Advertising can be done without tracking and cookies.

the site doing the advertising could also simply *host their own friggin ads* instead of using third parties.. which have a history of getting compromised and serving/linking to malware... if sites hosted their own ads, they could do all the tracking and click-accounting they want -- but only on their own site, which is the way it should be. the ad networks can suck it.

is there a point to ghostery if you're already running abp with easylist/easyprivacy and noscript? (other than the writeups about the tracking companies, which i could care less about -- trackers all get blocked here without exception)

hacks against the email accounts.. and then other sites these accounts are used on..

in the courtroom challenging first sale rights, click/shrink wrap licenses, etc. perhaps also format/device shifting, drm and circumvention of it to preserve customer rights... heck, even privacy and user tracking could be a part of it (that is one reason why the push to online-everything.. it's easier to track and report)

but the case will drag on for so long, that most of the readers here will be so old and arthritic they won't be able to play video games anymore anyway other than things like freecell.

when the supreme court does finally hand down a ruling, though, it _will_ be monumental (for the better, or the worse) and completely change how not only video games are sold, but also other software, digital goods (software, music, movies, books, etc) that are fast replacing physical ones, and the used/lending/rental markets for all of those (including ordinary public libraries and person-to-person lending).

at Amazon so I don't have to pay sales tax

you, and people like you, ARE the problem.

yes, you don't have to pay "sales tax" on online purchases made from out of state merchants... but you DO have to pay a USE TAX. afaik, every state with a sales tax on local purchases also has a corresponding use tax to collect the equivalent amount in use tax on untaxed (or under-taxed) out of state purchases.

use tax may be difficult for states to enforce because there are no reporting requirements (one of the things amazon and other online merchants fought against) -- states don't know how much is owed to them, and by whom; but that does not make paying use tax a voluntary thing. if you and others like you would have paid your use tax on out of state purchases, this would be a non-issue.

use tax is typically either a line item on state income tax returns, a separate single-page form submitted at the end of the year, or if you yourself are required to collect sales tax on your own sales (e.g. businesses), it may be on your sales tax reporting form.

amazon grew to be the size it is by exploiting the fact that people like you are greedy enough to ignore their local sales and use tax laws. now that amazon is so big, and has such a large percentage of the online shopping market, they believe that even if the tax playing field were leveled, they'd still be able to beat local retailers and chain stores... which is why they are finally supporting online sales tax collection.

You forgot the one that more people are lacking than any other....

10) Common Sense

one of the definitions is.....

impressive by reason of age

how many other single versions of a web browser have had as long a supported lifespan as ie6?

12 years 7 months and 15 days between rtm (24 aug 2001) and xp eol (8 apr 2014).

as much as you and i, and pretty much everybody else, may dislike ie6, that IS impressive.

by tying an office installation to a microsoft account/email address, microsoft is essentially introducing the one-time serial code that has infested the gaming market... the next version will likely *require* this office-online account link... at least in 2013, it is currently optional.

the pigs win

You just ensured DHS VIPR teams will harass, molest and radiate every person that gets within a block of every Superbowl venue from here on.

is that you have someone else to blame when things go wrong.

The bad thing about outsourcing....

when things do go wrong, there's usually more than enough blame to go around, and you look bad too anyway.

http://whatif.xkcd.com/16/

my phone isn't quite that old, but it's a dumb phone, too, and only needs to be charged about once a week - with regular use.

i would get smartphones, though --- IF CARRIERS DID NOT REQUIRE A DATA PLAN WITH IT --- wifi connectivity for data is enough for me, i do not need, nor want, cellular-based data and the outrageous cost (compared to voice-only plan that we have now) that go with it. you should not be forced into a data plan if a phone has other ways to get that data (e.g. wifi).

hell, we don't even need a 'nationwide' footprint, our lower-cost regional plan (basically our state plus part of neighboring ones) is more than sufficient -- especially when something like skype-out over wifi would be available to use instead of roaming charges for that odd time, once every few years when we might find ourselves outside of the regional area... but soon after verizon axed all the regional alltel plans in favor of their more expensive nationwide plans, uscc (the only other carrier that can provision local numbers here) did the same thing.

so for us to get smartphones, we'd have to add not only data plans at an extra cost, per device, but also move to a more expensive nationwide plan besides -- our bill would be about $90 (uscc) -110 (vzn) MORE than we're paying now (plus the cost of the hardware)...

keeping our dumb phones seems like the smart thing to do.

that map is not entirely accurate.. _official_ international borders between the u.s. and canada in the great lakes are in the water, NOT along the lakes' shores. michigan, for instance, is not entirely within 100 miles of the border; and chicago is not even close to being within 100 miles of an international border (lake michigan is entirely within the u.s. which makes the nearest border to chicago over 200 miles away, near detroit).... http://img24.imageshack.us/img24/373/greatlakeborders.png

regardless, the government has gone waaaaay too far here. i refuse to submit simply because might happen to live or travel within 100 miles of one of the great lakes or an ocean coast. i wouldn't be surprised to see them try to extend this to navigable inland waterways, too.. that would cover most of the rest of the population so they could molest and harass (and steal mp3 players, laptops, tablets, ereaders, etc, just like tsa/customs at airports, from) pretty much anyone, anywhere, without cause (as if anything is really stopping them now)

we managed to get the post office filter-out the junk mail -- they no longer deliver ANY bulk rate mail (standard mail class) to us that is not actually addressed to us by name. all it took was to leave all the junk mail behind when we picked-up the 'real' mail. we cleaned out (most of) the junk mail only when the mailbox got stuffed. it took many months, but they eventually quit trying to deliver it. been going on like this now for a number of years, and the 'filtering' has even survived a change in our regular letter carrier when ours retired.