I'm sorry to go off topic like this. I'm not a rabid privacy advocate, but
your reasoning is apallingly shallow, and from my experience re. the social
responsibility of the whole tech profession, I fear it is representative.
Y'all just see bits and bytes, but there's more to it.

> On the upside, it's like your grandfather
> walking into the general store, and having the people there know him, and
> what he likes.

No, it's  not. It's like having a spy satellite tracking him everywhere he
walks, recording it in a database, including when he's on the golf course,
and then sending him books on how to reduce his slice!

.. Plus seeing that he goes to AA meetings (no offense to your grandfather
here!), to a GOP rally (none there either), to an HIV clinic (you get the
idea), all the while not knowing that Big Brother is watching him. And then
some hacker strikes and grabs the whole database. Oops!

This is even worse than the user-hostile interfaces that are produced as a
rule rather than an exception. <g>

Apologies again.
Henrik

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