As a Canadian I don't enjoy any protection from the spying because I'm not a Canadian citizen.

So let me be amongst the many who say "Fuck the United States."

This is precisely the kind of behaviour that leads to hatred of and terrorism against the US.

Most people assume GTK+ is a dead end seeing as it's tied so closely to that abortion of a desktop known as Gnome 3.

Amen to that. Spend some of that FX budget on the script, FFS.

One big difference: The supporters for Linux systems release updates that can be installed automagically on a regular basis. They may not deliver the latest release of the Linux kernel, but they do backport patches and fixes and roll those out on a regular basis. The handset vendors do not.

Warriors go to battle against armed opponents. They're not over-armed thugs who kick in the doors of the innocent or peaceful to shoot them and their pets.

Calling these jackboots "warriors" is an insult to everyone who has ever served in the armed forces.

Facebook isn't being bought off by lobbyists or run by political fanatics with an agenda. They're in it for the money, plain and simple, and that's something the people can understand.

Windows won't die as long as consumer and corporate desktop computers are required and Microsoft doesn't keep trying to force incompatible user metaphors on that customer base.

However, cellphones and tablets are surging past that core base as secondary devices (at least in North America and Europe -- in the third world cell phones are often the primary device for people.)

I'd never want to try to type out a letter or a large document on a cellphone or a tablet, much less try to do any serious programming on them directly. There simply is no good substitute for a keyboard for mass data input.

But Windows will have an ever-shrinking share of the internet access market share as those newer devices take hold for media consumers. The writing is very clearly on the wall in that context, and sooner or later it's going to start affecting the default metaphors used by website programmers as well, at least for those whose core consumers are not on the desktop.

That doesn't mean Windows or the desktop are "failing" or "obsolete" -- it just means that companion products have opened a new market that they can't reach.

The Metro UI isn't actually impossibly horrible from the "regular" user's standpoint. It took my elderly parents all of two weeks to get used to it for running their card games, browsing the web, and so on. But I did install most of the software they would need on the base system; out of the box it really doesn't do much.

Still, they only tolerate the new UI. The still gripe that it's not the same as XP. I'm firmly convinced they'd have been far happier if they'd followed my advice and bought an older Win7 based system that still had the tradition menu-and-window organization.

The best thing Microsoft could do as far as the Win8 debacle goes is to ensure that 8.1 lets you stick with the "traditional" desktop full time. The thing my parents hate the most is this full-screen, one-app-at-a-time mentality from the cellphone and tablet markets. Just because that kind of approach worked for green-screen terminals and iOS doesn't mean that people like it -- just that they used what they had to.

The windowing interfaces used by Gnome 2, KDE, Apple OS/X, Win 95-7, OS/2, and a host of other interfaces were based on years of research at IBM that resulted in the Common User Access style guides. They weren't pulled out of their arse based on some artsy-fartsy desire to just do "something different." They were based on studies and feedback.

Microsoft threw all that work out the window with the Metro menu system in favour of pursuing an iOS experience, forgetting that the only reason the iOS interface is acceptable is because it's designed for small screens. Not necessarily tablets, but small screens.

Metro is an admirable first cut of an interface that would work well on the small screen devices like a phone or tablet, but they didn't go all the way. Every third party application I've used on my parents box drops you back into the desktop when it runs. So in effect, the only thing you get that's "tablet style" when using WIn8 full time is the start menu. Forcing people to shift their entire usage pattern for the sake of a menu system was asininine, and the sales numbers prove that out.

The sales numbers for Win8 are even now grossly exagerrated. Everyone I know who bought a Win8 box save my parents downgraded to Windows 7. Every single one.

Hell, if I were buying a new box I wouldn't buy one without downgrade rights. (Aside from that, my next system upgrade will be for my Linux desktop, not another Windows system. I only need one windows box, and that, happily, runs Windows 7.)

Churn for the sake of churn is the most asinine strategy I've ever heard of. Look at how slow vendors are to actually release updates for Android for their devices. Mozilla is shooting themselves in the foot if they think their hardware partners for Firefox OS want to see point updates anywhere near as often as they're proposing. They want something tested and stable that they can ship, not an always-in-development "product."

Apple? Microsoft? Facebook?

Are you seriously trying to tell me that these companies have future revenues and payouts that justify their exhorbitant prices?

Don't confuse "shiny, shiny" and "Windows n+1" with actual investment in R&D or new technology. Don't confuse hedge funds and futures with actual value. They're gambling on a return, but not on profitability.

The stock market isn't based on the real value of a company anyhow. It rarely involves evaluating the technical expertise, the research and development, the long term product development plans, the current or future rational profit projections of the company, or anything like that.

Instead, it's now a bunch of automated systems buying and selling at a furious rate based on statistics and very small margin profits for the trades.

In other words, legalized gambling with the biggest players gaming the system to their advantage.

When I think about how solid or worthy a company is, the last thing I consider is their stock price.

Before we can control something, we have to understand it well enough to be able to predict it accurately. Despite all the supercomputers in use for weather system modelling, we can't do that. Unless and until we can, trying to modify the weather systems is suicidally dangerous. Not just to people in the area, but to people around the globe affected by the larger pattern of the systems.

Furthermore, have there not also been cases where the FBI was told they had to get a warrant before installing GPS trackers on a vehicle? How is stealing the data from a built-in GPS tracker any different?

Actually I don't believe that the 4th gives Congress the right to determine what "due process" is. The 4th is quite specific about a warrant being required for a search:

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

The "horror" is that the sick and twisted website operator thought the footage "entertaining" and tried to make a profit off it by posting it.