First, yes dammit, I must be reachable as much as possible. If a friend or family member needs help in the middle of the night, I'm not gonna be the guy who says "sorry, I had my phone off."

Second, I must be able to make a call at any time. My mobile is my only phone, and if something happens where I need to call 911, I'm not going to want to wait for the damned thing to boot.

No, they don't. The NSA doesn't do this directly, they use their legal authority to require that providers do it for them. Providers often have short-term logs of the relevant metadata for security, troubleshooting, and the like; they simply ensure that NSA gets copies as the logs are created (remember: the NSA requires that they do this).

In a phone system, for example, the switching systems that route phone calls log the switching activity. That's metadata. Cell towers log location data (as course as cell handoffs or as fine as GPS coordinates, depending on a host of factors) for service management and troubleshooting purposes. ISPs log requests, including source IPs. And so on. That's all metadata.

The storage requirements for that volume of data are so high that providers typically only retain such data for extremely short periods of time; hours or days at most. That makes them hard to subpoena; so the NSA's PRISM program allows them to simply get real-time copies of those logs, and they handle the data-retention for their purposes.

There is no proof I'm aware of that the NSA captures all data; they have the capability to capture data, but there's no evidence they routinely do so. Capturing all data from nodes would be a Herculean undertaking, and it doesn't even make sense for them to do so.

Capturing metadata gives them the bulk of what they need for surveillance, possibly falls into a legal loophole (they certainly think it does, anyhow), and requires far fewer resources to acquire, store, and process.

Not only that, but EFF is very clearly a legally-formed US organization under which all of its US activities are run. WikiLeaks was, for payment purposes, a foreign entity.

EFF could very easily sue the pants off a provider that acted to suppress payments based on their 1st Amendment protections. (Incidentally, that the EFF has 1st Amendment protection is the upside of the SCOTUS ruling that corporations are entitled to rights reserved to "people").

The NSA's sniffing is legally comparable to a police dragnet checking door-to-door for a suspect

I wholeheartedly disagree. A dragnet is supported by either probable cause or a warrant, is subject to judicial review, and narrowly targets a specific area to find a specific person or persons.

What the NSA has admitted to with PRISM is more like the police following everyone around wherever they go and noting where they went, when they went there, and who they were with.

It's billions of counts of illegal wiretapping

I'd very much like that to be the law, but it isn't. What the NSA did is probably illegal, certainly ought to be, but it isn't wiretapping. Wiretapping, as legally defined, requires that someone listen to a conversation. That's well-established enough that the NSA went out of their way to "only" capture metadata about the conversation.

What the EFF (and others) are arguing -- I think correctly -- is that even though it's not wiretapping, it's still a violation of our rights. Given the recent history of court rulings on 4th Amendment grounds, they probably feel they have a better shot at making this 1st Amendment argument than hoping for the court to agree that capturing phone call and internet message "envelopes" constitutes a search.

Just about every comment from people who hate touchscreen laptops (as opposed to those who merely say "eh, not for me") confuses me. It seems that the haters think you have to use the touchscreen for everything... lots of comments about what touch is bad for, lots indicating that a mouse and keyboard are better for lots of things.

And all I can think is exactly. The whole point of having a touchscreen laptop as opposed to a tablet is to use traditional inputs for things they're good for (writing, precision work, etc.) and touch for things touch is good for (reading, certain game interactions, composing drafts of some kinds of visual media, etc.).

I had a touchscreen laptop for work for a while. It was wonderful. About 80% of the time, it was a traditional laptop. When I was drafting a presentation (mostly images, very little text), touch was a godsend. When I was reviewing large reports, "tablet mode" with touch was much better than reading on a normal laptop configuration.

They may not be for everyone, but I submit that most people who hate them have never used one for more than a few minutes.

Ok, cool, then we ought to ban driving all together considering it's one of the most dangerous things people routinely do. Or perhaps that's unreasonable and we should only ban "unnecessary" driving?

What's fantastically short sighted is the notion that, in a society that puts an extremely high value on cooperation and interdependence, putting your life at risk in any circumstance only affects yourself.

That's a lovely strawman you've constructed there. Of course it affects other people -- everything we do affects other people. It doesn't affect anyone else's rights. The difference is important: if we can make laws just because other people are "affected", then there is nothing that's off-limits... and that's such a bullshit position that I can't imagine you actually think that. I'm assuming you just didn't think about what you said.

Everyone wearing their seatbelt is a good idea.

Indeed it is. The question is whether good ideas ought to have the force of law. Because when you make it a law, you're effectively saying "I am OK with using violence to enforce this behavior." The key question for me is this: if I choose not to wear a seatbelt (thus increasing my risk of death or injury should I get in a crash), whose rights am I infringing?

But now, with multi-terabyte HDs and the proliferation of NAS appliances, there is a limited need for this or any other 'compressed' music file format.

Yep, because audio files are never:

1. Streamed over low-bandwidth data connections (e.g. cellular or crappy public APs)
2. Stored on small, portable devices with limited storage space, like Phones, solid-state media players, Chromebooks and tablets.
3. Backed up to remote locations where storage is more expensive

I can't imagine anyone having a need for those things. *eyeroll*

there will be more mobile phones and tablets in use in four years' time than there are people on the planet... will we be using them or will they be controlling us?

Right this moment, there are more ears of corn in use than there are people on the planet. Will we be eating them, or will they be eating us?

Seriously... having lots of something doesn't automatically change its nature.

What is it with Slashdot readers who don't know what the fuck the logical fallacies are and can't be bothered to do a simple web search to find out?

Argumentum ad populum is when you argue that a proposition is true because it is believed by many people. The quintessential form is "can millions of people be wrong about X?"

"It's for hipsters and hipsters don't drive" is an unsupported premise, nothing more. No actual argument is being offered, just an assertion made without support.

If it's a good idea to wear a seatbelt its just a good fucking idea to wear a seatbelt, make it a law and move on

That's... fantastically short-sighted of you. The government should have the power to enforce "good ideas" with the force of law? Well:

• it's a very good idea not to have a child until you're out of college. Let's make it a law and move on.
• it's a very good idea to live less than 15 miles from where you work. Let's make it a law and move on.
• it's a very good idea not to drive at all, and instead rely on public transit (it's safer *and* better for the environment). Let's make that a law and move on.

In short, we don't make things the law because they are "good ideas". We make laws because we as a society are willing to force people to do (or not do) something, and we care enough about it that we're willing to point a gun at them if that's what it takes to achieve compliance.

Now, I don't buy into the Libertarian extreme on this, but I do think that the rest of society doesn't have the right to tell me what to do unless what I do puts their rights at risk. That means I'm ok with the government telling car companies they have to at least include a seatbelt that meet certain standards in all cars they sell -- it seems reasonable to make sure that people have the option to protect themselves. (Though frankly I'd prefer it was done through creation of liability rather than an absolute mandate...).

But when society decides to tell me -- not through social force, but by means of a government that I must obey under peril of imprisonment -- that I must decide to manage my risk in a particular way, that's inappropriate. That's the majority telling me how to live my private life, and that's not any of government's business, plain and simple. Now, I agree that wearing a seatbelt is a great idea -- I won't move my car until everyone in it is belted in, because I'm responsible for their safety while they're in my car. But I balk at being told that I must, because the risk is mine to take.