Yeah, and don't forget that "loud pipes save lives" around typical inattentive drivers. This thing is silent but deadly.

I mean, with the recent dumbing down of fine-grained authorizations when installing apps, it's Google Play itself that feels like a security liability.

Less productiviy.

Visually appealing stuff is nice, but the best way to use a word processor or a spreadsheet is still the good old flat desktop with no bells and whistles.

what part of this am I not getting?

It's a sign of the times.

Most people just do a "sudo apt-get install" now or click on "Install" in the update manager.

FOSS is mature in that it has a boring, straight-laced, conformist main-stream that caters to 99.9% of the public's needs with unsurprising conventional applications.

We have become institutionalised and the cutting edge has been blunted.

Now? I really won't bother building Windowmaker applets or LibSpinyEchidna.so from source. :-)

I would, if only I had the time these days.

In fact I have some teency tiny scripts for making WINGs into a shared library. I half-wrote a calculator application using it about 8 years ago.

Still using WindowMaker, on Slackware64, but I install the binary package, I don't build from source :-)

Irony upon irony. We're getting this list from a Communist nation

A Communist country where people can own companies and trade stocks and shares?

His point is still valid as an example of where things could go if left unchecked. Don't get all high and mighty as this is a Canadian-related thread.

An EXTREME case would be when someone is bid-ridden.

What's that? Too much eBay?

Any article/interview from Bruce Perens can be summed up thusly:

"Bruce Perens, who loves Bruce Perens, thinks that Bruce Perens Bruce Perens Bruce Perens Bruce Perens, and also Bruce Perens. Of course, Bruce Perens also thinks Bruce Perens is so Bruce Perens that Bruce Perens Bruce Perens.

Signed: Bruce Perens"

To be fair, the guy is often interesting if you ignore his personality. But he's SO conceited and full of himself, I have a hard time divorcing the message and the messenger.

The easiest way to eliminate this threat is to lock down hardware sampling rates such that ultrasonic frequencies cannot be reliably reproduced

Nope. The easiest way to eliminate this threat is to keep a pet bat next to your computer to scramble any ultrasonic transmission.

Net neutrality is the idea that data from any provider (rich or poor, powerful company or a single guy, corrupt or honest) is treated the same way on the network.

Cisco's comment concerns the prioritization of data depending on its type. I see nothing wrong with that.

If Snowden hadn't been treated like a traitor by his country, he wouldn't've had to flee in the first place. Uncle Sam only have himself to blame if snowden is spilling the beans in Russia.

They would get them back and then punish them and then separate them.

Exactly. If that's what he deserves, then truth will out.

And I have seen an awful lot of people saying that he wasn't worth any particular effort to get back, which is pretty close to "let him rot." That's just mind-boggling to me.