I see we have found one of the aforementioned idealists. It's extremely naive to think that any ad company whose entire business model is suck up as much data as possible is going to honor the user's preference to "please don't track me". It's like asking a hungry bear "please don't eat me". This approach was doomed to failure from the beginning without some very heavy handed regulation and penalties enforced by governments (like DMCA), which of course was never going to happen. As usual in a tech discussion, the focus here is on some completely irrelevant technical detail of some software setting, instead of the actually real causes of the issue, which are the market forces and business realities. Whatever Microsoft set the default to is completely irrelevant; their browser market share is tiny anyway.

It was always a naive solution put forth by idealistic technologists. Did we really expect the ad companies who are already abusing data collection to the fullest extent possible to stop doing it (and go out of business) simply because you asked them nicely using an obscure setting in the browser?

Telcos have 0 incentive to resolve this issue. They get paid every time a call traverses their lines, and they desperately want the wireline phone system to die so they can get out of regulatory obligations, maintenance costs, and union obligations. The only chance they have to allow this to happen is if customers get so annoyed with the service that they cancel, and when enough people cancel they can make the case to shut it down.

Uhm, what? USPS First Class mail prices are regulated by the government. They cannot raise prices without regulatory approval. And last time I checked, most Post Offices are falling apart, yet you make it sound like they're a bunch of fat cats living the sweet postage life.

It seems like the inevitable fate of any successful product. Wall St demands higher and higher profits, so there is no choice but to keep adding and pushing, even beyond what makes sense. Then the product inevitably becomes so bloated that people only tolerate it until a simpler alternative comes along. Then that becomes successful and the cycle continues...

94% of billions is not "very few" sites remaining.

It's really baffling that these e-cigarettes have nicotine in the first place. Isn't it obvious that including that ingredient is specifically done to create addiction? With tobacco at least one could argue that it's a natural part of the product, but by adding it to e-cigs CLEARLY shows the intention of the manufacturers to get people addicted. If you want e-cigs to help smokers stop smoking, that's one thing, but to have it generally available to everyone is just crazy.

It doesn't really matter unless there is data on whether the system works or not. Nothing in the article seems to mention this.

No, it is not used that way. It means the editor is indicating the preceeding word or phrase is either spelled incorrectly or has incorrect grammar. It's usually used in a quotation that is reproduced verbatim and copies the incorrect spelling/grammar, to let the reader know it is intentional.

found the photo online and saw no indication that it was copyrighted

Uh, what? The basis of copyright law is that everything is automatically copyrighted by the owner. You can't just go around saying that you didn't know and just assume you can use things.

Yes, Facebook is bad, but this is on some PARTNER web site. Is Facebook (and every other Internet company) supposed to constantly pen test the sites of all their partners? They should probably have contracts in place, but legally the risk lies with Nametests, not Facebook. Facebook can only do so much to enforce the practices on their partners.

The arguments are always the same: We need to implement a persistent and total invasion of privacy that applies to everyone at every minute of the day, "just in case" some very unlikely thing might happen in the future. The more likely scenario is the school superintendent got a nice kickback for some percentage of the cost.

Why are you saying the exact same thing I just said but presenting it in a way that you are arguing against it? This is really the problem with the Internet these days -- people just argue for the sake of arguing, even when in agreement.

Isn't the point of capitalism to allow failing companies to die? At least during the financial crisis there was a national interest reason (collapse of the economy and banks runs are bad), but coal mines?

LTSB is only suitable for ATMs, kiosks, etc...