I have a Nexus 4, not a Nexus 7, and yes, according to the scanner tool, it's still unpatched.

We can quantify the damage done when a window is smashed. Books that are removed from a library must be replaced or they will be unavailable to patrons; that can be quantified as well.

Can you quantify the damage Aaron did? I suspect it is somewhere around "13 cents in electricity costs."

Right, because Aaron being in possession of them did not stop anyone else from reading them.

He did have access, MIT's network is open and anyone who has access to MIT's network can access JSTOR.

So strict that they give them out in PDF form to anyone who asks.

That is because Android handset makers have been slow to issue updates for their handsets.

I have a Google Nexus 4, supposedly gets all the updates right away, first to get new versions of Android, etc. I haven't seen an update since I bought the phone 6+ months ago. Samsung has apparently patched their phones; Google announced a code fix months ago.

What's Google's excuse for not patching my device? No carriers involved, current model, etc.

DNT is a compromise. If we were unwilling to compromise, we would build ad-blockers into browsers as a default, much like pop-up blocking ten years ago. It was because of people like you who would not stop whining about how important advertiser dollars are to keep the web alive that we even considered something like DNT. It was because advertisers promised that they really do respect our wishes, that ad blockers and legal restrictions on tracking are not needed, that DNT was ever considered by anyone.

The advertisers showed their true colors. They never wanted a compromise, they just wanted a facade that allows them to pretend they respect us while continuing to do what they have done all along.

When my CPU is spinning because of your Javascript-super-fancy-tracks-all-the-things advertisement, you are consuming my resources. When I have to download a megabyte of Javascript/Flash/whatever to see your ads, you are consuming my resources. When I have to spend time trying to navigate around annoying hover ads, you are consuming my resources.

At least when I receive spam, I know the spammer has no idea who I am or whether or not I opened their message. Website advertisers try hard to track everything, even when you are very clearly trying to stop them; that is what DNT has demonstrated.

No, the page is what is requested. My browser is not obligated to do anything at all with the webpage your server sends it. There is no implicit request; you explicitly asked my browser to request ads from the advertisers you choose to do business with.

You put your work on the open web. You did not put it behind a paywall. You did not force me to view your ads before seeing your page.

Nobody wrote an ad blocker because they were angry about textual ads or banner ads. Ad blockers exists because the advertisers have no respect for anyone's desire to not be tracked, to not have hover ads, pop-ups, pop-unders, Flash, Java, and other adware annoyances. Advertisers have shot themselves in the foot with their own greed, and if your website is not saying, "No, I do not want you to piss off my users with these antics" then your website is part of the problem.

Sure, but ABP has an easy-to-find checkbox to enable/disable whitelisted ads. There are also many other ad blockers out there that can be used if ABP ever stops working effectively (and being easy to configure).

You are acting like tracking and advertising are inseparable. They are not, you can advertise without tracking people and you can make money doing so. I do not want to be tracked, and the only technical solution at this point is to block advertisements -- because even loading a static image from an advertiser will be used as a data point to track me.

If a website wants me to view its ads, it should refuse the business of advertisers that create privacy-invading ads. If websites were standing up for their users they would not be at risk of becoming collateral damage in this fight.

DNT is not more challenging for technical reasons. Today's ad blockers remove almost all advertising. The real challenge is politics: the popular browser makers are all in bed with the advertisers.

Why spend the effort on the courts? Ad blockers take under a minute to install.

"Do Not Track" is pretty clear. It means "do not track," without exceptions, without room for debate.

This fiasco has basically proved what everyone knew from the beginning, which is that advertisers do not give a damn about people who do not want to be tracked. Luckily, we have a technical solution to the problem: ad blockers. Much like spam filters and pop-up blockers, ad blockers are the solution to advertisers who have no respect and who cannot be trusted.

DNT had exactly one use: to determine whether or not advertisers respect the wishes of people who do not want their browsing habits tracked. The verdict is in, and to nobody's surprise advertisers have no respect for anyone. Now we know that we are justified in using ad-blocking plugins and building browsers that block ads by default.

"Because it is the same approach and Mir is further along. Wayland isn't at the benchmarking phase yet they are still getting stuff to work at all."

Um. No. Phoronix benchmarked XMir. XWayland, which is precisely the same thing for Wayland, has existed in usable form for months or years.

GTK+ and Qt already have Wayland compositors, AIUI.

"The irony here is that Mir, which is is seen as a huge competitor to Wayland, could end up helping Wayland enourmously since Canonical doesn't seem to be afraid to pick up a phone and call people at AMD/Nvidia to talk about updating the drivers."

Well, no, Canonical is not afraid to print loud press releases about how they're talking to AMD/NVIDIA, couched as confusingly as possible to make it sound like AMD/NVIDIA are already confirmed riders on the Mir train. It's a publicity exercise. I'm sure the Wayland developers are in touch with AMD/NVIDIA as well, they just aren't as cynical as Canonical about trumpeting it loudly in press releases.