I used to be leaning right 20 years ago. I even was a member of a right-leaning party, and a nominee in a local municipal elections. Since then all we wanted to go right had gone so and even further right. So now I gotta lean left, while my opinions are about the same. And that's in Finland. In Bill O'Reilly scale I am a total communist.

In Finland banks have practically forced people to use Internet for paying bills, by making payment at the desk ridiculously expensive and reducing the number of payment machines. The 8% of Finns that have never used the internet must be old people that are wealthy enough to pay 6€ per bill. Learning even basic usage is a big effort if you haven't touched a computer before, people growing up with computers and other gadgets have no idea how hard it can be.
That's why R-Kioski (chain that makes most of it's money selling tobacco, candy, magazines and lottery tickets) has started a service where paying a bill costs "only" 3 euros.
Oh, internet access is not a "right" in Finland. There has only been talking about that every household should be capable of having a broadband access for a reasonable price, with government support if needed, but there has been no real action yet. For people living in cities there is no problem, but in the countryside many farmers can't get a broadband, or are struggling with a 3G connection that works sometimes.
Though most of Finland is covered with 3G networks, ensued by Finns need to go to a shore of one of Finland's 187888 lakes every chance they get. People expect their UMTS modem to work in their summer cottage, 100 paying customers by a lake makes you build a station for them. But if you are a lone farmer with no lakes near, who's gonna care for you? In current economic situation propably nobody.

For most people it is all the same if a driver is open source or not as long as it works and you get it for free.
As I appreciate AMD opening up some of their secrets. The open source Radeon driver is a lot better than it was on ATI times. However, the closed driver still gives you double the fps on games, the bad news that it works so badly. Messes up the screen and stuff.
I recently bought a new nVidia based card, partly because I was fed up with the proprietary Radeon driver not working. Gave up trying to install it on Fedora 16 or Mint 12.
GeForce is the only choice if you want fast graphics for Linux right now.

It's good that someone forked Gnome 2 into Mate, however Gnome 3 should have been the fork, because it's more of a new product rather than upgrade of the old.
Usually when you upgrade you get something similar, but with new features. Now you'll lose features if you upgrade. But I will not join Gnome 3 bashers. It's not "dumbed down" as some folks claim, It's an early version of the new DE.
When Mate fork is finished it will be just like Gnome 2 was, and Gnome 3 will get more customisability while it develops, things will be good again.

I remember how it used to be. When the reader guy made his first round and you weren't home, you had a note: "I was here to read a meter, but you weren't home, please be home at this other time, or call to arrange a better reading time". The reader guy came once a year, and the monthly bill was based on an assumption how much you are using. Once a year there was a correcting bill that got payments up to date with the actual consumption. Of course electric and water companies had their own reader people.
Now I get a monthly bill based on the actual consumption and I don't have to let anyone in.

So what's the security risk? Someone finding out how much power I'm using?

Sure, say 1333 MHz is dirt cheap, but if you are looking for 1066 DDR2 for a two year old system, it's not that cheap. If I wanted 8 GB now, it would be cheaper to buy a new motherboard and the RAM for it + all the hassle of changing the motherboard.

I have a smartphone, but I don't use it as a phone, because if I forget to, or am incapable of charging it some day the battery runs out and then I effectively wouldn't have a phone. It's my internet/entertainment/GPS device.
My phone phone is Samsung's second cheapest flip model, the battery lasts for a week.

I've been stalking this girl for 10 years, in order to kill her and take her market share. I finally got her on a date. She told me to fuck myself.

Flickr.

I mean 150g (of habanero could be lethal)

(wikipedia knows everything, right?) If scoville rating of Pure capsaicin if be 15M, and habanero is up to 350k, about 15 grams of habanero may be a lethal doze. These http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1-QVQLbwtHA chicks are risking their lives!

As if the fear of pedophiles wasn't out of proportion. Treating all contact between an adult and a minor as a potential pedophile act, giving them an excuse to seriously infiltrate peoples personal lives.
It's not for the government to decide who can be friends with whom. I think it's good for children to have other adults they can trust, besides their parents. What if you get sexually abused at home (which does happen a lot)? Then an adult friend is a best thing you can have.

"Think of the children"? Yes, think if your children want to live in a sexually tabooed and paranoid world, that you "think of the children"-folks are pushing it towards.

Sort of agree. You should give your kid a half decent camera if he/she is interested in taking photos. Adults are often stuck with the idea they think photos should look like, resulting with a bunch of boring photos. Kids don't have this restriction and can take new kinds if fun and interesting photos.

But you sound like a typical consumer who think the more megapixels, the better the camera is. The resolution is only a part of what is good image quality. A typical pocket camera has nowhere near good enough optics to make use of 12MP. Sensor makers could have developed them to be less noisy and perform better in low light. But no, people want megapixels, sell them megapixels.
Nikon's top model D3 has 12MP in a film frame size (35mm) sensor. Some pocket cams are stuffing 16 in 1/40 of the area.

Stop this megapixel race insanity!

Microsoft should support a 10 year old system if it takes them 8 years to produce a newer system someone would want to use. In fact they are still supporting it for almost 3 years, as they should.

Culturally you can use anything you want, like using miles and fahrenheit and cups. But in sciene and engineering there should be only one system, and let that be the better system, which is SI. The least possible amount of base units and the rest are derived from them. If all your parameters are 1 something, the result will be 1 something, only the unit changes. Try that with archaic units.