Labour MP Helen Goodman was "genuinely shocked that a public official could say such a thing." I'm genuinely shocked that a public official (internet security chief Andy Smith) could actually be this competent and give citizens valid, practical advice about protecting their privacy.

What, giving false information to random social networking sites is a "felony hacking crime"? Name one country where this is the case. Terms of Service are usually ridiculously overreaching works of corporate fantasy that conflict with many local laws - especially in the EU. Violating a corporation's Terms of Service is not "breaking the law" unless your action is actually illegal.

I initially defended this Unity Dash adware with the same comparison, but after reading more about it, the Mint advertising is nowhere near as bad. All LOCAL searches are transmitted UNENCRYPTED back to Canonical! If users aren't aware of this new "addition", they will be leaking potentially private local information all over the net - I'm surprised this is even legal (it probably isn't in the EU). There is also no filtering done on pictures of suggestions returned from Amazon, so even pornographic images can be displayed - I guess this automatically bars Ubuntu from any workplaces/net cafes/universities etc. due to possibilities of dismissals, sexual harassment lawsuits etc.

Last time I installed Mint, it had modified Firefox so that built in Google search would kick back some money to the Mint team with referrals. This is a pretty similar situation - easy to remove, and IMHO a reasonable method to support a free distro (I doubt many people donate).

You are a corporation's dream consumer - willing to give up all privacy in return for... being subjected to slightly more relevant advertising!

pfff banning killing animals in prolonged, painful ways for magic rituals - those right wing fascists!

Well, they do need 'Cleanfeed' as a blanket excuse to force all ISPs into line and censor the web in a coordinated fashion. Rather than bicker and get involved in court cases to get each individual ISP to add each individual site to their IP filters, the government can just force all ISPs to run Cleanfeed proxy censorship systems using the same blacklist, where sites can be added silently if the government disapproves of them. Obviously it hasn't progressed that far yet, but I'm sure that's what they want.

Ahh, so that's what 'Cleanfeed' was for. What a surprise!

Wow, that's bad news... someone I actually admired and had an incredibly wide reaching, positive influence on computer science. I can't even imagine how different the tech world would be today without his amazing accomplishments.

While both of the situations you describe sound fairly innocuous, I personally think a no-photo policy is more in line with preserving civil liberties, and I'm surprised I seem to be in the minority. Imagine being photographed around shops, and having those photos then submitted to random corporate entities like Facebook and Flickr. With the advances in facial recognition software and increasing government/corporate control, pretty soon your privacy and freedom is a distant memory, and everything you buy and everywhere you go is public knowledge. There are even disgusting sites like http://www.peopleofwalmart.com/ dedicated to trying to publically humiliate people who have non-consensual photographs taken of them in supermarkets. In these circumstances, I think it's essential that stores have no-photograph policies (perhaps permission/supervision could be granted by staff on a case-by-case basis?)

+1 I've never experienced this on any other site - I constantly think Firefox has frozen or crashed because closing a Slashdot tab causes the browser to become unresponsive for several seconds - I can't believe this sort of fault (presumably caused by dodgy bloated car-crash Javascript) is even allowed by the browser! Oh, and congrats to the Slashdot coders for getting OPENING LINKS in comments working again after about half a year.

Well, actually, after the Columbine massacre news media emphasized how the killers used level editors in Doom or Duke3D (forget which) to recreate their school layout and carry out fantasy massacres. So I suspect your competent parenting efforts (i.e. spending time with them and teaching them stuff) had a much bigger positive influence on their ability to discern between reality and fantasy, and not become spree killers, than the aquisition of modding knowledge alone...

Well, it actually is a silent movie - the blog author says that he had the 8mm reel digitised, and added the music (apparently by Dave Brubeck) himself.

Remember they're still very young so just cut it down to the basics - maybe start by introducing some design patterns from GOF, explain the main software development methodologies and processes and their respective pros/cons, and maybe finish up with some quality management strategies such as Six Sigma and perhaps introduce some basic formal verification theory.

I'm fairly sure device manufacturers would be glad to "donate" plenty of licenses to indoctrinate/lock-in new generations of students.