The replies to my post are very insightful. Google and Amazon also have access to all or at least some of this kind of information - Google for the same reason as FB and Amazon to figure out what I want to buy next and already have it on a UPS truck. I (a Prime member) get email from Amazon noting what I recently purchased and what I probably need because of what I bought. I'm convinced the only way to regain my privacy is to cancel my ISP subscription which isn't likely to happen.

Any one know the overlap in numbers of FB and WhatsApp users? My guess it's nearly 100%, I don't know for sure.

You're certainly right about DSL and it's providers. However, DSL does have one "physics" limitation and that is the limited distance a single line can cover which is about 3 miles or about 4.8 km. Coax and fiber has much greater distances particularly with repeaters. Where I live the local Telco called a few years ago and asked if I wanted DSL then looked up my address and said I was 300 feet too far from the connection to get it. Since then they've improved their coverage but throughput is very low and not at all competitive with coax cable.

More about the situation in Iowa: my wife's cousins who live on farms can get DSL. One of them gets about 1.0 Mbit/s and the other gets about 0.70 Mbit/s. Their parents who live a couple of hundred yards down the road can't get DSL or any other wired connection because they're too far away from the connection point. Their only option is dial up. I suppose they could get satellite Internet, but it's very expensive, slow and very low daily caps. The local high school gives every student a lap top computer but I'm guessing when some of them get home they can't get connected. Something's got to be done, not only for city dwellers but particularly in rural areas to make affordable connection to high speed Internet available.

What's really needed is a system of universal connection to the Internet in the US. Virtually every building in the US is connected to the power grid or to copper telephone wires. It would be great if either of these could be used for Internet connections but it appears that physics seems to limit it's use for really high speeds. In my neighborhood with DSL I might get 1.5 Mbit/s down and 0.7 Mbit/s up. No way could this be used for HD video streaming. Electric utility lines as a carrier seems to have other limitations such as RF interference in some situations. Not sure about speed. The solution must be some kind of universal connection which may require a new technology.

As a side note: I was talking to my 93 year old mother-in-law who lived in rural Iowa and when she went to nursing school in the"big city" in the late 1930's she had just gotten electricity in the farm home. She didn't know how to plug things in or turn on a switch which upset her instructors. It wasn't until REA, a government agency, electrified rural America that rural folks got electricity. That's around 40 years after Edison electrified a small part of NYC. Indeed, we need a RIA - Rural Internetification Administration to do what the Rural Electrification Administration did in the 1930's. If that could be done in the 1930's in the midst of the Great Depression, it can be done today in an era of economic plenty.

I'm not sure exactly, but the average household in the US is something like four or five people. At five people per household, that's 200 million folks. Also, there are something like 20 million college students. Is any 30,000 student university with a subscription a single sub, i. e., one bill a single sub?

You don't think the NSA doesn't have physical access to US network equipment manufacturing or on-site users of that equipment? Stealth NSA employees or bribed ones inserted there would do the job.

Use American based infrastructure to make it easier for the NSA, CIA, etc., to get your data.

Virtually 100% of airplane accidents in the US are from general aviation pilots not commercial pilots and certainly not from commercial airplane equipment malfunction. The only recent commercial crash I can remember involving pilot error was the tragic crash of a Korean airliner in San Francisco involving an inexperienced pilot, though I haven't heard that the FAA has come to a final conclusion/report.

The problem is that the Asus solution doesn't run Windows which may or may not be important for your students. For elementary school children that may not matter if you can find the apps that teach what you want. For HS students, more advanced hardware with Windows may be needed. A careful evaluation of what you need and what will fill that need will be important before making a choice. It's probably not simple.

It appears one just gets the box. Unless you can re-purpose old accessories, you'll need to buy a monitor, HDMI cable, mouse and keyboard which in total could cost more than the black box. Of course if you have an HD TV with HDMI input, that takes care of that and maybe a old mouse and keyboard, you're all set. You also must run the HDMI cable from the box to the TV if that's your choice which could be inconvenient in the living room. A BT keyboard and mouse would be better in that situation. One could also get a KVM switch with HDMI ports added to your current setup. All this would increase cost regardless of your situation and choices. On the other hand, Chromebooks might cost less as the screen is there as well as a trackpad and keyboard.

HP clearly made computers before Apple Computer. Around 1970 they were the second largest mini-computer maker in the world. Not sure if IBM or DEC was number 1, but in the lab I was working in we had a choice between an HP and a Varian computer. Others were adopting the PDP 8 which came out 22 March 1965. HP acquired DEC some time ago. The statement by Schiller didn't use the term PC he used the term computer. He's wrong.

I'm not sure whether the OS makes any difference, but I'm not an expert. The thing is, it seems to me, that in the US, the magnetic stripe on credit cards contains all it's information unencrypted and maybe in plain text. Even if the POS encrypts the data when the card is swiped, for a very short time the unencrypted data stays unencrypted and that's where it can be intercepted. The first step we need is to reissue all credit cards with encrypted information, update the POS terminals and anything else along the confirmation path to be able to handle that encrypted data. The other option might be to adopt the non-US system: use an RFID with encrypted data requiring entry of a pin in the POS terminal. This would be more expensive requiring new more expensive credit cards and POS hardware. It's unacceptable to just say that its less expensive to deal with the fall out than rebuild the credit card system. No one seems to consider the major inconvenience of those end users who have to deal with credit card fraud. Been there, done that. It's not fun.

Exactly. The other day, IIRC, in a routine traffic stop some guy in the midwest USA was found to have 40 bombs, enough "stuff" to make more bombs, two long guns and two pistols. I don't think the NSA let the cops know about this guy. I haven't heard any more about this but one wonders where this guy was going and what was to be done with what he had in his vehicle. Probably not for some fireworks demonstration.

There's one way AT&T could prevent congestion if there really is congestion: shut down users not getting paid data. Let's say web site A pays AT&T and web site B does not. When congestion occurs AT&T could throttle or shut down web site B to let web site's A data through. Doesn't sound good to me.

The linked-to article is very confusing about the time of the event. The CCTV date-time stamp shows Dec. 26, 2013, at 17:43 hours. This is 5:43 PM on the day after Christmas.