. Castro takes over Gitmo and makes it the worlds most secure & cheap IT call center.
7. India collapses too, because of unemployment.
8. China buys India & the US.
Better start learning Mandarin!