Buy nothing. Wait for a need; then research what fits it best.

You've been given an opportunity in disguise here.

Do you really want all that stuff that consumes time? Only one way to tell: wait for yourself to need it, then buy it as you determine those needs based on what you actually use.

A real world analogy: encryption is like a room within a room.

If you were to enter a residence, and find it divided into apartments, you'd probably have to get a warrant for each locked, separately numbered door.

The real question is whether one individual can have multiple rooms within a room. If your phone and computer are encrypted, do they need a warrant for each?

By collecting user data, the benevolent state of Ubuntu is able to keep track of what you might need.

I notice you searching for blow-up dolls and discount alcohol, citizen. Would you like the number of a qualified therapist?

I don't wanna know.

I'm not in favor of ignorance, but sometimes, it's better to live for what time we have and not depress ourselves with the toxic inevitable far-off doom that awaits us.

Let us enjoy our lives free from meta-mortality.

Not necessarily -- big media productions already get plenty of coverage on the torrent scene, and there'll only be more users keeping torrents alive/healthy longer when people lose today's popular RS/MU/etc.-type sites and get driven back to bittorrent.

That's a good point. Cracking down on piracy may drive pirates to methods of file transmission that are even less detectable. I'm waiting for them to drive us all to darknets, when the internet will be nothing but a stream of encrypted packets with ambiguous destinations. Then what are they gonna do -- outlaw encryption?

Thank you for elaborating.

There's a number of reasons for not switching from Windows 7.

First, it's the operating system most of us always wanted. It gets closer to a perfected version of Windows XP. It does everything we need with the software and the interface paradigms we've known for 20 years.

Second, I don't trust any new product until it has been on the market for 18 months in order to get the bugs out. Developers know why, and the reason isn't developers (generally).

Finally, I distrust trends. They blow through, take your money, and blow out the other door. I trust reliability and paradigms that are time-tested.

As a lack of positive reason, I'm not sure what Windows 8 offers that Windows 7 does not. There are improvements; they look really neat. I'd like to play with them, on some computer I'm not using for work when I have lots of spare time to play around with it.

The computer is a tool for me. I use it to achieve other ends. Thus I'm not that fascinated with the OS and want it to "just work." Windows 7 does that, or an adequate job of it at least, on a wide variety of hardware.

You don't need the latest, greatest, most powerful computer, either.

You could use an iPad!

What if you're having legal troubles? IRS are after you? You have applications for a Betty Ford-like clinique? Tax returns? These are things that you're NOT going to be putting up on Facebook or your blog, but documents you might have to have. T

I agree. However, that sort of information should be guarded under a different principle, which is general privacy laws. No one should have access to that type of personal information unless it's signed over by the informed consumer.

As written elsewhere in /. comments, often choice means that most people will bungle it and enslave those who do know better to those who do not.

It's a useful counterpoint at least.

It seems to me obvious that this should be the case; Google has for most people replaced those annoying phone books.

The only caveat is that they should make sure they lock down the machine well...