Tripod, mate, Tripod

And yes, I apologize.

Unreservedly.

But it was a long time ago. And besides, the bitch is dead.

Somewhere in the Wayback Machine there is a page I coded in 1997. It featured

marquee

nested inside

blink

. And I did it because the client's kid thought it was cool. I bet he's sorry to see it go, I know I am. ;-)

+1 to this
(Assuming you are going to be spending the majority of your time in an urban area)
Get an unlocked Galaxy Nexus (or whatever the next Nexus is) and use it on the Straight Talk T Mobile service.
Here's a pretty comprehensive guide: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1646755 Plus, here's another vote for T-Mobile's customer service.

One small note, MSE is *not* available for 64 bit XP. So in the (admittedly unlikely) case that your laptop has XP 64 bit on it you'll have to look further. Your first line of defense, as always, is safe surfing, but Avira is going OK for me. It'll annoy you with occasional pop-ups but they are easy to dismiss.

OK, is $30 a month reasonable enough for you? Assuming you are in the USA, you can buy the Galaxy Nexus (unlocked) from Google and use it on T-Mobile's Pay as you go service. Here are a couple of XDA threads which may help you out: [GUIDE] Smartphone Service for just $30/month [INFO][GSM] Own Your Cell Service ..with Prepaid and the Galaxy Nexus [UPDATED 5/24]

Reprising the comment I posted over on TFA:

Disclaimer: "This ITWorld page contains at least eighteen trackers, including eight of the top ten listed in the article. Dan's eSarcasm site loads at least 5 trackers including three of the top five."

There, fixed that for you.

--

He had me until he praised the Wall Street Journal series. While the goal of informing non-technical people about tracking on the web is a good one, the series has been full of inaccuracies, omissions and sensationalism. WSJ seems to actively avoid telling people how easy it is to avoid/minimize tracking and AFAIK has never broached the obvious conflict of interest issue raised by their reporting.

Like most Slashdot readers am no fan of tracking and targeted advertising and I run the usual suite of blockers you would expect (Ghostery, AdBlock Plus, NoScript, FlashBlock, Better Privacy, etc etc. But intellectual rigor is even more important to me. It has been missing from the WSJ reporting.

3) Buy a handset with vanilla Android on it to start with.

There, fixed that for ya.

Seconded.
One plain vanilla phone on every carrier with every radio.

For all other phones: On starting the phone for the first time pop a dialog box:

Would you like to use plain vanilla android (with no enhancements for this particular device)?
OR
Would you like to use TouchWizSenseBlur a beautiful-finger-paint-like-buble-gum-super-duper-extras-which-will-love-you-all-night-long-and-cook-you-breakfast-in-the-morning-full-of-win-enhancements-for-your-personal-phone-and-life?

At the start of 2010 it looked like Google was going to try to go down this road with google.com/phone but then Verizon came calling and said "we don;t think so". Google got into bed with VZW on the issue of net neutrality for wireless networks and one of the victims was their project to change the way phones are bought and sold in the US. Perhaps Larry Page will revisit this in the future, but it's difficult to see how it fits into his "focusing" strategy. I'm not holding my breath that all this changes in the US any time soon.

And yes, I vote with my money. I bought an unlocked Nexus One through Google.com/phone on the very first day it went live and replaced it last month with an imported unlocked Galaxy Nexus GSM. And yes, it is a fine phone. When I showed it to the folks at the local Verizon store they were salivating. And then they offered to sell me cases and sleeves for it. They had those in stock, even if they still don't have a release date for the Verizon Galaxy Nexus phone itself.

FiOS would be nice, but the country is just too damn big,

This. Many times over. It's just soooo frustrating sitting here in USA seeing the UK complain about speed and caps and prices. I'd *love* to have that problem. Of course Brits probably look at our US discussions of petrol/gas prices or taxes and have much the same reaction! Swings and roundabouts, I guess.

The US site is completely broken with scripting off. They've got so much cruft it's embarassing. Hey Nick, ever hear of progressive enhancement? Gracefully degrading? Judging from the hash bang in your URLs, I'm guessing you don't care. Thanks for breaking the web, buddy.

http://www.haltadefinizione.com/home.jsp?lingua=en from http://tech.slashdot.org/story/10/10/02/1415229/Masterpieces-Online-mdash-High-Culture-At-High-Resolution but I dunno how easily you'll be able to grab the images. Or, indeed, remove the watermarking

Nope, according to the paper, even if you don't USE Facebook, even if you have never visited Facebook, the like button appearing on other sites can gather data about your visit.

You need to block Facebook widgets because they track even without your being signed in (or even a member):
Facebook's 'Like This' button is tracking you (Whether you click it or not)
which is derived from this paper:
Facebook Tracks and Traces Everyone: Like This! (Social Science Research Network)
Assuming you are not a member of facebook and have no need of the "Share" and "Like" buttons, the hosts file is your friend. Just enter 127.0.0.1 for facebook.net, facebook.com, facebookcdn.com (there may be others but I can't be bothered to look for them right now)