And how hard is that? In my home, the wifi is encrypted so if the TV connects via wifi, I simply don't give it the key. If it connects via ethernet, I disconnect the ethernet cable. It's not too hard to prevent the TV from phoning home.

As for the original question, at this time it doesn't seem like there are too many options for this. I bought a "smart" tv several years ago, I thought it would be helpful since I wanted to be able to stream Netflix without getting a third-party box. The interface is terrible, it's very slow and unresponsive. There haven't been any updates to the "NetTV" portion of the software, so pretty much the only thing worthwhile is Netflix - most of the other services it supports either are useless or don't even exist anymore. If the company cared about providing updates and staying current with services it might be worth it but there is no motivation for the company to provide software updates since they would prefer I just buy a new TV if I want access to current services. With things like Chromecast and FireTV, it makes a lot more sense to get a dumb TV and add the smart features you want via a cheap dongle rather than paying hundreds of dollars for the TV manufacturer to add the same hardware with a crappier interface to the TV.

I don't see how Bitcoin is different than cash in this regard. If you are purchasing something without escrow then you will always run the risk of the other party making off with your money/property. If this happens, they still broke the law no matter if you were paying in cash, Bitcoins or Triganic Pu. If you don't trust the party you are doing the deal with you should take steps to protect yourself, no matter the currency.

The Wikipedia article seems to disagree with you:

'The number "419" refers to the article of the Nigerian Criminal Code dealing with fraud.'

Nothing about them being legal, in most countries fraud is fraud. Do you have a citation that such scams are legal in Nigeria (or elsewhere)?

However, this person is not the inventor of PGP, Phil Zimmermann is. Koch just wrote an open source program that complies with the OpenPGP RFC. This is certainly valuable and I do think that the community receives sufficient benefit from this program to support it financially, but Koch isn't an inventor, he is a programmer that implemented a public standard.

Sodium doesn't necessarily cause a rise in blood pressure -- just like the title of this /. article says, don't trust shit you've read about diet and fitness. Here's an article about a new study that could not find a strong link between sodium consumption and blood pressure. That being said, it's probably still not a good idea to eat a ton of salt but it may not be as dangerous as previously thought.

That's odd, does anyone know why it would run out of hydraulic fluid? Usually a hydraulic system is a closed loop, are they constantly dumping hydraulic fluid from this stage?

In this utopia, how do you get your food? Are the people who own the machines just going to give you that food out of the goodness of their hearts? Are they also going to provide housing and transportation? There is plenty of automation displacing workers now and all the benefits of it go to the people with the capital. Labor has not realized the benefits of the productivity gains that have happened in the past, what makes you think they will reap such benefits in the future?

If something cannot be proven scientifically then it is not affecting the world. If something has no effect then why concern yourself about it? God could certainly be proven scientifically, He just needs to heal a few amputees or part the Atlantic ocean. God's insistence on only healing people who's body might heal itself doesn't lend great credence to the 'omnipotence' claim.

When the miracles degrade from 'flooding the entire earth' to 'make something that looks vaguely like my son appear on a slice of toast' it's not surprising that the level of belief has fallen. It's curious that the miracle degradation happened concurrently with human's ability to measure the natural world, it's almost like ignorance of natural processes fueled belief.

It's easy enough to configure your mail server to not send if the STARTTLS command is ignored. It should treat it the same as a server that doesn't support TLS. If someone is concerned about email getting sniffed they will configure their server in this manner and will effectively be unable to send any mail over these networks. This should certainly fall under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, it's basically a denial of service attack.

Am I missing something? Didn't The West Wing air on NBC?

Why would you need spacesuit cooling on Mars? It's not space, where the side facing the sun heats up and it is difficult to radiate heat, there is an atmosphere that is quite chilly. I would think that you would need spacesuit heating on Mars, not cooling. However, I'm not a rocket scientist, is there anyone who has definitive knowledge on this topic?

All the examples you gave are failed predictions, not lies. Lies would be something like falsifying current data. Predicting the future is notoriously hard, to call failed predictions "lies" is assigning malice to the statements that I don't think exists. Perhaps if you toned down the rhetoric and didn't accuse people who don't share your views of lying there could be meaningful dialog on the matter. I doubt that will happen, because it is much easier to demonize your opponent than it is to present data that contradicts the hypothesis. Perhaps the people who believe AGW isn't happening should make some predictions of their own (glaciers will grow? Ice extent will increase or stay the same? Ocean levels will not rise?) and we'll see how their predictions hold up.

It won't bring down insurance rates because the police unions will never allow it to be implemented. It's not like there was a technical hurdle to gathering this data before and Ford just 'solved' the problem, the issue is that the public employees that are supposed to enforce the law increasingly see themselves as above the law.

Wow, with the Orbital Sciences launch failure and now this, it is really turning into a bad week for privately funded spaceflight.

Unfortunately, the very people who would need to take action to enact such laws are the same people who benefit from the system the way it is. Congress will never do anything meaningful in this area because it would take power away from them. The people in power are extremely power-hungry, that is why they ran for the office in the first place - there is no way they will voluntarily give up any of that power.