> Oh. The thing everyone and their brother is told to NEVER check!

By whom? Almost no home users installed Windows 7 themselves. They all have copies pre-installed by OEMs who all left this on. And as I've said above, on corporate networks this is turned on and off at the Domain level (and I haven't seen one business do this except a few that were pirating Windows) , so corporate users CAN'T turn this off. Based on my experience, I'd guess 70-80% of Windows 7 installs left MCEIP on. The only big exception would be OEMs pirating WIndows in China, etc.

MCEIP was opt-out, not opt-in, and anyone joined to a domain can't opt-out. So it's pretty clear that the majority (even pirates) of Windows 7 boxes were reporting stats.

It's not focus grouped. MS tracks behavior in Windows 7 through the Customer Experience Improvement Program. Home users have to explicitly disable this and if you're joined to a domain (corporate network) this can only be disabled by admins. So most people were probably reporting.

And that data showed that people were navigating the Start Menu, as opposed to using shortcuts pinned to the Taskbar and Desktop, less and less.

If you're using the Start Menu a lot then you're in a distinct minority of Windows 7 users.

> because your $500? ($1500??)+ PC is a simpler more reasonable solution than a $50 bluray player and $5 worth of cables

Not true. A $50 Blu-Ray player won't have an internet connection and so won't be able to update the firmware to play the latest discs with the latest copy protection (updated yearly). It is for this reason that every Blu-Ray player other than the PS3 is basically garbage.

This argument is sort of missing the point that the primary technical problems with DVD and Blu-Ray are:

1) Being forced to watch trailers or menus with no option to skip.

2) You can't (easily) back up them up. Especially Blu-Ray.

3) For security reasons, Blu-Ray executes in a JVM which is slow and buggy. Plus the aforementioned firmware issues.

At least properly mastered Blu-Ray discs (relatively few) have the advantage of being true High Definition (as opposed to fake streaming HD, like Netflix) content. And that's still relatively difficult to pirate being 40 GB and all.

Don't believe the lies. The explict purpose of ALL DRM is to orphan users and force them to repurchase content. This was the explicit reason written in the documentation for CSS, Apple's Fairplay, etc. This is the reason cassette tapes existed instead of consumer DAT (quality of DAT was too good and no DRM so users couldn't be forced to repurchase again). It's the reason for the format limitations on DVD-Video (DVD can do HD just fine). Blu-Ray's hideously complicated DRM system is one of the big reasons BD won over HD-DVD. etc.

If you buy anything with DRM your are GUARANTEED to be locked out of your content eventually. iTunes will not last forever and even if they do, they will eventually just "switch systems" and screw the old users. There has never been a DRM system that didn't deliberately orphan it's users.

WALMART IS **NOT** RIPPING DVDs!

again

WALMART IS NOT DOING ANYTHING WITH THE PLASTIC DISC YOU BRING IN!

The sole reason you bring in the disc is proof of ownership. What Walmart does is that they look at the DVD title, and then look in the Vudu database to see if it's available, and if so they add the Vudu version of the title to your account. If it's not already on Vudu, you don't get anything and (presumably) are not charged. You DO NOT have your own separate online storage with your own personal content.

Basically this service allows you to buy Vudu movies at a discount.

I'm not sure how they're going to deal with rentals or with (well done) pirated discs. I suspect they might keep the DVD after "converting" it.

The USA and Israel stand completely alone in wanting to bomb Iran. The vast majority of Western democratic nations oppose a bombing campaign against Iran and consider Iran's quest for nuclear power legitimate. And the US doesn't give a crap about democracy in the Middle East. The US continues to back vicious Arab dictators against popular liberal democratic opposition movements throughout the Middle East. The US explicitly backs the torture and murder of prisoners in these nations, all of whom are far less democratic and have far worse human rights violations than Iran. The US' support for China, the very worst of the worst, invalidates any "moral high ground" the US is standing on.

The problem is a huge amount of dishonesty on the part of the US. Nobody really believes that Iran is going to nuke Israel. That's asinine. The situation is much like Cuba. The US is still butthurt because it "lost" against the revolution in Iran and is whining about the fact that the Islamic government EXISTS. The US doesn't want Iran to get nuclear weapons because that would make an Iraq-style US invasion of Iran impossible, and overthrowing the Islamic government is still an explicit policy goal of the US.

> BTW most of those regulations are god-awful stupid,

No, most of those regulations keep the food you buy in the grocery store from killing you. Read "The Jungle". If it wasn't for modern food inspection and regulation you'd be getting food poisoning at least once a month because that was exactly the case before modern regulation. Several of your relatives would have dies from food poisoning.

Most people that want to eliminate food and drug regulation are either too young or too stupid to remember the situation before those regulations were put in place. Lots of people died. Dying from poisonous "medicines" used to be the #1 cause of death among women in the USA, before the FDA.

Sometimes it goes too far. Ex. Unpasteurized milk and beer is completely illegal in the USA. This dates back to the 1930s and is because stupid Americans couldn't be bothered to refrigerate beer on store shelves and are too cheap to offer uncooked milk (which only stays fresh a few days) and ended up poisoning LOTS of people. I think you could be able to buy unpasteurized milk and beer IF it's properly stored and labeled and IF the store owners are willing to soak up the liability for poisoning people.

> Besides the second Iraq war, what wars has the US initiated?

The Mexican-American and Spanish-American wars come to mind, as well as the US invasion of Hawaii. These stand out because these were explicit US wars of conquest. There is also the fact that the USA is explicitly based on the genocide of Native Americans.

> Iran trained Iraqi insurgents

There is no credible evidence for this. Iran cooperated closely with the US occupation in Iraq and with the current Shia-led government. Iran was involved in the training of the new Iraqi Army and police and was involved in equipping them.

> Iran funds Hezbollah

True. Hezbollah receives much of their funding from Iran.

> Iran funds Hamas

Sort of true. Iran probably gives money to HAMAS, but HAMAS receives most of it's funding from Israel. Most of their arms are provided by the IDF.

Recommending multi word passwords is fucking retarded. 95% of the login systems people will use DON'T ALLOW MULTIWORD PASSWORDS. Linux doesn't allow spaces, no website I can find does, and most corporate Windows networks also block spaces.

Passwords are a shitty way to secure anything. The only reason we use them at all is because it's easy to code (and in that sense, easy in general). Do you think replacing the keylocks on the front door of your house with a guy who asks people "What's the password?" is a good idea? Of course not. You use a key aka token to open the door.

Obviously, tokenized security is better. The best token is your fingerprint hash (since you can't lose it).

My reccomendation is to use randomly generated passwords that are between 8 and 16 characters and are stored in a password vault secured with a token, ideally fingerprints. Buy one of the Authentek readers and haul it around or use a smartphone token or a hardware token. If you go with the reader or hardware token be sure to buy spares.

I think the biggest thing people don't understand about copyright is that, for the most part, the corporations that hold the copyrights on most major works (film, books, music, etc.) STOLE those rights from the creators either through unfair business practices or straight theft. My experience is limited to the movie studios and record industry, but these companies claim copyrights they do not hold all the time. A lot of DMCA takedown notices are invalid on their face because the company making the infringement claim doesn't actually hold the rights.

This beyond the fact that every single modern work is completely derivative of older, non-copyrighted works. Ex. Disney claims they own "Snow White", a story that is hundreds of years old. It is literally impossible to create a new song. There are only so many combinations of notes and they've all been used before, there hasn't been a "new" song for hundreds of years.

One could also talk about the enormous damage copyright does to history and culture. Since nothing goes into the "public domain" anymore, that means that modern works (tv shows, etc.) will simply cease to exist after a few decades since nobody can legally archive them (except the corporate owners WHO NEVER ARCHIVE ANYTHING) and even illegal archiving is technically blocked (DRM, etc.). Most films from the 1930s through 1970s are completely gone for this reason, they only exist in a few private collections (if they exist at all) and they can't legally be shared or distributed to anyone.

I'm pretty sure the plan is to kill T-Mobile's 1700/2100MHz AWS network, their 3G/"4G" network running HSPA, and replace it with a new 1700/2100MHz LTE network. Existing T-Mobile customers will be shifted to AT&T's 1900MHz GSM network. The new LTE network will be much faster.

This isn't really true. In the USA there are lots and lots of regional carriers that are compatible with the phones of other carriers because they use their networks. Sprint in particular is a big reseller so you can take their phones to Boost, Cellular South, Cricket, Liberty Wireless, Movida, U.S. Cellular, Virgin Wireless, and others, Verizon has MetroPCS, AT&T has Cellular One, and T-Mobile has Simple Mobile.

The solution AT&T has been working on is offloading as much of the data traffic as possible to their hotspot network. Traffic is typically worst in metro areas where AT&T typically has hotspots so it makes sense. For example: You can't actually disable the WiFi on an iPhone (4 at least), regardless of what the UI says. As you travel around, you are silently connected to any AT&T hotspot within range and your traffic is redirected to that. The iPhone will report its' still connected to 3G. I'm pretty sure it's the same with the iPads.