I recognize that global climate is going to warm up no matter *what* we do, and suggest that we should prepare for it (while debunking the claim that it's bad for "life" or farmland), and that makes me a fool? Sorry, but no. The fools are the ones that think anything we do can *stop* the coastlines from being put underwater. It's going to happen, and it does not matter if mankind causes it or not. We should be spending our limited time and resources preparing for something that is inevitable rather than trying to prevent something that is inevitable.

You can believe every single climate scientist. All of them say the same thing : we are currently in an ice age. There is no debate on this topic, certainly not as much as there is on the topic of AGW or on the subject of AGW being "good" or "bad" in the long run.

I will "keep that in mind" as I point out that during the Paleogene, when the average global temperature was the same or higher as during the Cretaceous, mammals flourished and came to dominate. The Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum was indeed very good for mammals. Were it not for that time period, Plesiadapis would probably not have come to be so successful, and humans today would not exist as a result.

Nonsense.

I don't get how so many otherwise smart people think we're living on a world that has the absolutely perfect climate, and that any change warmer or cooler results in disaster for mankind. The fact is a warmer climate such as that found during the Cretaceous(~ +4C) is beneficial to life.

On the other hand, just a tiny bit cooler than now and you're back in an ice age, decidedly unfriendly to life.

For the record, we are *currently* in an interglacial period of the ice age that started 2.6M years ago. When/as we exit the current ice age, it's going to warm up, period.

Franklin said essential liberty. Anarchists continually forget or ignore that. Being able to lie to the police (or hell, your parents) about how fast you were going, if your foot was on the brake or gas, etc, is not an essential liberty. If you don't like speed limits, seatbelt laws, and so on -- fight for those to be repealed.

There is about zero risk of abuse from systems like these, even if the data is broadcast openly and unprotected, live, while you're driving. For the most part, in fact, that is already happening. None of the information these devices records is information that is unavailable otherwise, except perhaps things like the seatbelts being fastened.

Indeed. You need something other than an adapter -- something with a microcontroller and a driver (or that uses the built in driver but this can be problematic), that presents the ps/2 HID devices to the PC. The OPs comment is easily read to imply he "regularly" plugs an AT keyboard into an AT->PS/2 adapter which he then "stacks" with a purple PS/2->USB adapter, which is just not possible.

I regularly use keyboards from the mid 1980s, sometimes with stacked adapters to go from ATX to PS/2, and PS/2 to USB, and I'm sure that's not too unusual.

No, you don't.

Going from AT or PS/2 to USB with only an adapter is impossible. The PS/2 to USB adapters only work because modern keyboards know how to speak both protocols and can detect which kind of port they're plugged into. Old PS/2 only keyboards do not have USB controllers onboard and only work with a USB device (driver required) that provides the ps/2 port(s).

You cannot just plug an old AT or PS/2 keyboard into one of the purple PS/2 -> USB adapters and have it work, because it won't.

I can place limits on what they "can't" do, which is, "install software without my permission", the question as originally posed.

They can't do that. Full stop.

When I do give them permission to install something, I can expend the time and energy determining exactly what it is, if I so choose. Full stop.

In other words, you're still wrong on the face of it, no matter how asinine and paranoid the rabbithole you want to lead us down is, nor how empirically false your suppositions are when viewed in the context of conspiracies and game theory.

I suppose they could be using psychic waves rather than electromagnetic ones.

I have access to all my network traffic logs.

MS cannot "install software changes without asking permission" -- unless you give it permission to do so. Derp harder. After you take a bath.

If you look at the link, you'll see that this is exactly where it failed. It's the same place the bushy carbon-15 rifles tend to fail as well. As another AR-15 aficionado, I must say, the risk of personal injury is pretty small and the severity of those risks is likely to be small as well.

Yes, some of these data companies are getting a bit out of hand, but is it time for the government to step in? You, of all people, know better.