I wanted to click on your signature link but the fucked up "new" Slashdot layout puts "reply to this" link directly over your own signature link.

Nope. "We" didn't use it. A few select people used it.
That's a big difference.

Yes, a company can keep the servers to themselves, and thus give up other advantages. Again, balancin one with the other is held true.

I think there are more shades of grey than 50, here.
The phrase "I want my data to be secure" makes no sense. There's no such thing as "secure data". One can't even define "secure data". Data can only be considered secure within context, e.g. my pictures stored on SpiderOak are secure... as long as someone doesn't beat the username and password out of me with a $5 wrench. My Facebook data isn't secure by definition, anyone could save those pictures or that text. And yes, each company wants their piece of the pie (the bigger, the better) and yes, each person wants to be able to do stuff as easily as possible. The more secure data is, the greater the usability sacrifice.

We're not our worst enemy. We are how we are and it's impossible to change it. Try explaining your mom that she needs to enter an overly complicated password and then receive a code through SMS and then type that code manually in a little text box every time she wants to look at each of her granskid's pictures. Won't work. And it's not because your mom is lazy, but because the perceived need for security for such data is very low.

Yes, a thief only needs to browse his local area citizen Facebook profiles to identify who's going away on vacation. Before that, he needed to physically roam the neighborhood to find out. In both cases, the reward (loot) greatly outweighed the effort, the sole difference being less effort now than then.
The advent of Internet and technology brought us great advantages as well as risks. They always go hand-in-hand.

Example: There's one website which streams Senate and Lower Chamber political debates and meetings in my country. It's subscription-only. You gain access to full HD audio-video streaming plus a large archive stretching 10+ years back. No ads, no delays, available 24/7.

Yes. I'm ready to subscribe to a paid website with good content but no ads. As a matter of fact I have subscribed to a couple and didn't regret it a bit.

Was it less effective when mixed with shit?

Urine was also widely used during WWII to soften the hard leather boots that would otherwise hurt soldiers' feet.

"le parfum".

I disagree.

When you read "design" you think about the shape of a mobile phone or the ratio of a monitor, but that's only a small subset of the word's meaning.

Leonardo da Vinci, one of the greatest inventors of all time, was also a designer. And a prodigal one, to say the least. I could even say he was a designer more than an inventor. Many of his inventions only existed in design format and nothing else.

Yeah but that's gonna be the norm at the time.
Think of it this way: when I grew up, everyone was playing ball and running around while I was reading serous books and tinkering with science. I was the weirdo. When my kid will grow up, everyone will live inside their mobile device or VR and my kid will want to play ball and run around. He's gonna be the weirdo.
Normal kids are not what we think normal is or should be.

With that being said, my kid thoroughly enjoys playing golf and memory match on his laptop as well as playing ball outside and running around. I'm balancing his life the best I can, trying not to slide towards any of the extremes.

This, so much of this.

Erm, plant trees. Lots o' them. And I mean LOTS o' them.

Some questions:
1. How do you plan to decrease that amount?
2. How do you know how long you need to wait to realize you've overdone it? Suppose the temperature rises 0.5 degrees per year, so you spit some substance out. Next year there's no reduction of the trend, so you do what? Wait to see if that goes down next year or spit some more substance? Do you wait a decade? A century?

These global mechanisms are poorly understood and overly complex as it is, the last thing I'd want is meddling with it. It's like a 2 year old shoving both hands into a running car engine to make it sound more like the lullaby his mom's singing to him every night.

I actually liked that movie a lot.
The environmental plot was pretty good considering the movie genre's competition (e.g. other environmental plots).
The movie ended like shit but that's another discussion.

OK, I'll bite.
I could say the same from the other point of view.
Each and any average dude uses products invented and designed by someone who was way above average, starting from fire and ending up with that "phat aiphone" in one's pocket.
The few rely on the work of the many and the many use the work of the few. Symbiosis at its best.