Yes, it's silly. In most of the world we use SI units, but screen sizes are still annonced in inches. Another one is dpi for printers/snanners.
It's annoying.

How do I know this tool doesn't collect passwords that people try, which could then be used to break into people's accounts?

Whatever, Iron Maiden says it's 666. That's good enough for me.

Saying that Android is Linux is like saying that Ubuntu is Linux. Linux is actually just the kernel, which they both use.

I for one forgot to include my phone. The apps that I have on my Android phone are nearly all closed source. And android itself is kind of semi-open source.

No, it's not. It's controlled though, there are 14 varieties of GMO accepted to be cultivated in EU. And yes you have to label it.

GMO's are not common on shelves in Europe. Most of it goes to animal feed. (you don't have label the meat, if the animal has eaten GMO)

Legistlation here

PowerAmp plays practically everything. I wouldn't be surprised if it soon supported this Opus thing too.

That has to mean if the taxi is free, so that you can't discriminate people, like "That dude looks like a hobo, so I'm ignoring him, I'm looking for someone who looks rich.".

You can also "call a cab", then a taxi driver somewhere hopefully nearby will put on his meter and come to pick you up. Surely he doesn't have to stop for anybody hailing. (Otherwise it would be more like call and pray taxi service).

There's no difference between calling and mobile-app-hailing, except the way the order comes through.
The central depends on people calling taxis to make money. They don't like people being able to bypass them.

It's not really the judge's job to say if a law is good or bad. He's job is to know the law and judge according to it.
If he is a "patent judge", the more patents, the more arguments about patents and the more work for him, and he can make more money. So software patents age good - for him.

The blackouts and other campaigns are are raising awareness of SOPA. Slashdot is used by nerds who already know about SOPA, and mostly already oppose it.

I used to be leaning right 20 years ago. I even was a member of a right-leaning party, and a nominee in a local municipal elections. Since then all we wanted to go right had gone so and even further right. So now I gotta lean left, while my opinions are about the same. And that's in Finland. In Bill O'Reilly scale I am a total communist.

In Finland banks have practically forced people to use Internet for paying bills, by making payment at the desk ridiculously expensive and reducing the number of payment machines. The 8% of Finns that have never used the internet must be old people that are wealthy enough to pay 6€ per bill. Learning even basic usage is a big effort if you haven't touched a computer before, people growing up with computers and other gadgets have no idea how hard it can be.
That's why R-Kioski (chain that makes most of it's money selling tobacco, candy, magazines and lottery tickets) has started a service where paying a bill costs "only" 3 euros.
Oh, internet access is not a "right" in Finland. There has only been talking about that every household should be capable of having a broadband access for a reasonable price, with government support if needed, but there has been no real action yet. For people living in cities there is no problem, but in the countryside many farmers can't get a broadband, or are struggling with a 3G connection that works sometimes.
Though most of Finland is covered with 3G networks, ensued by Finns need to go to a shore of one of Finland's 187888 lakes every chance they get. People expect their UMTS modem to work in their summer cottage, 100 paying customers by a lake makes you build a station for them. But if you are a lone farmer with no lakes near, who's gonna care for you? In current economic situation propably nobody.

For most people it is all the same if a driver is open source or not as long as it works and you get it for free.
As I appreciate AMD opening up some of their secrets. The open source Radeon driver is a lot better than it was on ATI times. However, the closed driver still gives you double the fps on games, the bad news that it works so badly. Messes up the screen and stuff.
I recently bought a new nVidia based card, partly because I was fed up with the proprietary Radeon driver not working. Gave up trying to install it on Fedora 16 or Mint 12.
GeForce is the only choice if you want fast graphics for Linux right now.

It's good that someone forked Gnome 2 into Mate, however Gnome 3 should have been the fork, because it's more of a new product rather than upgrade of the old.
Usually when you upgrade you get something similar, but with new features. Now you'll lose features if you upgrade. But I will not join Gnome 3 bashers. It's not "dumbed down" as some folks claim, It's an early version of the new DE.
When Mate fork is finished it will be just like Gnome 2 was, and Gnome 3 will get more customisability while it develops, things will be good again.