You have no idea what Microsoft's culture is like do you? Half of Microsoft's problems are related to it's culture, stack ranking (bottom 20% of workforce gets the boot) destroys morale and actively encourages sabotage and office politics ("I'm sure as hell not gonna be the poor SOB on the bottom of the stack, I'll arrange for Bob's project to go to custard and then HE'LL be the poor SOB on the bottom and out the door!")

Not to say Sony is any better, they are Evil incarnate, but your rosy view of Microsoft's culture, especially considering how infamously corrosive it is, makes me think you are a fanboi.

Have you tried looking at the wiki? 1-click installs for all the blobs

Not necessarily the second group, Republicans certainly acknowledge the existence of the Tea Party but you can be damn sure they aren't gonna give them even a farcical version of "good healthcare" (not that they would take it)

Then you are missing the point of civil disobedience. You are supposed to get caught, especially in places like the US where LEOs like to have a bit of theatricality in perp-walking someone out to the squad car. You want all the attention you can get, that's the point, you are calling attention to something you believe to be wrong.

I dunno, he seems pretty surly to me...

Considering that Obama had to publicly promise not to execute Snowden if he were to be extradited from Russia I really don't blame him for running. If he stayed in the US he would likely be a martyr by now.

OK lets say that in context your advice is sound and I now thoroughly understand the math behind modern crypto systems. How am I going to be sure the math is correctly implemented? Are you advocating that in addition to having a deep understanding of some fairly esoteric maths I now need to be an expert enough coder to judge the Underhanded C Contest as well? Because that is what you are asking and for 95% of folks on the net or event people here on /. that is asking the impossible.

Bonus points for creating an expert system to play back various prerecorded messages as the sap on the phones works through a generic T-Tree until they have exhausted all options but to actually bug you. Double-plus bonus points if the expert phone system was designed by the BOFH.

ProcMon ProcExp and ProcDump All go a long way toward tracking that sort of info down and are all free (as in beer) to boot.

Because "our betters" use those money-saving services. Therefore they are A-OK with storing money offshore and will not prosecute such activities.

SpiderOak would be a good one. It's cross-platform, FOSS-friendly, and has a rather impressive feature-set. I'm frankly surprised they aren't better known by now.

Not the Federal Government. The Federal Reserve is a private entity.

Are you telling me that Mexicans are not enthralled by a corporate bottom-of-the-barrel parody of their cuisine? Shocking!

This is slashdot, not R'ing TFA is par for the course, not R'ing TFS gets you a gold star!

When the cult incites or orders members to commit crimes then the cult is also criminally liable. These individuals did not act in a vacuum.

Read up on some of the shit that the CoS has pulled, Operation Snow White for starters...