+1 for the previous poster.

I'm a Canadian who happens to be living the the U.S.A. and my American friends are generally shocked when I explain the hoops I had to jump through and the restrictions put on me and my wife to get a green card. The entire process was done by a law firm, thank goodness, but I still had the feeling that the U.S.A. really didn't want me here. Took around three 1/2 years to get it, pretty quick by some standards.

- My wife wasn't allowed to work at all for the first three years, spousal visa (she was aiming for one of those coveted coffee serving jobs).
- I missed my fathers wedding because "If you leave the country, you aren't serious about your green card, and you don't want anything to happen to the application do you?"
- We had to cancel a vacation because the government *might* start processing our green card application and if we aren't in the country when they start, they'll throw the application away. Not that they need to contact us you understand, it just showed we weren't serious if we went on vacation outside the country.
- A co-worker is from Lebanon, he has to tell immigration why he is leaving the country *before* he leaves or they will not let him back in (even with his valid H1B visa).

So yeah, it wasn't exactly welcoming.
Just in case people are wondering:
- The position was open for eight months for an American to take it, they couldn't find anybody with the skills
- Why don't I move back to Canada? I like Americans, they are generally nice people. The immigration process isn't nice.

I like shoes, but the sports aspect puts me over the top:

Everyday (6)

Work Shoes
Comfortable Shoes
Going Out Shoes
Winter boots
Sandals (still shoes!)
Motorcycle boots

Sports Oriented (6) Indoor Soccer
Outdoor Soccer
Trail running shoes
Road running shoes
biking shoes x2 (one at office, one at home)

Ah, that helps. I'm still using 3.6.22 and wondered "How the hell did I miss four major revisions of FF?". Guess I didn't. The reason I use FF is due to the add-ons, the minute they started breaking those I stopped thinking "New version? Yes please!". I'll just stick with what works until there is a damn good reason to change. /grumble

They are finally thinking of using profiling rather than treating every person (old ladies in wheelchairs and babies included!) as a potential terrorist? That isn't the 'future', they could do that now ... of course this would require them to hire better than bottom-of-the-barrel employees. I'd rather they pay the employees more and give them training than spend loads of cash on unproven and invasive technology.

According to the submitted letter in article (and I haven't got a Verizon phone, so I cannot check) they say they have location services turned off *by default* on all their phones. Also according to the submitted letter if you turn on location services (all three types) you get warnings regarding "the application will know where you are and share with, etc.".

So you have:
1) Sticker on the front saying what location services does.
2) Location services turned off by default.
3) Warning when you turn location services on.

After all that people complain about "Verizon isn't taking my privacy seriously!"? I don't know about the rest of the services, but come on, that's a lot of warnings a user needs to go through. I'd say they've done their due diligence.

Note I'm just talking about location services here, if Verizon is ignoring your privacy elsewhere, that is another thread.

I didn't realize you could point multiple Kindles at the same account. Thanks for the information .. she *has* been pushing for a new Kindle. Guess I may be looking at the hand-me-down.

I bought my wife a Kindle for X-mas a couple years ago. She, unlike me, has no issues with DRM. The Kindle fits in really well with a type of book I like to call 'brain candy', fun to read, not deep, no value in re-reading and you sure as hell don't want a copy sitting around your house for the next couple of years.* The whole Twilight series falls firmly in to this category. Read once, discard.

Then she read a book she knew I'd enjoy, I wanted to read it. That's when it hit me, there is only a single device to read the books on. I'd like to read the book she finished but I can't because she's reading another book. It is the equivalent of having a massive library, but you can't take the books out, and only a single person at a time can enter the library.**

I can see why the publishing companies love electronic books. If I want to read a copy of a book she already owns I have to buy another copy of it, or wait until she isn't using the Kindle ... which is rare.

*I'm lazy. Yes I could have a garage sale, yes I could give them to a book bank, yes I could ship them to the third world where they to could enjoy sparkly vampires. Reality is, they just sit around the house taking up space.

** Yes, yes, I could go online and figure out how to hack the Kindle and export all the books and import them on to my laptop to read. I don't want to read on my laptop and if it was a paper book I could just pick it up and read it.

Encrypting your home directory using FileVault on a Mac is nice for security, be aware that it makes backing up your machine with Time Machine a nightmare. You cannot do incremental backups if it is encrypted. I'm not sure (never tried it) that you can do restore of individual files either. Have 200GB of music/images in your home directory (the default location)? Have fun backing the entire thing up every time. I wish Apple would let you encrypt a single directory and everything under it rather than the all or nothing approach.

My issue with the scanners are:
1) They're invasive
2) They're yet another knee-jerk reaction
3) They won't do any good

== Invasive ==
If you do a search online you'll find all kinds of different images of what these things will show. They vary from the obviously modified to make them look really bad to the modified to make them look generic. A couple of things stand out:
- the case of the Florida TSA guard who went bonkers after too much teasing about his small genitalia after they were testing the full body scanners. How'd they know the size of his genitals if they weren't shown? http://articles.sun-sentinel.com/2010-05-07/news/fl-miami-airport-screeners-20100506_1_airport-workers-co-worker-tsa
- the British won't use the full body scanners on children under 18 because they may break child pornography laws http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1221111/Nude-X-ray-scans-scuppered-child-porn-fears.html#ixzz0bl6GB9Ts

So you are giving up personal rights that normally you wouldn't. You wouldn't want police to be able to pat you down with no probably cause on the streets would you? They're doing that at the airports with no probable cause. But, the extra security! Read on.

== Knee Jerk Reaction ==
9/11 attacks used box cutters and other sharp objects (not illegal at the time)
-- rules are changed to no longer allow those items
Shoe Bomber
-- rules are changed so your shoes now need to removed and screened
Liquid Explosives attempt
-- rules are changed to minimize amounts of liquids you can bring on board
Panty Bomber
-- introduction of full body scanners

Notice the pattern? Terrorists find ways to work within the rules.

== They won't do any good ==
Nobody can say with certainty that the scanners would have caught the panty bomber, since he used a low density explosive https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/03/17/AR2010031700649.html
The scanners do not penetrate skin, so people can still carry explosives in body cavities (I'll leave the details of that up to your imagination). http://www.consumertraveler.com/columns/whats-the-real-lowdown-on-the-full-body-scanners/
Once you are on the plane you are not scanned again, terrorists will get in the system at small airports that don't have the scanners

== Summation ==
So where does that leave you? Rules/Restrictions are put in place, terrorists work within them, new, more stringent rules and restrictions are put in place. I was annoyed at the previous restrictions, but I could live with them. This invasion of privacy is a step too far.

And for those of you who have no issues with this step due to 'better security' where are *you* going to draw the line when that terrorist uses his handy body cavities to smuggle stuff on board and the TSA tries to figure out how to catch that ....