I just don't understand why any gamer, casual or otherwise, would choose a gaming platform that requires so much personal information. I didn't give it to Microsoft, and I'm not giving it to Facebook. plenty of flash games elsewhere!

quick note on gucci: if the consumer can't tell whether it's gucci, it probably never mattered in the first place.
defending gucci's ability to sell things on brand name alone doesn't seem like a strong cause for moral outrage.

if new users use debian, they stand a better chance of actually learning something about operating systems and computers.
we *all* need open-source, what you call free and open

are you intentionally cribbing from http://xkcd.com/743/ ??

why did you 'tada'? you didn't pull a rabbit out of a hat so far as i can see
oh, i get it. you're being a smug asshole. didn't realize that was such a trick.

GP has a point: you can't tout how awesome open-source is when you make your living off of proprietary/closed-source software and expect us to be pleased.

"exponents don't seem useful"

this doesn't seem like a fact worth accepting.

If you can find *nothing* bad about google, you aren't looking hard enough.
"people is worried" heheheh.. but anyway, here's an example of privacy issues: when rolling out google voice, the text-transcribed voicemails of users were viewable through google. They've fixed this since, but it was an issue.
How about the leaks of google searches, tied to a unique identifier?

I don't want my email on the cloud; I host my own.
Adblock can tell the difference in terms of URLs the advertisements were loaded from; this isn't readily viewable to a human.

"why is a boring muggle like you even doing here?"
-1 for HP reference, -1 for grammatical failure

aside from whether anyone considers facebook necessary, the issue is that the service they signed up for, and the service they now use, have different privacy issues. so it is now an opt-out procedure every time they add some new security debacle. the opt-out is, if you're lucky, a setting. if unlucky, it means leaving facebook.
I myself have what I call a read-only facebook, I post nothing and comment rarely. It is similar to twitter (but more universally used). Still, I get concerned about who can see my friendship network.

this is terrible logic..
the iPhone jailbreak does not prevent you from using pirated 'apps', but neither does it require you to do so.
the xboxjailbreak does not prevent you from using pirated software, but neither does it require you to do so.

Where's the difference?

our rate of response is far too slow to correct the issue..
instead of iPads, you need to NOT be spending hundreds of dollars on luxury electronics which cost our planet dearly to make
even considering starting offworld colonies shows that you're completely cut off from reality.. the costs to our society and planet would be far too massive. the only thing that will ever work is massive cultural change, BEFORE it's too late.
of course, this will never happen. and it may already be too late.

John Gilmore was right; as soon as people have to contemplate dealing with spam, all rights and liberties go out the window.

>"partisan trolls"
partisan means strongly identifying with or voting along party lines, aka a person who votes republican because "he's a republican, damnit" rather than the issues being weighed
a troll is someone who posts things for the sole purpose of garnering attention, anger, flames, etc. he rarely posts with his actual belief system, he posts whatever will be most inflammatory.

so these words really don't go together. don't just throw words together to sound smart.

I forgive you the 'que' thing. it happens.

less profit equals less motivation, and thus less violence; not more.
people don't get violent over a nickel, they get violent over a multi-million dollar industry (which has no protection under the law from theft or violent takeover).

I'm also not sure why you think legal drugs would be less profitable; it would just move the profit from gangs to corporations.

I agree with your point about bureaucracy, but I think it's better to have drugs saddled with taxes than paid for in blood.