gl, hf

Yes, but then you haven't *really* rooted it, have you? Once you do, though, and have ANYTHING running as root that wouldn't otherwise be; that's where the increased risk comes from.

Yes, this. You shouldn't root your device "just because you can", which seems to be the mentality some people have. It greatly increases your attack surface for security vulnerabilities. I'm certain that the ability to root will stick around "forever", but for most people having a well thought out API which allows separation of privileges is going to lead to better results.

Good news! You haven't needed root to do that for a Long Time now. You can just click the "Disable" button in the app's details page, or drag it to the trash can from the apps drawer, and it's disabled. Sure, it's taking up a few MB of space on your system image, but, "oh well." At least, this is certainly true on any Android 4.x device I've owned.

If you are going to write a response to nit-pick someone's grammar, spelling, etc... you should check yours first!

Yes, a petition to the White House is totally the way to get a constitutional amendment passed... Not! Petitions are great, but it's much more useful to send them to someone who can actually do something about them.

That link seems broken. Did you mean this?

Yes, it does. From what I recall it even nags you to set it up. At least, I know it nags you when, after setting it up, your backups fail for whatever reason (out of disk space, etc).

Mozilla products don't use the GPL, they use their own license: http://www.opensource.org/licenses/mozilla1.1

Yes! Lets keep those commies from corrupting our precious bodily fluids! Only distilled water and vodka for me!

I know many of my wife's passwords (not word related ones, but most others), but she doesn't know mine. She still has accounts on all my computers though so she could get to all my files if she needed to. She doesn't know mine mostly because they're long and random so she'd probably have to write them down to remember, etc.

I have given a bit of thought to some sort of escrow account/file for this sorta stuff. But, we both have access to the bank account, insurance,... already, so it probably isn't that important. I'm sure her dad could do data recovery on my other systems if the need arose.

Scanning for heat trails... that reminds me of Cyberia...

Sorry, but "undocumented feature of the human eye"...? I didn't know there was a manual!

While I agree that Consumer Reports does a good job of making objective analyses of different products on the market, their focus is on consumer goods, like microwaves and air conditioners, not corporate infastructure like server operating systems.