I am a happy user of Permissions as well. And while I like it as a hack, I use it with full understanding of consequences of disabling random permissions in Android apps.

I also understand Google's position. This feature has capability of breaking apps in various ways. It makes it much harder for app developers to test and deploy the apps.

If the app requires some permission and it gets disabled, suddenly some OS calls will fail and the app will usually not be able to handle it. In best cases it may not matter, in a lot of cases it will cause crashes, in worst cases it will cause user data corruption.

For feature like this to be fully supported whole Android permission model would have to be upgraded with 3rd state, in addition to permitted and denied states for each permission it would have to add "optional/user" state and app developers would have to test with that setting on and off. This would also explode number of test cases so I don't expect any developer going for it. So disabling permissions will always be a hack and a testing/developer tool.

Since most people get their knowledge of the world from Hollywood movies which have portrayed pervasive government surveillance for many many years the reality is not much of a surprise for them. Most people are actually expecting it to be much more advanced. For reference see movies like Enemy of The State http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0120660/
I suspect people are more surprised by the fact that you cannot infinitely zoom-in digital photographs like in CSI or easily track people with satellite based cameras in realtime. It is also interesting how these movies and CSI TV shows affect reality, for instance http://www.npr.org/2011/02/06/133497696/is-the-csi-effect-influencing-courtrooms

Pretty much most iterative simulation systems like weather simulation will behave this way. When the result of one step of the simulation is the input for another step any rounding error will possibly get amplified.
Also see Butterfly Effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Butterfly_effect (not the movie!).

Thats easy, just click on this llittle Java app.

That the computers parse your email and use the information for both ads and better services. Its not only for ads, although generally targeted ads are better in my opinion.
If you tried Google Now on Android it will give you notifications about stuff the servers parsed from your email, like flight notifications for the flight booking notifications you received in your email etc.
Recently I have given up on my illusion of "privacy" (running ADBlock, Ghostery and WOT I am still pretty sure I am being tracked by ad networks). So I decided to stop fighting the battle I have lost long time ago. I have uploaded my whole email archive to GMail so Google can index it and start being my electronic nanny. And it is by far the best electronic nanny there is.

And I am pretty sure that both Yahoo and Microsoft are doing targeted ads based on email content, and Yahoo used to append their ads to emails.

And if you don't want your emails to be ready by anyone but the intended recipient and NSA, there is a tool called PGP.

E-ink display manufacturers are closing their factories already
And such a shame.
Maybe a tablet with e-ink display on the back could be a good idea, like the recent Russian phone.

that you actually have any privacy without joining Facebook or Twitter.

You see all these Facebook buttons everywhere? They are already tracking you without you needing to log in into Facebook or even having an account there.
Same thing for all the ad networks. Single pixel bugs and ads are used to track you. And from scraps of the info you left on some sites, and the emails and addresses you provided to shopping sites they know who you are, where you live, what is your phone number and what size of shoes you wear.
It works so well that for instance after visiting some furniture store site just to browse it, a little while later I got their nice printed catalog in snail-mail.
Oh yeah, and I am browsing with Adblock and Ghostery.
So unless you nuke your cookies and Flash cookies and change IP address every day as well you probably have zero privacy.
Welcome to 21st century.

Along with other skeuomorphic crap. E-books do not need stupid animations slowing you down when you turn pages.

You mean competitors like Power Computing?
And by "eaten alive" you mean "Apple Computer bought key assets of Power Computing for $100 million in Apple stock and roughly $10 million in cash"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_Computing#cite_note-3

Patents on standard AR-15 lower receiver design expired long time ago. The rifle was designed in 50s-60s. That is why there are zillion of AR-15 parts manufacturers. They just don't call it AR-15 because that trademark belongs to Colt.
And it is legal to manufacture a firearm in US for your own use (if the firearm is otherwise legal).
And this is nothing new, people have been machining their own guns forever. 3D printed stuff may be just little easier, but it is also worse quality.

Still what, does it have to do with "desktop environment". It should be a core OS library with plugins that every application can use.

For that you have user interface guidelines and standard widget libraries. In case of Linux the guidelines should be published by standard bodies or by Linux distros themselves. Ubuntu for instance makes good job making things consistent.
Microsoft, Google, and Apple do provide standard widgets in their OSes and UI guidelines. They also enforce them to various degree. Personally I don't want to live in a nazi (Goodwin law bingo!) like world where only one "UI contract" is enforced on everyone.
It is true that programmers still produce "skinned" program abominations started by "why can't you die already" Winamp. That is the cost of living in a free world.
Most Linux GUI programs do use standard widget libraries like QT and GTK and to some degree follow UI guidelines. The additional theming can be added by the user or distro in form of theme packs.

I never quite understood the attraction. What exactly is this whole GNOME or KDE package for? Granted, there are some decent programs that came with them, but do they really require all the extra baggage of 10 layers of crappy libraries with fancy names? Both KDE and GNOME are just pointless empire building exercises by bunch of people who want to force their way of computer interaction on everyone else.

The OS should do one thing, provide services to programs. On UI level that includes managing windows and provide some way of task switching. Widget library is nice too since it saves some time for programmers, but it doesn't really have to be part of OS. On Windows this functionality is pretty much built in to the point of being (almost) non replaceable. Thankfully on Unix one has a choice of window manager, task switchers/panels, widget libraries etc. The users should be able to mix and match them to fulfill their needs. Some distros like Ubuntu may make these choices for the users that do not care much what they use. Where do mega projects "we gonna takeover your computer and make you do things our way" like GNOME and KDE fit? Nowhere, and finally people realize that.

The only thing that can be done with these projects is to salvage any good apps they have created and make them into independent projects. There is less and less to salvage though because GNOME managed to create dumber and dumber versions of the same things (like image viewers or browsers or file managers etc).

For instance, why would anyone ever use web browsers that GNOME has created (is the latest one Epiphany or something?) when there is Firefox, Chrome or Seamonkey made by people who know what they are doing?

There are some nice projects like LXDE, and to lesser degree XFCE which are actually helpful, they put together bunch of tools, most of them optional, and give you quite a lot of choice. Although XFCE is getting fatter and fatter.

I have been using 7" original Galaxy Tab running CyanogenMod 6 (then 7) as my phone. It fits just fine in back jeans pocket although seating with it is not very comfortable. I use it less now after I got Galaxy Note (CM9), but it 7' is still the best format for reading books. 10" inch Galaxy Tab just sits in it's cradle, hardly every used.

And guess what, there is plenty of smaller smartphones if this is what you want. Get Xperia Mini, and back off from my Galaxy Note. There are plenty of different devices for everyone. If you don't need bigger screen don't buy it and let the market decide. And it did decide, Galaxy Notes are selling pretty well - see nice progress ion 2, 5, 7 million devices: http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2012/03/galaxy-note-sales-so-far/ http://www.bgr.com/2012/03/28/the-phablet-is-a-hit-samsung-galaxy-note-sales-top-5-million/ http://www.smartcompany.com.au/information-technology/050030-samsung-reveals-galaxy-s-and-galaxy-note-sales-figures.html