It's not paranoia, it's just that I have a zero-tolerance policy for getting used by datamining corporations.  But regards the other stuff, the doom, well I do have my suspicions although some of that was posted in humour ;-)

I'd love to be able to buy an iPad, but it ain't going to happen.  I did consider getting one and then disconnecting the communications circuit so that I could just use it as a handy little toy, there's some nice apps for it, I must admit.  Disconnecting that would mean that Apple can't datamine the iPad, but it would also mean I'd have no way to load apps onto it.  I even thought about 'Jailbreaking' one, but if did that, I'd be blocked from the App Store, again, rendering the thing useless.

I have no problem whatsoever going to a shop and buying one of those iTunes App Store cards, I can pay cash for it, same for the iPad itself.  But I'm not happy with their TOS and there is no way I'm agreeing to that sort of crap.  So without a way to load it with Apps without it being internet connected, it would be useless to me.  I've been wanting one for a while, ever since Korg released that MS-20 app for it, but like I said, privacy is more important to me than playing around with a nice app.

So, nothing I can do about that, it's just the way it is.