A thermostat still provides a simple "I'm too hot" and "I'm too cold" control. It just means that variations in engine temperature don't require me to adjust the climate setting. Likewise cars could still provide multi-zone control, both with their own thermostats, to accommodate the scenario you note above.

Guns make people more effective at suicide than many other tools. Eliminating guns wouldn't solve the underlying problem, but it would move some numbers from the "suicide" column to the "attempted suicide" column, and at least some people see that as desirable.

You are allowed to be offended. That's a perfectly valid feeling and anyone that tells you otherwise is probably wrong.

But society places all sorts of restrictions on individual freedom. The trade been individual freedom and the power of collective action is the basis of society -- we agree to protect you from murder, and you agree not to murder anyone. We've long since agreed not to socially acceptable to call people names they don't like, unless that label is itself contrary to societal values and factual (i.e. murder). It's literally one of the first things we teach children, and it's a more or less globally held value.

If you'd like to change that belief, or convince us that your beliefs are tolerable in society, feel free to try. No one will stop you -- you've already posted to the public Internet and I'm reasonable certain that no one broke down your door and arrested you for that post. But if you hope to convince us though, you might consider avoiding straw men. No one is preventing use of the term "redskin", demanding reparations for previous use thereof, or even suggesting that such things should happen in the future. No one is suggesting that hurt feelings are a reasonable basis for legal decisions.

I'm not sure using centuries of gender discrimination as an example is the best play when trying to defend this position.

It's also unclear to me why other people having feelings that don't align with yours poses some threat to your rights. What right of yours is being impeded by allow the individuals and groups may choose their own names, like they have since the dawn of time? Is someone discussing a criminal or civil statute that would apply the standard of "at least one person is offended" and impose some penalty or restriction on that basis?

The person or group being named gets to decide what others should call them. This has been true since time immemorial, and it has always been considered disrespectful to do otherwise. It's particularly offensive when the term being used is itself derogatory, as is the case here.

If only there was some sort of completely internal guidance system available for aircraft.

Absolutely. There's nothing to stop you using a modem with your voice link. As in the ISDN days the bandwidth is much more limited when you used the encoded voice channel, and as with all voice connections you can only reach one endpoint at a time, but if you want to setup a PPP gateway someplace you can call into it and slowly exchange data with it all day long.

I suspect you'll have trouble improving upon the $/byte ratio when limiting yourself to cellular modem speeds -- your voice channel is probably less than 20 kbps (8.7 MB/hour) or usable bandwidth, but it's absolutely something you could do.

It doesn't. They can terminate the VoIP call to the PSTN. It's just that when they control both ends it's possible for the devices to talk directly to each other, using whatever route the IP network finds most efficient, rather than forcing all calls out onto the PSTN or through their central VoIP server.

It's nothing different than the way SIP calling works today in non-mobile contexts -- all setup goes through a central server, and the server *can* route to non-SIP targets or forward voice traffic between SIP targets that can't reach each other, but it's *also* possible to bypass the server for voice data if the endpoints can reach each other directly and speak the same language.

If they make good batteries and sell them at a reasonable price, other will buy them. Take a look at say, projector LCD panels -- Epson makes essentially all of them, but you can buy projectors with a wide variety of designs from a number of manufacturers. And that's hardly the only example.

Tesla doesn't produce the consumable fuel (electricity), just the durable storage device. And while car manufacturers certainly might outsource a fuel tank, no one would consider it unusual for them to make their own either.

But if you had external PCIe you wouldn't need to choose between a workstation and a laptop -- you could have a laptop when you wanted mobility, and with the connection of a cable you could have a workstation. You wouldn't haul around your PCI cards any more than you haul around your monitor -- you'd just have the option to ditch them for the times when you need mobility more than capability, and you could make that choice flexibly, after the fact, without hassling with (or purchasing) multiple machines.

It's like a docking system, but without the "only available on certain models" and "only available with the bits we think you want" and "only available from the system OEM" and "not forward compatible" limitations of a dock.

Not all boards are designed to allow arbitrary DMA; modern memory control systems can provide segment protection for hardware just like they have for decades for software. And on systems that do not provide such protections the OS can disable DMA access -- Windows 8.1 disables DMA at boot and whenever the system sleeps/hibernates/etc., and linux has provisions to forbid the use of DMA while otherwise allowing normal access to devices.

It's useful for anything that wants lots of power or space, which includes things like high-end GPUs, disk arrays, anything with lots of physical connectors (like analog capture devices), as well as various special-purpose ASICs and the like. It's all stuff you *can* do in a big case, or with a custom cabling system, but it's nice to have external be an option and use standard cable.

One of the obvious applications is desktop use of laptops. I'd like a super-thin, low-weight, long-battery-life laptop for mobile use. I'd also like a high-end GPU, full-sized Ethernet ports, and a slew of USB/etc. connections when I'm at my desk. Currently the solution to that problem is a device-specific dock that supports precisely what the laptop manufacturer decides it will (if the even offer one). External PCIe means nVidia can sell me a GPU that plugs into any laptop (and can be used with more than one laptop), and I can add whatever other bits I like individually or as packaged by arbitrary third-party manufacturers.

If you can't smuggle data in a book, you're doing it wrong.

You might also recall that submarines are not known for their spacious interiors.

Good luck with your sticky, stiff, wet books.

Yes. Wake-on-LAN and power management. Super scary stuff there. Thanks for the warning.