Oh I agree that my analogy is imperfect, and that it does not directly have anything to do with warrantless tracking.

I'm just stating the obvious, in that typically, unless you are using encryption, you may not want to use email for the communication of anything you consider sensitive. Therefore, if you're not transmitting anything sensitive, it's unlikely anyone snooping is going to find anything sensitive, without someone other than you having put it there.

That said, I think I've just discovered the ultimate merit in your stance. With these broad powers, it would be trivially easy for someone abusing their powers to frame an individual by fabricating an email message and using it as "supporting evidence".

Whenever anyone starts freaking out about email snooping, I find it is a good time to point out that an email message that is not encrypted is roughly as secure in transit as a postcard.

I used to be a pretty avid PC gamer but as a father of six I tend to fill a support role in our household, which doesn't leave a lot of time for gaming. However, I live vicariously though my six, nine and eleven year old daughters who like PC games (especially Minecraft - I set up a LAN server for them), but they also spend a significant amount of time watching YouTube, playing Flash games on websites, and watching Netflix. We have a PS3 slim that gets a significant amount of use by my three year old daughter (Little Big Planet 2, predominantly), and a Nintendo Wii that's been mostly neglected (haha Nintendo). We also have a PS2 slim, and four vintage arcade cabinets (of the four, Soul Calibur III gets the most use).

The desktop computers are also primarily needed for school, and because three of our children need them for schoolwork each day, if one of them is down it causes a problem. When the desktop running Windows 7 (for game support) was compromised by a drive-by trojan, presumably from one of the flash game sights that are rather heavy on the advertising, I spent four days trying to repair it before throwing in the towel (bear in mind I've worked over a decade in the PC repair industry, and my malware removal/repair skills are not insignificant - this was an unrepairable mess).

Each computer in our house (except my wife's Windows 7 laptop) is now running Debian stable. I wouldn't wish this solution on someone else due to the amount of time getting everything set up, but for us it works. I've also found that once I have a LINUX system established, it tends to remain stable (with the exception of when my three year old somehow enabled all of the Accessibility options on one of them simultaneously - that was fun to undo). Each desktop has Minecraft installed. The girls would like Windows games, but the amount of effort involved in getting one running via Wine (or Crossover, or even PlayOnLinux) typically far exceeds the amount of free time I currently have available. Whenever they complain I point out the PS3, the PS2, the Wii, the arcade machines, and that pretty much ends that dialogue. Yes, first world problems.

I have found compositing to be problematic in day to day use on LINUX and up until Ubuntu moved to the Unity platform I kept it disabled (right after the initial luster of Compiz Fusion wore off). This is one of several issues that drove me away from Ubuntu and I now prefer Debian Squeeze. Usability is my primary selector in a LINUX distro, whether I'm browsing the web, developing, editing an image, running a 3d Windows game in Wine, or rendering a video. If my 7 year old laptop becomes sluggish and unresponsive because the memory shared with the GPU is being used to create a shiny new tablet-friendly interface, then that OS no longer qualifies as usable on that platform. The idea that I should have to buy a new laptop with a better 3D accelerator so that I can continue to use the latest newest shiniest LINUX distro is ridiculous.

In my opinion, all modern OS developers seem to have forgotten that the primary purpose of the OS is to provide (easy ?) access to the software the end user needs to run and a stable platform for it to run upon. A desktop environment should not require a 3d capable GPU to be rendered efficiently. The idea that it should is roughly akin to claiming it would be more efficient to drive a five minute commute with a high performance sports car.

This is not progress, it's the illusion of progress.

1. Slackware in 1996
2. Redhat in 2003
3. Ubuntu in 2005
4. #! (CrunchBang) in 2012
5. and currently Debian in 2012

I dropped Ubuntu earlier this year over a number of things, most recently Canonical's announcement regarding UEFI. Mark's "Erm, we have root" comment only made that decision permanent.

...would this be a possible link to the childhood obesity epidemic?

Another possible theory (and I use the term theory because there are presently no unbiased studies that have looked thoroughly into both short term and long term effects of multiple vaccines being administered simultaneously to a human) is that the average child's immune system, which is known to be in its development stage until approximately eight years of age, has been partially compromised by receiving 21 vaccines (or more if they have received their yearly flu shot) by the age of six. Therefore the resulting under developed immune system that has never had to create its own antibodies naturally is potentially more susceptible once the temporary protection afforded by the vaccine in question has worn off. This in combination with a diet consisting primarily of foods containing refined flour, refined sugars, monosodium glutamate, and high fructose corn syrup alongside lack of exercise and exposure to contaminants in the food supply, water supply and air can all contribute to the susceptibility of an individual to a disease or illness.

The assumption that there is one smoking gun that either explains or can prevent these health issues is a common phenomenon on this site, and one that I believe is deeply flawed.

Crystal Meth has been found to cure cancer!

Just by reading through the comments here makes it clear that everybody has their own opinion as to what is healthy.

Do you really want to let someone else mandate for you what healthy food is, based on the variety of responses?

Seems to me only a few people would benefit, and most would suffer under this proposal.

In America, it seems like few citizens want to take responsibility for their own health, so I wouldn't be very surprised if this should someday come to pass.

Bear in mind they offer the service free of charge, and their redirects to their own pages provide OpenDNS with advertising revenue. This is all clearly stated in their TOS. I for one would rather be redirected to an OpenDNS page than to a site offering drive-by trojan infections.

That said, should OpenDNS's advertising ever be compromised and start distributing malware, that would be a pretty big black eye.

And I refuse to stop using kewl. It's too kewl not to. Crap I'm old.

Agreed. Not a tear will be shed for the US cellular cartel.

Reform of...a bucket of water! Shape of...a patent troll slaying sword! Sorry...lack of coffee does strange things to my mind this early in the day.

Until the current TSA scanning/pat-down security practices are eliminated entirely from the airport, I will not take my children on any airplane for any trip. If we cannot drive, we simply will not go. If everyone else who did not want to be subjected to scans/pat-downs stopped flying, I would expect that the airline industry, already in financial trouble, would petition to have the TSA's security theater eliminated in order to bring back their lost business.