Corporations are primarily a liability-limitation scheme for executives and shareholders, structured so that profit and growth must push aside other considerations. Corporate personhood or not, there's little reason to create one otherwise.

Indeed, it is libertarians all the way down in corporate thinking, and the corporate class are free to do what they want as long they have reached that stage of critical mass and minimal competition. We are supposed to ignore that the producers are free to affect the testing business through purchase of stock, etc. At least with government testing and standards, the regulatory capture should be readily apparent (Citizens United is an attempt to circumvent this, however).

This is priceless libertarian pro-corporate agita :D

How about saving people from the endless screaming via ads about having to use whatever new chemicals that will make us shiny, youthful and lovable? People are bombarded with advertising crap every day, sometimes all day non-stop. It is absolutely essential to push back on the worst of their getting rich through innovative chemistry schemes. Corporations do not have a right to propagandize (and even force) us into using their products in the absence of skepticism.

If you want a long-term antibiotic type effect in your mouth, eat foods or supplements that are rich in vitamin K2. It is chemically/structurally similar to vitamin K, but the 'small' difference makes it play an almost entirely different role in the body. K2 (especially the MK4 and MK7 variants, used with vitamin A/cod liver oil) has a moderating/managing effect on calcium uptake and tooth/bone health and somehow prevents plaque buildup (to the point where I wonder sometimes if I should bother brushing my teeth). More calcium ends up in your bones and less clinging to your arteries.

Some fermented bean products (like Japanese natto) have tons of K2, and this is where a lot of supplements get their source.

But the Brookstone one costs 4X as much, true to form...

Watergate whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg:
“Richard Nixon, if he were alive today, might take bittersweet satisfaction to know that he was not the last smart president to prolong unjustifiably a senseless, unwinnable war, at great cost in human life. (And his aide Henry Kissinger was not the last American official to win an undeserved Nobel Peace Prize.)

He would probably also feel vindicated (and envious) that ALL the crimes he committed against me–which forced his resignation facing impeachment–are now legal.

That includes burglarizing my former psychoanalyst’s office (for material to blackmail me into silence), warrantless wiretapping, using the CIA against an American citizen in the US, and authorizing a White House hit squad to “incapacitate me totally” (on the steps of the Capitol on May 3, 1971). All the above were to prevent me from exposing guilty secrets of his own administration that went beyond the Pentagon Papers. But under George W. Bush and Barack Obama,with the PATRIOT Act, the FISA Amendment Act, and (for the hit squad) President Obama’s executive orders. they have all become legal.

http://www.juancole.com/2011/06/ellsberg-all-nixons-crimes-against-me-now-legal.html

To have the possiblity of secure communications, I suggest buying a recently manufactured PC with VTx and VTd/IOMMU capabilities and get used to running a minimally exploitable OS on it.

For portable devices, I recommend something that can have all the firmware flashed to something like Android or Firefox OS, has a removable battery, and no cellular radio. Also, re-flash on a regular basis.

And finally Slashdot is getting past its kneejerk response on stories like this: 'Get over yourself... the government isn't interested in your boring life'.

Not only are they interested (in filling up prisons, at least) but their corporate masters still remember what dealing with a powerful citizenry was like and it gives them nightmares.

Do you think millions of people who signed up for the service last decade read the changes in the EULA that show communications are centralized?

They seem to be trampling on peoples' expectations here.

At some point Skype was changed to allow a MITM situation.

Why do a preponderance of apps found within most repositories feel the need to describe themselves, first and foremost, in terms of which toolkit or DE they are based on? 'OMG! I found a Gnome3 checkbook manager!'

It isn't nonsense; Its a description of a social malady. FOSS desktop systems have no shortage of them. Unlike the moblile space, their primary movers are wedded to the greybeard hacker/sysadmin concept of what an OS should be: A server with a layer of foamy GUI fluff on top that can be disposed of or ignored or replaced at a moments notice.

I say, lets replace them; make them irrelevant. If Android completely mopped up all the (residual) Desktop Linux market share tomorrow (even from Ubuntu), I wouldn't shed a tear.

Mono, LOL.

OTOH, my 2012 model ThinkPad i5 running Ubuntu 13.04 uses 12% CPU to play a low-bandwidth voice MP3 while the notorious Gnome System Monitor shows up as 15%. Memory use is 2GB + 500MB swap for 20 very simple web pages in Firefox plus Rythmbox plus GSM plus CLI; I am using the defalt vanilla Ubuntu apps and preferences. Its on-par with OS X for RAM use, and very inefficient compared to the CPU usage on my Macbook despite the Macbook being a 2007 model that's less than half as fast in raw power.

That's not to mention all the hardware integrations it got wrong (of course, its mainly sound and visual-- but who really needs those when you got an ethernet port?!!).

I can't even find a SIP phone app in the Ubuntu 13.04 repository that works!