It seems like you're saying it would be acceptable for MasterCard to be forced to transact, or serve as an intermediary to transactions for, business with Assange or WikiLeaks. Is this what you're saying?

Many moons ago, I spent four years as a strict vegetarian on ethical grounds, but have long since recovered. These days, I prefer the approach of killing my own game, so I can be directly assured the animal wasn't treated inhumanely prior to its death, that its death was swift, and that its body will be used to the fullest potential possible.

In case you weren't actually interested in a direct response to your post, please familiarize yourself with the word pedantic. Have a nice day.

Why do I get the impression you're almost experiencing this?

As others have pointed out, your reply demonstrates your ignorance. iOS is indeed a Unix operating system:

Speaking as someone who's been using Linux and championing it in server and limited, special purpose desktop environments since the 90s, I wholeheartedly agree with your general premise. That said, I think there's an important lesson here that you probably see yourself, but didn't express.

Apple went from Mac OS 9 in 1999 (the final progression in the "classic" series beginning with 1.0 in 1984, closely followed by Windows 1.0 in 1985 [albeit only a highly limited MS-DOS graphical shell]) to Mac OS X in 1999/2000 following the purchase of NeXT in the 90s. This essentially meant Mac OS became a *nix operating system with a pretty GUI; the emphasis on its lineage is further reinforced by the release of Mac OS X Sever prior to a general desktop OS release. Especially considering the company's prior struggles and obvious challenges maintaining its existence as an integrated systems vendor (operating system plus their hardware), they really bet the farm on this.

As it turns out, Mac OS X became what many people expected from the "Linux on the desktop" dream, at least in terms of basic *nix underpinnings and reasonable extensibility. This occurred because Apple drove the campaign bus, so to speak, as a single corporate entity bent on carving out its share of the market pie. They delivered what the market judged to be a good product, largely based on usability principles (that we may or may not personally agree with) and reputation for It Just Works reliability.

Consequently, Apple is now the most valuable company in the world. While I continue to operate all my server infrastructure on Debian, I'm typing this from a three year old MacBook Pro. In my view, consistency, stability, support, and marketing to tell the world about all of it have won the day for Apple. I have yet to see a single Linux vendor competently fulfill those requirements when it comes to mass market desktop sales. Perhaps I never will. In the end, that's actually okay with me, since I will simply continue to use the tool that works best and is best accepted in business environments for different roles. For several years running, that's mostly meant Debian on servers and Mac OS X on desktops, and things Just Work.

obligatory reference yet. For extra bonus points, let's theorize about what the prize claimant will have to do as part of the claims process.

I firmly believe this is obligatory.

Alternately, people could simply take responsibility for themselves and choose to avoid services which require agreement to miles of terms. Given your attitude on the topic, you probably haven't even bothered to read the terms of service for anything you're using right now. It seems you're trying to divert responsibility for yourself onto the backs of the service organizations you choose to deal with. Again, note the word "choose."

You've also managed to miss the opportunity to discuss where data goes and how it's protected after it's submitted in the first place. Oddly enough, this is the essential question posed by the submitter in the first place, and regardless of what any given set of terms says, is actually the most important piece that very few people think about at all. In other words, you can trust an organization to high heaven based on what they say they will or won't do with your data, but if their infrastructure is a gaping mess of channels by which your information could get compromised, all of a sudden those terms don't mean much. I applaud the submitter for asking the right questions, and remind you to think more about your responses in terms of real wold data acquisition and retention mechanisms before posting again.

That's not how PCI works at all. Please educate yourself.

If you had 3.1 GBytes of RAM in any single system you personally owned in 2002, please tell us what you've been doing since then. Inquiring minds truly want to know what revelations await.

I'm terribly sorry to have to inform you of this, but that money just won't kill a million people nearly as rapidly as a bomb. I'm not excusing accumulated deaths over time, mind you, just noting that the instantaneous effect of massive population reduction in a matter of minutes has a somewhat more "oh shit" factor associated with it. This falls into the category of "slow drip versus epic flood" in terms of catastrophic consequences.

I think you've missed about ten years of history.

No, you shouldn't trust a package now because the distro you're using is run by core developers who still don't have a shred of honest concern for security. Go ahead and talk to the them about the topic; it'll at least result in a few laughs. Let's put it another way: if someone shot you in the face last year, but has promised he's changed his ways, are you going to invite him over for dinner tonight?