Who's to say that Windows 7 is going to be much better than Vista? Sure, we can hope that MS learned from that misstep, but this is also the same company that also brought us Bob and Windows ME.

The part of civil disobedience that people always seem to leave out is that you have to willingly accept the consequences of your actions. The whole point is to demonstrate that the proscribed punishment is unfair. A bunch of legal ducking and weaving to avoid that punishment might eventually prove something in the courts, but it's not civil disobedience.

Heh... My first thought was "gee, I wonder how many (kilo)calories worth of nutrients these critters can remove from my blood?" ::Pops open another can of Coke:: It would be the truly most geeky way of enhancing my Comic Book Guy physique.

I remember reading that whitepaper when it came out. One of the findings was that there was a significant difference in reliability between hard drive manufacturers. However Google decided not to name names in the report (I'm guessing because they didn't want to be sued). Has any more information about that come to light?

Maintaining the PKE infrastructure, the technical support staffing costs, plus the likely attrition of customers who "just can't get their online banking to work right" would dwarf any savings that they'd see from not just buying a certificate.

While I've used local credit unions for years for personal accounts, my business bank account is at a nation bank. Most credit unions are severely lacking in the online services department. They tend to outsource their online banking systems to a third-party who apparently was the lowest bidder on the project. Even in 2009, you're lucky to get a website that works in anything other than IE and lets you do anything more than check your balance.

Local credit union can also be somewhat of a mickey mouse operation. A couple years ago my credit union migrated their organization to a new banking ERP system (or whatever that industry calls it). Their solution was to shutdown the entire credit union, including online banking, for an entire week. No deposits, no withdraws--nothing. I can't believe that the board of directors approved that move. I would have have laughed the CIO out of the room for even suggesting that plan.

For the lazy: Call (866) 483-9600 to opt out with Verizon. It's automated and you'll need the the primary phone number on the account, the account name, plus you'll have to leave voicemail that states the primary name on the account, billing address, the name of the caller, and a callback number for the caller. It seems that they're determined to make this as painful as possible.