I have two access points as well. House is a two-story, 2,590 square feet. Cable access is at one end of the house and the main router is there as well. At the far end of the house, the signal has to go through several walls, a washer and dryer, and a staircase to get to the Chromecast plugged in behind the TV against the outer wall. It is about 1 bar and I am not about to try to use it like that as it will likely stutter and degrade. So I pulled wire to that end of the house and there is a second router (in simple bridge mode) there. As a bonus, I now have coverage in the upstairs master bedroom / bathroom where there was basically no signal before. BTW, this isn't a single router / brand issue. I have used about 7 or 8 different routers - all sorts of brands from Linksys, Netgear, Buffalo, etc. and they all had the same issue getting to the other end of the house.

Interesting point about the "reasonable person". I don't know any of them though. Most people I personally know (aside from my kids, who think like I do) think the meta data collection is OK. They equate it with survey data that is aggregated and anonymous - even though the meta data includes non-anonymous stuff like your phone number. I don't consider them reasonable, but they seem to be in the majority. Generally, if put to a vote, the majority - assuming they aren't apathetic and don't vote - will win and will be considered the reasonable ones. Maybe I am unreasonable? But I sure don't like the NSA collecting all of this info...

I guess the question does come down to "your media". However some of it is in a grey area. For example, I have a bunch of (legal) MP3 files that I personally ripped from CDs (which I still have). So I have these MP3 files and CDs here locally. But, I also have them on Google Music. How does that count? 1/3 cloud? Or, since they are the same files is that "local" and ignore the cloud "copy". We have a ton of DVDs in several racks. Those, of course, are local. As far as movies in the cloud, I never purchased any, but I got a free one here and there - so there are a few. But we watch a TON of Netflix. Those aren't MY media. But I have access. How does that count? I am going to have to say - because of all of that, that I have only those few movies I got free that are cloud only and are supposedly "mine". Compared to the number of DVDs and CDs (and MP3 files) that I have local those few free ones are rounding error making it 100% local. But since I use a lot of Netflix I think of myself as a heavy cloud consumer. Strange, huh?

Well, my wife and I are getting older (late 40s) and our eyes are not the best anymore. It is much easier to read an ebook on a Nexus 7 or a Kindle because you can increase the font size and lower the eye strain. Unfortunately you can't increase the font size on a paper book.

If it was designed properly, they would not HAVE any information to sell (or leak when hacked). If, for example, I bought such a device for my kid's car, I would expect that the information it sends (including any unique identifier like a serial number in the equipment) is sent encrypted by my public key to the cloud service along with an unencrypted number representing ME (so that it can route to me in their system). I would have an application on my computer, tablet, etc. into which I could put my private key / certificate. It would download the encrypted information and decrypt it locally. Anything less - nope! No sale. If they are able to do alerts and geo fencing - it is clear that they get the information on location unecrypted and can access it. I would not want to get such a system...

None of this matters. If any sort of canary became popular - EVERY site that had one would immediately get one of these secret orders. That order may be for something ludicrous (home phone of the CEO or something), but they would ALL get a secret order immediately. Boom. All the canarys are dead. And they no longer provide any information. Your move internet...

I chose the Pinball option. But if it had Galaga and Gorf - I'd have to split my time 3 ways between Galaga, Gorf, and Pinball.

There is only one real fix - abolish time zones completely. As the summary states, time is arbitrary. Duration may be based on something concrete (like the decay of a particle or something), but the actual time itself is indeed arbitrary. Let's just agree that everyone uses UTC and call it done. Can you imagine the benefit? When is that world cup football (US: soccer) match on? Oh, at 17:00. Who gives a rat's ass where it is now? It is on when it is on. No, hmm, it is in Brazil, that is x time zones from me - wait am I forward x or back y from that - heck, when the fuck is it on! Just one time. World wide. Why does it matter if we get up at 23:30? It is arbitrary. If your boss then expects you at work at 2:00 - fine. Later in the year, if they want to change that to 3:00, no problem. But the time itself is just a referent. There is absolutely no reason that it cannot be 14:00 in California, Singapore, and the UK at the same instant. Who cares where the sun appears to be if you look up at that same instant? It doesn't matter. What matters much more is being able to coordinate things easily on a global scale. Get it done!

Sure, but it wouldn't be so hard to just block the content from the ad network until it was verified as cleaned up. An added benefit is that - the first time this happened - the ad networks would start to take security more seriously.

'It's not just this one technology that's the problem,' Schneier says. 'It's the mic plus the drones, plus the signal processing, plus voice recognition.'"

I usually agree with Bruce. But unless that quote was taken way out of context, he is wrong here. Technology isn't the problem. It never is. It is the people salivating at the thought of using it against us. Even those who think they are doing us a service to keep us safe: when they invade our privacy, they are the problem. The tech? It's actually cool. There are probably - how would someone jaded to the world of sound and copyright put it - many non-infringing uses of the tech. It can probably even be used in a way that isn't spying. For example recording a conference speaker (with permission) in a noisy room or the like.

They would need weaponized autonomous vehicles though. Otherwise the other drug runners would steal from them by capturing their autonomous vehicle. They would need to be hardened from a computer / radio front so that they can't simply be "hacked" to go to a different destination and they would need to be hardened to physical assault so that crazies in rubber boats wouldn't come steal the drugs or simply grab the whole unit.

Bombing even selected targets will just make innocent people pay for the actions of a few. There are a few people who were involved in ordering the chemical attacks. If anything were done, those few would be taken to international court (the Hague is it?) and charged with war crimes. That should be the extent of it. Oh, and someone should investigate the claims that the rebels also used chemicals several months ago. There might be some folks that need to be charged with war crimes there too.

Who the fuck are these astronauts that will study it?

They will probably be astronauts in the same sense that the guy who controls a drone is a "pilot". In other words, they will be in some NASA control center controlling some drone spacecraft with lasers and drills and mass spectrometers.

Well, when you are in business you try to stay in business. As more and more content becomes "deliver over network" and more and more is DLC with only one user able to access the required DLC (killing rental and resale), the physical disk business (for both GameFly and Netflix) is drying up. GameFly will go out of business, drastically downsize, or convert to another method of making money within a couple of years. They might as well try to grab as much capital as they can from their declining business so that they can fund new business development efforts and keep their people employed. If getting a lower postal rate helps them do that, then that is what they will try to do.

Rightsholders have to have *full time* people involved in policing sites like youtube.. something just isnt right about that.

Actually, they CHOOSE to have full time people do this. They also choose to have some inadequate software do it too. They don't have to do it. They have some fear (grounded or unfounded, brilliant or misguided) that "people will see our stuff and we won't profit from their eyeballs". This may be true. But it is their choice to produce stuff and their choice to limit distribution in the way that they do. If those choices then result in them choosing to try to put a genie back in a bottle and attempt technical and social engineering means to enforce artificial scarcity on the things they produce - well, that was all their choice. They don't "have to" do it.

I happen to agree with limited copyright protections (maybe 10 years, maybe 20 - there are good arguments on either side), and, as a rule, don't violate copyright and actively educate the minors in my household about respecting copyright laws. But that doesn't make me blind to the crazy choices that these distributors make in limiting distribution of content and then expecting people to not be criminals. Lots of people are criminals. Heck just look at all the red-light runners and speeders on the road. Look at all of the shoplifting that goes on. Then take copyright violation (which many people don't even consider to be immoral) and what would you expect to happen when you attempt to artificially limit the avenues by which content can be legally acquired? Yep. Violations. Lots of them. If hiring people to police web sites is the price of the business decisions they've made - well, sorry, but they made their bed. Now they get to sleep in it. And by artificially limiting distribution - here is what I mean summed up pretty well - http://theoatmeal.com/comics/game_of_thrones