This is just another step in the governments plan to control our online lives. John Locke states that the reason for this plan is that 8.1 million people were victims of identity theft in the US last year. What he fails to mention is that only 11% of that 8.1 million were internet or technology related while over 43% were due to theft of purse or wallet, another large chunk were the result of dumpster diving or other unsavory methods.

As someone who has worked on the digital end of a tremendous number of campaigns for some very (very) large clients, please understand that oftentimes the larger company is not aware of what is going on. Campaigns are pulled quite often for even smaller, sillier, brand infringments. The only reason anyone cares about this one is that Apple's walled garden is a hot button topic.

This is a ridiculous conversation. Don't provide anyone healthcare and you don't have this issue. If everyone pays for the outcome of their life choices then it doesn't truly matter what the studies say about the cost of a smoker or an obese person. When we pay for people's healthcare then it becomes a concern for everyone who has responded to this thread, nearly 100% of whom neither live in Arizona nor collect from public health systems. You could be busy making something rather than complaining about a small tax proposed in Arizona.

I remember similiar arguments around laptops about ten years ago. This is battle won't be won today, it will be won five to ten years from now.

Webmaster is a very broad term. Remember not every site is run by a single person, in fact most of the big ones have teams of many many people working on them. Depending on their systems map, their software architecture, their browser compatibility requirements and a whole host of other concerns using an SSL cert is not always just a matter of dropping the certificate into apache. It could take months to properly implement without breaking the system and upsetting users, and those months come with costs, developers on the coasts cost a business more that $100/hr (cost assumes all costs associate with a developer not just what you are paying them), so assuming 500 developer hours your already in it for $50,000 and that doesn't include planning and testing. Additional servers could easily run you another $50,000 including the labor to set them up. By the time all is said and done, adding that little s to the end of your http can easily cost a business a quarter of a million dollars. That is why everyone doesn't just use it.