Victoria, BC has it, too. I can't step onto my balcony without getting a "Welcome to the US" text from AT&T.

This whole thing doesn't make sense to me. If Comcast is intentionally degrading (or failing to upgrade, causing degradation) NetFlix stream, why doesn't NetFlix just let them? Put a message over the buffering stating that the buffering is caused by Comcast and asking the customer to contact them in order to fix it. Maybe put a short pre-roll PSA video, explaining the situation to all Comcast NetFlix users. I'm (luckily) not a Comcast subscriber, but if I was, and I couldn't do whatever I wanted with the net connection I bought from them, I'd be screaming bloody murder, and I'd sure want to know who was to blame.

is gonna be pissed!

I've been very happy with the service so far. I can access my music from a variety of devices, whenever I want, and I only pay a little more than $2 a month. I even had a hard drive failure last summer, and I was able to redownload every single track without any loss. Obviously, the service will never be any good to people who hate Apple, but for non-fanboys who like the right tool for the job, it's fine. If this is the model the industry is moving towards, is that so bad?

I don't understand why the big cartels aren't in on this. Direct sales via post would solve a lot of their problems...seizures probably wouldn't be more than they have now (with mules smuggling condoms of drugs in their guts and such), some middle men would be eliminated (increasing their share of the street value), and they could make an App Store-style cut off of the sales they aren't doing directly. They could even host it in some country they have control of, like Colombia or Mexico, reducing the chance of it all being interrupted or seized. They should be all over this.

I saw Ubuntu running on the desktop monitor of a judge on TV* last night. Usually they use some custom graphics to fake an interface, was surprising to see Unity.

* It wasn't actually ON TV, it was from Amazon Instant Video.

I've heard this claimed before, in other articles about Google Glass. When did Google develop batteries that last forever?

Yes, every time it starts up.

People still do that? I don't think I've cleared my cookies in five years...

On the bright side, the Info Leak Wars might actually beat the Leafs.

I'm more familiar with Windows as an environment...having similar Windows underpinnings, but with standard free software tools, would be easier for me to maintain and keep running. Besides, pure Linux tablets are expensive niche devices...how much was that tablet with KDE Plasma Active (the one with last years hardware specs), like $500?

When a 10 inch Windows RT tablet can be had for $199, I'll be all over it. With a jailbreak, there's a great deal of open-source software that has been recompiled for ARM, and will work just fine in desktop mode. I already have a Bluetooth keyboard.

Someone released an app on XDA, called Seeder, that purports to create entropy to seed the random number generator. Does this have anything to do with that app, or the bug that prompted the developer to write it? I remember when people were discussing the original app (which some people say only has a placebo effect), and they were saying it had security implications...does it make this problem worse or better?

You can gang the Xfinitywifi up with your regular cable connection. See here: http://www.connectify.me/alex-connects-thank-you-comcast/

I don't work for them or anything, but doubling your bandwidth sounds pretty good to me.

I had my bank account disabled once. When I called up the bank to find out why my card didn't work, they told me that an unknown woman had called and attempted to access my account. I'm a male, so that action caused them to red-flag my account and disable it until they could determine what was going on. I was understandably concerned, and asked them for more information. Turns out, the "woman" who accessed my account was me, and the underpaid foreign telephone agent had misidentified me as female. Now, I am in no way female (the neckbeard is a dead giveaway), so having my account disabled simply because some idiot thought I sounded like a girl was pretty bad.