GPL software isn't forced on you, there's plenty of competition against free software you can always get non-GPL software if you like.
Broadband is another story, most Americans are lucky if they have more than 1 choice for reasonably fast access, and if net neutrality isn't enforced none of the current providers will provide it.
I can freely develop applications for my Android phones. As for the gaming consoles you mentioned (last I checked the iPad isn't one), those devices are sold at a loss with the assumption you will buy games from publishers who pay large fees to the manufacturer. You also can't produce free games for the devices, whereas Apple expects people to pay them for the development license even if the application will be free on App store. Not only does Android not charge for the SDK, they don't even do anything about competing app markets and they don't require apps to come from a market at all.
Running Windows 7 64-bit here, unless I missed something VirtualBox's drivers are not signed, that's why I had to click OK when they were installing. I thought they got rid of the signing requirement for Win7 64.
My ISP (Frontier) was doing this as well, even worse, when you opted out you still actually got the wrong response from DNS, it would detect your browser and give back an error page that looked similar, but not quite the same (at least that's what it did for Firefox). I noticed because the error page looked a little different and the URL was clearly wrong. I ended up switching to Google DNS until my contract was up, and then switching to the local cable monopoly (I suppose they do something similar, but I haven't noticed since I'm still using Google).
However, I'm obviously a lot more technically savvy than the average user, or even the average tech support person (they couldn't understand the problem). ISPs shouldn't be doing this, router manufacturers should start shipping their products to default to Google DNS, it's faster anyway.
What do you need DHCP for? Neighbor discovery protocol works fine. My router at home is already using 6to4 to connect to the nearest IPv6 entry point and advertising the prefix to the rest of the network. My Windows XP, Windows 7 and Linux machines all pick up IPv4 and IPv6 addresses just fine, and access to both networks is seamless. I haven't seen any problems setting it up at all. It took all of about an hour to setup.
" People also get mad at me when I point out that, by definition, nearly half of the population ranks below mean "
That's because you're wrong, nearly half ranks below the median, that doesn't mean nearly half ranks below the mean. If you rank intelligence from 1 to 10, and you have 10 people with a rank of 1 and 2 people with a rank of 10, you get an average of (30/11)=2.72. It actually doesn't matter what the number is, by definition half would not be below the mean.
Now, it may well be that half the population is below average intelligence, but that isn't the definition.
Note: I'm avoiding IQ here because that is actually adjusted based on intelligence of the population.
You should only be preventing your own customers from answering DNS queries (for home routers which act as DNS servers on their WAN port) you shouldn't be preventing them from using 3rd party DNS servers. That doesn't make them safer, most people don't know how to configure DNS, those that do will be aware of the vulnerability (and probably using OpenDNS and similar services which are presumably at least as secure as your service).
Preventing access to 3rd party DNS is just a money grab (since then you can lock people into your advertising-supported DNS).
Or, an error message could pop up saying "sorry, we can't connect to the ad server" and ask the user to check their browser. Oh, you expect everyone to open their machines to attack by allowing every ad through on every site they go to?
I've always thought that scammers in the U.S. should be punished harshly. After all, we claim to be a capitalist society, which essentially makes money the most important part of society. Those who deprive people of money by dishonest means take away the only thing that makes someone worth anything in a capitalist society.
I've certainly had my browser killed by the OOM-killer. Firefox is a hog, and I often use a lot of tabs. Simply claiming that every crash = vulnerability is wrong. Plus, a plugin could probably crash the browser very easily with no vulnerability.
A good example of an OOM-Kill, this article includes vulnerabilities for the iPhone, how about the Android? My G1's browser crashed quite a bit when I tried to load a huge page, it was a pretty memory-limited system. My Droid has no such problems.
Lots of things that have nothing to do with vulnerabilities can cause crashes, and vulnerabilities won't necessarily cause a crash either.
Using more memory and being killed by the OS's equivalent of the OOM-killer does not make it more vulnerable. Crashes are an indicator of POSSIBLE vulnerabilities. The OOM example is one of many I'm sure.
The legislature is pretty representative of the state. We're more liberal than the much of the country but conservative in our own way. It ends up with a very deliberative process. Things move slowly. Unfortunately, this also leads to a pretty ineffective government, though that isn't always a bad thing.
I agree in theory that there was good reason to have each state legislature appoint senators.
However, I live in New York.
My state government is notorious for being unable to pass a budget. This year for a while the two sides were trying to lock each other out of the senate chamber. If these clowns were picking senators New York wouldn't have had senators for at least the past 20 years or so.
In the United States, in order to ratify a treaty it must be approved by 2/3rds of the Senate. We're not bound by treaties which we have not ratified.
Wikipedia: In the US, treaty ratification must be advised and consented to by a two-thirds majority in the Senate. While the United States House of Representatives does not vote on it at all, the requirement for Senate advice and consent to ratification makes it considerably more difficult in the US than in other democracies to rally enough political support for international treaties.
Of course, the President can sign a treaty, and follow it through government policies and executive order, without the treaty being ratified, but that gives it no inherent weight in law.
The treaty which ended World War I was hotly debated in the senate, and in fact we did not ratify the treaty as presented.
In this case, the problem is people faking existing "trusted" users, so yes, it would work to require the mail to be signed before the user would be "trusted".
I know very well that Toronto is in a different country. I live in Rochester, I go there all the time. My point was, in terms of gay rights, it's an area you would expect to be pretty liberal. BTW, Toronto is closer to Rochester than NYC. Toronto is about as far from Montreal as Rochester is from NYC in terms of driving time. Culturally, Rochester has more in common with Toronto than NYC too.
It's more than that. In NYS there are over 1000 rights (1400 or something?) that are reserved for married couples. The total cost of getting each of them that you can without a marriage is in the thousands of dollars, and it takes *a lot* of time to get done. There are others for which the only legal avenue is marriage. Many private institutions such as employers only recognize marriage for certain benefits, and hide behind the "well you're not really married" defense to cover their bigotry.
This is in NYS, which has NYC and Rochester, plus Toronto not far away. I can only imagine what it's like in Washington.
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Use a modern browser with a pop-up blocker and install an ad blocker. I don't see porn when I'm browsing unless I go looking for it.
GPL software isn't forced on you, there's plenty of competition against free software you can always get non-GPL software if you like.
Broadband is another story, most Americans are lucky if they have more than 1 choice for reasonably fast access, and if net neutrality isn't enforced none of the current providers will provide it.
And I'm sure they don't prevent the query from leaking in the REFERER header, which would be trivial for them to do if they would take the time.
I can freely develop applications for my Android phones. As for the gaming consoles you mentioned (last I checked the iPad isn't one), those devices are sold at a loss with the assumption you will buy games from publishers who pay large fees to the manufacturer. You also can't produce free games for the devices, whereas Apple expects people to pay them for the development license even if the application will be free on App store. Not only does Android not charge for the SDK, they don't even do anything about competing app markets and they don't require apps to come from a market at all.
Running Windows 7 64-bit here, unless I missed something VirtualBox's drivers are not signed, that's why I had to click OK when they were installing. I thought they got rid of the signing requirement for Win7 64.
Presumably the only remaining working output would be HDCP-encrypted HDMI output, that's what would be connected to the TV.
My ISP (Frontier) was doing this as well, even worse, when you opted out you still actually got the wrong response from DNS, it would detect your browser and give back an error page that looked similar, but not quite the same (at least that's what it did for Firefox). I noticed because the error page looked a little different and the URL was clearly wrong. I ended up switching to Google DNS until my contract was up, and then switching to the local cable monopoly (I suppose they do something similar, but I haven't noticed since I'm still using Google).
However, I'm obviously a lot more technically savvy than the average user, or even the average tech support person (they couldn't understand the problem). ISPs shouldn't be doing this, router manufacturers should start shipping their products to default to Google DNS, it's faster anyway.
What do you need DHCP for? Neighbor discovery protocol works fine. My router at home is already using 6to4 to connect to the nearest IPv6 entry point and advertising the prefix to the rest of the network. My Windows XP, Windows 7 and Linux machines all pick up IPv4 and IPv6 addresses just fine, and access to both networks is seamless. I haven't seen any problems setting it up at all. It took all of about an hour to setup.
Norton is pretty loud in terms of constantly popping up messages. Probably beeps too if you don't mute it.
Automatic transmissions (even the non-CVTs) have gotten a lot better recently. If you look at the numbers the difference in MPG is very small.
My company uses Twitter to promote itself. I use facebook maybe once a week, it's a good way for family members to contact me.
Do you assume that everyone who uses these things is addicted to them?
" People also get mad at me when I point out that, by definition, nearly half of the population ranks below mean "
That's because you're wrong, nearly half ranks below the median, that doesn't mean nearly half ranks below the mean. If you rank intelligence from 1 to 10, and you have 10 people with a rank of 1 and 2 people with a rank of 10, you get an average of (30/11)=2.72. It actually doesn't matter what the number is, by definition half would not be below the mean.
Now, it may well be that half the population is below average intelligence, but that isn't the definition.
Note: I'm avoiding IQ here because that is actually adjusted based on intelligence of the population.
You should only be preventing your own customers from answering DNS queries (for home routers which act as DNS servers on their WAN port) you shouldn't be preventing them from using 3rd party DNS servers. That doesn't make them safer, most people don't know how to configure DNS, those that do will be aware of the vulnerability (and probably using OpenDNS and similar services which are presumably at least as secure as your service).
Preventing access to 3rd party DNS is just a money grab (since then you can lock people into your advertising-supported DNS).
You're only "fined" if you have income, it's an addition to an income tax, which isn't unconstitutional (sadly).
Or, an error message could pop up saying "sorry, we can't connect to the ad server" and ask the user to check their browser. Oh, you expect everyone to open their machines to attack by allowing every ad through on every site they go to?
I've always thought that scammers in the U.S. should be punished harshly. After all, we claim to be a capitalist society, which essentially makes money the most important part of society. Those who deprive people of money by dishonest means take away the only thing that makes someone worth anything in a capitalist society.
I've certainly had my browser killed by the OOM-killer. Firefox is a hog, and I often use a lot of tabs. Simply claiming that every crash = vulnerability is wrong. Plus, a plugin could probably crash the browser very easily with no vulnerability.
A good example of an OOM-Kill, this article includes vulnerabilities for the iPhone, how about the Android? My G1's browser crashed quite a bit when I tried to load a huge page, it was a pretty memory-limited system. My Droid has no such problems.
Lots of things that have nothing to do with vulnerabilities can cause crashes, and vulnerabilities won't necessarily cause a crash either.
Using more memory and being killed by the OS's equivalent of the OOM-killer does not make it more vulnerable. Crashes are an indicator of POSSIBLE vulnerabilities. The OOM example is one of many I'm sure.
The legislature is pretty representative of the state. We're more liberal than the much of the country but conservative in our own way. It ends up with a very deliberative process. Things move slowly. Unfortunately, this also leads to a pretty ineffective government, though that isn't always a bad thing.
Signing it does not bind the country to anything. There would certainly be diplomatic fallout, but no violation of international law.
I agree in theory that there was good reason to have each state legislature appoint senators.
However, I live in New York.
My state government is notorious for being unable to pass a budget. This year for a while the two sides were trying to lock each other out of the senate chamber. If these clowns were picking senators New York wouldn't have had senators for at least the past 20 years or so.
In the United States, in order to ratify a treaty it must be approved by 2/3rds of the Senate. We're not bound by treaties which we have not ratified.
Wikipedia:
In the US, treaty ratification must be advised and consented to by a two-thirds majority in the Senate. While the United States House of Representatives does not vote on it at all, the requirement for Senate advice and consent to ratification makes it considerably more difficult in the US than in other democracies to rally enough political support for international treaties.
Of course, the President can sign a treaty, and follow it through government policies and executive order, without the treaty being ratified, but that gives it no inherent weight in law.
The treaty which ended World War I was hotly debated in the senate, and in fact we did not ratify the treaty as presented.
In this case, the problem is people faking existing "trusted" users, so yes, it would work to require the mail to be signed before the user would be "trusted".
I know very well that Toronto is in a different country. I live in Rochester, I go there all the time. My point was, in terms of gay rights, it's an area you would expect to be pretty liberal. BTW, Toronto is closer to Rochester than NYC. Toronto is about as far from Montreal as Rochester is from NYC in terms of driving time. Culturally, Rochester has more in common with Toronto than NYC too.
It's more than that. In NYS there are over 1000 rights (1400 or something?) that are reserved for married couples. The total cost of getting each of them that you can without a marriage is in the thousands of dollars, and it takes *a lot* of time to get done. There are others for which the only legal avenue is marriage. Many private institutions such as employers only recognize marriage for certain benefits, and hide behind the "well you're not really married" defense to cover their bigotry.
This is in NYS, which has NYC and Rochester, plus Toronto not far away. I can only imagine what it's like in Washington.