NoScript causes to much impact. I actually tried that route early on with my dad, who is very non-techie. It caused all sorts of headaches by breaking various websites. The idea being that they can still browse relatively freely, use a scanner that doesn't bring the system to it's knees, or destroy the OS with bad AV quarantine, etc.

The above method is what I ended up with after a decade of various tech as it evolved. Not bullet proof, but keeps the re-installs down to one every 4-5 years.

I would suggest this as well. If she's comfortable with Windows, then make it as safe as possible. Security Essentials has far less risk of throwing a key Windows file into quarantine and hosing the install. It's also far better as far as performance. Ensure she knows how to spot when it has not updated in a while (it happens). Ensure it updates when the PC is likely to be on.

From there, you need to use a few plugins that will help keep your mother safer online. WOT is an excellent, and low impact plugin that will warn her about known dangerous sites. AdBlock is a must if she's prone to clicking on things she shouldn't.

If you can swing it, get an SSD, and kill scheduled tasks like defrag, which would no longer be necessary.
DO schedule checks for updates when she is most likely to be on. Ensure you train her to spot the prompt that updates are needed, and how to install them.
If she can't deal with the update process, then you should setup some time each week to remote into the PC to do them, and to handle basic maintenance

For remote fixes, I'd suggest TeamViewer, set to auto-run as a service., with an Admin password setup for yourself.

I used all of the above steps with my Dad who lives about 2 hours away with decent results for quite a few years until the old XP hardware failed. I should note that I eventually moved him to a Mac mini when his old hardware failed, and when I no longer wanted to pay a hundred bucks for Windows. My dad likes playing games for the most part, and the ecosystem on a Mac made sense for him (app store), while keeping him largely out of trouble.

What you've posted stands to reason, since they still require warrants to parse the data in the phone record metadata. They can't just randomly go out and start reading the data in the hopes that they find something useful, but rather must get approval from FISA with a credible threat. In short, the data collected doesn't drive the investigation, but rather re-enforces it. With millions of records to go through, they need a key value to look for (say a phone number from a known terrorist), which they would take to the court to get a warrant to search the metadata for a match to any calls to/from that phone number. Without that key data, the volume of numbers in the collected phone logs is largely useless until something comes along that gives them a target to look for.

That said, I do have to agree wholeheartedly about the 'publicly approved' statement, which is blatantly false. Although the public may have given tacit approval by voting certain members into congress, the closed door court approvals are a far cry from public approval.

Which would be be invalidated if it was ever leveraged.

Far too may on here seem to lack basic knowledge about trade dress. Samsung doesn't even deny that they heavily copied Apple at this point. Their executives state they were in a design 'panic' due to the iPhone.

This was to address lost profits for Apple that Samsung took as a result of Samsung copying trade dress and infringing on various patents. It's also the reason a CPA was noted as a key factor in the amount awarded.

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2007/07/070730-hurricane-warming.html

You misunderstand what the debt ceiling is. The debt is already incurred, meaning we are already obligated to pay for that existing debt. Raising the debt ceiling allows congress to borrow as needed for short term income to pay off incoming debt. It does not authorize additional spending or incurring any new deb (only congress can do that with spending bills). I assume by 'doom', you are generalizing. We've already seen one immediate affect of not raising the debt ceiling the last time they failed to do so. Our credit rating was dropped, costing us billions more in interest, much like your interest rate spikes if you miss a payment. This isn't rocket science. Our credit worthiness allows us to do things that a poor credit rating does not. It's really just that simple.

The root cause of 'spending' is Congress, not the debt ceiling. The right has turned the debt ceiling into some bogeyman without any context as to what it is, and why it's necessary to raise it.

If you are looking to address a spending problem (ex: live within our means), then tell congress to stop authorizing such spending. They control the purse strings. Playing with the debt ceiling is like giving your children your credit card, letting them max it out, and then refusing to pay the bill when it shows up in the mail because you think it was irresponsible to let you children max out your card.

Regarding your 'mentally ill' statement, a mentally ill person could certainly harm someone with a knife for example. but it's unlikely they could commit mass murder without being stopped. They could do the same with a rock, but again it's unlikely they could kill 20, 30, or more people before being disarmed and contained. I suspect you knew that before you put up that particular straw man argument.

For you climate change question, you are making an assumption that the short term result is harmful, when in actuality, one may see an increase in growing seasons. That doesn't mean it's not harmful, but rather shortsighted to assume that those changes will remain beneficial. Eventually when the increase begins to affect planetary ecosystems to such a degree that they break, you are faced with flooding, increased storm activity, etc.

As to short term damage, you need only look at the last few decades of increased storm activity, both in number, and in power.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-11-10/record-typhoon-damage-shows-aquino-s-task-in-philippine-tragedy.html

Here in the US, we also had two record storms that caused billions in damage. Each considered a 'storm of the century' except they both happened in the same decade (Katrina and Sandy). As the temperature increases, climatologists predict even more increase in storm severity. You are providing yet another straw man argument that says "Look here..short term, this hasn't caused any issues at all". The same could be said for poison, until it reaches a toxic level.

That two week 'vacation' as you call it had a larger impact than simply sending people home for two weeks. Those two weeks without pay affected every business that takes such money in, affecting their bottom lines, which in turn affects the goods that they order and produce. The work that would have been done in those two weeks became backlogged, causing new work when they return to also be delayed. Any fees and fines that would have been collected by the government were lost revenue. Any contacts that the government would have spent would be pended or cancelled, causing more ripples in the business sector. The CBO estimates that the shutdown costs about $300 million a day in lost economic activity. The shutdown was never just about 800,000 people being sent home for two weeks.

When folks like the Koch brothers are found to directly affect local politics across the entire nation, donating millions to sway election decisions, it becomes simple fact rather than fear.

Fear itself is not a bad thing, but Irrational fear is. Frightened people are easily controlled. Although your argument might appear to put my statement in the same class, it only appears that way. For example, death panels were widely used to scare people when health care reform was begin drafted. The simple facts are quite different with specific text preventing the fed from denying any type of medical care or 'rationing'. This would be an irrational fear. In my statement, I indicated that big money is pulling the strings. The fact that these political organizations must often disclose their donors, and those donors happen to be folks like the Koch brothers, puts the statement into fact, rather than irrational fear.

http://philanthropy.com/article/Koch-Brothers-Influence/140227/

Their donations are public record. They spend millions to sway elections towards business friendly politicians. They aren't the only ones. Does this follow the same category that implied the president was friendly towards the 9/11 Terrorists that killed thousands of Americans, that Death Panels would be used to let the Fed decide who lives and who dies, etc. The above fear mongering had no basis in fact. Even worse, it was peddled by both news outlets, and directly from the mouths of representatives of the government itself. Pailin and her anti-immunization rant is a good example of fear based rhetoric with no basis in fact.

The following examples are reports, obtained from public disclosures of donations by various political groups, some loosely defined 'charities', etc.

http://www.lung.org/associations/states/california/for-the-media/inthenews/study-tobacco-money.html
http://www.publicintegrity.org/2013/05/01/12591/gun-lobbys-money-and-power-still-holds-sway-over-congress
http://articles.latimes.com/2010/jul/11/local/la-me-special-interests-20100712

Are they in the same category?

FEAR: feeling of anxiety: an unpleasant feeling of anxiety or apprehension caused by the presence or anticipation of danger

The family of the victims of various shootings at the hands of the mentally ill would beg to differ with you as to something perceived to be a danger, and something that kills your family. There are already gun control laws, and the 2nd amendment doesn't guarantee unrestricted access to any weapons a citizen might want. There are already restrictions on automatic weapons, as well as a wide range of military grade weapons, explosives, poisons, WMD's, etc. There are also restrictions on who can gain access to weapons based on criminal history, as well as location. Not one single bill being seriously discussed in congress was taking away anyone's guns, as in every case, currently owned guns were grandfathered in. The vast majority of such legislation was aimed more at sensible background checks. Something even the NRA used to support before they were against it.

Can you cite any sources whatsoever as to the cost of shutting down a park as opposed to keeping it open? Unless you handle the billing for the various public park departments, you are just parroting talking points you read online or heard on the 'news'. You are also suggesting that they just leave these parks open to the public, which would be like opening the door to your home, and going on vacation for a month, and hoping everyone was on their best behavior. The Fed is legally required to shut down any services that are payed for with discretionary funds when they are no longer legally authorized to pay for such parks to remain open. Period, end of statement. The fact that you are more concerned about some park begin shut down, rather than people being denied food, social services, life saving medicines through various studies, etc, speaks volumes about your priorities.

No one is 'ignoring' the debt ceiling, and it has been dropping steadily for the last few years. In fact, it's dropping faster than it has since the 1950's. This is probably something you might be aware of if you weren't solidly wrapped up in your fear based news network.

http://money.cnn.com/2013/04/22/news/economy/deficits/index.html
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/us-debt-load-falling-at-fastest-pace-since-1950s-2012-06-08

Just as an FYI, Benghazi was a TERRORIST ATTACK, not a 'scandal'.

Just in case you missed , it is not the government selling fear thus time (WMD Anyone?), but rather the right wing media. The left media can spin as well, but are simply outclassed by outlets such as fox, which has ingrained itself as 'mainstream'. I have friends from over seas who laugh when they hear Obama is called an extremist.

Death Panels, socialism, communism, dictators, taking your guns, scandalegate, climategate, gay armageddon, etc.

The list just goes on and on. I turn on Fox 'news' and they literally have huge flashing red warning banners about whatever talking point is on the menu for today. I hear my right wing friends whispering about the dictator in office, the Muslim friend of the 911 terrorists. The saddest part is that they truly BELIEVE these stories.

The media is far better equipped at selling fear than the government. The current crop is ripe for the picking.

The reason? It allows those who are really pulling the strings, like the big money behind every political engine, to control things in a way that makes business more profitable, regardless of the real cost.

This hasn't been my experience with Apple either. I had a Macbook Pro (17" 2008) that was affected by an issue with a bad nVidia card causing a black screen on boot up. nVidia claimed the issue did not affect my Macbook. Apple investigated and found a significant number of those Macbook owners who were affected, and warrantied the repair anyway. My Macbook Pro was 3 years out of warranty in late 2012 when I had this happen to my Macbook (it was 4 years old at the time), and Apple replace the motherboard free of charge, no questions asked. I made an appointment, brought it in, and they offered the repair to me after troubleshooting it on the counter.

I have also gone in with a missing key on a keyboard, and they replace it free of charge. I also had an iPhone fresh from the factory with markings on the case when I took it out of the box. I found this when it was shipped to my home. They replaced it with a new one, again no questions asked.

I do know that Apple always tops the satisfaction survey and has for the last decade. There's a reason for that, and it's certainly not due to poor service.

Requiring cross licensing as a condition of licensing a FRAND would violate the (F)air and (Reasonable) piece of the puzzle. By their very nature, only one company can own a patent, so every person wanting to license FRAND patents can't offer the same cross licensing. Allowing a FRAND owner to pick and choose the cross licensed patents they require in order to license a FRAND patent is by it's very nature, anticompetitive. Although a company might opt to cross license, it cannot be made a condition of licensing a FRAND patent.

It would require a company surrender any competitive via surrendering their standard patents in order to cross license FRAND patents. This is exactly what Samsung was doing. Samsung was slapped down for extorting from competitors via it's FRAND patents in order for them to enter the market.

I have to agree there. Patent law as it applies to an inventor as opposed to a corporation, which is lifeless, and potentially very long lived (read: centuries), has twisted the original intent of a patent and it's purpose. As to governments taking a FRAND patent from the owner, it would also discourage any company from entering their patents as FRAND patents. This is done voluntarily now. If a government forced a company to surrender such patents, then the industry overall would suffer.

Misguided android fanboi defenses aside, a FRAND patent is an entirely different animal. Samsung was demanding cross licensing of choice non-frand patents from competitors in order to license FRAND, and they were caught, and reprimanded. This I agree with completely. They were also caught with confidential court documents, leveraging the licensing info in them against competitors. You would do better to choose a better cause to champion. They are hardly the industry leader in exceptional and above-board behavior.

The Apple hate has grown to the point where they are marking satire as 'informative'? Seriously? I would expect my parents to fall for something like this. Any /. user that does needs to hand in their geek card.

Actually no, he's sending a clear message that a company trying to extort unfair terms in order to grant license to a companies FRAND patents sets a bad precedent, and undermines the very reason for a FRAND patent. It forces those entering into a competitive market to give up too much, often times with cross patents that allow a new company to offer unique features that differentiate it from a competitor. A FRAND patent on the other hand is required by every competitor in that market and should be offered to all under the same terms.

Apple was not offered a 'fair and reasonable' request from Samsung for it's FRAND patents. Samsung was demanding cross licensing of key Apple patents in order to grant Apple access to these FRAND patents. Rather than simply charging a standard rate, Samsung saw some unique patents that Apple had and made them a condition of cross licensing their own FRAND patents.

The President was fully justified in overturning this specific import ban for that reason. If such extortion was allowed, you and I would be paying substantially higher costs for just about anything with a FRAND patent associated with it. It raises the bar to entering into a competitive field where a company could be forced to give away any competitive edge they had in 'regular' patents, just to gain access to industry essential patents.

If you can't see the forest for the trees due to some obsessive fanboi-ism, then there is no help for you.

There was an import ban on iPhones because Samsung won such a ban using FRAND patents, and the President overturned that ban based on that fact. It set a dangerous precedent and weaken's the FRAND patent and it's ability to allow anyone to enter into a competitive field.

The reverse that the summary so easily ignores is that the patents that Samsung infringed on, and were banned with as a result, are garden variety infringements, and don't require a response.