That's what you want, and others on Slashdot. But "you" must accept you aren't the typical user.

If these are the features that would help sell phones, then those are the features people would get. Do you seriously think Apple, Samsung, LG etc. does no market research before prepping a new release of a phone? If there was such a huge market out there demanding these phones and willing to spend money on them, of course there will be phones to buy to fill that market and get the money!

This is the same argument about women in the workforce being "cheaper" (underpaid). We hear the (rightful) argument all the time on Slashdot that if women are so much cheaper than men, companies would just hire women and save money. It's the same thing here -- if making these phones is going to all of a sudden give a huge boost to a company's revenue, they would have already done it. Time to face reality - most users don't want these things.

No problem! Always happy when someone takes the time to post real, hard stats that are backed by reputable sources. This is why I read Slashdot, for comments and links like this. Many love to just throw out anecdotal or un-referenced "information", so it's nice to see this.

Plus, these kinds of worldly stats are what I really find interesting. I wish they were more mainstream.

Thank you for posting this link, this is really cool.

For the record, the US 15% number is actually their 2001 stat (14.7%), whereas the 2011 stat is 14.4% (which presumably you would round to 14% instead).

This is from the XLS which I assume you used for the data: http://dx.doi.org/10.1787/888932942241.

For the record, I have a 6 year old machine running Windows 7 with a RAID-0 setup (asus p5k-e motherboard, WD 250gb drives), and it has never had an issue. It it typically on 24/7, but it has gone through many power outages where the UPS ran out of battery and it hard-reset.

I do, of course, keep all data on a separate regular drive, along with an external back-up of that. So if the RAID-0 did die, it wouldn't be a big deal (and I could finally move to SSD!).

Anyways, the point I am trying to make is that RAID-0 is not as "crazy unreliable" as some people would have you believe.

Also 1/3 of all English-speaking Canadians use US Netflix, so I am sure this is also helping.

I know it's helping for me personally, as the first thing I do when I want to watch something is check Netflix.

My last sentence is a testament to the fact that "your" (I don't know if you're American or not) elections are already bought, so what's the difference?

In Canada, they are not, and electronic voting can be fairly secure. Nothing is 100% secure, but it can be made mostly secure.

By the way, all of your examples - hacking, social engineering, threatening, they all already could be done to game the system. After the physical ballets are counted, someone could tamper. Before someone goes into the polls, someone can (and already do by handing out things) tamper. Threatening is obvious. And others, such as using dead people. So why do you worry so much about this?

How is that any different than all the other items I listed that are centralized? Hackers could hack into tax returns and make all the accounts for deposit their own and get a hefty pay-out. They could also change the numbers and bankrupt the government during pay-out.

We already have a verification system in place in any case. The government mails out IDs through physical mail (or hopefully confirmed e-mail later), and you use that ID plus some form of ID (such as some #s from your previous tax return, or your passport #, or whatever) and it is secure enough.

There's always a fairly safe way to do it, enough that nobody can buy an election.

In any case, I'm surprised this is the concern. Elections in the US are already bought by corporation funding. We've all seen the correlation between US election spending and results. So do you really care if it's bought by hackers or by corporations?

Good work pulling numbers out of your ass. How about you give me some evidence that even 1% of online tax filings are fraudulent, because I am sure you cannot.

All this crap about "hackers buying an election" is bullshit made for you to eat by politicians.

In Canada you can file your taxes (and even get the replies via e-mail), renew your driver's licence, file for immigration changes (visa extensions, etc.), renew car plates, get a new passport, etc. all online. And yet, we don't feel we are secure enough to allow people to vote? How the fuck does that make any sense?

In the end, all this bullshit about "we can't provide enough security for voting" is just a smoke and mirrors job. The real fear is that everyone who doesn't vote now because it's a pain in the ass will start voting, and that could seriously change the political landscape.

And while you may be tempted to start giving me examples of how it's not a pain in the ass, such as how you can pre-vote with an envelope (wait, why is this allowed but online isn't?), or go physically in the morning/afternoon/whatever, NOTHING beats the ease-of-use of and time saving of online voting.

Doesn't ICANN now enforce 'real' information on custom domains? It's less anonymous.

I never understood this. What are the passengers doing to do if they see something? Cry? They can't do anything, and the tower / pilot would already know about it if it was dangerous.

Nature finds a way.

Certainly no study is perfect, and you are right that there are studies that show it is unsafe too. But what I've linked are federal studies by various governments, the national cancer institute, the FDA and the EFSA. These are pretty big, well funded institutes who would actually benefit by finding it not safe and banning it - for example, Canada has government funded health care, and does not want to have to pay for all sorts of people getting sick from something, which is why they tax so much on 'bad' things and ban what they can.

So I feel pretty secure that it's safe in 'regular' amounts (don't drink like 20 diet pops a day basically). But that goes for everything.

There are two major reasons why people incorrectly think aspartame causes cancer:

1. In 1975 a bad study was released saying aspartame caused brain and other cancers. This study became “legend”, and is what everyone thinks about aspartame, but it is not true. There is even an article on Wikipedia specifically about this controversy: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aspartame_controversy
2. In 1998, a hoax was released saying aspartame caused all sorts of serious diseases, and people believed it: http://urbanlegends.about.com/library/blasp.htm. It’s also on snopes http://www.snopes.com/medical/toxins/aspartame.asp

Due to the 1975 study, studies were launched and FDA officials describing aspartame as "one of the most thoroughly tested and studied food additives the agency has ever approved" and its safety as "clear cut" (http://web.archive.org/web/20071214170430/www.fda.gov/fdac/features/1999/699_sugar.html)

1. The European Food Safety Authority concluded in its 2013 re-evaluation that aspartame and its breakdown products are safe for human consumption at current levels of exposure (http://www.efsa.europa.eu/en/efsajournal/pub/3496.htm)
2. As do other independent studies (http://informahealthcare.com/doi/abs/10.1080/10408440701516184)
3. The national cancer institute has cleared aspartame as having no links to cancer (http://web.archive.org/web/20090212130028/http://cancer.gov/cancertopics/factsheet/AspartameQandA)

There are many more scientific studies on it by national governments showing it’s safe as well:

• UK https://www.food.gov.uk/science/additives/aspartame/
• Canada http://www.hc-sc.gc.ca/fn-an/securit/addit/sweeten-edulcor/aspartame-eng.php
• Australia / New Zealand http://www.foodstandards.gov.au/consumer/additives/aspartame/pages/default.aspx