Also good for people who value their time (not having to worry so much about fraud and malware, research, etc.) more than their ability to do things with a device that they would never bother doing anyway.

It's perfectly fine for tinkerers on Slashdot to have the opposite preference and express it verbally and in the market with their purchases, but to presume that their preference - which is shared by an extremely small minority of people - is ideal for everyone else is a bit silly. I fully support people who want to tinker - I used to be that way myself. But as I've gotten older my interests have shifted and I simply don't want to spend my very limited time on vetting everything that goes into my mobile device, and the limitations imposed by the "walled garden" don't really affect my interests. It's a simple trade-off.

from environmentalists over warming the fjord water in 3 ... 2 ... 1 ...

It's the sort of stupid article you'd expect from an organization that is supposedly all about information technology, but is so backwards that they're endlessly pestering me to take a free subscription to their dead-tree edition. If their web site isn't even worth visiting for free articles, why would they think I want to spend the effort moving their magazine from my mailbox directly to the trash?

...and put on some Rush. :-)

The real purpose for Google putting everything into one entry box is that everything you type gets turned into a search, and therefore gets sent to Google. It adds a very significant amount of data to their user search information database - essentially monetizing everything you type up there (Microsoft does this with IE as well). My guess is that Mozilla is getting something under the table for this as well. Fork time?

Why? Do you think regulations will magically make these companies haxx0r-proof?

Here's what happens with the regulatory process: the companies lobby the shit out of the appropriate politicians and agencies. Regulations are produced. They don't solve much, but now we get a new bureaucracy to handle the regulations. The companies still get cracked, but now they can say "Hey, it wasn't our fault - we followed the regulations."

Happens all day, every day.

George Jepsen is a Democrat. (Disclaimer: I am not a Republican - I can't stand either major party).

...then why do they pass laws and ordinances mandating their existence? If you don't believe me, try starting your own phone or cable company sometime.

I love it when government passes laws adding new regulations to solve problems created by government rather than just fixing their initial mistakes. The closest we got to to sanity was the AT&T breakup by the Judicial branch, but the legislative and executive branches were bought off sufficiently bought to more or less undo all of the good done there.

Heck, my freaking blender has a microprocessor in it (and takes a second or two to boot up when I turn it on).

Yes, it's a BlendTec.

Santa's having to spend all of his energy moving his workshop whenever the North Pole shifts. This screws up Christmas gift giving, which is a major economic driver.

Somehow this is all Bush's fault - and like everything else Obama's just putting Bush's policies on steroids...

Ugh. That's only because the ASA CLI is so hopelessly, thoroughly screwed (actually, that describes ASA software in general). I love running "sh run object-group | b " and then scrolling back through 600 object-groups to see the one I was interested in. Or searching through access lists that are in no particular order. Or remembering that clearing a site-to-site VPN connection is in the "clear crypto" command tree, and remote client VPN connections are "vpn-sessiondb logoff" (I could go on for ages).

The whole thing should have been refactored ages ago...

The Iso's (sp), still don't really get it.

It's so people on Slashdot can make "Man, I'd like to mount that .iso" jokes from the comfort of their parents' basements.

Ummm... a few points:

1) FedEx is, as far as I know, the only major carrier that handles radioactive material. It doesn't go in their regular package delivery system; they have a separate division that handles it (and biohazards, poisons, explosives, and things like that). See: http://www.fedex.com/us/services/customcritical/specialty/hazardous/index.html

2) No delivery service is going to be 100% mistake free. Negative outcomes will happen in life. Get over it.

Netflix sent me an e-mail indicating that they would no longer support the discs after 31 days.

I won't miss the discs. The upgrade rocks.

Then why not come up with a business plan and do it? If it's really that cheap, you should be able to wipe out the competition and make a handsome profit while providing people with a good product at a better price.

Except that you obviously have very little or no knowledge about large scale wireless infrastructure, otherwise you wouldn't make that sort of absurd claim.