>>I would never sacrifice that freedom for the off-chance that some piece of malicious
>>software may cause me some inconvenience.
>(shrug) If the RIAA thinks they can succeed, perhaps Microsoft thinks the same?

Apple has more-or-less proven it's a viable strategy. $200+ billion cash on hand??

>Somewhat amusing and yet disturbing is the general trend you see with consumers.
>They want convenience. Convenience of being able to get at their informatino
>from anywhere -- which of course means it has to be in a centralized location...
>Convenience of not having to worry about dealing with infrastructure -- the service
>takes care of it all.

Yes. And for malicious purposes of control, and not just about revenue sources, entities like Apple and Microsoft prey upon that desire by consumers, but they are not the only components. It is a much wider effort being played out around the entire globe. It is from a multitude of governments, a multitude of big businesses, a multitude of powerful forces behind-the-scenes directing it all (big money, big power).

>It's back to the days of mainframe -- with a bit of variation in that it's tablets and
>smartphone rather than dumb terminals... I'll bet Microsoft wouldn't mind that --
>especially if places them where IBM was back in the mainframe days, especially if
>it opens up possiblity of "pay-as-you-go" subscription type service.

I think it's about more than just revenue streams.

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