If I pay with cash, it's mine and nobody has that data to sell to someone about me. Also, nobody ever knows if I ever watched it at all, or if I went back and watched a hot sex scene or some dude's head exploding over and over again.

Streaming services track this kind of info. Many just blow that off, but it matters to some.

For public work docs we put together. I was trying to hit "Alt+F, S" to save everything for quite a while.

I personally don't like the change because not every piece of software behaves that way (yet), and that leads to confusion.

I also like having control over what is saved and when for a reason. Maybe I don't want some server having every thought I've ever had (and then deleted later because it was a bad idea, such as an angry email you never sent) stored somewhere in "Big Data". Imagine the psychological profile that someone could build about you with everything you ever typed anywhere in any Google product, Facebook, Twitter, etc...

With that said, I get why most people don't have such paranoid thoughts. It's all about convenience.

I don't, actually - and I've intentionally avoided GM primarily for that reason.

I'd have to verify that I could kill OnStar at the hardware level (i.e. unplug it) before buying one, actually.

5. For all of the talk from some libertarians, most Americans want to feel safe - and through their inaction (despite the revelations) have ratified GW's and Obama's acceptance of the spy programs.

What would be REALLY interesting to see, IMO, is if Rand Paul (by some miracle) was elected president in 2016 and despite his lineage and rhetoric even he decided to leave the surveillance in place. You'd have to wonder exactly what they're keeping from us, security-wise...

BTW - Looking at some people's defense of Obama on this topic shows that like past Slashdot articles have said, the more people are shown facts that disprove what they believe to be true, the more they clench onto their mistaken beliefs (in this case about Barack Obama's administration being a good thing for the country overall.)

"or face increasing regulation of said killing devices."

Reasonable regulation is understandable, but doesn't the government have to prove at some point that they need to be regulating stupidity with guns within the walls of people's homes?

That's a key part of this debate that people sweep under the table with various gruesome statistics (4000 dead each year, etc.). What is the price of freedom from over-regulation, or taken to the extreme, tyranny?

By the way - Do you own a "said killing" device?

"gun fondlers"

Troll... Didn't read beyond that point.

The government can't disable a key (or a car) - yet. It's about control over what you own.

While schools had Apple computers, many 40 somethings first cut our teeth with computers at home on the C64 or Vic-20. With the C64, I first saw a modem (300 baud) and connect to a BBS system, a floppy disk drive (5.25" - holepunched to use both sides), and compressed digital music (at a C64 club meeting someone had a 10 second snippet of compressed, digital music on a C64 - sounded like crap and took (the usual) 2 minutes to load, but it was a decade ahead of MP3s.)

It also had BASIC programming capabilities with the disk drives for storage. You could draw sprites/graphics, program songs, do basic word processing, etc. Save it on your floppy disk and you were set.

Finally, the C64 had great games that made the pre-NES home consoles like the Atari 2600 look like garbage. The game selection was big enough to where a lot of good games were eventually produced: Ultima III/IV/V (or Bard's Tale, Temple of Apshai, Sword of Fargoal) = World of Warcraft. Arcade/Adventure/Pinball Construction Kit(s) = Minecraft. Karateka/Yie Ar Kung Fu = every fighter game ever. Beachhead = a 2D Call of Duty. Other great games off the top of my head -- Mission Impossible, Raid Over Moscow, Summer/Winter Games (Epyx), Raid on Bungeling Bay, etc.

It was also our first exposure to pirated software trading and beating DRM (Fast Hack'Em, etc.). To play our pirated version of archon (a great cross of chess and 2-D shooter):

load"*",8,1 (,8,8)
sys 24832

The system is a fossil today, but it was great for its time... You just kinda had to be there.

Whether Romney was just lucky or not doesn't matter. The real problem is that the guy that won was so arrogant and clueless about Russia. And his administration has made multiple, big mistakes abroad. AND it probably doesn't help that they're appointing top campaign contributors as foreign ambassadors even if they know nothing about the country they'll be living in.

Seriously - They're running their foreign policy like a bunch of amateurs playing catch-up.

And yes - The GOP was really wrong to push for and lead the invasion of Iraq. It was a total waste of political capital, a trillion+ dollars, and the scarring of thousands of American soldiers' lives. The problem with that "I hate the GOP no matter what" argument, however, was that Romney was willing to stand on his own at times, and he was definitely not a Sarah Palin like candidate.

This CANNOT be posted enough. Obama was 100% wrong, and Romney was 100% right.

Call it sour grapes for the 2012 election, but the guy that lost saw the potential problems coming - and our current administration mocked him for it. And Romney haters mocked him online and in the media.

Bottom line: As of today, when it comes to international relations, the executive branch looks like it's being run today by an amateur - supported by amateurs, all living in the same intellectual bubble full of yes men.

But prayer won't get you drunk or pregnant.

Communism wasn't a religion. Communism is just an evil mutation of a utopian society where everyone VOLUNTARILY shares their wealth with each other and cares for each other, regardless of what religious views were held by any of its occupants. Communist regimes (under the Soviet model), however, chose the single religious model of athiesm to use as a tool of oppression and control. I imagine that Lenin and his more sincere followers in 1917 had no idea what kind of evil would spring up in the wake of Lenin's death within a few years.

Religion is powerful enough to compel mass murder, oppression, and dismissal of damning facts against your actions.

I think you meant to say that philosophical fascism, not religion, is powerful enough. Religion is a subset of philosophy, and any philosophy used to force an agenda on others and used to oppress those who don't conform is truly evil.

Philosophical, fascist atheists are just as capable of evil as intolerant religious people. See Stalin in the Soviet Union, as atheist of a state as there has ever been. I'd argue that Stalin was even more evil than Hitler. Millions upon millions were murdered, displaced, starved, and/or oppressed under his atheist regime.

The good news is that the majority of the world fails to follow religion as their religious books tells them to.

"Good news"? You clearly have no understanding of neither the content nor the meaning of religious texts such as the Bible, Torah, Koran, etc. If people followed the tenets of their scriptures, the world's problems would be solved so quickly that intellectuals would call it a modern-day miracle.

What would crank up the fear quicker would be some A-list celebrity's well-documented child dying of vaccinate-preventable disease. I'm not saying any names because that would be in really bad taste and I don't wish any harm on anyone like that, but I can think of quite a few children that the press, tabloids, and bloggers have covered extensively - and their untimely deaths would be even more dramatic...

Whether you chalk it up to "the Constitution" or an almost religious-like refusal to admit they were wrong about autism/vaccinations, you can't force that kind of view that will be labeled as fascism by those who don't want them.

Like others have posted, the only force that will move these people now is watching loved ones they refused to vaccinate die in their own arms. (And it wouldn't surprise me that much if those people, in their grief, actually blame everyone else for their bad decision.)