What happens in 100 years is very theoretical. What happens this year and next with my money isn't. This was exactly my point. People need to understand the extreme short term risk involved, and not underplay that even if we like the concept.

This is considered the leading AV review site in the world, not achieving their "certification" (the icon in the third column) in test is certainly a bad review, most well known security software manage to exceed that threshold. MSE didn't in the last two tests.

http://www.av-test.org/en/tests/test-reports/

Actually, the leading security software reviewer site, AV-Test, gave MSE a bad review in the last round, they did not pass "AV-Test certification".

The problem with a Chromebook though is the exact same as for the always-on game fiasco's of late. Sometimes you don't have a reliable connection, but still want to work/play.

Actually, I remember iPhone-like midnight queues for Windows 95 launch (yes, that old).

A chance is exactly the right word. With the use of HTML5 Netflix is talking about you will be able to stream Netflix to all platforms that Netflix develop and distribute a HTML5 CDM plugin for.

Agree with much of what you are saying. Except that I think you do have too narrow definition of marketing. In product marketing, collecting user and market feedback, market requirements, identify opportunities and guide engineering in designing the product and UX *is* part of the responsibility in many organizations. I agree with the parent who said that iPhone was designed by marketing (and by designed I don't only mean the pretty looks) and that Apple is run by marketing, including the products.

You are right the summary can be interpreted as meaning actual numbers and not percentages. I didn't read it that way but maybe because I knew from before that Mac Flashback is the biggest malware epidemic in modern times in terms of percentage of user base affected (most accounts actually have it "beating" Conficker on Windows).

Of course the Windows user base is much bigger. But percentage of user base affected is the right metric to use if you want to look at risk of infection and infectability on a platform. This is still not a comparison Windows vs Mac in general, just the worst case from each platform. Windows currently has a longer tail of other cases of course. But it should be a much bigger wake-up call to the "Mac can't be infected" people than it was. Later versions of Mac Flashback did completely silent drive-by infection just by visiting a web page, not needing user interaction or admin password, something many Mac people still today seem to think only happens on Windows.

Google has admitted to collecting from peoples WiFi networks “URLs of requested Web pages, partial or complete email communications, and any confidential or private information being transmitted to or from the network user while the Street View cars were driving down streets.” One of many sources on this.. They call it an accident, but this data they have admitted to collecting is quite a bit more than MAC addresses.

Some people - especially here on Slashdot -- also seem to believe Google came clean on this on their own. When in fact they first guaranteed the German authorities (the first to pressure them on this) that they were not collecting anything. And first after the German authorities despite this assurance still demanded a full audit of the data anyway, did Google do their disclosure. This sequence of events was covered extensively in European press (one of many sources), and I don't know how mostly US geek sites ended up with an alternative impression.

It still can perfectly well be ascribed to a screw-up on Google's part (although in the FCC investigation report it is claimed the Google engineer who wrote the code knew about the collection and told colleguages about it). I'm not even sure how major I think it is, but it shouldn't be downplayed and described inaccurately either.

You mean you have skipped all the darker Orwellian surveillance no more privacy sci-fi stories? Because there is quite a lot of them too.. ;) Problem is, doesn't help if you jailbreak and ad block yours, if you are filmed by all around you, feeding into a facial recognition capable search and tracking engine... But then, it very well might be that technology will make the notion of privacy something we have to forego, Google has already predicted this, but that sure makes some of the other discussions we have here about online privacy and anonymity rights quite meaningless.

I wouldn't say it is exactly the same as camera phones, it is usually quite noticeable if someone is walking around using it as a camcorder. And they don't all feed into the same centralized Google search engine with facial recognition capability.

It is possible to use various "spy" cameras and techniques, but I would also frown upon people doing this too. But again, they don't all feed into the same massive data-aggregation/tracking engine. And this will never be comparable in volume of use to having a lot of people everywhere (if this catches on) potentially capturing you on film, even if mostly unintentionally.

That said, it might be that we have to completely give up the notion of privacy, as Google has claimed all along. As in the story The Light of Other Days, by Stephen Baxter/Arthur C. Clarke.

This is incorrect. The requirement is that alternative browsers use the *built in* webkit and javascript engine. This is a very important distinction. Chrome on iOS is not allowed to supply and use its own webkit and javascript engine that Chrome is using on all other platforms, on iOS it is using the ones built in to iOS. Apple do not allow anyone to supply a rendering engine and javascript engine to iOS, regardless if it is webkit or not. This is why some call them just gui wrappers to the built on browser, which is basically what they are.

Because someone claiming to remember seeing you doing something stupid in that bar one time is the same as being filmed, tagged and published searchable on the net?

The "integration" of IE/Trident in modern versions of Windows is exactly the same as the "integration" of Safari/Webkit on OS X. The rendering engine is a system control that the system and 3rd party apps depend on being there, and thus can't be "fully removed" (people making fun of this display technical ignorance). The browser front-end can though (and is then not used by the system), and you can install another browser that uses its' own rendering engine for web, but the built-in OS render control will still (have to) be there for help files, in-app HTML rendering, etc.

So, I really don't understand this (the highlighted part). I've not only run Windows fairly trouble free myself, but I "admin" it for a number of family and friends, and don't find it difficult at all. I guess you know what you know, but I would strongly contest that Linux or Mac is any easier. I've been running Linux as well since years and years, now it is Ubuntu, very early on I was running Red Hat.