A good start in the US would be to separate the infrastructure and content provider aspects of the business.

That's the key. Our laws do provide for that separation, and except for the fact that we've had extremely weak regulatory enforcement over the past 30 years, it would have been done already.

There is no way that one company providing infrastructure and content complies with anti-trust laws. But we've had such weak Attorney Generals who don't want to upset the corporate sector that nothing's been done. That's why telecommunications in the US is in such shoddy shape compared to other developed countries. My European or East Asian friends can't believe how bad it is when they come here.

Not just dialup. I was able to get T1 service locally for less than I'm now paying for DSL. Plus, the provider was staffed with nice people who went beyond the call to help. The service was fast and I could host from home if I wanted to. No bandwidth limits or warnings.

Try to find local access like that any more.

Correct. That list is here:
http://csrc.nist.gov/groups/STM/cmvp/documents/140-1/140val-all.htm#1051

Incorrect. OpenSSL has been on that list since 2008, here's the certificate:
http://csrc.nist.gov/groups/STM/cmvp/documents/140-1/140crt/140crt1051.pdf

It's not crazy, you are just badly informed.

The NSA also has the job to make sure nobody does to the US what the US does to everyone else. They've been developing crypto and security technology for decades, some of which (like SELinux) has passed even the most paranoid double-checking.

You would want to trust them for the same reason an ex-burglar is the best guy to hire for checking out your home security system, or hackers make up some of the best security consultants: They know what they're talking about.

As close as you can come to trusting something like the NSA, but yes.

Most people see the NSA as a pure spy agency, but that's not true. It has two jobs. One, to spy on everything else and two, to make sure nobody spies on the US.

They employ enough smart people to understand that if they can break it, so can someone else.

If you are really concerned, you should check the implementation. Past experiences show us clearly that it is a lot easier to put backdoors there. And it has the advantage that if the enemy finds them, you can fix them.

Or, more likely, you use a different, backdoor-free implementation internally.

That's my point. And yet, every time a new iPhone comes out, inventories are depleted within a few weeks.

How do they "sell-out"? By turning you, the consumer, into the consumed. You're not buying their product, you're what they're selling. Their real customers are AT&T and advertisers and the strategic deals they have with their content providers.

Hell, they could give away their products and still make money.

You think for one minute that Verizon and Comcast want a "free market"?

Is it a free market when there are only a very few players? Are you old enough to remember when there were hundreds of ISPs in every city? When there was actual competition?

The problem is, we're not really Verizon or Comcast's customers. None of us choose them because we like those companies or the services they offer. We choose them because there are no other choices. So now Verizon pays $130billion (with a "B") for Vodaphone, and the only reason they do is because interest rates are near zero (look at the bond prices, not the prime rate). Forget for a moment that if we actually had any enforcement of the law, that merger would get laughed out of court. For that to be worthwhile, interest rates would have to stay near zero for 20 years. But Verizon sees the writing on the wall. They figure they can take out another competitor and then just soak the people who pay them for service (not customers mind. the customers are their "strategic partners", production divisions, advertisers, and the people who they sell your information to).

You're not a consumer, you're the commodity. You're what they selling. You're trapped. Go ahead, move to Comcast and Comcast can say, Go ahead, move to Verizon. They don't give a fuck because they're gonna get paid either way. 'Cause where you gonna go?

Welcome to Corporatism 2013: End-stage Capitalism.

...and yet any new repackaging of their material is met with instant sellouts.

Sellouts yes, but those venues get smaller and smaller.

They got 60k at Comiskey when I was a kid and went to see 'em. Now, they get 10k at the United Center, and that's with every radio station in Chicago giving away tickets. Sure, it's a sellout, but it means less and less.

But now that I think about it, "sellout" is a good tag to use for any story about the Stones or Apple.

Mine, too, with a lot of visits to the US. I wonder if they're doing any sort of analysis of changes over time in fingerprints and patterns in the retina and cornea. More interestingly, would this weaken further the FBI's insistence that fingerprints are unique identifiers which are invariant over long periods.