…but lets think of it this way, the Ask toolbar is a simple tax on the stupid. If you are stupid enough to install software with it’s default settings then you get what you are given, If you don’t bother to read what you’re being asked while installing then the same thing goes.

I just reinstalled windows on my machine and so downloaded among other things a new copy of utorrent. Paz was actually surprisingly good, I downloaded it simply because it was offered and really what is the downside to that?
Two or three of the tracks have made it onto my default playlist and there are a few others that I don’t mind either. Rather better than most albums commercially produced.

It’s also sad to see people continualy defend their actions as being just because they are actions taken in the pursuit of monetary gain. What I find even more disheartening is that these same people have absolutly no idea of what the “money” they are trying to hoard really represents. You would have to agree that you can not pay a debt with a debt. So why are you focused on hoarding liabilty funds? Federal Reserve Note’s are just that, and continual novations of debt with the U.S. Federal Government and all U.S. Citizens as Co-Sureties helps no one but the Creditors. I think you would also agree that operating in a positive sum game whereby debt is of-set and settled, rather than novated, is a much better solution.

It still amazes me from time to time how prescient certain people from the past have been, but then I am just forced again to remember that there is nothing new under the sun.

“America is said to be the arena on which the battle of freedom is to be fought; but surely it cannot be freedom in a merely political sense that is meant. Even if we grant that the American has freed himself from a political tyrant, he is still the slave of an economical and moral tyrant. Now that the republic — the res-publica — has been settled, it is time to look after the res-privata, — the private state, — to see, as the Roman senate charged its consuls, “ne quidres-PRIVATA detrimenti caperet,” that the private state receive no detriment.(15)

[16] Do we call this the land of the free? What is it to be free from King George and continue the slaves of King Prejudice? What is it to be born free and not to live free? What is the value of any political freedom, but as a means to moral freedom? Is it a freedom to be slaves, or a freedom to be free, of which we boast? We are a nation of politicians, concerned about the outmost defences only of freedom. It is our children’s children who may perchance be really free. We tax ourselves unjustly. There is a part of us which is not represented. It is taxation without representation. We quarter troops, we quarter fools and cattle of all sorts upon ourselves. We quarter our gross bodies on our poor souls, till the former eat up all the latter’s substance.

With respect to a true culture and manhood, we are essentially provincial still, not metropolitan, — mere Jonathans. We are provincial, because we do not find at home our standards; because we do not worship truth, but the reflection of truth; because we are warped and narrowed by an exclusive devotion to trade and commerce and manufactures and agriculture and the like, which are but means, and not the end.”
http://thoreau.eserver.org/life2.html