Aye. At the car dealership where I work, 9 is the same as zero on customer satisfaction surveys. Further, less than an 85% average score cuts your commission for all further sales until the average goes up. With an average of 10-12 new car sales per month (less than half of which fill out the surveys) one middling score can cut my income for several months.

The company has the system well rigged.

I think that's where most of their "members" are. I last looked at mine maybe three years ago; don't they disappear after a period of disuse?

(Sigh) The POINT was, classic Darwinian standards of fitness are already irrelevant as regard humans in civilized countries. Rather, fitness as regards utility to the individual, as in NOT having the genes for Huntington's, hemophilia, etc. But you knew that.

Read Robert Heinlein's "Beyond this Horizon." from 1942. Or, at least read the Wikipedia article. Clever method of eugenic selection without direct gene manipulation. (Granted, I'm not sure the method would actually work). Or, "Methuselah's Children" - same period, same author - for a simpler, guaranteed method.

Simple fact is, modern medicine is allowing more, genetically less fit, individuals to survive and breed. Note the current research on Huntington's disease. We have to combat the deterioration somehow...

The only one I've tried was Siri on my iPhone, but I've never had it do anything useful. The searches and directions it's provided are always wrong.

Companies are, in fact, not (usually) stupid. Someone calculated the revenue from selling the information against the loss in sales X the chance it will be discovered. The profit said "do it!" I've worked for companies where it cost more to keep existing customers happy than to advertise for new ones. Guess what we did?

How many drive bays, how many ports, and how many card slots? I've owned every top end Mac Since the Macintosh II; this one I skipped.

These ride sharing services were set up to allow people to casually earn a little extra money. They do this by bypassing the cruft that's accumulated around traditional taxi services. So immediately, government, workers, and to some extent even the public wants to re-load all the baggage - destroying what ride-sharing was intended to be. It's not the 30's, in a company town - if they don't like the wages, there are other agencies and other industries.

Next, everyone strikes to have an above-average income.

No matter how many times you warn them, teach them, educate them - drivers will ALWAYS assume these system are more capable than they are. Especially given the instinct to blame anyone but themselves. I've always had a hard time visualizing an intermediate step between fully automatic and fully manual driving; and it appears that's coming true.

I have plenty of computers in the house, but "my" computer is a 2009 iMac running OSX 10.6.8. Notable feature is several multi-terabyte FireWire external hard drives. I have newer ones, but I don't like the later OS revs. My Windows machines are the same; I actually use Windows 7, despite having newer revs.

I recall setting up a Facebook account, looking around and deciding it was a waste of time. Pretty sure I used a pseudonym, but I haven't logged on in years.

The likelihood I'll upgrade is inversely proportional to the urgency with which MS wants me to do so. If they're ramming it down my throat, it can't be for MY benefit, right? Besides, at work I use software which MUST run IE 10.

I use a combination of RAID, local backups, and (for critical files) offsite optical storage.

That turns out not to be the case. With my Apple phone, Apple offers updates and I accept (or decline) them. The carrier has nothing to o with it.

I grew up in the 50's. I had a happy and healthy childhood. But by today's standards, every relative of mine would have spent their entire lives in prison. I lived in Philadelphia, and by the time I could reliably walk I was running short errands of a block or two for my grandmother. "Go get a head of lettuce from the greengrocer, dear - have him put it on my account." By the time we moved to the suburbs (I was six) I was walking a mile or two to school. At eight I got a bike, and in summer roamed the entire town, out of adult supervision for most of the day. By ten or so I had a rail pass, and visited nearby towns (usually with a friend) to go to book stores or hobby shops. Note that I purchased, and flew, "dangerous" hobby items like model rockets.

Most damning, when I walked home from school - starting in third grade - I was home alone for a couple of hours before my mother got home from work. No one thought anything about it, or anything else mentioned above. I am so, so sorry for people currently experiencing childhood - they'll live their lives in coddled fear. No wonder they expect the government to protect them - they have no idea how to live their lives themselves.