It is severely disappointing when the discussion around something turns out to be highly misleading based on a simple wikipedia search:

2-Butoxyethanol has a low acute toxicity, with LD50 of 2.5 g/kg in rats.[3] Laboratory tests by the U. S. National Toxicology Program have shown that only sustained exposure to high concentrations (100-500 ppm) of 2-butoxyethanol can cause adrenal tumors in animals.

Before reading any further, I thought it would be a good idea to see what 2-butoxyethanol was. According to wikipedia, in addition to fracking...

2-Butoxyethanol is a solvent for paints and surface coatings, as well as cleaning products and inks. Products that contain 2-butoxyethanol include acrylic resin formulations, asphalt release agents, firefighting foam, leather protectors, oil spill dispersants, degreaser applications, photographic strip solutions, whiteboard cleaners, liquid soaps, cosmetics, dry cleaning solutions, lacquers, varnishes, herbicides, latex paints, enamels, printing paste, and varnish removers, and silicone caulk. Products containing this compound are commonly found at construction sites, automobile repair shops, print shops, and facilities that produce sterilizing and cleaning products. It is the main ingredient of many home, commercial and industrial cleaning solutions. Since the molecule has both non-polar and polar ends, butoxyethanol is useful for removing both polar and non-polar substances, like grease and oils. It is also approved by the U.S. FDA to be used as direct and indirect food additives, which include antimicrobial agents, defoamers, stabilizers, and adhesives

Probably worth knowing before getting into a debate on whether it is fracking's fault, or how its poisoning us (from that last sentence: probably not).

Regardless of the other facts, I dont see how expecting to be paid for a product that you made and are selling shows an entitlement complex. The things you mention, perhaps. The letter? Not so much.

Im not sure if you're familiar with certificate pinning, but in any case I can assure you they have not been doing this on a wide scale, and it is nowhere near as easy as you think.

To properly intercept HTTPS, you need to know the URL-- not just the IP-- being visited. DNS can be cached, which means sometimes the MITM ISP cant know what the URL is they need to forge a certificate for.

It could be done, but would generate a ton of red flags and everyone would hear about it.

You heard wrong. CAs dont posess the private keys for the certificates they issue; they simply sign the cert. Private keys generally dont leave the server that issued the CSR.

No, it doesnt, if you do the work of specifying the private keys you want wireshark to use to decode the traffic.

Except for, you know, the RedHat and Debian developers who included systemd?

Theres an old saying, which Im going to modify for my own purposes.

Those who can, make distros. Those who cant, whine endlessly about what the distros are doing.

The concern is the same concern that says "Never run a web browser with admin privileges". Doing a particular task with root privileges is fine; doing everything by default with root is just asking for a nasty accident or exploit.

No, thats not what hes saying. "sudo passwd -u root" requests elevated rights to reset the password for the root account, which is by default completely random. The account does already exist, as it cant not exist on a linux box (afaik).

Ubuntu is just designed to prevent you from using it, as sudo and gksudo are the preferred methods of gaining root privileges.

But why?

Im pretty sure that ubuntu uses dash, not bash.

You can use bash, but things may behave abnormally.

I suppose you're not familiar with the genesis of the phrase "illegal flower ceremony" or the history of internet censorship in China.

I dont think you really have any idea in how the MSS is different than the NSA.

Lets start with the fact that the MSS gives no craps, they straight up block sites like Google who dont play the censorship game, and they inject malicious javascript into millions of citizens sessions to enact a government-run DDOS of foreign sites.

The things the NSA does that are violations of our principles are extra-ordinary. The things that the MSS does on that scale are ordinary, expected, and well documented.

How about the fact that if you think the NSA does some crazy malware stuff with Flame and Stuxnet, at least they tend to confine it to foreign political targets. China has probably the largest censorship and MITM infrastructure in the world, and actively uses it to pull average citizens into a government run botnet to DDOS western sites.

Not to mention that any sufficiently large business needs to have the explicit blessing of the powers that be in China.

All of that combined means you would have to be crazy to trust Qihoo; the FSB-affiliated Kaspersky is more trustworthy. Installing Qihoo gives one of the most technically competent, politically repressive organizations in the world root access to your computer. That more than anything is sufficient reason to not use them.

Call me when Symantec has close ties to a government that denies the Tianenmen Square massacre and actively represses search results on it.