Because Windows 8 is better?

GP is saying that the amount of electricity being "wasted" by the bulbs in the form of heat would be more efficiently turned into heat using a furnace.

I don't see that much difference. What are you talking about?

Simple solution: abolish sales taxes. So easy!

Wrong. They will demand your personal email password (since it is tied to G+) and your slashdot password and your ftp server password and your webhosting password. It is a slippery slope.

I actually own a Fuelband, unlike to poster and the original story. It is basically a pedometer, sensing motion, nothing else. No or any other thing to guide them to my house. It sends information to the cloud, but has a lot less info than facebook. You can actually sign up for an account its free and see how little is actually stored. I be more worried about the data on my phone or in my wallet, both which will lead someone to my house, than on this thing.

Baldrson made the front page.

Jim Bowery is a racist piece of crap. This is where my journey with this website ends.

Surely there's enough blame to go around?

We can and should blame the MPs for doing unethical things, bringing in bad laws and generally behaving like arseholes.

We can also blame the public for being complacent and not voting for AVC or whatever it was. In fact this latter blame apportioning appeals to me a lot because I left the country for several years, and when I came back I found out that the great unwashed had voted to continue being ignored. Morons!

Which goes to show that it has zero support, surely?

Always the way.

The last big one I remember was ID cards, which was also very skewed, but at the last minute the government decided that any results collected from the internet were unrepresentative and to be ignored.

It's almost as if your opinion doesn't count if collected electronically, because it's too easy or something. Never mind that it brings down the barriers and allows people to participate just that little bit more in democracy, no citizen, you didn't try hard enough so even though we heard you we feel safe ignoring you.

And they are safe, frankly. We never vote the bastards out because of this stuff.

Actually a number of them are potentially trying to bring the aircraft.

See 'chemtrails' for a conspiracy community of whackos who think that airliners are trying to poison them, and that bringing them down would be just awesome.

I don't agree either, because these provisions are usually more about what you are allowed to do with what you've bought than they are about hacking other people's systems.

Breaking DRM should be legal and applauded, not criminalised.

I agree it's a nice idea, this middle path where everyone wins. But I strongly disagree that people should have to opt out of anything, and I also don't believe for one second that advertisers will respect it even if it is left to the user. Since when are marketers even the slightest bit trustworthy?

The only way default-off is anything like an honest option, rather than a dishonest way of saying there's an option but leaving most people in the dark, would be to have the browser ask. Probably when it's installed or updated to a release that can do DNT. A full page explaining the issue clearly and concisely and letting the user choose. Not just slipping in a config option quietly.

And even then it would be a total failure because marketing scum would ignore it.

If a significant number of people turn it on, it will be ignored. This is wheter MS does it or the users do it themselves.

Of course we all know that users won't change the default because they may as well be cattle, but still...

I see the whole thing as a waste of time. Nobody wants to be tracked. A polite request is not oing to fix anything. Technological and legislative measures are needed.