To me, when I read things like this, I think about what this really says about our society and the current state of our civilization.

Sure, I guess you could find some advertising going back to the stone age, but really, advertising didn't become the monstrosity it is until the last 60 years or so. And in the last 15, via the internet, it has just exploded.

Ads, ads everywhere and not a thought to think

The pedaling of goods and services, the saturation of commerce and advertising, however you want to analyze this, it is wrong, and it's not what the intelligence and creativity of the human race was meant for.

Looking back on this time, historians and others will cringe...

I think you need to stick to flavored wine coolers and leave the thinking to people who know history.
Obviously with a statement like that you don't.

All that it means is what we've known for the last twenty years or so.
It doesn't matter who is president or who is in congress.
The real power is controlled by the lobbyists for those with the most money and power.
The charade of representative democracy is wearing quite thin indeed.
Republican or Democrat, they both kowtow to the 1% and their aims.

Actually it's St. Reagan

No, Obama isn't Reagan, but Obama isn't even close to being a liberal. The last real liberal president the US had was Carter.

The undercover fomenters in Kiev were Space-X agents!

A sales guy from upstart home security company knocked at my door a while back.
I was in the middle of dinner...
He wanted to sell me on all the cool new features that a smart home can provide, such as what you describe above.

I told him no thanks, and he wanted to know why.

I told him I've been working in IT for quite a while and I understand all the security risks inherent with such systems, and I don't want to have to worry about all the extra crap I have to secure in my house, besides the usual things I have(servers, pc's, WAP's, routers, etc;). He said something like, "well...(smirk) I can see you wouldn't be a good fit for us."

or isn't it always good practice to disable the public community string as well as creating an egress filter to block all outgoing snmp?

Yea, I've noticed that since 9/11. I'm sure the DOHS has input and influence over any script for any film or tv program dealing with "national security". It was like that when Hoover was around.
It's like the 1950's with the threat of Communism around every corner, and how film and television pushed that fear on the American public.

If you question anything, or want to get the real reason decisions are made, then you're a bad guy.

Rational thought and deductive reasoning aren't taught in school, and now we see the consequences, where the younger generations coming up simply tune out all this talk of privacy. They don't have a problem with the NSA, or anyone else, monitoring their every thought, word and deed.
The ultimate irony will be when Orwells 1984 isn't banned, it just won't be read or studied because his vision has come true.

Brilliant!

What about the "War on Terror"?
Were you not paying attention to the last 13 years?

Since it happened in Canada, eh, he'll end up smoking WEED with Ricky and Julien in the little big house.

The support I needed wasn't about the game really.
It was the problem many users had running the game once EA made ME a "phone home" game.
I think this was in ME 2?
I would start up the game, get to the login screen and it would show I was connected but would then throw a variety of errors...
I eventually figured out a sort of "dance in a circle backwards during a full moon on a Tuesday" workaround that some on the forums had suggested.
It was bullshit that I couldn't just play the game, that I paid for, because of their ridiculous "always on" krap.

Back when I was playing the Mass Effect series I needed support on a couple of occasions.
I attempted in vain to get assistance via the legitimate support channels.
I quickly found out their "support" isn't worth the time and effort and I was got more help via forums, etc;

The best post on this thread yet.
Well done.