HOWEVER, there is a difference in attitude between "losers are stupid and should never be informed of the facts of life" and something at least aimed toward making the users more informed.
If you have a deadly disease, there is a difference between the doctor knows the name and refuses to tell you that name and the doctor tells you the name but you are not competent to understand the terms. Me I prefer the latter.
Hiding file extensions does not do EVERYTHING to help out the bad guys, but it does draw a line in the sand as to where Microsoft stands regarding informed victims of its software.

>Why is it that they can provide 250GB of transfer for $45/month, but the next 250GB costs $500?
In a word. Oversubscribed.
Anyone who subscribes to the second 250GB tends to use ALL the first 250GB (instead of the more usual 5 or 10 GB).

Apple IOS has more games than all other game systems combined
http://www.intomobile.com/2010/11/17/apple-ios-iphone-ipa/

The simple act of reading any book doesn't make you a better person. However the subsequent incorporation of the ideas held in the book to your own life may well have an effect (just ask any Christian about the bible, a devout muslim about the Koran, any 16 year old who has just read Atlas Shrugged, Myra Hindley about the Marquis de Sade). Whether the changes result in a human who is better or not may end up being a subjective judgement, but you can definitely say the human is acting differently as a result of those ideas. They may act differently such that you appraise them as a 'better person' or a 'worse person'. Without the means of transferring ideas and knowledge to the next generation through books, I think it's fair to say that the human race would have advanced much slower. In fact picking up the right book can inform us about the effect the Gutenberg press had on our culture.

Further, expensive placebos have been shown to be more effective than cheaper placebos.

Unfortunately the Burroughs refused to run mainframe software with such bugs. Burroughs died.
IBMs ran such software without complaint. IBM survived.
Since the programs certainly had some design errors, it really becomes a question of which erroneous behaviors are silliest. Often the "most correct" are the silliest.

Methinks that atheism is effectively just another religion and that overzealousness and exclusiveness in all of them is a problem.

Sure.

However, the Texans won't fall for it. They take a moment to add up all the money they get from the "evil" federal government, and suddenly they're not so interested in leaving.

Actually, I hope you're off on your percentages -- I was hoping it was more like 20% right-wing fanatics pushing their religion vs 20% of the left-wing fanatics wanting a godless, socialized state with the rest of the 60% of us reasoning people in the middle. Meanwhile, a very small percentage of jihadist-wing Islamic whackos are trying to kill us all. I very much sympathize with AZ - it's our worthless, spineless government over the last 20 years who have ignored the basics of the original constitution. Yes, our government is a mess, the alternatives suck even more. What IS the answer?

While you're right that both of the major parties are nealy identical, it's silly to describe them as "pro-free-market". They both advocate, and drool over, their own control over the market. Claiming that "The free market has failed" when it hasn't seen the light of day is ignorant.

Anyone else notice that BP's attempts to fix their mess all involve recovering the oil, and they've not tried anything that involves sealing off the well? Are they trying to prevent environmental disaster or are they trying to maximize profits?

Since when is being "pro-america" a bad thing for Americans?

>MS products are good in firms that have the resources to insure all machines are homogeneous and up to date, firms that require a high level of collaborations of complex non-technical documents

Including both customers' and vendors' computers. (regardless of how or how not technical) ;-)
Actually you need to make exactly the same errors in the same way that your big customers/vendors do.
Esperanto is a better language for everybody to use rather than English/French/Spanish/German.etc-etc, BUT

It is always useful to be able to blame your own mistakes on somebody else's version/configuration/whatever of software.
With Microsoft this is much easier than if using software that actually works correctly.

"Whatever happens, we have got the Gatling gun and they have not..."

And that doesn't prove the contrary.

Perhaps you could come up with an example where there is no correlation, but there is causation?