Most notepad apps sync to cloud servers. So they would still require "internet" access, which means the ads would not be gone. The biggest problem with being able to remove permissions is that people will use that to try to get rid of in app advertising. That in turn may cripple app functionality. Not a problem for technical users, but for normal users that is not a good experience. For developers, it means less revenue. For these reasons it is doubtful that Google would adopt this model of "you asked for x but I only gave you y".
If they stole my notebook, they would have to format it. There is no way they would be able to guess my password and get logged on. And since the drive is encrypted - simply removing it and placing it in another computer to try to get the data is not going to work. I am always amazed at these people who do things like loading this "prey" software but can't be bothered to have a strong password on their notebook. It just seems stupid to not protect your data more than you protect your device. I imagine most people here take simple precautions like strong passwords and drive encryption, right?
You could actually see that the calc.exe process in the video Vupen put out was running a medium integrity level (which is standard user). It did not escape UAC and get elevated to the high integrity level. The person recording had process monitor open and displaying the column that shows the integrity level. So it would depend on what the exploit was trying to do. If it was "delete user files" or "send user information to some web site" the exploit would work fine. If it was "install this malware that requires admin to install" it would not work - at least not as shown. It would need to find a Windows exploit to elevate from user to system in order to do that. There certainly have been some exploits that have done this (recently there were some true-type font exploits that could do it, among others). So, if the exploit was complex enough to use the shown exploit to get local code running, then use another exploit to elevate privileges in Windows - sure it could work even if the browser was running as a limited user. That said, it becomes a lot harder to craft an exploit that would do both.
The issue isn't always really that JS lets the baddies do anything to your machine directly. It is usually more that it allows them to do a redirect to a site that is serving an exploit kit with lots of nice exploits against browser objects that are usually auto-instantiating (for folks who aren't running a blocker or the like). Examples of common auto-instantiating objects would be Flash and Acrobat Reader. These can be exploited without anything visible showing to the user. Often, vulnerabilities in these programs are used to do nefarious things like install fake AV programs that render your machine mostly useless unless you pay. (They tend to intercept process start events and stop the programs from starting and display "infected" messages).
So, since the browser normally trusts and runs any JS referenced by the site - no matter what other site it comes from or redirects to, it is a problem.
Agreed 100%. I'd add that there is one of those slippery slopes between honest difference of opinion and people spreading intentionally false or misguided (uninformed) information. Obviously even experts in the field differ between themselves on some of the details. It would be chilling to see only the "government version" of the 'truth' be available. Honestly, I don't know how someone entrusted as the 'censor' is supposed to tell the difference unless they themselves are also an expert on all things nuclear.
Sure you can. The password simply has to work as if it was the user and the user can't know about it (in other words you can't change the password and hand over that because then the user would know something happened since they could no longer log on with their password). Companies just need to add a second password that is only enabled (only stored) when they government wants to do some snooping. The request comes in, the web company creates the second password and supplies it to the government. No problem. Minor changes to the security system to accept two passwords as correct instead of just one.
Well, we know that isn't true. Try this: http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2011/03/google-android-microsoft/. According to that, an MS rep said, "Microsoft has taken these actions against Barnes & Noble, Foxconn and Inventec because they are commercializing products that infringe our patented innovations.” That pretty much shows your "only defending against patent trolls" to be patently (pardon the pun) false. Microsoft historically has not been quick to sue for patent infringement, but in recent years has been much more likely to go to court. How about this one: http://itmanagement.earthweb.com/osrc/article.php/3807801/Bruce-Perens-Analyzing-Microsofts-TomTom-Lawsuit.htm where they went after Tom-Tom for the patent on FAT32 of all things. You can no longer just claim that Microsoft doesn't go after patent infringement and doesn't attack other companies.
Now, your statement that MS isn't a patent troll is, of course, true. MS hasn't sued people over patents that MS isn't using in devices of their own. They aren't just an "IP holding company" like your normal patent troll. But they have clearly gone beyond the days of holding patents merely for defense.
You are correct; stealing does require that the original no longer be in possession of the rightful owner. I do agree that we need to come up with and use a term other than theft for this. There are two different things going on:
1) Making an unauthorized copy. Let's call that copyright violation. 2) Using that software after violating copyright. Let's call that freeloading.
I think we should be able to agree on these new terms. They pretty much EXACTLY spell out what is going on, irregardless of your stance on whether it should be legal or not.
You certainly make a good point about how there are a lot of devices that can / could handle general computing tasks that are not "PCs" (such as tablets and phones) and that those generally don't run Windows. However, today, most of those devices are still considered secondary devices - and many of them require a PC or Mac in order to get their updates. This will change, and not all of them require it. But - right now - most of them are ancillary devices. For example, most updates for the iPhone require it be tethered to a PC / Mac in order to get them. In the Android world, many phones do OTA updates (like my Motorola Droid), but my Wife's HTC Aria just got an update to 2.2.2 and it had to be applied tethered to a PC (not a Mac) and was a wipe and load. I do believe that it won't be too long before most of these devices dispense with that tethered connection. Today though I have to consider a lot of them as secondary devices - and unlike Steve Jobs I can't call them "post PC devices" when they still require a PC / Mac in order to get updates.
Honestly I guess I am just not sure anymore where this stuff is going. What is the difference (other than the "on the internet") between posting the address of a physical record store and posting a link to say Amazon.com? Both take you to where you can buy the record. Now, how about posting the physical address of a flea market (where you know there are physical "pirated" CDs, not to mention usually some real stolen merchandise) and posting a link to a "pirated" song or video on the net? Both are a pointer to where the "illegal" stuff is. But one gets you arrested and your domain taken and the other isn't a problem at all? Why? Or maybe I just gave them ideas. The next thing they will take is some domain like FleaMarketDirectory.com (which I just made up).
Actually, Intel recommends overprovisioning the drive even further. For example, I have a 160 GB SSD in the notebook I am typing this on. It is provisioned to 128 GB (and formatted to 125 or so). http://cache-www.intel.com/cd/00/00/45/95/459555_459555.pdf. You do indeed see a speed increase by leaving more of the drive "unavailable" to BIOS. We've been using Ubuntu Live CD's and hdparm to set this.
Most of these infections have been coming from Flash and Adobe Reader exploits. Maybe the ones you got weren't, but many of them are. It is amazing how slowly people patch Flash and Reader - especially with all the exploit kits out there targeting them. About 8 months ago both my boss and my brother in law got one of these fake AV programs. Both got them through adobe Reader, and both were from normal everyday websites where the ad network had served ads with the exploit included.
However, you can get rid of the thing faster by just booting to Windows PE and deleting the file and registry entry. It takes about 10 minutes (and that includes the boot / reboot).
We use it at work a lot when sending notes to large groups of people. If you were to use To: or CC: to these groups, you always get the couple of blockheads who "reply all" to say, "take me off of your distribution list". They are too stupid or too busy to realize that it makes no sense to do a "reply all", but that's what they do. Then you get the storm of people who equally stupidly use "reply all" to tell people to stop using "reply all". Many years ago we had some folks mistakenly send to a DL that contained most of the 50,000 people in the company. The resulting storm of "reply alls" actually caused mail service slow downs and an outage or two. (There are now permissions applied to those large DLs). In IT when we have to send a note to a DL containing (for example) 100 people, we use BCC just to avoid the crazy people using "reply all". We find it a best practice to put at the bottom of the note a message like, "this note was sent BCC to the following groups:" (and list out the DLs). On the other hand I've found no use at all for BCC at home (although others on this thread clearly have some use cases for it).
Most modern browsers like Firefox already do that for you too, even if you type the URL straight in.
I thought that Chrome, Firefox and IE would all help to detect phishing sites. The other day I actually received a phishing email (purporting to be from Chase - a company I don't bank with). It was the first time I'd gotten one in years. I figured it was a good chance to test the phishing blocking in Chrome, Firefox, and IE. I went ahead and put the URL into Chrome. It took me to a site that looked like, but was not, Chase. I put the URL into Firefox. It also took me to the phishing site. I put the URL into IE 8. It gave me a "this looks like a phishing site" warning and did not take me to the site. Honestly I was completely surprised that IE did this better. I really haven't used IE for anything but Intranet sites at work in years. I then went to the Google page to report a phishing site and reported this URL. Two weeks later, Chrome still took you direct to the site. Of course so did Firefox because Firefox uses the Google service for detecting phishing sites. From what I can tell, Google never did block the site even though it had been reported. The site itself is now offline (since these sites never have a long shelf life).
While those are good tips and I generally agree with the fresh OS install, you can often get similar results by purchasing from the company's small business site instead of their home site. I can't speak for HP, but I have done this with both Dell and Lenovo and been pretty happy. The last Lenovo notebooks I bought for home (the kids and I needed new ones last year) had only the Google Toolbar and a couple of the less useful Lenovo utilities to uninstall. It doesn't take much time at all to do that - faster than gathering the drivers and re-installing the OS from scratch. But you definitely need to avoid buying from the "home user" parts of their sites or your will indeed get all that foistware (and are then better off rebuilding the machine).
I'd imagine they would use the iPad for more than just the static plays. For example, when watching the game, you always see the players and coaches going over printouts of things that have been happening directly in the game being played (taken from above in the "booth") - seeing how the other team's defense reacts to certain formations, etc. The iPad could easily replace this function and could even include video instead of only static pictures of this. However, they would need to have the connectivity turned on in order to make use of it for the in-game updates.
Although this idea can work, it just starts an escalation. Assume Firefox is updated to do this. Firefox has to track the information about addons it knows about so that it can detect the new one. The slimeballs that are doing this eventually figure out how the tracking works and set it to approved. Then Mozilla makes an update to encrypt the store of known addons. It stops the slimeballs for awhile. Eventually, they figure out how to copy an encrypted data blob that has several known addons already allowed - including theirs. Mozilla makes another update - this time to use some LUID type information as part of the encryption so that the files can't be copied. Another escalation. Unfortunately it is hard to stop bad behavior with technical solutions.
I agree that prevention of the resale market is a plus for the publishers of the games. Many / most of them have wanted to prevent folks from doing that and erode the "first sale doctrine" (US anyway) to the point where the publishers still control it even though you "bought" it. This actually goes for books as well as music, video and games. So online "sales" (almost more "long term lease") is good for publishers. In some cases it can be good for consumers (scratched disks aren't a problem), but it is a mixed bag - some good, some bad. In particular though the xbox case you mentioned is not 100% correct. While it is tied to the original, when you get a replacement there is a MS website where you can go to transfer it to your new console so that you don't have to be online. I just had to do that when we had an xbox360 die on us. The process was slow and cumbersome (7 pages of about 9 items on a page to transfer all of my son's map packs and our Rock Band songs). But it does work and enables you to have the new machine own those titles. For some weird reason, they only let you do this once per year. That seems ludicrous to me - what if our new xbox got stolen or perished in a fire? No transfer to a new one for another year.
Anyway, there are definitely pluses and minuses to the download option. Heck, with all of the "extra value DLC" you have with games today that you can only get with a serial number a lot of the secondary market is already eroded even with DVD.
Your first paragraph is a great summary of the situation. I think many people "know" this to be true, but enough fools will be parted from their money for the current investors to get out while ahead of the game just like you say.
Anecdotal point - I am one of the legion of folks who have nearly abandoned their account. I think the last time I checked it was 2 weeks ago and that was only to click "ignore" to a friend request from one of those people that sees messages "suggesting" friends because "you have 4 friends in common" or whatever. If you aren't a real world friend, eventually people learn to decline. Then they learn to prune their existing list. Then they lose interest. I guess the cycle goes something like this:
1) Accept all friend requests 2) Realize you need to block all games from your feed 3) Learn to block all the "send a (whatever)" apps 4) Block some of the "friends" who always rant about politics or religion 5) Realize that accepting all friend requests is probably stupid 5) Actively prune your friends list. 6) Post less frequently 7) Lose interest altogether 8) Profit!! (Yes, because you have some formerly wasted time back!)
Devices like the iPad are just holders and consumers of media
Actually I think that may really be the whole point. Levies of this type (as the summary says) have typically been applied to things like CD-R, blank DVD, music players, etc. - because of the fact that they ARE holders of (often copyrighted) media. I don't agree with these levys at all; I think they are very misguided, but I can see how they got into a quagmire trying to define what is "like a CD-R" (holds content) and ended up getting it a bit wrong.
Not 100% true. I've had only one article on the front page so I certainly can't speak for all. However the link I provided in my submission was to Engadget. The link that was published was to some site in the UK. They also added / changed some sentences that garbled the intent so much that it became confusing. I WISH they would only publish what the user submitted (maybe correcting a typo or two).
Don't forget that Assisted GPS (A-GPS) requires network access: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assisted_GPS. Some of these folks may have just been trying to get you a correct fix faster by using A-GPS. Unfortunately, you can't tell from the Android permissions screen as you will just get things like "network access" which can be used for any purpose - benign, nefarious, or anything in between. I don't know what the answer is to this, but I know I would prefer to be able to tell the app what sites / services it could access.
Google already is an ISP. Haven't you kept up to date: http://www.google.com/tisp/. They have had this out there for awhile. I heard it didn't bowl anyone over. You'd think that a company like Google that is flush with cash could do better.
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Most notepad apps sync to cloud servers. So they would still require "internet" access, which means the ads would not be gone. The biggest problem with being able to remove permissions is that people will use that to try to get rid of in app advertising. That in turn may cripple app functionality. Not a problem for technical users, but for normal users that is not a good experience. For developers, it means less revenue. For these reasons it is doubtful that Google would adopt this model of "you asked for x but I only gave you y".
If they stole my notebook, they would have to format it. There is no way they would be able to guess my password and get logged on. And since the drive is encrypted - simply removing it and placing it in another computer to try to get the data is not going to work. I am always amazed at these people who do things like loading this "prey" software but can't be bothered to have a strong password on their notebook. It just seems stupid to not protect your data more than you protect your device. I imagine most people here take simple precautions like strong passwords and drive encryption, right?
You could actually see that the calc.exe process in the video Vupen put out was running a medium integrity level (which is standard user). It did not escape UAC and get elevated to the high integrity level. The person recording had process monitor open and displaying the column that shows the integrity level. So it would depend on what the exploit was trying to do. If it was "delete user files" or "send user information to some web site" the exploit would work fine. If it was "install this malware that requires admin to install" it would not work - at least not as shown. It would need to find a Windows exploit to elevate from user to system in order to do that. There certainly have been some exploits that have done this (recently there were some true-type font exploits that could do it, among others). So, if the exploit was complex enough to use the shown exploit to get local code running, then use another exploit to elevate privileges in Windows - sure it could work even if the browser was running as a limited user. That said, it becomes a lot harder to craft an exploit that would do both.
The issue isn't always really that JS lets the baddies do anything to your machine directly. It is usually more that it allows them to do a redirect to a site that is serving an exploit kit with lots of nice exploits against browser objects that are usually auto-instantiating (for folks who aren't running a blocker or the like). Examples of common auto-instantiating objects would be Flash and Acrobat Reader. These can be exploited without anything visible showing to the user. Often, vulnerabilities in these programs are used to do nefarious things like install fake AV programs that render your machine mostly useless unless you pay. (They tend to intercept process start events and stop the programs from starting and display "infected" messages).
So, since the browser normally trusts and runs any JS referenced by the site - no matter what other site it comes from or redirects to, it is a problem.
Agreed 100%. I'd add that there is one of those slippery slopes between honest difference of opinion and people spreading intentionally false or misguided (uninformed) information. Obviously even experts in the field differ between themselves on some of the details. It would be chilling to see only the "government version" of the 'truth' be available. Honestly, I don't know how someone entrusted as the 'censor' is supposed to tell the difference unless they themselves are also an expert on all things nuclear.
Sure you can. The password simply has to work as if it was the user and the user can't know about it (in other words you can't change the password and hand over that because then the user would know something happened since they could no longer log on with their password). Companies just need to add a second password that is only enabled (only stored) when they government wants to do some snooping. The request comes in, the web company creates the second password and supplies it to the government. No problem. Minor changes to the security system to accept two passwords as correct instead of just one.
You know, Gozer was very big in Sumeria.
Well, we know that isn't true. Try this: http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2011/03/google-android-microsoft/. According to that, an MS rep said, "Microsoft has taken these actions against Barnes & Noble, Foxconn and Inventec because they are commercializing products that infringe our patented innovations.” That pretty much shows your "only defending against patent trolls" to be patently (pardon the pun) false. Microsoft historically has not been quick to sue for patent infringement, but in recent years has been much more likely to go to court. How about this one: http://itmanagement.earthweb.com/osrc/article.php/3807801/Bruce-Perens-Analyzing-Microsofts-TomTom-Lawsuit.htm where they went after Tom-Tom for the patent on FAT32 of all things. You can no longer just claim that Microsoft doesn't go after patent infringement and doesn't attack other companies.
Now, your statement that MS isn't a patent troll is, of course, true. MS hasn't sued people over patents that MS isn't using in devices of their own. They aren't just an "IP holding company" like your normal patent troll. But they have clearly gone beyond the days of holding patents merely for defense.
You are correct; stealing does require that the original no longer be in possession of the rightful owner. I do agree that we need to come up with and use a term other than theft for this. There are two different things going on:
1) Making an unauthorized copy. Let's call that copyright violation.
2) Using that software after violating copyright. Let's call that freeloading.
I think we should be able to agree on these new terms. They pretty much EXACTLY spell out what is going on, irregardless of your stance on whether it should be legal or not.
You certainly make a good point about how there are a lot of devices that can / could handle general computing tasks that are not "PCs" (such as tablets and phones) and that those generally don't run Windows. However, today, most of those devices are still considered secondary devices - and many of them require a PC or Mac in order to get their updates. This will change, and not all of them require it. But - right now - most of them are ancillary devices. For example, most updates for the iPhone require it be tethered to a PC / Mac in order to get them. In the Android world, many phones do OTA updates (like my Motorola Droid), but my Wife's HTC Aria just got an update to 2.2.2 and it had to be applied tethered to a PC (not a Mac) and was a wipe and load. I do believe that it won't be too long before most of these devices dispense with that tethered connection. Today though I have to consider a lot of them as secondary devices - and unlike Steve Jobs I can't call them "post PC devices" when they still require a PC / Mac in order to get updates.
Honestly I guess I am just not sure anymore where this stuff is going. What is the difference (other than the "on the internet") between posting the address of a physical record store and posting a link to say Amazon.com? Both take you to where you can buy the record. Now, how about posting the physical address of a flea market (where you know there are physical "pirated" CDs, not to mention usually some real stolen merchandise) and posting a link to a "pirated" song or video on the net? Both are a pointer to where the "illegal" stuff is. But one gets you arrested and your domain taken and the other isn't a problem at all? Why? Or maybe I just gave them ideas. The next thing they will take is some domain like FleaMarketDirectory.com (which I just made up).
The one I pick isn't random, but it is more than 2 digits. 80085.
Actually, Intel recommends overprovisioning the drive even further. For example, I have a 160 GB SSD in the notebook I am typing this on. It is provisioned to 128 GB (and formatted to 125 or so). http://cache-www.intel.com/cd/00/00/45/95/459555_459555.pdf. You do indeed see a speed increase by leaving more of the drive "unavailable" to BIOS. We've been using Ubuntu Live CD's and hdparm to set this.
Most of these infections have been coming from Flash and Adobe Reader exploits. Maybe the ones you got weren't, but many of them are. It is amazing how slowly people patch Flash and Reader - especially with all the exploit kits out there targeting them. About 8 months ago both my boss and my brother in law got one of these fake AV programs. Both got them through adobe Reader, and both were from normal everyday websites where the ad network had served ads with the exploit included.
However, you can get rid of the thing faster by just booting to Windows PE and deleting the file and registry entry. It takes about 10 minutes (and that includes the boot / reboot).
We use it at work a lot when sending notes to large groups of people. If you were to use To: or CC: to these groups, you always get the couple of blockheads who "reply all" to say, "take me off of your distribution list". They are too stupid or too busy to realize that it makes no sense to do a "reply all", but that's what they do. Then you get the storm of people who equally stupidly use "reply all" to tell people to stop using "reply all". Many years ago we had some folks mistakenly send to a DL that contained most of the 50,000 people in the company. The resulting storm of "reply alls" actually caused mail service slow downs and an outage or two. (There are now permissions applied to those large DLs). In IT when we have to send a note to a DL containing (for example) 100 people, we use BCC just to avoid the crazy people using "reply all". We find it a best practice to put at the bottom of the note a message like, "this note was sent BCC to the following groups:" (and list out the DLs). On the other hand I've found no use at all for BCC at home (although others on this thread clearly have some use cases for it).
Most modern browsers like Firefox already do that for you too, even if you type the URL straight in.
I thought that Chrome, Firefox and IE would all help to detect phishing sites. The other day I actually received a phishing email (purporting to be from Chase - a company I don't bank with). It was the first time I'd gotten one in years. I figured it was a good chance to test the phishing blocking in Chrome, Firefox, and IE. I went ahead and put the URL into Chrome. It took me to a site that looked like, but was not, Chase. I put the URL into Firefox. It also took me to the phishing site. I put the URL into IE 8. It gave me a "this looks like a phishing site" warning and did not take me to the site. Honestly I was completely surprised that IE did this better. I really haven't used IE for anything but Intranet sites at work in years. I then went to the Google page to report a phishing site and reported this URL. Two weeks later, Chrome still took you direct to the site. Of course so did Firefox because Firefox uses the Google service for detecting phishing sites. From what I can tell, Google never did block the site even though it had been reported. The site itself is now offline (since these sites never have a long shelf life).
While those are good tips and I generally agree with the fresh OS install, you can often get similar results by purchasing from the company's small business site instead of their home site. I can't speak for HP, but I have done this with both Dell and Lenovo and been pretty happy. The last Lenovo notebooks I bought for home (the kids and I needed new ones last year) had only the Google Toolbar and a couple of the less useful Lenovo utilities to uninstall. It doesn't take much time at all to do that - faster than gathering the drivers and re-installing the OS from scratch. But you definitely need to avoid buying from the "home user" parts of their sites or your will indeed get all that foistware (and are then better off rebuilding the machine).
I'd imagine they would use the iPad for more than just the static plays. For example, when watching the game, you always see the players and coaches going over printouts of things that have been happening directly in the game being played (taken from above in the "booth") - seeing how the other team's defense reacts to certain formations, etc. The iPad could easily replace this function and could even include video instead of only static pictures of this. However, they would need to have the connectivity turned on in order to make use of it for the in-game updates.
Although this idea can work, it just starts an escalation. Assume Firefox is updated to do this. Firefox has to track the information about addons it knows about so that it can detect the new one. The slimeballs that are doing this eventually figure out how the tracking works and set it to approved. Then Mozilla makes an update to encrypt the store of known addons. It stops the slimeballs for awhile. Eventually, they figure out how to copy an encrypted data blob that has several known addons already allowed - including theirs. Mozilla makes another update - this time to use some LUID type information as part of the encryption so that the files can't be copied. Another escalation. Unfortunately it is hard to stop bad behavior with technical solutions.
I agree that prevention of the resale market is a plus for the publishers of the games. Many / most of them have wanted to prevent folks from doing that and erode the "first sale doctrine" (US anyway) to the point where the publishers still control it even though you "bought" it. This actually goes for books as well as music, video and games. So online "sales" (almost more "long term lease") is good for publishers. In some cases it can be good for consumers (scratched disks aren't a problem), but it is a mixed bag - some good, some bad. In particular though the xbox case you mentioned is not 100% correct. While it is tied to the original, when you get a replacement there is a MS website where you can go to transfer it to your new console so that you don't have to be online. I just had to do that when we had an xbox360 die on us. The process was slow and cumbersome (7 pages of about 9 items on a page to transfer all of my son's map packs and our Rock Band songs). But it does work and enables you to have the new machine own those titles. For some weird reason, they only let you do this once per year. That seems ludicrous to me - what if our new xbox got stolen or perished in a fire? No transfer to a new one for another year.
Anyway, there are definitely pluses and minuses to the download option. Heck, with all of the "extra value DLC" you have with games today that you can only get with a serial number a lot of the secondary market is already eroded even with DVD.
Your first paragraph is a great summary of the situation. I think many people "know" this to be true, but enough fools will be parted from their money for the current investors to get out while ahead of the game just like you say.
Anecdotal point - I am one of the legion of folks who have nearly abandoned their account. I think the last time I checked it was 2 weeks ago and that was only to click "ignore" to a friend request from one of those people that sees messages "suggesting" friends because "you have 4 friends in common" or whatever. If you aren't a real world friend, eventually people learn to decline. Then they learn to prune their existing list. Then they lose interest.
I guess the cycle goes something like this:
1) Accept all friend requests
2) Realize you need to block all games from your feed
3) Learn to block all the "send a (whatever)" apps
4) Block some of the "friends" who always rant about politics or religion
5) Realize that accepting all friend requests is probably stupid
5) Actively prune your friends list.
6) Post less frequently
7) Lose interest altogether
8) Profit!! (Yes, because you have some formerly wasted time back!)
Devices like the iPad are just holders and consumers of media
Actually I think that may really be the whole point. Levies of this type (as the summary says) have typically been applied to things like CD-R, blank DVD, music players, etc. - because of the fact that they ARE holders of (often copyrighted) media. I don't agree with these levys at all; I think they are very misguided, but I can see how they got into a quagmire trying to define what is "like a CD-R" (holds content) and ended up getting it a bit wrong.
Not 100% true. I've had only one article on the front page so I certainly can't speak for all. However the link I provided in my submission was to Engadget. The link that was published was to some site in the UK. They also added / changed some sentences that garbled the intent so much that it became confusing. I WISH they would only publish what the user submitted (maybe correcting a typo or two).
Don't forget that Assisted GPS (A-GPS) requires network access: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assisted_GPS. Some of these folks may have just been trying to get you a correct fix faster by using A-GPS. Unfortunately, you can't tell from the Android permissions screen as you will just get things like "network access" which can be used for any purpose - benign, nefarious, or anything in between. I don't know what the answer is to this, but I know I would prefer to be able to tell the app what sites / services it could access.
Google already is an ISP. Haven't you kept up to date: http://www.google.com/tisp/. They have had this out there for awhile. I heard it didn't bowl anyone over. You'd think that a company like Google that is flush with cash could do better.