Lots of people claim that there are studies showing that plants "cry out in pain", though not surprisingly no one ever seems to have a link to a reputable study to go with that claim.

Here's a more thorough response than I'm willing to take the time to type.

I don't recall any mountain lions claiming to be a civilized society. I also don't recall any mountain lions having the knowledge and ability to survive any other way, especially being that they're obligate carnivores.

Because it's unnecessary.

If survival's at stake, I'll do what I gotta do. But if the sole reason for killing another living creature is "mmm, tasty", then something's wrong. My definition of "civilized" would include "not killing for pleasure".

Is that a bad thing? Shouldn't an intelligent society always be questioning its beliefs, traditions, and prevailing wisdom?

I agree. Free them all. There's no reason for an advanced, "civilized" human society to treat living, sentient* creatures as products to consume.

*For bob's sake, please look up the word before replying with the standard Slashdot anti-animal-sentience nerd rage.

Why one or the other? Most captors bring food to their captives.

Exactly. It's not the tools, it's the tools who use them. The Exchange client on my smartphone allows me to specify my work hours, and I have it set up to NOT deliver any new emails outside of those hours. Lots of phones do this, but it's up to the user to use it.

Rumour has it that Ford's deal is a fairly significant part. I'm not sure that he'd be interested in just a cameo, to be honest. He doesn't owe Lucas squat, and has done so much since then that he barely remembers those movies, so if he's on board, it's because it's worth it for him to be on board. Sure, his role won't be as significant as in Crystal Skull, obviously, but he'll get a few action scenes and lots of dialogue, I'm sure.

I just hope he's still flying the Falcon. It's not a Star Wars movie without the Falcon breaking down (again).

Except that they're talking about arrests. When you're being arrested, you can expect to be searched. However, there are limits on the search that can be done. This is merely a logical interpretation of the existing laws as applicable to phones.

No. They predicted a >0% chance of an earthquake but told people it was a 0% chance, resulting in people who were already preparing for an earthquake to stop their preparations.

Could be worse. You could've received one of these.

Additionally, the person will have had to intentionally sync their card with their Twitter account to enable this in the first place. It's a stupid idea from a consumer perspective, although kind of brilliant from a marketing perspective, as now not only do we make purchases but we announce them to the world, but it's not nearly as prone to abuse as folks here are making it seem.

As I understand it, the way he got the huge universe into such a small space was by not actually storing it at all. The universe was randomly generated, but it used a hardcoded seed value so that it always generated the same universe. Pretty cool if you ask me.

And it's nothing compared to the $10/gal that Americans routinely pay for bottled water without a single complaint.

This is how the conversation should've ended.