I switched to Teksavvy Cable a month ago and it's awesome. No throttling, 200GB cap, and 10/1 speeds for $42. You can't match that with any other provider in Toronto.

The problem is not the idea of everyone having anti-virus, it's that you want the ISPs to distribute and enforce it.

I don't know about you, but I would never install any software given to me by an ISP. In Canada, Rogers actually have a history of opening more security holes than they close with their Firewall/AV software. To the point that some large corporations IT departments won't let you VPN in from home if you have the software installed.

In my experience ISP software is typically one of the worst forms of insecure bloatware you can put on a computer.

This beautifully illustrates how idiotic the concept of "copy right" and IP in general is in the digital universe. When 75% of 1.2 zettabytes is mostly untracked copies of other information, just storing the licenses alone would be an impossible task.

How do you maintain a business model built on the exclusive right to copy information in world where everything is a infinitely copied and copyable? It's like trying to legislate and sell access to saltwater while floating on a raft in the middle of the pacific.

Exactly. I can't understand any of this:

"That balloon was as large as the Melbourne Cricket Ground when fully inflated, carried a two-tonne payload and travelled in the outer edge of the atmosphere at 50 metres per second."

They should know that in the US the standard units of measurement are football fields for length or area, elephants for mass, lightning strikes for probability, NASCARs for speed, DVDs for data, and swimming pools for volume.

"Outer edge of the atmosphere"? How many Empire State Buildings up is that?

Contrast this with the provisions of ACTA, which require that the ISPs more strictly monitor citizens for imaginary property infringement.

Looks like you're much better off being a corporation than a person these days. Better privacy. Better health benefits. Better insulation from litigation. And if you get big enough you don't even have to be financially solvent in order to survive, the government will bail you out.

I have always thought the technology-based privacy fears were unfounded.

Hitler, Stalin, Mao, and Pol Pot seemed to be able to track down and kill people pretty well without GPS, computers, the internet, or even twitter.

It's the system itself you have to fear, not the version of the OS they are using.

Perhaps. But the chances of a truck-driving blind man, or even a relatively well-sighted one, finding my particular hole in the first place is virtually zero.

Practically every security system is vulnerable at some level. All that matters is it's good enough for your purposes.

Every time anyone discovers some tiny vulnerability in any computer security system (WPA, TKIP, AES, etc) nerds everywhere leap into action, spreading FUD while shunning the now flawed protocol and anyone who still chooses to use it.

But the reality is that for almost everyone, the flawed protocol is still fine. Most people only need to protect their data from another average computer user, not a hacker, sophisticated encryption-cracking security firm or a government.

It's like locking your car or your house. It's really only designed to keep honest people honest.

So please don't go scaring the ignorant needlessly. I don't want to spend 30 minutes trying to explain to my mother how WEP is different than WPA and why she shouldn't be concerned. All I get out of that transaction is a confused and paranoid mother whose password is still her last name.

That's just the thing, alternative medicine can really only be justified in situations where a placebo is considered a viable treatment option, and they bring with them a number of unique problems.

- Poorly labeled, or undefined drug conflicts. In fact some are known to diminish the effects of cholesterol and heart medications, or birth control.
- Cost. They are not all 15 cent teas. My mother has spent thousands on homeopathy, energy healing, acupuncture, and herbal remedies without any noticeable effect aside from a lighter wallet.

But my personal opinion is that people don't seek out alternative medicine because it works. It clearly doesn't.

People move to alternative health care because the practitioners tend to spend more time listening to their patients, and use that information to come up with nice-sounding theories to explain their affliction. Science-based medicine is complicated and requires a large amount of education. Alternative medicine is simple and easy to understand. It doesn’t matter that the theory has been completely refuted by numerous double-blind studies, the patient feels that they’ve been listened to and given a seemingly adequate explanation, and that’s more than they got from the hospital.

People don’t turn to alternative health care because they want better medicine, they turn to alternative health care because they want better doctors.