You can block applications on a per-application basis too. I've blocked everything people have invited me to, except for the two applications I actually use. Not as good as opt-in, but it does exist.

My Motorola droid gets 93/100 on acid3.acidtests.org, which is the same score my Windows firefox 3.5 gets. My Linux 3.0.14 firefox only gets 72/100.

Wow. It's not about Windows! It's about being easiest. You could argue about whether this is really easier, but bringing Windows into it is unnecessary.

Which writs were rejected, and what were the companies involved? I'd love to know, this isn't just a "citation needed" bitch.

> I really can't see a situation where MS is a monopoly, but Apple isn't.

How about reality? One of those entities is a convicted monopoly, one is not.

> urinating in public, in which case you'll get a disproportionate sentence, and in the latter case, a scarlet letter as a bonus.

FYI, you don't get put on the sex offender list for public urination. It's a $94 ticket in my state, though.

That works as long as the only strategy used is reference counting. There are others, and I think Java uses a fancy version of mark and sweep.

I'm 22, so a fairly young *nix user, and I do all of my coding in Vim. However, I do most of my debugging in a visual debugger. How anyone could do anything else, I have no idea. Using a CLI debugger is insanity. For example, when I 'step', I can see every value that changed, without having to query every variable again. It may be easy for small programs, but for large programs with lots of objects it makes things a lot easier.

I don't think that's the whole picture.

For example, if I play WoW and meet a real life friend who plays WoW, we can only play together if we happened to sign up on the same server.

If I play Guild Wars, we both sign in, switch to the same district, and we're in game together. It is possible for any player to go to any district in the game (if they have unlocked the content, obviously). So, you can always play with new people you haven't connected with before.

Do YOU know what OS/firmware your television/radio/refridgerator/telephone/dishwasher/washingMachine/etc are running?

In all of the cases you stated, it's almost certainly something proprietary developed by the manufacturer. If I had re-flashed it, then I'd know the source. What's your point?

> It says on the Noscript website it is software under the GPL, that means the source code is available, yes?

He says that, but I just looked on the website and couldn't find any links to a source package. If I can find the source, I'll hack together a version that doesn't have this feature.

I don't see how you're giving up security at all, really. The time between when you realize your phone is missing and when you revoke the public key is the only 'insecure' time, and for a guy running ssh on his phone, this is probably pretty small.

Also, this streamlines multitasking, since you could automatically initiate connections. It's not the best solution, but hey, I didn't buy an iPhone either.

Why don't homeowners associations for neighborhoods provide internet, like they do for other utilities? You pay a flat fee "last mile" when you build your house just like you do with water/septic/electric.

The homeowner's association runs the utilities. Just like with everything else, they contract for a say 100mbit guaranteed line, and then the 20 or whatever homes connect to that. The homeowners association polices problems/abuse, much like it does with everything else. It works because: you don't want to piss off your neighbors.

More generally, why can't I buy into a "1 gigabit pool" with a cable company? Make it blatantly obvious that they're overselling, and let the user decide. Company A says "we've got a gigabit of bandwith with 100 users", Company B says "we've got a gigabit of bandwith with 150 users", and I decide.

Can't you do something like public key logins? If your phone gets stolen, just revoke the public key from whatever servers it's on.

Not that I agree with the idea that it's a mental illness, but gender dysphoria is an illness according to the DSM-IV: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender_identity_disorder#Diagnostic_Criteria

So, in the US, you're 'ill' too. In fact, it was only recently that the people who do the DSM realized that homosexuality was not an illness.