Show me a libertarian that thinks the government making secret lists of people not allowed to participate in otherwise legal business transactions is a good idea... I'm not sure how libertarianism is the enemy here, it seems that secret government lists removing people's freedoms would be the opposite of libertarianism. Or are you actually trying to argue that a secret government list with zero oversight is a good idea?

I can't speak for AT&T's implementation, but where I live we also have a TV over DSL provider, and they can definitely tell the difference between TV traffic and non-TV traffic, and therefore can still see what your non-TV traffic totals up to if they want to bill for overage... the plus side is I've never heard of anyone actually receiving an overage bill, but they do reserve the right. This also means that they can limit bandwidth separately for TV and internet services, so for example you could watch 3HD streams (total of approx 18-20megs of bandwidth) but if you turn them all off, they could still limit your internet speed to the 15 meg you're paying for. (often the modem will be trained up at 50-80meg, but you only get the internet speed you pay for with the rest being reserved for the TV's use)

Not "all providers up here", only those where you live, in Western Canada I'm not aware of any PPPoE providers.

I did say "or earlier"...

I'm not that old, and even I was trained on thinnet, thicknet, and token ring. Hearing someone talking about using gigabit with the "off my lawn" meme is frankly a little depressing...

Not to mention how convenient the long wire is to my tablet as I walk around the house....

Future proof is one thing, but using it today is useful too. Almost everything has an ethernet port on it, not much is ready for fibre.
Honestly I think it will be a very long time before fibre optics are standard for networks within a single house, too much cost and too much legacy wiring, and that legacy wiring is capable of "good enough" speeds for a while yet (most traffic these days is to/from the internet, and if your internet connection isn't gigabit, what point is there for anything more than gigabit ethernet to your devices?) More likely we'll see continued improvement in speeds over cat5 long before we see fibre optics being pulled between rooms in a house.

Exactly, wifi is for devices that can't be wired. I actually miscounted when I voted apparently though, I forgot about a gaming system which is wireless only because some idiot engineer somewhere decided that a stationary device, designed to connect to the internet, should be built without an ethernet port!

2 person household
Wireless: 2 laptops, 4 phones, 1 Wii
Wired: 1 desktop PC, 2 NAS devices, 1 printer, 1 media streaming device, 1 Blu-ray player

As a side note, if you want people off your lawn, you shouldn't be on gigabit... maybe 100Mb, more likely good ol' 10baseT or earlier ;)
(I upgraded my 10Mb hub to a 100Mb switch last year, and finally to gigabit 2 days ago, so I'm possibly a bit behind the curve too...)

I think it more likely points to the fact that the advertising industry is completely out of touch with reality. People buy products regardless of if any advertising occurs or not, some things people just have to have, some things people want and research before buying, some things are impulse buys when they walk by them.

Thing is, even if you didn't follow any advertising to find a product or service, you still pay for the advertising of that product or service when you purchase it. The tagline has always been "half of the money spent on advertising is wasted, we just don't know which half", but I contend that it is FAR worse than that, I suspect it's more like 95%+ is wasted, companies swear that by throwing their product in our face at every opportunity we'll be more likely to buy from them, but I don't think it always works that way.

So yes, you spend way more than $230 a year on product and services in general, and about $230 of that money you spend on stuff you want/need didn't go to the company you gave it to, but instead to advertising that you didn't care about.

The marketing industry is completely out of control, and it costs society an inordinate amount of money.

I own a 3D TV, So I'm part of that statistic that proves how well 3D TVs sell. .. I also do not own any 3D glasses, or any 3D content, or have any intention of ever doing so.
I have a 3D TV, not because I wanted one, but because the manufacturer wanted me to. I couldn't find my other requirements without it at a price I was willing to pay. I'm certainly not alone in this category, many people have no interest in 3D, but own 3D TVs, not because they want a 3D TV, but because the TV they want happens to have that feature.
Look at sales of 3D content and 3D glasses, not 3D TVs to gauge the interest, I'm sure it's a lot lower than the industry would have you believe.
Thing is, the industry is desperate, we just went through the transition from SD to HD, which provided real value to the end user, this caused millions of people to go out and buy new TVs to replace ones that were still working fine, that's petering out now and most people have already replaced their old SD TVs. The industry desperately wants to replicate that situation and force people to go buy all new TVs again, but people just aren't biting.

This is one more reason to make extra sure that companies that you deal with have zero US presence. In fact in many jurisdictions it would be illegal to follow these US laws due local privacy laws. By doing business in the US, any data on individuals that you have, even stored in other jurisdictions is subject to their laws, meaning you'll often have the choice of breaking US law, or breaking the laws of the country you're in.

Much safer to just avoid all dealings with the USA.

Simple, they cut off your service for non-payment, and you move your internet connection to the competi....er... well, does Netflix still run a DVD service?

Only partially true though, what they ignore is that those same people need glasses for distance. So it's a choice of needing glasses for reading, or for distance, or for both. Not needing glasses isn't really the option there.
With Lasik you'd need your reading glasses, without you'd need either distance glasses, or bi-focals, depending.

Although the risk of dislodging the "flap" is real, I question for how long it is an issue? I don't think you're likely to be able to dislodge it months later as it will "heal" the same way the new layer grows back after PRK

I know that the Canadian Army used to require PRK for this exact reason, but I believe they've now changed that and allow both.

For this reason the Canadian Army used to insist on PRK over Lasik, the difference is that in Lasik they open a flap in your eye, and then re-seal it. in PRK they cut the flap off and let it re-grow. That said, I believe with more experience that they've changed the rules to allow both now.

There is a risk of dislodging the flap after Lasik, though the risk goes away with time (I'm not sure how much time?) Though I don't think G-forces alone are enough (at least not survivable ones) they were worried about direct trauma to the eye.

I actually got my lasik done from the same surgeon that did my opthamologist... so I felt fairly confident (I did do quite a bit of my own research too, but when I asked my opthamologist and they gave me the name that did theirs I'll say it carried some weight)