That is the way all of this will ultimately be defeated if it ever becomes a reality. I would be interested in the scaling laws of progress in data storage vs data transmission vs data processing. Unless the power of the last one always scales more than the other two then deluges will always win.

On the very few (read one in the UK) occasion your analogy is correct there has been a massive public outrage:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phorm#BT_trials

So people generally don't accept it when it is your ISP. They shouldn't (but ATM seem to) accept it with fb. How long that will last only time will tell - MZ will be happy once he has his billions - most things he has been saying of late in a "tech visionary" context are just complete nonsense, so I suspect he isn't in it for the long term.

I shall have a read of the article, but the summary is a mess; it reads like someone talking about something they don't understand.

Last time I checked science isn't failing anyone. The vast majority of problems we have are of our own doing (climate change, obesity, poor health, poverty and deprivation, conflict). Perhaps the editors of slashdot should start editing submissions rather than letting junk summaries get to the front page.

The most spectacular hacking episodes to date generally involve spear phishing (RSA's SecureID comes to mind). Spear phishing relies and thrives on "banal trivia" because it makes the phish appear completely legitimate.

There are really to many examples to mention - something as simple as a person's full name, their date of birth, mother's maiden name (can be very easy to divine on fb) and their immediate family network - would allow their sphere of privacy to be entirely hollowed out.

The question is not whether you are giving private information to facebook/google/whoever - you are, even if you don't think it - the question is do you trust them with it.

Are Lyonnaise de Garantie escroc?

I don't know whether Lyonnaise de Garantie are crooks, but I do know that they tried to censor the web to remove any association between Lyonnaise de Garantie and crooks, or as the French say, Lyonnaise de Garantie and escroc. Which is interesting. I wonder what Ms Streisand in her lovely beach house has to say about it all.

A vehicle recall is voluntary - ultimately you don't have to take it back if you don't want to. What Amazon did was the equivalent of turning up at your house and using their own set of keys to get in to and drive away your car because it had a fault - all without telling you until they had left.

Possibly/probably. I don't know if this falls within your definition of dubious hack, but the 1st gen transformer is the subject of a drive to get it running ubuntu:

http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1191141&page=125

it is still an active and ongoing project, and so-far they have most components working though it is pretty hands-on.

The transformer appeared on my radar precisely because folks were getting ubuntu to run on it natively. And the word natively is important, as any other implementation of linux on an android tablet that I have seen involves lots of pseudo tricks such as running it on top of android and vnc'ing in to it - or variations on that theme. These folks have got ubuntu running as root from the internal ssd rather than an sd card. And hopefully if they can do it for the 1st gen then they will have a go at the 2nd as well.

Not as good as Asus providing support for this - but I get the feeling that a lot of people want to keep us in walled gardens these days - even android ones.

Not suspect I'm afraid, the truth. I click through google reader (I don't know if they count that), and I have noscript and cookieculler extensions installed.

I have never once seen any NYT paywall page - but yet ironically do run into a WP "register to see more" pages every now and then which is killed by clearing cookies (which for me with cookieculler is just closing and reopening the browser).

Either way, as you intimate, NYT are not making it impossible, or even difficult, to see their content for free - and that is what differentiates a rope from a wall.

It isn't a paywall, it is a payrope. You can just wander right over it (without any underhand tactics). I have been a reader before and after (5-10 articles per day) and have not noticed any difference. I don't know what the article cut-off is, but unless you plan to read the thing cover-to-cover every day you aren't going to notice. I suspect a lot of the 300k subscriptions come from ipads and kindles, because I can't see how it would be easy to get value for money from a PC subscription.

Paywalls block all content, and are flawed (and are what the /. crowd say will fail). The NYT payrope is a sensible hybrid model, that finds enough people (willing or stupid depending on your prerogative) to pay, while the rest go free. Now if we get figures on The Times of London's subscriber figures (blanket solid paywall) then I suspect they would be a lot more in-keeping with the /. predictions.

They don't paywall newspapers these days, they shutter them.

The complex web of the phone hacking scandal has many threads to yet unwind. James - Herr Flick - Murdoch was the heir apparent. But when the complete truth is ironed out and he is found to have lied to the UK parliament select committee on what he knew then his corporate career is over. Where that leaves the "empire" given the age of it's king, is anyone's guess - but a family dynasty to control all far into the future is looking increasingly unlikely.