Exactly. I would do much the same as you.

I suspect there is a large number of science fiction fans that do not watch SyFy any more... they stream or watch the few shows they like from that network through on-demand and forego actually tuning into the network. I don't even know, off-hand, what the channel number is on my cable box.

They get good ratings for wrestling, but it has driven the fans away from the rest of the programming, which suffers because of it, and draws viewers that do not stick around for any other programming. The junk programming they have (Ghost Hunters type shows) is like going to a fine dining establishment to be served hamburger helper - it also drives away the base.

For every decent SyFy show on the air, there are three or four terrible ones. The Wil Wheaton Project is a great show, because he celebrates and respects the fandom, but when I watch it, I'm reminded of all the crap SyFy inflicts as well. At least it gives Wil some fodder to joke about.

This is why you put an executive in charge of a channel that actually likes the genre. Bonnie Hammer only saw SciFi Channel as a stepping stone to a more mainstream network (USA), and installed another idiot who didn't really care for the shows they were peddling when she left.

They should be funding movies based on classics, whenever possible, instead of the crappy creature-of-the-week and pseudo-reality crap they shovel out every week. These days, its possible to deliver quality science fiction programming without busting your budget, too - but somebody at the top has to be motivated to deliver this to the fans (the network's viewer base), rather than dump garbage none of the fan base wants to see in order to draw more "mainstream" viewers.

It must be nice to take a stranger's word and believe entirely in their side of a story.

This passenger intended to intimidate the gate agent for following the rules - that becomes obvious when you know he had to inform them of the tweet. It seems more likely that he was overbearing and pitching a bit of a fit, and the agent might have felt threatened.

There is a lot more to this story we will never know, but if you try and see it from the agent's perspective, you become aware of other possibilities - some of which are more likely. At this point, we only have the passenger's word that they threatened to call the police, and for that matter, the same can be said about removing the tweet.

Who's to say another agent suggested they call security over the guy ranting and throwing a tantrum over not being granted special privileges, and he realized what that meant, and suddenly decided to back down - until he could go to the press with his horror story after the fact (thus completing his threats and gaining his "revenge"); removing the tweet was just a temporary gesture to placate the agents that he had "calmed down" while he plotted to "expose the rude bitch" later. (Just a theory here)

Not really likely, right?

So logically, the agent had to be informed that the passenger was making his angry tweet, which, as you imply, the passenger was actually using the tweet to blackmail the agent into bending the rules for him.

I think it is very key, and very telling that this is not addressed in the story. There is no way for Southwest employees at that gate to have known this guy tweeted anything, without the passenger informing of it, and once we get to that obvious fact, to what end was he doing this? The obvious reason is to intimidate the agent he felt was "rude" - which seems rather petulant.

Now it gets more interesting if you start to wonder if there was a reason why the agent threatened to call the police on this guy... was it an overreaction, or was this passenger just being such an incredibly overbearing, pompous ass in his blackmail attempt, that the agent felt threatened? It might be that they never requested him to remove the tweet, but were instead responding to his petulant tantrum.

I can easily see it playing out that he was informed he needed to calm down and back off or they would call security. We only have his word that they threatened to have him arrested, and that he had to remove the tweet... it seems more reasonable, knowing this passenger intended to intimidate the agents, that he was in a threatening posture, and realizing he was about to get a royal TSA probing, "calmed down" and offered to remove his tweet as a gesture - all the while plotting to tell the story we see presented here, in all of its one-sided glory.

I hate to side either way on this story, but I'm more inclined, given this key missing item of the story, to believe that the "more to this story" involved the passenger being a LOT more in the wrong than the gate agent.

My phone does this, it's called "Speaker mode"

Seriously, saying "fiber optic cables from thin air" is an idiotic statement. IR remotes have been doing this for decades, and using lasers to do so has also been done for ages.

...that's all I need, an avatar to browbeat me for an hour over my poor credit history that is partially due to my poorly-paid job working on a government contract.

HP has over 317,000 employees, thanks in large part to acquisitions - Microsoft is no different here.

Lots of redundancies can be eliminated (unfortunately for those employees) - and in some ways, this is a very bad thing. As monopolies grow, they are able to be more efficient and eliminate jobs. We don't stop and think about the fact that in a massive conglomerate corporation place once stood several competing corporations that meant competition (lower prices, better service to consumers) and more jobs - but of course, less return to investors and less pay to executives.

This is a troubling trend, as the American Dream is snuffed and the middle class finds itself dwindling deeper into poverty, while the richest seem to work tirelessly to increase that gap. I'm no socialist or communist, but it occurred to me the goal of these assholes wasn't to get richer - that's something that happens when you are that rich anyway - it is to make the rest of us poorer.

Take all landscape photos and crop 33% of the space on the left side and 33% on the right side. I see they already do this to widescreen videos taken on smart phones.

I just saved 66% of their bandwidth, and made the images more appealing to hipsters and guidos!

The monetary costs of "fighting piracy" is probably far greater than any actual losses. With international treaties, lobbying, investigation, prosecution, lawsuits, direct enforcement (police raids) as well as countless millions handed over to worthless organizations like the MPAA in this effort, the industry and society in general spends more to fight this phantom menace than is prudent.

Of course, common sense would tell us to stop being dumbasses, but there is an entire industry built around "copyright enforcement" and that scam involves too much money to give up anytime soon.

...is that instead of "saving" you on premiums, it will only be used as an excuse to tack on more to your premiums.

We already see this with credit ratings. Having trouble paying your bills, even though you pay your car insurance on time? Here's a nice 20% price hike to punish you.

This is the way this always works, particularly with an industry that you are legally mandated to do business with.

Once every 56 years?

Too soon?

...and used Microsoft's legal team. They would have gotten the gmail.com and google.com domains and then it would just have been a matter to use Microsoft name servers to commit a DoS attack against gmail's hackers, erm, users.

The Federal judges in Nevada are suckers for a good story, I hear, even if it's blatantly false.

"Right to be forgotten" works great for some already-anonymous person... not so much for CEOs or other 1%ers.

Try finding the damn tech support number at Microsoft... for those who are affected, call this number and ask for "Operator": 800-642-7676

At least voicing our angry concerns, and failing any resolution (that won't really happen, but perhaps we can overload their ticket system), call their legal and corporate affairs office (425-706-7863, in the parent post).

I was directed to the "Pro support team" - if they try and sell me Azure services I am going to freak. That's just outright illegal - hijacking and shutting down a competitor to sell business?!?!? I don't care if that is the unintended effect - it is still incredibly unethical and illegal.

I don't serve anything important... but I usually post images through my local server and upload to imgur "through the web" - it took several retries when I tried to do this a short while ago, and now I know why.

Thanks, Microsoft.... you can't just take over no-ip and then run it through crap servers that can't handle the loads.