"This was entirely predictable as soon as Apple allowed user expectations to settle on buying any app, no matter how useful or entertaining, for almost no money."

Sounds like you're saying Apple made the mistake of letting consumers make their own choices.

Would you like to walk into a restaurant and have the cashier or waiter tell you what to order?

In Hawaii pretty much 100% of the environmental assessments are nonsense.

The burden of proof should be on the person who claims this is not shenanigans.

Otherwise ... let natural selection take its course.

That sounds like a lot of work.

I would put the remote down to go to the polls, though ...

I like the idea of governments:

1) Spying on outsiders, as their job
2) Spying on their own citizens *when they have a warrant for that individual*

If you take away the case-by-case warrants in (2), you will have governments spying for political purposes (see IRS, Lois Lerner, Obama, etc).
If you skimp on (1) you make yourself too vulnerable (see Pearl Harbor, 9/11, etc).

I'm okay with foreigners spying on me.

Dissatisfaction with the world and the choices it hands to you can often be interpreted as whiney.

I saw Anakin in II and III as whiney and Luke as an individual.

Yes ... but W. didn't reach for the "most transparent administration" banner.

And it's hazy how much of this ramped up during the Obama years.

Part of the determination to prosecute will probably based on whether or not the executive branch (i.e. the White House) is of the same party as the Senate.

It is very hard for one part of the government (e.g. half of Congress) to attack a different branch when they're controlled by the same party.

But they should ...

Ultimately, I think that if the Senate doesn't go after the spy depts on this, the voters will lose trust in whatever party is not helping to fix it. As a tea party guy, I respect Pelosi for "draining the swamp" (Weiner, etc), but for Harry Reid to go after Obama ... I don't see that happening.

And I call that evil.

Right ... so we agree on that, then.

Even though he killed a lot of his own citizens, this doesn't undermine (to me) his value as a US president.

What do you think of Lincoln? My opinion isn't necessarily any better than yours, but the "own citizens" criteria by itself isn't enough to persuade me Lincoln and Israel are monsters.

That sounds nice.

If your code doesn't use any strings.

By that logic Lincoln/Sherman killed millions of their own citizens.

So in the EU if a company said, "We don't want to re-hire employees who have been let go within X period of time or work with contractors who use these employees." The EU would balk?

How is this any different than saying, "I don't want to consider eating at restaurants I've decided to pass on in the last 6 months."? Should the EU get involved in that?

(1) Microsoft gets a market

How does government provide this? I interpret "a market" as individuals wanting an operating system. I own a copy or two of Windows. How did the government make me want Windows? Or anyone?

A large part of the reason individuals buy Windows is because they have an awareness of what it can do and decide for themselves they'd rather use that than the alternative. You are entitled to disagree with that decision, sure, but individuals base that on Microsoft's past investments and accomplishments (or failures depending on whether you participate in that market).

(2) Microsoft gets a shop physically

I guess you're talking about their campus in Redmond. I'm pretty sure they paid for that. In the US we have something called "fee simple" real estate. It means the land legally belongs to the government, but for a small "fee" you can stake it out as property of which you have ownership rights, responsibilities, etc.

We are straying from this due to things like Kilo, but the government didn't just "give" Microsoft land that came out of tax payers pockets. Microsoft paid for the land in addition to the taxes it paid to the government (and the taxes its employees paid to the government).

I'm not sure how you couldn't just do the same thing with QR codes.

That way you always grab (potentially) current data.

Less expensive too.

Sounds prohibitively expensive.

History disagrees ...

See the first year of the pilgrims at Plymouth ...
See the socialist communes of American in the 19th century ...
See the hippie communes of America in the 20th century ...

When Cuba runs low on resources it allows more people to work in a regulated semi-free market. This is a tacit acknowledgement that free markets produce more wealth. The Soviets instituted the New Economic Agenda for the same reasons and it acknowledged the same thing.