The danger of semi-autonomous vehicles is abuse of Wagnerian music and a mild but dull 5 minutes of YouTube? On a medium full of people ghost-surfing their cars, some guy with a self driving car having it self drive (with nothing bad happen) is pretty low on the overall YouTube of Stupid scale.

Ever read the Dictionary Act? You know, 1 US Code 1? It disagrees: http://www.law.cornell.edu/usc...

To mangle a phrase, just because you take no interest in office politics doesn't mean that office politics won't take an interest in you.

Pay attention to little things. Watch the comings and goings of those who think they're players. Listen to everything that people try to tell you and never take sides out loud.

"Yeah, really?" is pretty much all I say when people try to drag me into their battles.

I hate the games of office politics but I'm a realist and I understand that I have to know the game to avoid it.

LK

but come on. Why do people keep fucking with the branding that we know and love?

Stop trying to get the prom queen to like you and stick with your day-one friends.

LK

You assume that security being called on me would have allowed me to board my flight as I had planned.

That being said, I am not saying both situations are the same, my point was and is that I expect that this story is not unique and that only a portion of them do we ever hear about.

Someone probably relayed the 'threat' of the tweet to someone on the flight crew who raised the 'is this a passenger a threat?' flag.

Remember that for a threat to be effective it need only be believed by the target... even if there is no actual plan to make good on it.

In a world where after going through a laughable but invasive search by TSA screeners and about to board an aircraft where you are legally required to obey all instructions of the flight crew in order to return to your home many miles away... is it any wonder that even the threat of the police being called might make someone comply?

Why do you assume her consent would be required?

The airport is a public place and there is little right to privacy or anonymity when in public... doubly so when you are wearing a name tag.

Did the agent think the whole thing would be erased from everyone's memory and it would be as if nobody complained?

To play devils advocate... maybe.

While from time to time we hear stories like this of some employee who acts in a rather bad way PR wise... how often do you think similar events happen and that we never hear about them? Probably a lot more.

The morning after a canceled connection flight I had a gate agent threaten to call security on me for using the word 'safety' with regards to my knees being impacted against the seat in front of me on the upcoming flight.

Granted... it was an excuse for her as she didn't like my attitude (I didn't like having to employ it), I didn't call the media or tweet about the incident, I just pledged to avoid that airline in future... and later upgraded it to a blanket ban after the next time I used the airline (4 years later) a similar event happened where my connecting flight was cancelled and trapping me in the same airport.

Using publically visible information (nametag & gate sign) to state an opinion constitutes harassment?

God help the reviewers on Yelp or Angie'sList who give their opinions on different businesses.

Unifying the UI is less important and desirable than unifying the underlying OS.

Which has already been done IIRC.

While Windows Phone 7 had the underpinnings of Windows CE... Windows Phone 8 had an NT kernel under the hood... ditto for the Xbox One.

I talk about retrocomputing with several people and most of those who are both over 30 and a long time computer users remember the Amiga.

LK